Eileen Jeanette Vancho, Lyttle, Garrett
(1892-1970)
Psychic medium, foundation executive, writer, editor, publisher, and one of the most important figures of the early para-psychological scene. She is believed to have been born March 14, 1892, in Meath, Ireland, and given the name Emily Jane Savage. In later years, Emily became known variously as "Jane Savage" or "Jean Lyttle" (or "Little"). The latter name was the pseudonym for her four published novels.
Garrett was a natural sensitive from an early age. Her psychic ability was further developed by Spiritualist James Hewat McKenzie at the British College of Psychic Science, London, between 1924 and 1928. Garrett, however, was unique among mediums in developing an objective approach to her own phenomena. She also enlisted the assistance of qualified researchers and scientists in investigating paranormal phenomena. She was invited to the United States by the American Society for Physical Research in 1931, and from time to time visited Duke University, working under the guidance of William McDougall and J. B. Rhine. She worked with many famous investigators of the paranormal, including Alexis Carrel, Nandor Fodor, and Hereward Carrington. She experimented with Telepathy, trance, psychic controls, poltergeist, ESP, and many other phenomena.
Her own powers of telepathy and clairvoyance were remarkable. As a medium she attracted world interest when she received a communication apparently from the dead captain of the airship R101 after the airship had crashed but before the news was reported.
In 1941 Garrett started the publishing house Creative Age Press in New York with her own book Telepathy, written in five weeks. She also launched Tomorrow magazine, one of the most intelligent journals on paranormal topics of the time, and established Helix Press, another publishing house.
In 1951 she set up the Parapsychology Foundation in New York to encourage organized scientific research through grants and international conferences. The foundation published the International Journal of Parapsychology, the first issue of which appeared in the summer of 1959. The foundation organized its first international conference on parapsychology at the University of Utrecht, Holland, on July 29, 1953, under the chairmanship of Gardner Murphy.
Garrett had been married twice before her marriage to J. W. Garrett in 1918. During her lifetime she encountered many famous literary figures and worked with the greatest parapsychologists of her time. She died September 15, 1970, and was buried at Marseilles, France.
Sources:
Angoff, Allen. Eileen Garrett and the World Beyond the Senses. New York: William Morrow, 1974.
Garrett, Eileen J. Adventures in the Supernormal. New York: Garrett Publications, 1949.
Awareness. New York: Creative Age Press, 1941.
Life is the Healer. Philadelphia: Dorrance, 1957.
Many Voices: The Autobiography of a Medium. 1968. Reprint, New York: Dell, 1969.
My Life as a Search for the Meaning of Mediumship. London: Rider, 1939.
The Sense and Nonsense of Prophecy. New York: Farrar, Straus & Giroux, 1950. Reprint, New York: Berkley, 1968.
Telepathy: In Search of a Lost Faculty. New York: Creative Age Press, 1945.
ed. Beyond the Five Senses. Philadelphia: J. B. Lippincott, 1957.
Does Man Survive Death? New York: Helix Press, 1957.
Progoff, Ira. The Image of an Oracle: A Report on Research into the Mediumship of Eileen Garrett. New York: Helix Press, 1964.