James Hervey Hyslop, Ph.D., LL.D, (August 18, 1854 – June 17, 1920) was an American psychical researcher, psychologist, and professor of ethics and logic at Columbia University.

[1] In 1906 he helped reorganize the American Society for Psychical Research (ASPR) in New York City and served as the secretary-treasurer for the organization until his death.

I give him short shrift, and do not propose any longer to argue with him on the supposition that he knows anything about the subject.Originally an agnostic and materialist,[5] Hyslop's interest in psychic investigation increased after sessions with the Boston medium Leonora Piper, whom he first met as early as 1888.

The issue as he saw it in this report was whether spiritism or telepathy exclusively from living people was the most rational explanation for the phenomena associated with Piper, in particular, messages allegedly received from his deceased relatives.

He concluded his lengthy account by saying that these messages forced him to ”give my adhesion to the theory that there is a future life and persistence of personal identity.... [and] to tolerate the spiritistic theory as rationally possible and respectable, as against stretching telepathy and its adjuncts into infinity and omniscience.” [6] He believed that through her he had received messages from his father, his wife, and other members of his family, about which he reported in the Journal of the Society for Psychical Research (London, 1901).

[2] In his book Science and a Future Life (1905), Hyslop wrote of his séance sittings with the medium Leonora Piper and suggested they could only be explained by spirits or telepathy.

[7] However, Frank Podmore wrote that Hyslop's séance sittings with Piper "do not obviously call for any supernormal explanation" and "I cannot point to a single instance in which a precise and unambiguous piece of information has been furnished of a kind which could not have proceeded from the medium's own mind, working upon the materials provided and the hints let drop by the sitter.

[9] In 1913, Edwin William Friend was employed by Hyslop as his assistant and with help of Theodate Pope became the editor for the Journal of American Society for Psychical Research.

Three days after the loss of the ship, Hyslop held séance sittings with the medium Mrs. Chenoweth in an attempt to contact Friend.

[15] In 1906, Hyslop criticized the famous experiments of Johann Karl Friedrich Zöllner with the medium Henry Slade and pointed out eleven possible sources of error.

[16] In a review for the Journal of American Society for Psychical Research in 1917, Hyslop wrote that various occurrences of levitation could have been faked by trickery.

He also reviewed the psychical researcher William Jackson Crawford's experiments with the medium Kathleen Goligher and suggested that reported physical phenomena in the séance room could be unreliable.

His three-year-old sister, Anna Laura; and his four-year-old brother, Charles both died of scarlet fever when Hyslop was ten.

[5] In 1922, William van der Weyde produced an alleged spirit photograph of Hyslop during a séance at the house of Edwin F. Bowers.

[22] For some time after his death his research assistant and longtime secretary, Gertrude O. Tubby, received what she believed were communications from Hyslop through many mediums in the United States, France and Britain.

"[24] Psychologist Joseph Jastrow criticized Hyslop's book Enigmas of Psychical Research as he was not "in any scientific sense investigating the residual phenomena of psychology" but searching for "another world" beyond the realm of science.

The control when asked if he had remembered a "Samuel Cooper" responded that he was old friend in the West, and that they used to discuss philosophy on long walks together, but the statement was proven to be false.

[10] Philosopher Josiah Royce in a review for Hyslop's The Elements of Ethics wrote that "[His] conscientious and detailed analysis do honor to his fairness, and make his work an extremely thoughtful one; but in matters that concern speculative skill of a constructive type this book is often, to the present reader's mind, distinctly unsatisfactory.

"[28] In the preface to Gertrude Ogden's book James H. Hyslop - X His Book: A Cross Reference Record, physician Weston D. Bayley wrote that "Professor Hyslop, had, with wonderful persistence, patience and precision, placed on record a vast amount of experimental material, fully accredited and exactly sustained in accordance with the standards of evidence.