This is an accepted version of this page Frederic William Henry Myers (6 February 1843 – 17 January 1901) was a British poet, classicist, philologist, and a founder of the Society for Psychical Research.

[6] In 1867, Myers published a long poem, St Paul, which includes the words of the hymn Hark what a sound, and too divine for hearing.

[10] As a young man, Myers was involved in homosexual relationships with Arthur Sidgwick, the poet John Addington Symonds,[11] and possibly Lord Battersea.

[15] The British writer on the occult Richard Cavendish commented: "According to his own statement, he [Myers] had very strong sexual inclinations, which he indulged.

[18] However, Trevor Hamilton dismissed this and suggested that Freer was simply using her acquaintance with Myers to gain status in the psychical research movement.

"[20] Biographer Bart Schultz wrote that "Myers was suspected of all manner of sexual quirks and it was alleged that he looked upon psychical research as giving him opportunities for voyeurism."

After the publication of Charles Darwin's On the Origin of Species (1859), it was difficult for those with a scientific education to retain a belief in tenets of the Judeo-Christian religion.

Searle described Myers as "having lost his Christian faith, sought a new kind of religion that could reassure him that death did not lead to extinction.

"[23] In the late 19th century Douglas Blackburn and George Albert Smith were endorsed as genuine psychics by Myers and Edmund Gurney.

[34] Blackburn called Gurney and Myers a "couple of credulous spiritualists" and wrote "we resolved that we should be doing the world a service by fooling them to the top of their bent, and then showing how easy a matter it was to 'take in' scientific observers.

According to reports by the investigators such as Richard Hodgson and magician John Nevil Maskelyne, all the phenomena observed in the Cambridge sittings were the result of trickery.

[43] Psychical researcher Thomas Walker Mitchell commented that "the chief aim of [the] book was to produce a cumulative quasi-statistical proof of telepathy.

"[44] It was enthusiastically praised by psychologist William James as a "most extraordinary work...exhibiting untiring zeal in collecting facts, and patience in seeking to make them accurate.

"[45] Some scholars, however, criticised Phantasms of the Living for its lack of written testimony and the time elapsed between the occurrence and the report of it being made.

[46] Some of the reports were analysed by the German hallucination researcher Edmund Parish (1861–1916) who concluded they were evidence for a dream state of consciousness, not the paranormal.

[47] Charles Sanders Peirce wrote a long criticism of the book arguing that no scientific conclusion could be reached from anecdotes and stories of unanalyzed phenomena.

[60] In Human Personality and Its Survival of Bodily Death, Myers speculated on the existence of a deep region of the subconscious mind, which he termed the "subliminal self", which he believed could account for paranormal events.

In 1961, Human Personality was re-published as an abridged version with Huxley's foreword, in which he remarked "an amazingly rich, profound and stimulating book.

"[67] Strong praise for the book and a revival of interest in Myers' ideas appeared in the 2007 Irreducible Mind by Emily Williams Kelly, Alan Gauld and Bruce Greyson.

Myers was buried in the graveyard of St John's Church, Keswick, between his father's grave and a gateway into the garden of the house where he was born.