Richard Hodgson (24 September 1855 – 21 December 1905) was an Australian-born psychical researcher who investigated spiritualist mediums such as Eusapia Palladino and Leonora Piper.

Sidgwick sponsored Hodgson to study in Jena in Germany, and Herbert Spencer provided a very flattering letter of introduction Haeckel.

[7] Hodgson in his report wrote that the letters were frauds and had been written by Blavatsky herself who had put them in the cabinet from an opening in her bedroom located behind the Shrine room.

Joseph McCabe praised the work of Hodgson in debunking fraudulent mediums but wrote he was credulous on his study of Leonora Piper.

[10] The psychical researcher Charles Richet with Oliver Lodge, Frederic W. H. Myers and Julian Ochorowicz investigated the medium Eusapia Palladino in the summer of 1894 at his house in the Ile Roubaud in the Mediterranean.

Lodge, Myers and Richet disagreed, but Hodgson was later proven correct in the Cambridge sittings as Palladino was observed to have used tricks exactly the way he had described them.

[11] In July 1895, Hodgson was invited to England to Myers' house in Cambridge for a series of investigations into the mediumship of Palladino.

[13] Hodgson had observed Palladino free a hand to move objects and use her feet to kick pieces of furniture in the room.

Hodgson was convinced Palladino was a fraud and supported Sidgwick in the "attempt to put that vulgar cheat Eusapia beyond the pale.

[16] In February, 1895 Dean Bridgman Connor a young electrician died of typhoid fever in an American Hospital in Mexico.

[17] Anthony Philpott a journalist for The Boston Globe travelled to Mexico to investigate the incident but could find no lunatic asylum or Dr. Cintz as described by Piper's control.

[17] Due to the incorrect information the Dean Connor case has been described as an incident that has cast doubt on Piper's alleged ability to contact the dead.

During these years Hodgson believed that he constantly received direct communication with the regular band of spirits in charge of Piper.

When friends put test questions to the spirit of Hodgson about his early life in Australia, the answers were all wrong.

[28] Joseph McCabe stated Hodgson was an unreliable source on account of a letter he saw in the 2nd edition Spiritualism and Oliver Lodge by Charles Arthur Mercier, from a cousin of George Pellew to Edward Clodd, alleging that Hodgson said that Professor Fiske from his séance with Piper was "absolutely convinced" Piper's control was the real George Pellew, but that when Pellew's brother contacted Fiske about it, he replied it was "a lie" as Piper had been "silent or entirely wrong" on all his questions.