J. Arthur Hill

John Arthur Hill (4 December 1872 – 22 March 1951), best known as J. Arthur Hill, was a British psychical researcher and writer. He is credited with having coined the term out-of-the-body experience in 1918.

Biography

Hill was born in Halifax, West Yorkshire, and was educated at Thornton Grammar School. He worked as a business manager until he suffered ill health. He was a member of the Society for Psychical Research (1927–1935) and was known for his writings on parapsychology and spiritualism.

In 1914, Hill wrote an article Is the Earth Alive? which was later expanded into a chapter in his Psychical Miscellanea (1920). Influenced by Gustav Fechner he speculated that the earth is a living spirit being. Reviewers ridiculed this belief.

Hill greatly admired the philosophy of Ralph Waldo Emerson. In 1919, he wrote a book on the subject.

Reception

Hill's most known work was his Spiritualism: Its History, Phenomena and Doctrine (1919). Arthur Conan Doyle wrote a supportive introduction to the book but later commented in 1926 that it was "written from a strictly psychic research point of view, and is far behind the real provable facts." Psychical researcher Hereward Carrington described the book as a "fair and impartial summary."

His books were criticized by skeptics. Psychologist Millais Culpin wrote that Hill was gullible in trusting the word of mediums and did not know anything about dissociation.