Harry Price - The Mediumship of Willi and Rudi Schneider

The Mediumship of Willi and Rudi Schneider

'The Foremost Physical Medium known to Psychists'

Harry Price demonstrating the electrical control method employed for his sittings with Rudi Schneider (Reproduced from Rudi Schneider - A Scientific Examination of his Mediumship by Harry Price [Methuen, 1930])

The importance and significance of the mediumship of the two Austrian brothers, Willi (1903-71) and Rudi Schneider (1908-57), cannot be underestimated in the history of Harry Price's career in psychical research. It was the Willi Schneider séances he attended with Eric Dingwall at the home of Baron von Schrenck-Notzing in Munich in May 1922 that first gave Price the conviction that genuine psychic phenomena existed and he signed a statement testifying to the fact. Four years later Price had his first sittings with Rudi Schneider in the same year that he opened his National Laboratory of Psychical Research to the public, and it was at the National Laboratory between 1929 and 1932 that Harry Price was finally able to test Rudi himself.

The controversy which surrounded the outcome of Price's Schneider séances had serious repercussions on the structure of his own organisation and ran like a thread through his later career until the end of his life. The very last letter he wrote two days before he died was to Mrs. K.M. Goldney concerning his investigation of Rudi Schneider.

This section of the website looks in detail at the mediumship of both the Schneider boys and Harry Price's involvement in it. Here you will find Harry Price's original articles and papers describing his work with Willi and Rudi, the whole story behind the National Laboratory séances in Price's own words and those of his contemporaries, and the still continuing controversy which followed on in the years after Price's death, with accusations of deliberate fraud and deception on the part of the man who to the end of his days never doubted the genuineness of the phenomena he had witnessed in the presence of Rudi Schneider. Click on the titles to access the articles.

Clipping from Light dated 7th April 1933 in which members of the National Laboratory disassociate themselves with Price's report which claimed Schneider cheated during a séance (This clipping is pasted into the back of a copy of Price's Rudi Schneider owned by French psychical researcher René Sudre)

Brilliant Phenomena in the Home of the Schneiders by Harry Price (1926) Price's report of a sitting with Willi Schneider in his home town of Braünaü-am-Inn in October/November 1925. This paper was published in both the Journal of the American S.P.R. and Price's own British Journal of Psychical Research (Vol.1, No.1, July-August, 1926).

Review of Harry Price's Rudi Schneider: A Scientific Examination of his Mediumship by Dr. V.J. Woolley (1930) This review of Price's monograph on his first series of sittings with Rudi was published in the Journal of the Society for Psychical Research (Vol. 26). Dr. Woolley's main comments were on the effectiveness of the electrical method of control employed during the séances. Also included is Price's rather terse reply together with some comments on Price's letter by Dr. Woolley.

The Schneider Brothers - Willi & Rudi by Dr. Nandor Fodor (1933) Entry on the Schneiders from Fodor's Encyclopaedia of Psychic Science which gives a good resume of both brothers mediumship and Harry Price's involvement in it. This short essay covers the Schneider story up until the Hope-Rayleigh sittings of October-December 1932 and Harry Price's subsequent exposure using the notorious 25th séance photograph taken during his second series of sittings at the National Laboratory.

Rudi Schneider: The Vienna Experiments of Professors Meyer & Przibram (With a Foreword) by Harry Price (1933) The complete contents of Bulletin V of the National Laboratory of Psychical Research in which Price publishes apparent further evidence of fraudulent practices by Rudi Schneider which was reported by two Viennese academics in 1923.

Report of a Series of Sittings with Rudi Schneider by Lord Charles Hope (1933) This is Part III of the report into the Hope-Rayleigh sittings with Rudi Schneider that were held in London between October and December 1932, written by Lord Charles Hope and published in the Proceedings of the S.P.R. This section contains Lord Charles' comments on Harry Price's exposure of Schneider which was published after the Hope-Rayleigh séances had taken place.

Review of Anita Gregory's Anatomy of a Fraud: Harry Price and the Medium Rudi Schneider by Dr. Alan Gauld (1977) Review from the Journal of the S.P.R. of Anita Gregory's paper published in Annals of Science in which she accuses Harry Price of faking the incriminating photograph taken of Schneider in 1932. Gauld comes out against the idea of a forged photograph but is critical of Price's conduct in the whole affair.

Cover scans of two rare papers written by Harry Price on the mediumship of Rudi Schneider and published in the Revue Métapsychique in the early 1930s.

Harry Price and the Rudi Schneider Phenomena by Dr. Vernon Harrison (1987) A short paper published in Psychical Studies in which Harrison refutes the suggestion that Harry Price faked an incriminating photograph of Rudi Schneider in 1932 and supports the genuineness of Schneider's mediumship.

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