Whately Carington

Whately Carington
Born	1892
Died	March 2, 1947
Occupation	Parapsychologist, writer

Walter Whately Carington (1892 – March 2, 1947) was a British parapsychologist. His name, originally Walter Whately Smith, was changed in 1933.

Carington born in London was educated at the University of Cambridge where he studied science. He joined the Royal Flying Corps during World War I and became an experienced pilot, but was badly injured after a forced landing. On behalf of the Air Ministry and War Office he returned to Cambridge to undertake research into acoustics, with special reference to psychological problems. At this time he devised some innovative methods for the mathematical assessment of feelings, which proved useful in his later work.

He investigated the mediums Kathleen Goligher and Gladys Osborne Leonard and he set about studying psychical research in more detail. Between 1934 and 1936 Carington tested the trance mediumship of Eileen Garrett, Gladys Osborne Leonard and Rudi Schneider with psychogalvanic reflex and word association tests. Carington concluded from the results their trance controls were secondary personalities, not spirits.

Criticism of Carington's tests on mediums came from C. D. Broad and R. H. Thouless who wrote he had made statistical errors and misinterpreted numerical data. The psychologist Donald West had praised the tests that Carington performed with Leonard.

Carington gave up all other work for his interest in psychical research. He lived on a small private income for a time in a remote village in the Netherlands. In 1938 he travelled to Germany, to rescue a woman from harassment by the Gestapo. They later married and set up home in Cornwall, where his wife collaborated in his experiments and nursed him as his health gradually failed. His early death at the age of fifty-four was due in part to his injury during World War I, and to overwork.

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