LibGuides: Hamilton Family: Home

The Hamilton Family fonds details Dr. T.G. (Thomas Glendenning) and Lillian Hamilton's investigations of psychic phenomena in their home in Winnipeg, Manitoba between 1918 and 1945. The images detail numerous aspects of spiritualism including telekinesis, teleplasm, trance states and various other psychic phenomena.

This site is comprised of over 700 images from the Hamilton Family photograph collection and over 1300 notes and accompanying documentation pertaining to seances held in the Hamilton's home. The entirety of the photograph collection has been digitized with the exception of duplicate photographs of the same image. It includes digital reproductions of photographs, stereo photographs, slides, negatives and glass slide negatives, as well as some accompanying textual records.

View a description of this fonds and a finding aid for the collection

View the digitized material

View a compilation of photographs set to original music

Voyez la description pour ce fonds en français

Eine ausführlichere Beschreibung dieser Sammlung finden Sie hier

Zasoby rodziny Hamiltonów - opis w języku polskim

このコレクションの詳細

We greatly acknowledge the financial support of the Manitoba Department of Culture, Heritage and Tourism and the Heritage Grants Advisory Council in the creation of this digital collection.

Read digitized copies of T.G. Hamilton's book, Intention and Survival, and Margaret Lillian Hamilton's book, Is Survival A Fact?, about her family's psychical investigations

Check out the Thomas Glendenning Hamilton biographical sketch in the Dictionary of Canadian Biography that was published January 26, 2022. There is also a version available in French.

Between June 7 and November 22, 2009, artist Susan MacWilliam represented Northern Ireland at the 53rd Venice Biennale 2009. One of the three video installations, titled F-L-A-M-M-A-R-I-O-N, comprising her exhibition, Remote Viewing, was based on research Ms. MacWilliam conducted on the Hamilton Family fonds. In addition to using photographs from the collection in her work, the installation also included a reconstruction of T.G. Hamilton's séance cabinet.

Learn more about Susan MacWilliam's Remote Viewing exhibition at the Venice Biennale

Read our annual Hamilton newsletter:

Hamilton Newsletter 2012
Hamilton Newsletter 2011
Hamilton Newsletter 2010

“Seeing the Unseen: Remarkable Evidence of Mysterious Phenomena Caught by Cameras of Psychical Research Society”
For an overview of the research, Leslie Garden’s article “Seeing the Unseen: Remarkable Evidence of Mysterious Phenomena Caught by Cameras of Psychical Research Society” was published in Manitoba’s Western Home Monthly (August 1931, pp. 18-19 and 54).
Thomas Glendenning Hamilton and Family Psychical Research Experiments Bibliography
To facilitate searches within one document, the Thomas Glendenning Hamilton psychical research experiments bibliography combines in four parts:

• An introduction to the Hamilton family fonds, including a proposed reading list to help orient new researchers
• A comprehensive list of writings by T. Glen Hamilton, his wife Lillian, their children and others who experienced the séances
• Articles about the Winnipeg experiments published between the 1930s and 1980s when the Hamilton family donated the records of their psychical research experiments to the University of Manitoba Archives & Special Collections
• Categorized lists that document the post-1990 explosion of scholarly and popular articles, book chapters, dissertations, art exhibitions, lectures and symposia, television and radio shows and interviews about the Hamilton research, including fictionalized accounts.

To submit corrections or report works not yet listed, please email: archives@umanitoba.ca