Tenhaeff, Wilhelm Heinrich Carl

Tenhaeff, Wilhelm Heinrich Carl(1894–1981)

Wilhelm Heinrich Carl Tenhaeff was born in Rotterdam on January 18, 1894. He studied at the University of Utrecht and received a Ph.D. in 1933. His doctoral thesis was the first in the Netherlands on the subject of parapsychology.

Tenhaeff married Johanna Jacoba Hemmes in 1926. From 1933 to 1953, he was lecturer on parapsychology, and then from 1953 onward, Professor of Parapsychology and Director of the Parapsychology Institute, State University of Utrecht. He founded the institute, which is now known as the Parapsychological Division of the Psychological Laboratory. In 1928, Tenhaeff founded and edited the journal of the Dutch Society for Psychical Research and was Secretary (1929–1938) and Advisor (from 1945 on), interacting with the Society for Psychical Research in Britain.

Tenhaeff had been interested in parapsychology from an early age, investigating and writing reviews of reported examples of psychometry, clairvoyance, precognition, psychic healing, radiesthesia (the use of divining rods), and allied subjects. He spent many years investigating the powers of psychic Gérard Croiset. He lectured extensively on parapsychology in many different countries, and published articles in a variety of journals. He also authored a large number of books on the subject, among them Short Textbook of Parapsychology—3 vols. (1926), Spiritism (1936), Parapsychological Phenomena and Speculations (1949), The Divining Rod (1950), Somnambulists and Healers (1951), Introduction to Parapsychology (1952), Telepathy and Clairvoyance (1958), and Precognition (1961). Tenhaeff died in Utrecht on July 9, 1981.

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