Fodor, Nandor

Fodor, Nandor (1895–1964)

Nandor Fodor was born in Beregszasz, Hungary, on May 13, 1895. He studied law at the Royal Hungarian University of Science in Budapest, where he received his doctorate in 1917. Four years later he went to New York and worked as a journalist. After reading Hereward Carrington’s book Modern Psychic Phenomena (1919), Fodor contacted Carrington and the two quickly became friends. Carrington introduced him to Sir Arthur Conan Doyle. Some years later, Fodor and Carrington co-authored Haunted People (in Britain titled Story of the Poltergeist Down the Ages). While in New York, Fodor interviewed Sandor Ferenczi, an associate of Sigmund Freud’s. Fodor believed that psychoanalysis could provide insight on psychic phenomena. Freud later came to support Fodor and his work.

Fodor moved to England in 1929, and worked for newspaper tycoon Lord Rothermere. Five years later he became an editor of Light, the oldest British journal of Spiritualism. Fodor was interested in Spiritualism while in New York, and attended a séance given by direct voice medium William Cartheuser. In England, Fodor started to seriously investigate all forms of psychic phenomena, visiting sites of hauntings, poltergeist activity, levitations, and materializations. In 1934, he authored his most important book, the Encyclopedia of Psychic Science. Sir Oliver Lodge was sufficiently impressed with Fodor’s work that he contributed a preface to the book. In 1935, Fodor became London correspondent for the American Society for Psychical Research. He resigned that position in 1939, and returned to live in New York.

Fodor was on the teaching staff of the Training Institute of the National Psychological Association for Psychoanalysis for many years. He was an editor of The Psychoanalytic Review. He was a member of the New York Academy of Science and an honorary member of the Danish Society for Psychical Research and the Hungarian Metaphysical Society. His books include Haunted People (1951), On the Trail of the Poltergeist (1958), The Haunted Mind (1959), Mind Over Space (1962), and Between Two Worlds (1964).

Sources: