Have the original research papers of psychical researcher Alan Gauld (1932-2024) been lost for ever?

Dr Alan Ogilvie Gauld (1932-2024) was among the most distinguished British researchers into ghosts, poltergeists and survival after death in Britain during the second half of the 20th century.    

Enjoying a career that spanned sixty-five years Gauld left a substantial body of original published research and scholarship. He collected a large library of rare books on paranormal and esoteric literature  and an extensive personal archive of  unpublished materials, notes in manuscript form which 18 months on from his death in December 2024 were put up for auction in Nottingham at the auction house of Mellors and Kirk on 14 April 2026. The auction attracted a lot of interest both in the UK and from overseas….

The Society for Psychical Research was able to purchase some items from this extensive collection. These will in due course become accessible to the wider research community. Unfortunately, a number of research files were acquired by an anonymous bidder in the United States who was able to pay the highest price.

This include the whole of Lot 371 which was made up of personal files and unique manuscript notes compiled by Alan Gauld.

From the  late 1950s through to the 1990s  Alan Gauld regularly undertook investigative fieldwork, teaming up with Tony Cornell, President of the Cambridge University Society for Psychical Research (CUSPR)  with who became a long-term research collaborator. On  several occasions Gauld and Cornell personally witnessed poltergeist effects he considered precluded any normal explanation, including during an extensive CUSPR investigation over 1957-1960 into mysterious physical phenomena at Hannath Hall, an antique house in Cambridgeshire and the home Derek Page, the Member of Parliament for King’s Lynn (later Lord Whaddon). These and other reports led to a reappraisal of previously dismissive attitudes towards poltergeist activity as merely the pranks of naughty children or seismic effects caused by underground water and extremes of weather.

These files were among Lot 371 which from the catalogue of Mellors and Kirk comprised the following:

“The papers of Dr Alan Gauld (1932-2024), including two folders concerning Hannath Hall, Cambridgeshire, its paranormal activity and his investigations there, with some photographic negatives and some photographs, typed and manuscript correspondence, statements, transcripts, photocopies of original manuscripts plans, etc., some material with his fellow Cambridge University Society for Psychical Research member and co-investigator Tony Cornell; 62 card archive boxes, with his and his family's correspondence and papers, early 20th c and later, his printed and manuscript research, transcripts, lots of photocopied publications, etc; a mid-20th c manuscript notes from various séances, split gutter but holding, 4to; four folios of mid-20th c and later newspaper clippings of the paranormal and spiritual words; two folders of Myers drafts, typed and with some marginal manuscript annotation; a folder of pamphlets, further published works in copy and papers relating to John Raymond Smythies; a philosophy folder of manuscript work, some typed; approx. 40 folders of research, mostly printed; mid-20th c school exercise books; toleware tin; further family material; etc”

Altogether, a great deal of original material and unique data.

Unfortunately, due to these materials now being bought  by a private bidder in the USA the opportunity for future research and study of these files with  the data they contain is now seriously, perhaps, irrevocably compromised.

Questions abound. Will the new owner appreciate what these files contain?  Will the new owner be doing anything positive with these records?

 Sadly, the likelihood is that Alan Gauld’s unique records  are effectively lost, at least in terms of  future research and the wider public benefit.  There is no guarantee that these files will be made available to anyone in the wider research community ever again. Even more concerningly, items held in private collections often vanish in time (often they are simply be discarded by heirs and successors unaware of their significance).

It is a most regrettable situation which will only be remedied if the buyer is prepared to allow access  to them in the future to serious scholars.