Eileen Jeanette Lyttle (Garrett) was born in Co. Meath, Ireland in 1892 as Emily Jane Savage. She was a renowned psychic and trance medium, having first trained at the British College of Psychic Science. From 1930 she gained international notoriety from what became known as the 'R101 airship séance' following her trance communication with the spirit of the captain of a crashed British airship. In 1940 she moved to New York and some years later founded the Parapsychology Foundation.
Not all the facts of Garrett's official life story add up. Garrett wrote that she grew up with her aunt and uncle following the tragic suicidal deaths of her Spanish father Anthony Vancho and her Irish mother Anne Brownell. She moved to London and married a 'Clive Barry', where her three infant sons died before she gave birth to her daughter.
In this compelling new biography by Julie Coyle, the author discovers that Anthony Vancho and Clive Barry were invented characters, Garrett never gave birth to three infant boys who then died, and she had in fact never been married. Her stories were fabricated to conceal her poor upbringing and the birth of her daughter outside wedlock.
Sadly, Coyle's research has also revealed that Garrett's death in France in 1970 was caused by an overdose.
The Early Life of Irish Psychic and Trance Medium Eileen J Garrett: Fact or Fabrication, the groundbreaking debut book from Irish spiritual medium, Julie Coyle, tells the tragic, true story of one of Ireland's forgotten daughters for the first time.
