Thirty Years Among the Dead

Carl August Wickland (February 14, 1861 – November 13, 1945) was a psychiatrist, a paranormal researcher and a non-fiction author. Wickland was born in 1861 at Liden, Norland Province, Sweden. His father taught him cabinet making in his youth. Later he studied watchmaking. In 1881 he arrived in St. Paul, Minn. after having emigrated from Sweden the year before. He married Anna W. Anderson in 1896 and they moved to Chicago so that he could attend Durham Medical College from which he graduated in 1900. He became a general practitioner of medicine and specialized in researching mental illnesses. In 1909, Wickland became chief psychiatrist at the National Psychopathic Institute of Chicago. He continued in that position until 1918 when he and his wife moved to Los Angeles, California. Wickland, in collaboration with his assistants, Nelle Watts, and Celia and Orlando Goerz, wrote and published in 1924, Thirty Years Among the Dead a book that detailed their experiences in abnormal psychology. Wickland believed that the doctrine of reincarnation was incorrect: The theory of reincarnation can undoubtedly be traced to early stages of mankind when departed spirits took possession of the bodies of sensitive individuals and lived and acted through them, thus seemingly indicating reincarnation. But in reality this was only spirit obsession or possession.