Psypioneer began as a free online monthly newsletter in May 2004 - available on publication to an email subscribers list. JV Trust and the Survival Joint Research Committee Trust later became donors for equipment and other running costs.
Leslie Price was the founder editor of Psypioneer, and Paul Gaunt took over in July 2005, assuming ownership in February 2006. Much support was given by established UK institutions in the field, such as the Society for Psychical Research (SPR), College of Psychic Studies (CPS), Spiritualists' National Union (SNU), Churches' Fellowship for Psychical and Spiritual Studies (CFPSS) and Psychic News (PN). In December 2016 Paul Gaunt retired as proprietor and editor to concentrate on his work at Stansted, including the free on line journal Pioneer which deals with the history of the Spiritualists' National Union.
Circulation of Psypioneer reached 480 e-subscribers in 2012 and nearly 800 in 2016.
In addition to circulation to the e-subscribers, Psypioneer was from the beginning archived on the website of the Woodlands Sanctuary Foundation Inc. in Melbourne, Australia, whose members Garth Willey and Peter Hui provided literary and technical help respectively. The team at Woodland Way retired in January 2017, and IAPSOP donated the technology and services to produce and maintain the present Psypioneer site. The easy availability of Psypioneer to students for over a decade was only possible because of the labours of the Melbourne team. Garth Willey and Lis Warwood (in Adelaide) also proof read the issues, and Lis has provided much help on genealogical and other historical maters (matters).
The material in Psypioneer deals with historic personages and organisations in the psychic field, and includes reprints of obituaries and other biographical sketches, old articles, book reviews and original papers. The most influential reprint (in April 2005) was of the Lewis Report into the Hydesville phenomena of 1848.
No particular standpoint is adopted about the phenomena under discussion, and personalities discussed include Spiritualists, Theosophists, Christians, Rationalists and non-committed historians and parapsychologists. Among those in whom we have taken a special interest may be mentioned Andrew Jackson Davis, the Fox sisters, Stainton Moses, Emma Hardinge Britten, Arthur Conan Doyle, prominent Theosophists and a number of physical mediums.
Yet there is a large amount of literature which, in general, is not to be found in Psypioneer. Normally absent are papers from the Proceedings and Journal of the Society for Psychical Research, even though the SPR has published many essential investigations. This is because they are already available in electronic form through the SPR web site, free to SPR members. Moreover, by a small extra subscription, electronic versions of some other parapsychology journals, such as "Journal of Parapsychology" can be reached via the same site. (www.spr.ac.uk), or through Lexscien (www.lexscien.org.)
The second omission is of survival evidence and discussions of the survival question, though much that is relevant can be found in our pages.
Third is religious controversy. Spiritualists have been arguing about relations with mainstream Christianity for over 150 years Arthur Findlay, for example, might write an article asserting that Jesus was not historically attested - a Christian Spiritualist would reply that he was! Sometimes the same sources are quoted decade after decade. Psypioneer carries historical material about workers of many different beliefs, but is not directly interested in criticising any.
The fourth omission, oddly enough, is of spirit teaching. This implies no criticism of the value of such teaching, often received in trance. It is just that it is not usually about events in the historical record. An unfortunate exception was the many predictions of "No War" immediately before the Second World War. Early in 2006, however, Psypioneer did serialise the 1845 trance addresses through Andrew Jackson Davis called "Clairmativeness". This is because they had been lost to later generations, and were an essential step in understanding how the Harmonial Philosophy of Davis developed.
In general Psypioneer helps us to understand more about the workers of the past, and the organisations and publications through which they worked. Sometimes even the present day leaders do not know about them - they may just be names. It is not unknown for confusions to develop in the history, or for aspects of their work, which are not fashionable today, to be overlooked. The Journal tries to fill in the picture and restore it to its true colours.
Arthur Conan Doyle recognised the importance of remembering the past, which is why he compiled his classic two volumes History of Spiritualism. A mere Journal is no substitute for such substantial works, but it can alert you to their publication, and offer factual building blocks that can be used in many ways today.
Since Psypioneer began, the electronic landscape for research has changed substantially for the better. Marc Demarest and the team at the International Association for the Preservation of Spiritualist and Occult Periodicals (iapsop.com) have digitised thousands of pages of searchable journals, and hundreds of monographs also.
.