During and after Edgar Cayce’s life, skeptics investigated his work. Harvard professor, Hugo Münsterberg (1863 – 1916) was a high-profile academic, who served as president of the American Psychological Association and the American Philosophical Association. A staunch opponent of parapsychology, he had a “great record of exposing mediums and other psychic charlatans,” according to Wikipedia. He visited and observed Cayce—no doubt with the idea of exposing him as such a charlatan. Based on the comments Dr. Münsterberg made to others around Cayce, what he witnessed in the Cayce home convinced him that Cayce had supernormal abilities. He never wrote anything about Cayce, however—perhaps lacking the courage shown later by Harmon Bro, to present Cayce to the academic world. We’ll come back to Harmon…
Journalist Thomas Sugrue had been Hugh Lynn Cayce’s college roommate—and didn’t believe anything Hugh Lynn said about his father’s abilities. Sugrue wrote for the New York Herald Tribune and later joined the staff of The American Magazine. In 1939 he contracted a disease that left him partially paralyzed, with little chance of survival. Sugrue sought readings from Cayce on his condition—and moved into Edgar and Gertrude Cayce’s home, where the Cayce family cared for him, applying the recommendations from his readings. He lived with the Cayces for two years, recovered his health and gathered material to write the first biography of Cayce, There is a River – The Story of Edgar Cayce.
Harmon Bro, a graduate student at the time, visited Cayce with the intent of exposing him as a fraud after his mother, Margueritte Bro, wrote an article about Cayce for Coronet magazine. Harmon was so impressed by the work Cayce was doing that he brought his young bride, June Bro, to Virginia Beach—where they both worked as assistants to Cayce for about a year. Bro ended up writing his doctoral thesis about Edgar Cayce. He would go on to become a professor of religion and psychology and an ordained minister of the Disciples of Christ church. He also eventually wrote another biography of Cayce, A Seer Out of Season.
Years later, award-winning filmmaker and best-selling author, Sidney Kirkpatrick, also began as an unbeliever. He met Nancy Thurling, who later became his wife. Nancy insisted he learn more about Edgar Cayce and brought him to the A.R.E. in Virginia Beach—where he was given access to all of the original Cayce readings in “the vault.” Amazed by the depth, breadth and consistency of the readings, Sidney became the author of the exhaustively researched bio, Edgar Cayce, An American Prophet—and a strong supporter of the Cayce legacy.
