Ghost Hunters: A Guide to Investigating the Paranormal

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I read the kindle version and it was peppered with typos. Also the 'continuity' was often incorrect. The whole book is badly in need of a decent editor to get rid of these numerous amateur errors and problems, and give it a good tidy up. Fascinating and a bit heart-wrenching, pioneering psychologist William James and many other well-respected scientists and famous people of the day suggested that psychic phenomena not be completely dismissed without a modicum of inquiry. Formed by journalist Edmund Rogers and physicist William Barrett, the Society for Psychical Research (SPR) attempted a scientific assessment of spirituality and the persistence of the soul after death. Eventually splitting into British and American branches, the SPR performed research into psychic phenomena while concurrently exposing frauds and charlatans. It surprised and chilled me how much evidence the Society was able to gather to support the notion of life after death, primarily via the medium Leonora Piper. Their round-robin experiment with several psychic mediums was clever and rather convincing, particularly the spillover to Alice MacDonald Fleming (Alice "Trix" Kipling), sister of Rudyard Kipling, who described the rooms and other elements that had been requested by investigators with no knowledge of their quest.

This seems to illustrate why mediums can sometimes be accurate and other times so completely wrong. If the medium does not have knowledge of a particular subject matter or their brain works in a different way to that of the spirit, it's difficult for the message to be sent accurately. That gives me a dilemma in rating the book - sometimes I find that the hardest part of a review. if I had to judge the first part on its own, I would award it no more than two stars. For the ending, I'd give four. So overall - three stars. Another great quote (pg 264) by W James: "Nature is everywhere gothic, not classic. She forms a real jungle, where all things are provisional, half-fitted to each other & untidy." Speaking about Mr. Myers acceptance of the complexity of the cosmic environment, "although we may be mistaken in much of the detail, in a general way, at least we become plausible." This book is an imaginative account of the haunting of Borley Rectory, apparently "the most haunted house in England" and the investigation of it by ghost hunter, showman, charlatan - make up your own mind which - Harry Price. Set between the 1920s and the 40s, it takes us to a world where the relatives of those who fell in the First World War are exploited by false(?) mediums. The mediums who are in turn turn hunted down by the indefatigable Price. But Price has a problem. He is being supported and his "laboratory" accommodated by the Spiritualist movement, whose pet mediums he keeps debunking. So it may seem very convenient when an opportunity arises to investigate a serious haunting. Will Price, and his assistant, Sarah Grey, encounter something much darker and much nastier than they expect? Blum was very adept at laying bare long forgotten antidotes of history. In Ghost Hunters, she approaches her brilliant and influential subjects as they were–human beings who experimented with narcotics, believed they had attained enlightenment under the influence of nitrous oxide, fell in love with their test subjects, and traveled to other continents to interview and test mediums and self-professed psychics. She weaves a detailed picture of a research field under siege by fellow scientists, journalists, and subjected to unending embarrassment caused by fraud and dubious conclusions at a time when England was ground zero in the battle between science and faith.Sarah Grey has returned to England after a brief time as a model in Paris. She is looking for a new job, but she never expected to be offered and accepting a job as a personal assistant to Harry Price, the infamous ghost hunter. Harry has devoted himself to expose mediums and false hauntings. And, despite being temperamental and neurotic is he also very charming and Sarah can't help but be drawn to him. One of the most puzzling cases for them will be Borley Rectory. Is the place really haunted or are the rumors about it exaggerated? Mr. Price's character has several sides to him--and none of them match up to any one person's perception of the man. Sarah's character was a bit "over-the-top" and transparent to me, but I can see why the author added her as she made for several additional branches of this story. The Victorian era was probably the high-point of belief in spiritualism - who doesn't picture all those fine gentleman and corseted ladies participating in seances, dabbling with Ouija boards, tilting tables and automatic writing? It's probably no coincidence that this peak in belief coincided with the rise of science as we understand it - perhaps this emerging insistence that the universe could be codified and classified and explained also gave rise to some kind of reaction against it, this belief that there were some things beyond explanation? This excellent piece of popular scholarship has been on my "to read" list for many years and I was glad to finally get the opportunity to read it. Blum, a science journalist by profession, does an excellent job of telling a captivating story about the foundation of the SPR (in England) and the ASPR (in America) at the end of the 19th-century and into the first decade of the 20th, as well as the continual antagonism between the founding figures of psychical research and their more "scientifically minded" colleagues. Several times while reading the book I thought how this story would make a very interesting film. But even aside from Blum's talents as a writer the book showcases her excellent use of scholarly resources (particularly the tremendous amount of archival material she had to wade through to extract this story).

This is an first rate account by Deborah Blum of the emergence of a growing curiosity and serious research project regarding the existence of life after death, the possibility of communication with spirits, as well as the existence of mental telepathy. The parties involved were a group of well respected scientists and psychologists in the US, as well as the UK, in the late nineteenth century who formed the "Physical Research Society." It is hard to arugue with the respectibility of William James and Harvard as well as several other educated and determied participnts. In addition to their quest for knowledge and proof of an afterlife, they also set out to uncover the scam artists who were plentiful at the time. The work went on diligently for years by dedicated, educated people on both sides of the Atlantic, though many of their contemporaries spent a great deal of effort trying to dismiss any interest in this subject matter as pure folly. Those nay sayers and detractors made it their own mission to portray any of the documented findings in a negative and dismissive light. Blum counters this positive portrait of a remarkable medium with the more ambiguous and disturbing portrayal of Eusapia Palladino, a rough-around-the-edges Italian medium who was often caught "cheating" during her seances, but also seemed to manifest some genuinely puzzling phenomena (including the first reported instance of "ectoplasm"). The two mediums similar and yet, in many ways, contrasting reputations and fates and Blum skillfully uses these two women as a means to structure the second half of her study.As they repeatedly test remarkable mediums and hear overwhelming reports of ghostly warnings of loved one's deaths, these scientists become more convinced than ever that in the vast ocean of fakers, some events truly are supernatural in origin. But they face growing suspicion and ridicule from their fellow scientists and anger from spiritualists who find those they've put on pedestals tumbling down one after another. This is historical fiction, a well researched story. Its focus are Borley Rectory, allegedly the most haunted house in England, Harry Price and his fictional assistant Sarah Grey. I enjoyed the read despite so-called historical inaccuracies. Anachronistic as some elements may have been, it is for the author to have some poetic license and as much of the text is from Sarah Grey's manuscript written decades after some of the events in the story, it for sure could easily be explained away on this basis.

So what about Sarah? I liked her quite a bit, but not enough until after she had left Henry the second time did I really get attached to her. And that was well past the half-way point of the novel. So could the debunking really carry the novel? No. Not really. They were mildly curious oddities, and I've watched tons of b-movies, read lots of silly tales, and I've even read a lot of the greats within both sides of the issue, from Manly P. Hall to Madame Blavatsky, and this novel just kinda... moved along.

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The "ghost" was slightly interesting, at least, but she wasn't nearly strong enough to carry the rest of the tale, or possibly, the tale would have been served a great deal more by glossing the early debunking stuff and focusing on the manor entirely. Sarah's father actually got killed during the war, and you find out at a later stage in the book how and why he died. It is hard to enjoy a book with characters as either despicable, infuriating or boring as these. I mean all of them. Their relationships are just presented to the reader. They are unexplained. Most of the time you will not see the connection beyond what you are told about them. Usually in books when you come upon something you don't agree with, that doesn't mean it isn't well presented and explained in a book. You don't even have to accept it to understand it. Here, that is not the case. Here, I spent most of my time gritting my teeth whenever characters' feelings were in the focus. Let's just say various relationships in this book are not its greatest strength. In all, it was frustrating to see this group of learned men and women consistently run up against vicious criticisms from the rest of the scientific community, who refused to participate or even entertain the notion that the work that they were doing had merit. I sincerely wish that some group of researchers had continued this work, which sadly lost steam after most of the main investigators, particularly Hodgson and James passed on. My personal feelings on the subject accord with those of James; I don't necessarily believe in life after death or spirit communication, but I have not ruled out such things, because there are some situations that current science cannot explain fully. The Main Character - Our main character here goes by the name of Sarah, and is a Victorian woman who goes against the norm of the society when it comes to things like wanting a career and working for herself. She is strong-willed, and dedicated to her employer. In the end, I didn't even mind the romantic attraction she seemed to share for him (which felt a little out of place at first.)

When all is said and done, Harry Price turns out to be a character loaded with irony, and the author sets things up so that it isn't up to the last that we discover exactly what that irony entails. The "secret" Sarah carries around with her isn't so earth shattering when revealed, but even with this little bit of drama (a tad bit overdone, imho), she is also an interesting person both with and without Harry Price. There are many side characters who also come to life here -- most notably, the tenants of Borley Rectory, past and present.

I'll be honest, I'm more interested in William James than I am in his more popular brother, Henry, because Henry wrote really snooze-worthy books and I have it in my mind that he wasn't all that nice to my BFF, Edith Wharton. I haven't read all that much of James's philosophy/psychology (but I have some of his stuff!), but the concept of him has always fascinated me, probably because Henry gets all the attention. (And then sister Alice gets no love whatsoever; my heart has always gone out to her, poor lady.) GHOST HUNTERS didn’t convince me that spirits don’t exist. It did put a spotlight on the beliefs at the time.