Book Review
Ghost Hunters By DEBORAH BLUM
Reviewed by PEGGY BARNETT
Everyone who has ever lost a loved one can understand the desire somehow to communicate with the "other side."

In the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, as spiritualism and psychic claims became widespread, several intellectuals in Britain and America began to do research on the phenomena. They attempted to do experiments that would be respected by scientists. Much of the rest of the population was already convinced of the truth of the "unexplainable" happenings.

"Popular fascination with the spirit world began to spread like a grass fire, driven by a rising sense of moral uncertainty and sparked by events on both sides of the Atlantic." One of those events was the publication of The Night Side of Nature, which told ghost stories gathered from the author's friends, newspapers, diaries, etc. In addition to introducing the word poltergeist into English, the book convinced many readers (it stayed in print 50 years) that the stories should be investigated.

Nineteenth-century scientists in general did not want to lend credibility to ghosts and spiritualism by investigating them. However, as interest grew and mediums seemed to appear everywhere, journalists and a few scientists decided to approach the situation skeptically but carefully. Britain's Society for Psychical Research was formed, followed by a similar organization in the United States.

Members were risking their reputation as serious scientists, but many were already established as serious and spent years working on the challenge. Henry Sidgwick, Red Myers, and Edmund Gurney led the British group. Later William James was a leading investigator in the U.S., especially after his year-old son died, and he wanted to be in touch with him. Blum profilesall these interesting people, as well as lesser figures and some of the prominent mediums whom they studied.

Ghost Hunters is fascinating reading, not only because of the ghost stories, but also because the investigators and the mediums were fascinating characters. Sir Arthur Conan Doyle was a believer, as was Mark Twain. If one believed in life after death, as most of us want to, it was not a major step from there to a belief that those who have died might want to communicate with those left behind. It was easy for the charlatans and fake mediums to fool the gullible with cabinets and lights and apparitions.

William James and his colleagues, however, were not gullible. The way they trapped the fakes is fun, and the ones they couldn't trap almost have the reader ready to believe. Even we "moderns" may have set up a seance or used a ouija board, laughing but with a secret tremor.

"After 25 years working with some outstandingly good psychical researchers, conducting experiments, studying the literature, sitting with mediums both gifted and fraudulent, James found himself stymied. He could accept some of the phenomena as real, but he could not explain them." He and his friends mourned their inability to reconcile faith and science, and of course the search goes on.

Ghost Hunters is available at the Mary Willis Library.

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