Ghosts, grief and the paranormal

Summary

History Extra Podcast: "Ghosts, Grief and the Paranormal" — Episode Summary

Release Date: October 27, 2025
Host: John Baucum
Guest: Dr. Alice Vernon, Lecturer in 19th-Century Literature and Creative Writing at Aberystwyth University

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Overview

This episode delves into the evolution of ghost hunting over the past two centuries, exploring why society remains captivated by the paranormal, the deep link between grief and ghost-seeking, and how cultural, scientific, and technological shifts have transformed the way we interact with the supernatural. Dr. Alice Vernon joins host John Baucum to discuss her new book, "A History of Ghost Hunting and Why We Keep Looking," weaving together personal experience, historical anecdotes, infamous hauntings, and the social psychology behind our ongoing fascination with ghosts.

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1. Origin & Personal Motivation (02:57–04:21)

• Alice Vernon discusses how her own experiences with sleep disorders and night terrors, often involving hallucinations, inspired her to investigate the cultural and historical aspects of ghost stories.

• She notes that many ghost stories are tied to nighttime, sleep, and the bedroom, linking her personal struggles to larger historical patterns.

  "So many ghost stories take place in the bedroom... someone's asleep and they wake up in the middle of the night and there's something looming over them."
  (Alice Vernon, 03:37)

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2. Defining a Ghost (04:21–04:59)

• Ghosts are ubiquitous across cultures but defy simple definition.
• Vernon's definition:

  "...it is basically an echo, a lingering echo of something that was once alive but now isn’t."
  (Alice Vernon, 04:41)

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3. Ancient and Early Ghost Stories (04:59–06:42)

• Earliest known tales include the story of Athenodorus in ancient Rome, illustrating that ghosts often acted as messengers with unfinished business.

• These stories typically reflected the need for closure—resolving the ghost’s “message” would grant peace.

  "The sort of early ways that ghosts existed were as messengers...they had some kind of message, or revenge."
  (Alice Vernon, 05:42)

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4. The 19th-Century Ghost Hunting Boom & Spiritualism (06:42–09:00)

• True cultural obsession with ghost hunting began mid-1800s with Spiritualism, sparked by the Fox sisters in upstate New York.

• Fox sisters’ innovation: Two-way communication with a ghost (Mr. Split Foot) via knocks and coded messaging during séances.

• Connection to mass grief, especially surrounding the American Civil War—people sought contact and reassurance as they mourned loved ones.

  "It really begins with ... Margaret and Kate Fox... they actually began this two-way conversation, allegedly with a ghost that lived in their farmhouse."
  (Alice Vernon, 07:19)

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5. Science, Technology, and Fraud: Spirit Photography (09:00–12:00)

• The rise of photography enabled new ways to “capture” spirits.

• Charlatans exploited the public’s unfamiliarity with photographic techniques. Example: William Mumler’s “spirit” photos, including one of Abraham Lincoln for his widow.

• Spirit photos demonstrate how intertwined technological advancement and supernatural belief became.

• Science and skepticism often lagged widespread public acceptance.

  “...when you look at some of these so-called spirit photographs now, they are hilarious... but at the time it was such a new format, people didn't understand how photographs worked.”
  (Alice Vernon, 09:28)

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6. The Scientist Believers vs. Skeptics (12:00–13:47)

• Sir Arthur Conan Doyle stands out as a scientific giant who became a fervent advocate for Spiritualism, even falling out with magicians like Harry Houdini who routinely sought to debunk mediums.

• Scientists, unlike magicians, often got captivated by the promise of making contact with the dead.

  “Magicians...deliberately misled their audience and the audience knew that. Whereas the spiritualists ... made out that what they were producing was absolutely real.”
  (Alice Vernon, 12:11)

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7. Grief and the Afterlife: Sir Oliver Lodge & WWI (13:47–17:33)

• Spiritualism surged after tragedies like World War I, as society dealt with profound collective grief.

• Sir Oliver Lodge, after losing his son Raymond in the war, became a powerful voice for Spiritualism, promoting séances and reporting comforting messages from the afterlife (which Spiritualists called “Summerland”).

• These stories provided solace for grieving families; Spiritualism offered a kind of pseudo-scientific closure.

  “For Mrs. Lodge, it was a huge comfort... for a lot of people spiritualism was a way for them to make peace with the horrible circumstances in which their son, brother, husband had died.”
  (Alice Vernon, 15:50)

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8. Harry Price and the Rise of the ‘Celebrity Ghost Hunter’ (20:28–25:18)

• Harry Price: A colorful character and professional ghost hunter in the early 20th century, known for his obsession with publicity and his infamous investigation of Borley Rectory.

• Borley Rectory: Price organized a pseudo-scientific, highly publicized ghost hunt, complete with observer recruitment and strict procedures, leading to tales of hauntings and paranormal phenomena.

• Controversy: Price’s methods and findings were later condemned by his secretary, Molly Goldney, and fellow researcher Eric Dingwall in a posthumous exposé.

  “He just had a lot of money and wasn't quite sure what to do with it. So he sort of dabbled in all sorts of things. But...ghost hunting could get him quite a lot of publicity.”
  (Alice Vernon, 20:37)

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9. The Case of Helen Duncan & Ectoplasm (25:18–29:23)

• Helen Duncan, a Scottish medium, gained notoriety for producing “ectoplasm” (usually cheesecloth or egg white) during séances.

• She was prosecuted under the Witchcraft Act after revealing sensitive WWII information during a séance.

• Harry Price’s scientific investigations of Duncan’s ectoplasm often devolved into farce and revealed fakery, but still drew public fascination.

  “He did what any investigator would do in that situation and he sniffed it. That was his immediate reaction, was to just sniff it.”
  (Alice Vernon, 27:52)

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10. Child Poltergeists and The Culture of Belief (29:42–34:08)

• In postwar UK, poltergeist phenomena often focused on children, particularly in unstable household environments like council houses.

• Notable cases: The “Sorkie” and Enfield poltergeists. The Enfield case was heavily covered by the media and involved intense scrutiny of a child at the center of the alleged haunting.

• These cases highlighted the discomfort and ethical dilemmas of ghost investigation, especially when children were involved.

  “It is about a group of adults bearing down and just waiting for this child to mess up and show that they are the ones faking the phenomena.”
  (Alice Vernon, 31:43)

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11. Media, Entertainment, and Escalation (34:08–36:12)

• Ghost stories and the portrayal of hauntings have become ever more dramatic and sensational in popular culture, from reality TV to horror films.

• Modern expectations demand increasingly shocking or fear-inducing evidence—trending from mysterious to outright terrifying.

  “No evidence is ever enough. It always has to be better. And I think we see that in how ghosts are portrayed in modern horror films. They're really scary.”
  (Alice Vernon, 35:36)

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12. First-Hand Ghost Hunting (36:12–37:48)

• Alice Vernon describes her own experience training to be a paranormal investigator. Despite skepticism and fear, she found ghost hunting to be a uniquely social and surprisingly fun community activity.

• Ghost hunting, past and present, is motivated as much by camaraderie and curiosity as the supernatural itself.

  “What was the kind of the big eye opener for me...was just how fun it was... it’s a really fun social activity to just be in like a really weird old building at 3 o'clock in the morning...”
  (Alice Vernon, 37:12)

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13. Continuity & Emotional Resonance (37:48–39:03)

• Despite advances in technology, the core motives for ghost hunting remain unchanged: grappling with mortality, mourning the dead, and maintaining connections to history.

• Ghost hunting serves as both an exploration of the unknown and a means of personal and collective comfort.

  “The technology changes, but the social aspect stays the same. It is about trying to understand our place in the world... and trying to make peace with mortality.”
  (Alice Vernon, 37:51)

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14. Changing Perspectives (39:03–40:14)

• Vernon’s research journey shifted her perception from playful skepticism to a more empathetic view, especially regarding the role of grief in perpetuating beliefs about ghosts.

  “What really changed for me was the level of grief behind a lot of spiritualism and a lot of ghost hunting, which you cannot mock. You have to really look at it from an individual perspective.”
  (Alice Vernon, 39:13)

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Notable Quotes & Moments

• On the personal and collective need for ghosts:

  “It is so human to be obsessed with the idea of ghost hunting.”
  (Alice Vernon, 04:13)

• On media sensationalism:

  “The media really lap up a poltergeist case. You don’t really see it very often in the newspapers these days, but in sort of the 1980s, 1990s, newspapers loved a poltergeist case.”
  (Alice Vernon, 32:59)

• On the emotional value of spiritualism:

  “She can face Christmas now because they've been having these sittings... the sons don’t quite believe... but for Mrs. Lodge it was a huge comfort.”
  (Alice Vernon, 15:37)

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Key Timestamps

• Defining Ghosts: 04:21–04:59
• Earliest Ghost Story (Athenodorus): 04:59–06:29
• Spiritualism’s Rise (Fox sisters): 06:42–09:00
• Spirit Photography & Technology: 09:00–12:00
• Science vs. Spiritualism (Doyle, Houdini): 12:00–13:47
• WWI, Grief, and Spiritualism: 13:47–17:33
• Harry Price & Borley Rectory: 20:28–25:18
• Helen Duncan & Ectoplasm: 25:18–29:23
• Children & Poltergeist Cases: 29:42–34:08
• Media & Popular Culture: 34:08–36:12
• First-Hand Ghost Hunting: 36:12–37:48
• Enduring Motives and Grief: 37:48–40:14

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Conclusion

This episode provided a rich exploration of ghost hunting as a deeply human phenomenon: a blend of skepticism, science, and above all, the search for comfort amid uncertainty and loss. Alice Vernon’s research and personal insights offer both a critical and compassionate view of why ghosts have shaped our history—and why we keep seeking them still.

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Transcript

[Alice Vernon]

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[Alice Vernon]

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[Alice Vernon]

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[John Baucum]

Welcome to the History Extra Podcast. Fascinating historical conversations from the makers of BBC History Magazine. Why are we so spooked and yet so fascinated by things that go bump in the night? And can science really prove that ghouls exist? In this episode, Alice Vernon talks to John Baucum about the evolution of ghost hunting over the past 200 years and how tales of pesky poltergeists and ectoplasm filled seances have turned even some of the hardest skeptics into true believers. Now, Alice, I'm really excited to talk to you today because we're here to talk about your fantastic new book, which is entitled A History of Ghost Hunting and why We Keep Looking. And to be honest, that's a fairly straightforward title. It does exactly what it says on the tin. But to kick us off, can you just explain how you first got involved in this topic and where that idea came from.

[Alice Vernon]

Yeah. So this is my second book. And my first book came out three years ago, and that was called Night Terrors, and it was nonfiction again. And that was a book about how we have interpreted sort of spooky sleep disorders through history and culture and how we've misinterpreted them as well. Because it's something that I've suffered with my whole life. You know, wake up in the middle of the night sometimes, and I see something that's not there. It's just, you know, a part of my life that I have these hallucinations, these sleep disorders. So I wrote this book to kind of understand what was happening to me, but also to try and kind of feel less alone in the things that I was experiencing at night. And they're often very scary. And the main thing I found, I think, was that so many ghost stories take place in the bedroom. They take place where, you know, somebody's asleep and they wake up in the middle of the night and there's something looming over them. You know, Ebony's a scream, Scrooge and Charles Dickens, A Christmas Carol. I think he says at one point, you know, you're just a crumb of cheese that I've not digested properly. You know, that you're just some sort of night terror, some sort of sleep disorder. And so I then went down this avenue of ghosts and ghost hunting, and I started to write ghosted then to try and understand what ghosts are, but more in terms of the social aspect of it, of why we look for ghosts. You know, it's so human to be obsessed with the idea of ghost hunting.

[John Baucum]

And, Alice, a big question. What exactly is your definition of a ghost then?

[Alice Vernon]

My goodness, that is a big question. There are ghosts in every culture, you know, throughout history, and they're all differently defined. They all exist in different ways or don't exist. I suppose they manifest in different ways. But my. I suppose my definition of what a ghost is from all this research I've done is that it is basically an echo, a lingering echo of something that was once alive but now isn't.

[John Baucum]

That's an excellent definition. And what's the earliest kind of record of a ghost or a haunting that we have access to?

[Alice Vernon]

Oh, my goodness. Well, I think, you know, just kind of word of mouth ghost stories have existed throughout history, But a really good early ghost story is that of Athenodorus in ancient Rome. And he was trying to work in his house. He'd bought this house that Was allegedly haunted, but he didn't believe in it particularly. And he was trying to do some work, and this ghost came up to him, rattling its chains very stereotypically. And it's quite a funny story, really, because instead of being scared or, you know, trying to run away, he just gets a little bit annoyed by this ghost that keeps rattling his chains while he's trying to do work, like a kid in lockdown, you know, trying to just distract you at all times. And so he to do a sort of early form of detective work and he goes and finds out what the ghost wants. Because really, the sort of early ways that ghosts existed were as messengers. They would come back because they still had that stereotypical unfinished business, or they had some kind of message or, you know, revenge that they wanted, something like that. And so he thought, this ghost has a message for me. I won't get this work done until I find out what it is. So he follows the ghost through the house and finds him buried in the garden with all his chains still there. And by somehow giving him a proper burial, it got rid of the ghost. So that's quite an interesting early ghost story. Yeah.

[John Baucum]

So we have ancient ghost stories for sure, and I'm sure we have lots of medieval ones and early modern ones. But your book is primarily focused on the past 200 years. Why is that then? Is that because there's an explosion of interest in ghosts?

[Alice Vernon]

Absolutely. So I think, I think I mention in the book that we have always investigated ghosts. There are these sort of minor incidents throughout history of humans trying to find out what ghosts are. But it was only really in the middle of the 19th century that ghost hunting became a cultural obsession Rather than just kind of isolated groups of people, you know, going and having a look at ghosts. It was international, it was so widespread. And it really begins with these two sisters, Margaret and Kate Fox, in Hydesville in New York in 1848. And as I said before, ghosts really manifested to give us messages. It wouldn't really be a two way conversation. It would be that the ghost would appear, it would try and tell us something, and then we would try and figure out what it wanted and that it would disappear. But what happened with the Fox sisters is that they actually began this two way conversation, allegedly with a ghost that lived in their farmhouse. They named him Mr. Split Foot. And what they would do was that they would ask him questions and he would knock several times to indicate a yes or a no or to spell out things, to make numbers of things. And it really swept across America as This new sort of pseudo scientific religion called spiritualism, which was all to do with communicating with ghosts as a two way conversation, which hadn't really been. And it was also the Civil War, so there was widespread grief going on in America as well. Lots of people were losing their sons, husbands, fathers. And so I think it really came at a point in history where people were grieving on a mass scale and wanted to contact the dead. And so we get this explosion of mediums who were normally young women who would sit at a table and communicate with spirits on demand, basically. And it spread internationally. It came to the UK and was incredibly popular in the uk and it was just something that was accepted as well as just something that people did in their living rooms. They would try and contact the dead.

[John Baucum]

And what I think is also fascinating about the fact this takes off in the 19th century is this is the age of photography as well. And again, you have some people exploiting this medium, pardon the pun, to publish images of said spirits.

[Alice Vernon]

Yeah, I think the reason why that was so popular was because photography was such a fairly new format and it was something that people didn't really understand how they were produced. Because when you look at some of these so called spirit photographs now, they are hilarious and, you know, I urge listeners to, to Google this and to have a look at spirit photographs because they are ridiculous. You know, it's somebody with a paper ghost behind them or, you know, some sort of chemical smudge and they look so terrible. But at the time it was such a new format, you know, people didn't understand how photographs worked. And, you know, if you took a photograph, you expected, you know, it to be done properly and things like that. So we get these charlatans, I suppose I should say, that would take these photographs and manipulate them. And a very famous case was William Mumler, who was taken to court in America in 1869 and he actually took a spirit photo of Abraham Lincoln for his widow, Mary Todd Lincoln. And it is again a really, I mean, it is kind of sad because obviously, again it is through grief that this photograph has been taken. But it is literally just Mary Todd Lincoln with what looks like a glove on her shoulder and then a double exposure of a photograph of Abraham Lincoln behind her. It looks terrible. And so he was taken to court and was acquitted because so many people involved in the case and people on the jury, people just generally in the court, were spiritualists because it was just such a widespread religion that people subscribed to. And so he was acquitted because there were so many people biased towards spiritualism involved in prosecuting him. And it spread to the UK as well. Actually, just today I was reading about the crew circle who took spirit photographs, and they had customers such as Sir Arthur Conan Doyle. He went and had his photograph taken by the crew circle and people tried to investigate them and try and find out, you know, what sort of chemicals they were using or what tricks they were using to do these double exposures. And it is really fascinating and again, shows just how much science played a part in spiritualism, because you had to have a good scientific understanding of photography to be able to produce some of these photographs.

[John Baucum]

You mentioned him there, Sir Arthur Conan Doyle. He's probably one of the most famous spiritualists of all time. And what always fascinates me about him is that he was from a medical background, so he was a man of science, yet he had such a fervent belief in ghosts. Famously, I think he fell out with Harry Houdini, didn't he, over this?

[Alice Vernon]

Yeah, really interesting. Magicians absolutely hated spiritualists. But there wasn't, as far as I've found, there wasn't a magician that really subscribed to spiritualism in the way that so many scientists gradually got drawn into it. So magicians were really against spiritualism because magicians deliberately misled their audience and the audience knew that. And then the magicians would explain how they had faked certain tricks and phenomena and things like that, whereas the spiritualists and the mediums made out that what they were producing was absolutely real. So magicians really had it in for spiritualists. And Houdini would try and expose mediums, and his colleagues were very involved in trying to find out what sort of tricks they were using. And it would be part of their act then as well, that these magicians would kind of show a popular seance technique or phenomena and then show how that had been done behind the scenes. So, yeah, the magicians were very anti spiritualist, whereas the scientists were anti spiritualist. But quite a lot of them did get drawn into this. This world of seances and ghosts. Arthur Conan Doyle was quite a prominent one, but Sir Oliver Lodge as well, who was a big proponent of radio technology, he had a lot to do with developing radio and he was very much involved in spiritualism as well.

[John Baucum]

And you've expertly teed up my next question there, because I was going to ask you about Sir Oliver Lodge. He's an important figure in a chapter that you write about war and ghosts. How does he come into the book, then, specifically with regards to the Great War and The loss of his son Raymond.

[Alice Vernon]

Yeah, this was, I think, the most interesting part of Ghosted. And it was an avenue that I didn't know existed at all until I started doing research. You know, I thought that spiritualism and ghost hunting was the Fox Sisters and then poltergeists and their most haunted, you know. And as I did my research, I found that there was this resurgence in interest in spiritualism because it started to dwindle a little bit at the very beginning of the 20th century. But then World War I happened, and again, like the Civil War with the Fox Sisters, there was this widespread grief where so many soldiers died on an international scale in every community. There was loss, there was bereavement. And spiritualism became incredibly popular again. And one of the, I suppose, catalysts of this was Sir Oliver Lodge. And so he was a very prominent scientist, but he was also a huge member of the Society for Psychical Research, which was established a few decades before. And it was their mission to kind of investigate things like telepathy, haunted houses, those kinds of things. So he was very involved with that. But he really devoted himself to spiritualism after his son Raymond was killed in 1915. And he received word from a medium called Mrs. Osborne Leonard, who said that she had got in touch with Raymond and for him to come and do these seances. And he brought his wife, his couple of remaining sons also took part in these seances, and there's dozens of them. And it is a really interesting case because he then writes this book called Raymond, and it was so popular that it was sent to soldiers in the trenches. Their parents, their family would send them this book as if to say, you know, well, if you get killed, it's fine, because Raymond says that there is this lovely afterlife. And so he writes this book. And it really problematized for me the issue of spiritualism, because I think I had thought of it as something that was interesting but quite funny as well, in that there were all these cases of fraud. But this really complicated things for me because it made me realize the social aspect of wanting to communicate with ghosts. There's a really tragic bit in Raymond where he says that his wife says that she can face Christmas now because they've been having these sittings. They've been in touch with the alleged spirit of Raymond. But also, the sons don't quite believe in it, so it complicates things. But I think for Mrs. Lodge, it was a huge comfort. And you see that this throughout the period, because after Raymond was published as a book, there were dozens more like it. And you get this sense that for a lot of people spiritualism was a way for them to make peace with the horrible circumstances in which their son, brother, husband had died. It didn't feel like their son had had died in a ditch and there was no trace of him. He'd been blown to bits. If you subscribe to spiritualism, you could believe that he was in some better place. They called it Summerland. They kind of had this new term for an afterlife that wasn't necessarily Christian, it was more of a sort of pseudo scientific afterlife. And they, they often called it Summerland. They could believe then that their son was in this beautiful place and not in 200 pieces in a ditch somewhere. So it really complicates things and shows, I suppose, just how much grief is a huge part of why we are interested in ghosts in the first place.

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[Alice Vernon]

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[Alice Vernon]

He was a character. So Harry Price was a ghost hunter, psychical researcher, professional hobbyist, I think is a term that I use in ghosted. He just had a lot of money and wasn't quite sure what to do with it. So he sort of dabbled in all sorts of things. But I think he found that with ghost hunting, it could get him quite a lot of publicity. He loved publicity. He loved getting his name in newspapers. He was always writing to the BBC to try and get some program about ghosts on the radio. So he just loved publicity. And he was very active in sort of the 1920s, 1930s, made a lot of enemies along the way as well. But one of his famous cases is the case of Borley Rectory, which was a rectory down in Essex, which he rented for the equivalent of about £200amonth today. And so he rented this allegedly haunted house that was supposed to be haunted by a nun, very stereotypical, even though there was no evidence, I think, that it had ever had nuns. But there was this ghost of a nun and he rented out this house and started quite a sort of militaristic operation to try and find evidence of ghosts. So he wrote to the Times and Posted this advert asking for observers who must be people of leisure and also have their own car. It was very specific. And so he asked all these people to apply to take turns in holding vigil in this haunted house. And he had this blue book of instructions which he'd very meticulously written and it was all very militaristic. There was, there's one mangy little camp bed but he obviously didn't want his observers to, you know, have any comfort or any sleep. It was, you know, very intense and there's all sorts of phenomena happened. There was a window that smashed outwards as though somebody was standing in the room and had knocked the glass outwards. There was a gold ring that appeared, a coat. There were some messages that appeared as well and it really gained him a lot of notoriety and I think it is, is the thing that people associate with Harry Price now is the haunting of Bawley Rectory.

[John Baucum]

And his findings were controversial in certain quarters, weren't they?

[Alice Vernon]

Oh absolutely. So he had a secretary called Molly Goldney and I'm a bit obsessed with Molly Godney I have to say. So all of Harry Price's archive is housed at the Senate House Library in London. And it's really interesting because there is so much material from his secretary Molly Goldney, and yet she very rarely appears in any book and yet she's always behind him. No matter what Harry Price is doing, she's always lurking in the background ready to trip him up somehow. They had this real love hate relationship. Well, I suppose she had a love hate relationship. I don't think he noticed her at all. But she had a very love hate relationship with him. So she would work for him and yet sometimes she would work against him behind his back. And she was best friends with another ghost hunter called Eric Dingwall who just hated Harry Price. There was no love hate relationship, it was just hate with Eric Dingwall. So she was best friends with Eric Dingwall and after Harry Price had died, eight years after he died in fact, together with a man called Trevor Hall, Eric Dingwall and Molly Goldney published the Haunting of Bali Rectory, which was an expose of all the fraudulent evidence that Price had created and also just, just the terrible way in which he had conducted the investigation. So Harry Price had published two books on Morley Rectory, had gained a lot of notoriety, a lot of publicity from it, but even eight years after his death, Molly Goldney wanted her final say and so they published this book to really try and discredit the investigation. But really I don't think it has done the damage that they wanted it to. Because when you think of Rectory, you think of Harry Price in the investigation, you don't think of Dingwall, Goldney and Hall and the way that they discredited it. And their book is obviously not as popular as the work that Price produced on it. So, yeah, a lot of gossip, which is something I found throughout the research, is that there's just so much gossip in ghost hunting and it's delicious.

[John Baucum]

And if we just stay on the subject of Harry Price for a little bit longer. Cause he's such a fascinating figure. I suppose second to Bawley Rectory is his work or his investigations into Helen Duncan, who was a Scottish medium who was actually convicted under the Witchcraft act for her activities. What was going on there?

[Alice Vernon]

Yeah, there was an archaic law that was still standing at this point. So Helen Duncan was a notorious medium. I wouldn't say she was particularly famous or celebrated, but she was notorious because people often found her to be fraudulent. People exposed her for several things. And one of the things that she would do was that she would, I don't know what the word is, emit, exude ectoplasm from various orifices, normally like her nose or mouth, but sometimes unmentionable places. So she would sit in a chair and this white goo would come out of her nose or mouth. Sometimes it looked like cheesecloth because it was cheesecloth, and then sometimes it was more goopy. And so she would sit and just kind of emit this stuff. But the reason why she got in trouble and why she was tried under the Witchcraft act was because during the Second World War, a British naval ship was lost. And it wasn't public information, but somehow she found out about it and sort of gave this information in a seance, I suppose, to prove that she had information from beyond the grave. But she'd been fed this information somehow. And the police found out, the government found out, the army found out and she was arrested and tried. And they didn't really know what to try her under, so they tried her under the Witchcraft act, which was quite interesting. But prior to that she held seances with Harry Price in 1931. And this was in his purpose built ghost laboratory because as I said, he had so much money and he didn't know what to do with it. So he created this laboratory that had specific equipment to investigate mediums. It had really state of the art stuff, like an X ray machine, all these kinds of things. And so he got Helen Duncan in, managed to get her to agree to a few seances and Helen Duncan was very troubled. She had really bad health and she was quite volatile as well. So he'd managed to pin her down to these seances, but it was a bit kind of touch and go. He had to be very careful with her. And again, Molly Goldney was there. And because Molly Goldney was a midwife, Harry Price made Molly Goldney subject Helen Duncan to all sorts of bodily examinations. It was all a bit humiliating and awkward and problematic. But in any case, he wanted to find out what this ectoplasm, or teloplasm he called it, what this stuff was that she was emitting from her nose and mouth. Mouth. And he did manage to snip a bit off. And he did what any investigator would do in that situation and he sniffed it. That was his immediate reaction, was to just sniff it. But he managed to get some samples of her ectoplasm and he found that there were two types. There was a type that was either cheesecloth or wood, and when put under a microscope, it resembled wood pulp. Pulp, exactly. And then there was another type which was egg white, essentially this sort of egg white preparation. In his report, he gives this lovely recipe. He's like, if you wanted to make your own ectoplasm, you just get some egg white and urine. I think he says it's disgusting and you can make your own to impress your friends and family. But, yeah, during that investigation, he upset Helen Duncan numerous times. He brought her to the X ray machine and she just freaked out and started punching everybody and then she ran out of the building. So it was really quite dramatic. But interestingly, in his archive, there are these letters from Molly Goldney during Helen Duncan's later trial, where she's saying to him, why don't you give your report and all the notes and all the evidence to the court, to the jury and try and speed this conviction along? You know, she really implored him to do a bit more than. He didn't really involve himself that much when it actually came to that trial, I guess, because he probably thought there was not much publicity in it for him.

[John Baucum]

Yeah, it's a very, very strange set of events. And, Alice, moving on from Helen Duncan and Harry Price, if we move more into the middle of the 20th century, there is this shift, isn't there? Well, in the uk we seem to have more instances of poltergeist activity affecting children. What's driving that, do you think?

[Alice Vernon]

Yeah, you get this kind of interesting cultural split. And it's not to say that there weren't any poltergeists in the us, because there certainly were. But it seemed to be that in the UK there was a rise in poltergeist activity surrounding children and most often taking place in council houses. My theory, and this is a theory that other people have kind of put forward as well, is that that council houses were in such bad condition in the sort of 1970s, 1980s, that they were really quite horrible environments for children. And especially if a family had just moved into a council house, it was often because there was some sort of thing that they were going through, a financial thing, perhaps they were trying to get away from an abusive partner and, you know, they'd had to move into this house. So often it was a time of upheaval and unrest. So you get these cases like Sorkie in Scotland that was 1960s. And then you get, famously, the Enfield poltergeist as well, where it is a young child who seems to have this malevolent force that follows them round, that torments them, but is also strangely, a part of them as well. One theory that a lot of psychical researchers put forward is that a poltergeist isn't actually a ghost, because it's not a ghost of somebody that was living. It's this sort of split of the child's psyche, I guess, and it is this personality that manifests and causes all sorts of violent activity. What I find interesting about poltergeist's cases, though, is that they are quite uncomfortable to read because it's very much, especially when it involves a child as the focus. It is about a group of adults bearing down and just waiting for this child to mess up and show that they are the ones faking the phenomena. So you get that with the Sorky case. You get it with the Enfield poltergeist case, where investigators come and they just sit and watch the child and put the child through various tests and just wait for them to expose themselves as just being naughty, basically. So, yeah, it's quite an uncomfortable thing to read. But the Sawkey poltergeist is, I suppose, interesting because the adults actually seem to recognise that the young child, Virginia, is distressed. She's had to move to her aunt's house, so there's a sense of upheaval again. She's had to attend a new school and this poltergeist activity sort of starts up around her. And the adults that are investigating the case are mostly from the community. It's her teacher, doctor. And what they're trying to investigate is not just the phenomena itself, but why Virginia is upset and they try and kind of help her. Whereas the Enfield Poltergeist, it's very much just like. Like, let's wait for Janet to mess up, which is quite uncomfortable, really.

[John Baucum]

I mean, the Enfield haunting is extremely famous. I mean, what was the upshot of that? Because the Daily Mirror got quite heavily involved, didn't they? And it was all over the front pages.

[Alice Vernon]

Yeah, the media really lap up a poltergeist case. You don't really see it very often in the newspapers these days, but in sort of the 1980s, 1990s, newspapers loved a poltergeist case. They loved a ghost, ghost story. I think somebody from the BBC came to the Enfield Poltergeist. It's interesting how involved the BBC are in the history of ghost hunting. They come up again and again in terms of. Even from like the 1930s, they were putting discussions about ghosts and psychical research in their programming. So they were involved in the Enfield Poltergeist. They came and tried to see if they could get a program out of it. I guess so, yeah. I mean, I'm not sure if there was any particular upshot because I suppose every time a new iteration of the Enfield Poltergeist comes out, you know, it was the subject of the second conjuring film. It just reignites this really problematic debate of, you know, oh, let's all make fun of this child that was faking this phenomena.

[John Baucum]

And more broadly then, Alice, how do you think popular entertainment has shaped our perceptions of. Of ghosts and ghost hunting over the past 50 years?

[Alice Vernon]

One thing that I found with the research that I did was that there is a trend with mediums with spiritualism, with ghost hunting, which is that the more you start to kind of make a name for yourself and the more attention you get for doing this thing for ghost hunting or for being a medium in getting involved in seances. The more that happens, the better the phenomena you have to produce or the better the evidence that you have to produce every time. You can't just find a little bit of evidence and then find something that is just the same, really. It has to be scarier and scary or better and better. And this is reflected in poltergeist cases where the activity always ramps up because, you know, once something happens, the next thing that happens has to be scarier. It happens with scientific investigations as well. You know, the evidence against spiritualism has to get more exciting and better every time. And then, of course, you get the ghost hunting reality TV series like Our Beloved Most Haunted and various other things and Ghost Watch as well. Lest we forget where it has to ramp up every time people want more and more. This is what I found with my research is that no evidence is ever enough. It always has to be better. And I think we see that in how ghosts are portrayed in modern horror films. They're really scary. I watch quite a lot of horror films to my detriment. And I know I have really weird and terrible sleep and that's probably not helpful for me to be watching horror films all the time. But you know, there are so many jump scares and ghosts aren't necessarily just a sort of translucent figure anymore. They've got horrible makeup on or because our head's half off, it's all very scary. You know, it's that body horror as well. So I think, I don't know, will we ever get to a point where we sort of plateau and we can't go any further in terms of how scary these things are produced. But this is the thing that I found is that we always want more. We're always expecting something scarier, something bigger. When it comes to ghost hunting and.

[John Baucum]

Alice, what I think is really interesting about this book is that this isn't some kind of third person investigation into the history of this topic. You're not afraid to put yourself out there and immerse yourself in ghost hunting culture. I believe you actually got involved with a ghost hunting society, didn't you?

[Alice Vernon]

Yeah, a little bit, yes. You said I wasn't afraid. I mean I was a little bit. I have to say, even though I am a sceptic, I am a complete wuss at the same time. So yeah, so I got involved with the association for the Scientific Scientific Study of Anomalous Phenomena asap and they actually hold training courses. So you can go and you can become a trained paranormal investigator. You get a certificate as well. So I got involved with them. I went to this training day which I thought was really interesting. And then a few people that I met at that day asked me to go back to this place. It was the old prison in the Cotswolds in North Leech. And they asked me to come back and do a ghost hunt just with them. So I had that sort of first hand experience which I found really interesting. And what was the kind of the big eye opener for me, I suppose was just how fun it was. And I think I really understood then some of the social aspect of ghost hunting, which is that actually it's a really fun social activity to just be in like a really weird old building at 3 o' clock in the morning, the things you chat about, eating donuts. It is actually really fun.

[John Baucum]

So, yeah, it does sound fun, if a little scary to me. And although, you know, the technology might have changed people using iPhones and spirit boxes and things like that, do you see any common threads that have remained the same throughout the history of ghost hunting?

[Alice Vernon]

Yeah, I think with ghost hunting, it's kind of like the more things change, the more they stay the same, really. The technology changes, but the social aspect stays the same. And I think the emotional aspect effect stays the same. It is about trying to understand our place in the world, I guess, trying to make peace with mortality, I think. And as well, I think it's about just trying to explore history as well. And I think that's more so today, perhaps. But there is this sense that for ghost hunters, it is about experiencing history and experiencing, you know, humanity 100 years ago, 200 years ago, what it was like to live in those sorts of buildings in those sorts of scenarios and to try and preserve these historical places as well. So, yeah, I think even though the technology is definitely changing and getting quite strange, in some cases, it is about that social and emotional engagement with mortality.

[John Baucum]

That's quite profound, really.

[Alice Vernon]

Thank you.

[John Baucum]

And did the process of researching this book make you change your mind on anything? I mean, you say that you're still a skeptic, but was your perception of things altered a little bit?

[Alice Vernon]

Absolutely. I think, as I said before, I came into this research thinking it was all hilarious. So I think I approached it from a perspective that I was going to be. Not mocking in a way, but I suppose there is quite a lot of humor in Ghosted, but I think it was going to be more so than that. And so I think. I think what really changed for me was the level of grief that I think is behind a lot of spiritualism and a lot of ghost hunting, which you cannot mock. You know, you have to really look at it from an individual perspective. You know, I always think about Oliver Lodge's wife now and the way that those seances that she had to try and speak to Raymond really helped her. There was another example of another lady who had done some seances to try and contact her son again, and because of that, she stopped wearing morning dress. You know, she kind of came out of her period of grief because she felt able to kind of rejoin the world and to move on a little bit. So I think that individual bereavement on a mass scale, I think that really changed the way that I think about ghost hunting. Absolutely.

[John Baucum]

Dr. Alice, Vernon, thanks so much for your time.

[Alice Vernon]

Thank you very much, John.

[John Baucum]

That was Alice Vernon, lecturer in 19th century literature and creative writing at Aberystwyth University. You can learn more about Alice's research in her new book, A History of Ghost Hunting and why We Keep Looking, which was recently published by Bloomsbury. In this episode, she was speaking to John Baucum. And Doug, Here we have the Limu emu in its natural habitat, helping people customize their car insurance and save hundreds with Liberty Mutual.

[Alice Vernon]

Fascinating.

[John Baucum]

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[Alice Vernon]

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[John Baucum]

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[Alice Vernon]

And that was the first time that.

[John Baucum]

Anybody ever ran a car up that fast with no tires on. It almost feels like your eyeballs are going to come out of your head. Tough enough for you? Subscribe to History's Toughest Heroes wherever you get your podcast.