Reviews

The problem with reading about ‘real-life’ hauntings is that they are never as interesting as fiction ones. In this book, Clarke manages to avoid this, as he looks at cases and manifestations and how they were investigated and how theories about them were formed. What this shows is how people tried to find scientific or religious explanations for them leading to the problems that arise about how to get exorcisms when you are not Catholic.New technologies like recording and photography are employed to try and contact the dead through them. While the sheer weight of material on this topic means that the text can not cover everything, it does work as a starting point with a lot of interesting things coming up such as the mediums and the motives of the people who investigated the ghosts.

boorrito's review

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2.0

This could have done with a better editor - there's a couple of footnotes that aren't in the right place, some weird typing errors and it would have made sense to organise by chronology, considering Clarke doesn't manage to organise by theme.

Also, it'd be really easy to fake a "ghost" in a spellchecker if you knew how to modify the dictionary file in Word and I'm surprised that Clarke considers it a weird unexpected mystery instead. Then again Clarke really, really wants to believe.

Conclusion: I didn't change my view from reading this, I went in thinking it's inconclusive if ghosts exist, but anyone who claims to be able to summon them at will is a liar and fraud.

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