A review by davidallkins
A Natural History of Ghosts: 500 Years of Hunting for Proof by Roger Clarke

dark informative mysterious medium-paced

4.0

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.