Untraceable whispering voices.Gnome-like spirits who walk through walls.A room that glows with an eerie, life-draining light.Disembodied footsteps that climb stairs but never descend.A house with doors that open by themselves-even when locked.After a period of strong skepticism among writers and intellects regarding the reality of ghosts, the Victorian era (1837-1901) revitalized interest in seriously exploring houses and other locations alleged to be haunted. The paranormal investigators, including Charles Dickens and Arthur Conan Doyle, chronicled their methods and discoveries. Equipped with little more than candles, patience, and perhaps a flask of brandy, these men and women laid a foundation for the ghost hunters of today.The Victorian Ghost Hunter's Casebook presents some of the most intriguing, most frightening, and most charming of the chronicles left behind. Ghostlore scholar Tim Prasil provides an Introduction about what motivated the Victorians to investigate spectral manifestations, along with the history of ghost hunters that preceded them. He also provides enlightening details on twelve ghostly cases located in Britain, and an Appendix with two more ghost hunts held in the United States during the Victorian era.

Andrew Green, who died in 2004, was for sixty years one of Britain's most active and best-known ghost-hunters. The Daily Telegraph famously christened him 'the Spectre Inspector'. The author of best-sellers such as Our Haunted Kingdom and Ghost Hunting: a Practical Guide, he investigated hundreds of reported hauntings during his career, from famous cases such as 'the poltergeist girl of Battersea' to cases where a client had simply taken the wrong medication before bed. The most important cases from his lifetime of research are collected together in this volume - alongside new research and many reports that have never previously been published. This is an essential guide to the career of Britain's most famous ghost-hunter, and indeed to the paranormal history of ' our haunted kingdom'.

These are the last twelve stories Conan Doyle wrote about Holmes and Watson. They reflect the disillusioned world of the 1920s and also include some of the wittiest passages in the series.

Between the American Civil War and the nation¿s entry into World War I, a wave of ghost reports appeared in U.S. newspapers. Haunted houses, haunted roads, haunted families, and other spectral manifestations were treated as legitimate news. Tim Prasil has collected hundreds of these articles, and Spectral Edition: Ghost Reports from U.S. Newspapers, 1865-1917 displays the scariest, strangest, funniest, and most intriguing of them. Along with nearly 150 complete ghost reports, Prasil includes a well-researched Introduction, useful footnotes, rare newspaper illustrations, and an essay about how an alleged ghost encounter in Memphis ignited a debate about responsible journalism. Spectral Edition explores a curious chapter of U.S. newspapers and an era when the American press challenged scientific and religious skepticism with open-minded consideration of the possibility that specters return to haunt us!

There has been an upsurge in books, television programmes, films and websites exploring the reality or otherwise of the spirit world. Not since the founding of The Ghost Club in 1862 and the Society for Psychical Research in 1882 has ghost hunting been so popular. Television and the internet, in particular, have fueled this new level of interest, creating a modern media phenomenon that spans the globe. But while the demand for information is high, good information remains scarce. A Brief Guide to Ghost Hunting leads us through the process of ghost hunting, from initially weighing the first report, to choosing equipment, and investigating and identifying the phenomena, with an analysis of the best places to go looking, methods of contacting the spirit world, how to explain paranormal activity and, crucially, how to survive the encounter. However, it is also a book about ghost hunting itself, drawing on 130 years of research in the cavernous archives of the Society for Psychical Research and even older history to find the earliest ghost stories. A Ghost Hunting Survey makes use of interviews with those billing themselves as ghost hunters to find out their views, motivations and experiences. New and original research makes use of statistics to map the nebulous world of apparitions while a Preliminary Survey of Hauntings offers an analysis of 923 reported phenomena from 263 locations across the UK. This is, as far as possible, an objective presentation of ghosts and ghost hunting. It is no wonder that mainstream science largely refuses to deal with the subject: it is too complicated. Without trying to convince you of any viewpoint, this book is intended to help you understand more.