Product Description

What if a world-renowned professor of psychology at Harvard University, a doctor and scientist acclaimed as one of the leading intellects of the time, suddenly announced that he believed in ghosts? At the close of the nineteenth century, to great public and professional astonishment, William James-the great philosopher, a founder of the American Psychological Association and brother of Henry James-did just that and embarked on a determined, lifelong pursuit of scientific evidence to prove it.

James came together with two other brilliant and charismatic thinkers of the day-Richard Hodgson, a converted skeptic, and James Hyslop, a natural grandstander who would often visit mediums unannounced, a hooded mask covering his face-to form the core of the American Society for Psychical Research. They eventually merged with the British Society for Psychical Research, adding to the group the Cambridge philosopher Henry Sidgwick and his tiny, ferociously smart wife Eleanor, as well as the mythically handsome Edmund Gurney and others. While studies of ESP and ghostly visitations have occurred since the days of the society, at no other time have scientists of the caliber of James and his colleagues devoted themselves in such an ambitious and driven way for evidence of a life beyond. James and his band of brothers staked their reputations, their careers, even their sanity, on one of the most extraordinary (and entertaining) psychological quests ever undertaken, a quest that brought its followers right up against the limits of science.

This riveting book is about the investigation of the ghost stories-the instances of supernatural phenomena that could not be explained away-and it is about the courage and conviction of William James and his colleagues to study science with an open mind. At the heart of the story is the ongoing tension between empiricism and spiritualism-between a way of explaining the world that is grounded in the purely tangible and a way that is grounded in a mixture of the evident and the hidden. Pulitzer Prize-winning author Deborah Blum uses her extraordinary storytelling skills and scientific insight to explore nothing less than the nexus of science and religion. It is a territory as fascinating to us now as it was to William James and his colleagues then.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #121772 in Books
• Published on: 2006-08-03
• Original language: English
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Hardcover
• 384 pages

From Publishers Weekly
Starred Review. In a compelling tale with resonance for today, Blum evokes a surprising sympathy for her band of tough-minded intellectuals—among them philosophers, psychologists, even two future Nobelists—who, around the turn of the 20th century, pursued the paranormal in an attempt to bridge the gap between faith and science at a time when religion was besieged by the theory of evolution and a new scientific outlook. Foremost in the Society for Psychical Research in America was the brilliant philosopher and psychologist William James, who like the others, risked his reputation in this unorthodox pursuit. Blum unearths the history of their research, their passionate friendships and debates, as well as their private doubts about the meaning of their work. Much of the society's efforts were devoted to exposing charlatans, but even the most dogged of the members, Richard Hodgson, was baffled by Boston's Leonora Piper, a reluctant medium of rare gifts. As Hodgson obsessively studies this medium, the story grows weirder and weirder, but Blum, who was nominated for an L.A. Times Book Award for Love at Goon Park, tells it straight, never overdramatizing the strange events. She achieves deep poignancy at moments that in less gifted hands could have seemed most laughable. The result is a moving portrait of a fascinating group of people and a first-rate slice of cultural history. (Aug. 7)
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

From The Washington Post
When it came to the paranormal, the American psychologist William James manifested what he called "the will to believe" -- not necessarily in occult phenomena themselves, but in their worthiness for rational inquiry. Yet toward the end of a century in which inventors created technologies that reduced the power of time and space (photography and telegraphy) and in which scientists introduced theories that shattered old beliefs (paleontology, evolution), the Harvard professor met with resistance -- and some titters -- when he suggested applying scientific method to mind-reading and spiritualism, two of the late 19th century's most tantalizing fads, along with the possibility of an afterlife and other supernatural questions. These out-of-hand dismissals galled James. As far as he was concerned, writes the science journalist Deborah Blum, "it was past time . . . for science to open its mind." Despite being already overburdened with his academic duties and not in the best of health, in the mid-1880s James undertook the mission himself.

He found ready allies in England, where educated folk tended to be less hostile to the supernatural: No less a figure than Alfred Russel Wallace, who had framed the theory of evolution almost simultaneously with Darwin, took part in séances and tended to believe in spiritual powers, and Cambridge philosopher Henry Sidgwick and his brilliant wife, Nora, were eager to apply polling and mathematics to alleged psychic phenomena. The complementary late-19th-century inquiries by learned men and women on both sides of the Atlantic are the subject of Blum's absorbing but standoffish new book, Ghost Hunters.

The dogged investigators, most of them busy people with other duties to fulfill, gathered case studies, attended séances, designed tests of claimants' veracity, and ran what came to be known as the Census of Hallucinations, which counted apparitions of persons who were found to have died on the very day they made their appearances. According to a method worked out by Nora Sidgwick, Census respondents reported a correlation between apparitions and same-day deaths that was "442.6 times the chance rate of .0723." An impressive result, one might think, but James wasn't satisfied. If the sample had been larger -- say 50,000 respondents, instead of the 17,000 combined in England and the United States -- he thought the statisticians might have had something.

To enhance their respectability, the Anglo-British colleagues tried to reach a consensus on ruling out mediums -- the conductors of séances, in which tabletops rapped on their own, blank slates suddenly bore writing, musical instruments played spontaneously, and wraiths wafted in and out of the room. So many mediums had been caught faking it over the years that they had become an embarrassment, and James, among others, recommended that they be shunned. Nonetheless, a few investigators became virtual groupies for the redoubtable Eusapia Palladino, an Italian medium who might have sprung from the brain of Chaucer. Wild and sexy (she liked to take off her clothes during her spells and often woke up avid to make love), Palladino was a shameless cheater -- except when she apparently wasn't. As one observer summed her up, "I have always said that she will resort to trickery if she can, but if she was carefully watched she still performs the most marvelous acts [e.g., making tables tip] and some of these I can explain only on supernormal grounds."

Leonora Piper, an American, was a more decorous performer. Her modus operandi was to go into a trance, channel a Frenchman named Dr. Phinuit, who supposedly lived from 1790-1860, and, in Phinuit's accented English, amaze visitors with details from their private lives that she was unlikely to have discovered by earthly means. Shy and bemused, Piper claimed to have no idea how she did it, nor did she exploit herself as a money-maker like so many of her peers. Invariably she defeated the efforts of detectives to trace the "natural" methods by which she might have gleaned so much startling information. Yet when Phinuit was asked to speak French, he could hardly get out a word, and French authorities had no record of his existence.

Blum has a wonderful eye for what the novelist Evan S. Connell calls "the luminous detail." Nora Sidgwick, Blum tells us, was struck by the fact that "everyone who claimed to see a ghost described the dead person as fully dressed. Why should that be? Why should there be 'ghosts of clothes?' " But Blum's way with her fascinating material is a bit bloodless. By the end, the reader wants to ask the Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist (for her 1992 reporting on primate research), "So what do you think about all these weird goings-on?"

Periodically, she cites a skeptic. For example, she paraphrases a telling observation by T.H. Huxley, the eloquent champion of Darwinism: "He did not doubt that a talented conjuror . . . could fool even a talented scientist." And, indeed, some years after James's death in 1910, the most effective foil of mediums and psychics proved to be Harry Houdini. Hovering over the whole era, perhaps, is David Hume's devastating formula for judging miracles, which seems equally applicable to the claims of mind-readers, mediums and the like: "No testimony is sufficient to establish a miracle, unless the testimony be of such a kind, that its falsehood would be more miraculous, than the fact, which it endeavors to establish." In other words, faith aside, which is more likely: that Jesus multiplied loaves and fishes, or that the source for the evangelists' story simply spaced out on the mountain that day? That a repeating cheater like Palladino goes straight every once in a while and performs a true wonder, or that we just haven't figured out how she manages her latest sleight of hand? Perhaps Blum's title, with its echo of the movie comedy "Ghostbusters," hints that she lines up with Huxley and Hume. But ultimately, she signs off leaving us in doubt.

In the end, this may not matter. Most readers will probably come to her book with a mind already made up one way or another on the range of supernatural phenomena. In any case, for believers and agnostics alike, Ghost Hunters contains a wealth of lively and provocative reading.

Reviewed by Dennis Drabelle
Copyright 2006, The Washington Post. All Rights Reserved.

From Bookmarks Magazine
Deborah Blum, a Pulitzer Prize?winning science writer and professor of science journalism at the University of Wisconsin, tackles a chapter from our past that doubly intrigues—through the search for the afterlife and the number of famous thinkers associated with it. Critics point out that, despite her compelling narrative and her evenhanded history, Blum comes up short in her examination of the reasons behind spiritualism's rise in popularity. She never wavers, however, in her ability to draw in readers with stories of famous mediums and their ability to deceive. The result is an entertaining look at the ubiquitous séances and spirit-summonings that make a study of spiritualism a worthwhile curiosity to readers more than a century later.

Copyright © 2004 Phillips & Nelson Media, Inc.

Customer Reviews

Neat book
This book provides a unique glimpse into a fascinating chapter in the history and philosophy of science. It details the work of a small circle of scientists who tried to apply the scientific method to the question of the afterlife. I was impressed by this group's relentless skepticism of individual "paranormal" events. The only precept that they left up to faith was their belief that the scientific method provided appropriate tools with which to approach the question. They formulated and tested hypotheses, attempted to do repeated experiments with appropriate controls, and statistically analyzed their data. Despite this meticulous approach, their critics dismissed them out of hand, usually without reading their papers. Regardless of your stance on the afterlife, this book is an enjoyable and informative read.

A must read for anyone interested in the history of "ghost hunting"
A book of this magnitude was long overdue. Filling in a wide historiographical gap, Deborah Blum has masterfully retold the story of the birth of spiritualism and the scientific pursuit of "psychical research." Along with Raymond Moody's The Last Laugh, this book is required reading for any aspiring investigator of the paranormal.

The cast of characters in Ghost Hunters reads like a who's who of late nineteenth and early twentieth century luminaries. Blum, however, leaves no one out of her narrative. Scientists, theologians, performers, mediums, lovers, poets, working class families, and con men all share the same stage. Biographic surprises lurk behind every page. Even those familiar with the renowned father of pragmatism, William James, are usually ignorant of his role in the investigation of paranormal phenomenon at the turn of the previous century.

Other names crop up to startle the reader. Alfred Russel Wallace, the forgotten coauthor of Darwin's theory of natural selection, the poet Alfred Lord Tennyson, Charles L. Dodgson (aka Lewis Carroll, author of Alice in Wonderland), and even Samuel Clemens were all members of the British Society for Psychical Research.

Blum was very adept at laying bare long forgotten antidotes of history. In Ghost Hunters, she approached her brilliant and influential subjects as they were; as human beings who experimented with narcotics, believed they had attained enlightenment under the influence of nitrous oxide, fell in love with their test subjects, and traveled to other continents to interview and test mediums and self-professed psychics of all shapes and colors.

She also weaved a detailed picture of a field of research constantly under siege by fellow scientists, journalists, and subjected to unending embarrassment caused by fraud and suspect conclusions at a time when England was ground zero in the battle between science and faith.

In the United States, William James led the charge at the helm of the American Society for Psychical Research, but his investigations seemed no more fruitful than those of his British counterparts. By 1886, Blum wrote, "their annual report... had degenerated into a list of exposures of professional practitioners." (pg.117) Their experiments dismantled spiritualist claims one after another, and many members began to conclude that mental illness lay at the heart of ghost sightings.

Finally, one medium, who claimed to have received messages from deceased British Society for Psychical Research member Richard Hodgson, ultimately boosted their morale. In one message, the spirit of Hodgson revealed the name of a woman who he had proposed to years earlier, but who had spurned his advances. William James contacted the woman, who, to his surprise, confirmed the story. This new phenomenon, known as cross-correspondence, continued to yield remarkable results, results that were not easy to dismiss as mere coincidence. James hesitantly concluded that, as evidence of an afterlife, that was as close as they were likely to get.

As a journalist, Deborah Blum failed to document her sources as thoroughly as a historian would demand. Never-the-less, her years of experience writing about science has given her the ability to weave a wonderful narrative without getting bogged down in technicalities and jargon. When it comes down to it, Ghost Hunters is both entertaining and informative, which is a rare combination these days!

(This review originally appeared in the July 2008 issue of the Legends and Lore of Illinois, located at www.blackoakmedia.org/legendsandlore.html)

fascinating book, a must read for people really into the science of ghosts.
This book is also a must read into the world of ghosts - going back into the history of people who really tried to study the science of ghosts. These were not people trying to convince others ghosts existed - and they did not seem convinced that they did. They simply wanted to study the science, and to expose frauds - of which there
were many. For even considering studying the subject, the scientific world treated them poorly, to say the least. To me, these were courageous people, and dedicated true scientests.

This book does not try to convince you that ghosts exist - it simply tells of people who were exposed as frauds - and the people who the scientests could never show any way of fraud being perpetrated - the ones that may well have had a genuine "gift".