A nice review of my book “Investigating Ghosts: The Scientific Search for Spirits” (now available on audiobook by the way) is now out, by Marcus Seda, and can be read on “Adventures in Poor Taste”!

Ghost and paranormal investigations were considered a “mainstream intellectual pursuit” in the mid 1800s. This was during the advent of the Spiritualism movement, a time in which the first handful of ghost and paranormal investigation clubs were formed, primarily in British academia.  The most enduring of these groups is the Society for Psychical research, which still exists.

The heirs of these clubs and societies are the ghost hunting groups that have proliferated in the English speaking world in recent decades. Many of the first modern groups took inspiration from the work of Ed and Lorraine Warren, paranormal investigators who were active from the 1970s until Ed’s death in 2006. Today’s groups seem to be taking cues from their most recent predecessors, the ones they see on television.

One could rightly assume that the time and toil spent investigating the existence of ghosts should have produced good evidence by now. With over 150 years and thousands of investigators focused on the question, surely we should have some proof or solid data that points in the direction of spectral existence, right?

Unfortunately the answer is no, we do not… You can read the rest HERE!

You can find more on me and my work with a search for “Benjamin Radford” (not “Ben Radford”) on Vimeo, and please check out my podcast Squaring the Strange!