Interview with Alan Murdie, Chairman of The Ghost Club - June 2013
Peta (Peet) Banks, lead investigator of APPI, interviewed Alan Murdie, LL.B, Barrister, Chairman of the Ghost Club of Great Britain & Head of the Spontaneous Cases Committee of the Incorporated Society for Psychical Research.
The Ghost Club was founded in 1862 and is the oldest organisation in the world, associated with psychical research. With no premises or paid staff, this wonderfully historic ‘club’ is made up purely of volunteers from around Great Britain, all of whom give their own time to arrange events for the rest of the members.
What fascinates me with your organisation is how long it has been around. I’m a bit of a history buff. What would be your favourite historical case from the archives?
There you ask a good question as the records of the Ghost Club are voluminous, so much so that a group of members having been working on them for several years. So it is very difficult to pin down a favourite historical case with such an enormous variety and number to choose from. A personal favourite of mine, which the Ghost Club has looked into again in the course of the a visit to haunted places in the east of England some years back were the mysterious lights and claimed visions of Virgin Mary at Middleton in Essex reported by a priest by named Clive Luget in 1932-32. Middleton is just a few miles from the village of Borley, the site of the infamous Borley Rectory dubbed ‘the most haunted house in England’ Whilst Borley is remembered the alleged manifestations at Middleton have been forgotten. The other fascinating case from the same period was that of ‘Gef -Talking Mongoose’ a weird poltergeist case on the Isle of Man which intrigued Harry Price and Nandor Fodor, both Ghost Club members who wrote about it. This case is currently being re-examined and certainly is one of the weirdest on record and is fascinating from whatever angle one approaches it, whether psychical research, psychology or social history.
I know the group was originally founded by fellows at Trinity College, and included academia at Cambridge University. Do you think this assisted in giving the club more credence in the academic community?
I don’t think the Ghost Club ever sought credence in academic circles or beyond being a convivial and interesting place for those fascinated by the subject to meet. This is partly because the academic community at the time was very different to that of today. At the time colleges in Cambridge and Oxford were very conservative male institutions, wedded to reproducing orthodox ideas and practice and enjoying themselves in prescribed and traditional ways. One outlet was the formation of Clubs and societies concerning anything that interested them, almost as an escape from the cloistered environment. So in a way, the original formation of an all-male Club such as the Ghost Club would have been as seen as one an extension of college life, yet another student group or body and no wider significance.
Until the mid-19th century religion and science co-existed at an official level without any open conflict within their own spheres problems and with very little open dissent between them. Nor did psychology really exist as a discipline. However, new discoveries and theories in science were beginning to undermine literal interpretations and faith in the Bible as historically true (before this much important scientific work had been done by clergymen without any problems). A more militant form of materialism appeared that openly challenged religion and any spiritual belief. This in turn spread from the materialist philosophers who had arisen in the Enlightenment period in the 18th century
The arrival of spiritualism in Britain in the mid-19th century – arguably one of America’s most successful exports – polarised both science and religion with supporters and opponents in both camps. It also occurred amid concerns that science was revealing an increasingly godless universe in which human beings were just mere biological machines. This disquiet concerns amongst some academics and led to the formation of the Society for Psychical Research to see if what we would today called paranormal phenomena could be studied scientifically and if any conclusions could be formed about their nature and ultimate reality.
It can be said that the Ghost Club helped set the process going, but by the time the Society for Psychical Research was formed in 1882– drawing together some of the greatest thinkers and scientists of the time – many were already convinced of the reality of psychical phenomena and spiritual reality.
However, I believe that the greatest stimulant for the spread of spiritualism and the launch of psychical research was the high mortality rate throughout the 19th century. This meant that people in all classes were liable to die prematurely, from poor babies to Prince Albert, husband of Queen Victoria. Death was often sudden in the 19th century – hence all the cases of crisis apparitions it was possible to record. For those left behind neither science or established religion provided answers and that was why spiritualism flourished.
How has the club evolved over the past 151 years?
It has gone through a number of phases. In the 1860s it was in many ways similar to the more scientific investigative of groups today, in looking for haunted houses and for which it placed an announcement in The Times in 1862. But in the 19th century, generally speaking, you did not tend to go out to haunted houses to investigate ghosts, rather you invited spirits to materialise in the séance room. Modern ghost hunting as we would recognise it only really dates from the late 19th century; before the 1850s the ghost hunter is indistinguishable with the spirit-raiser or necromancer, and later typically becomes a full-blown spiritualist (many ghost hunts ultimately still end up as attempts to contact the dead). Unfortunately, Ghost Club records from this period are exceedingly fragmentary; it seems there was also a similar group the Phantasmagorical Society founded at Oxford University in 1879.
By the time the Society for Psychical Research had been formed in 1882 there had already been over thirty years of reports of mediumistic phenomena and there were many sincere believers. Amongst these were some of the earlier founders of the SPR, including the Revd Stainton Moses who was a vice President of the SPR. Stainton Moses revived the Ghost Club in 1882 and quit as vice president of the SPR in 1886 stating he felt the phenomena already proved.
In fact, then as now, neither the SPR or the Ghost Club have collective opinions, both are open to sceptics and believers alike. Unfortunately, the SPR was adept at catching mediums cheating and the Ghost Club retreated away from this and became rather insular and intensely secretive body of believers who were already convinced of the existence of a spiritual realm. They kept extensive minutes with some extraordinary claims and stories recorded therein, but all too frequently they did not set down precise enough details which can be followed up today.
In some ways the Ghost Club at this stage operated as a mix between an occult society and a discussion group, being convinced that they were in touch with deceased members on an occasional if not frequent basis. Not surprisingly, the records of the Ghost Club were kept confidential and they admitted less than a hundred members in a period of 58 years. In doing so it also provided a confidential meeting place for various individuals who had formally abandoned psychical research, such as the physicist Sir William Crookes following a scandal over his involvement with a teenage medium named Florence Cook. Another controversial figure was Frederick Bligh Bond who was involved with a High Court case over his attempts to channel dead monks from Glastonbury Abbey in the course of archaeological work.
After World War I the Ghost Club began to attract some younger members who were to become significant in the next few years, including ghost hunters Harry Price and Nandor Fodor. The emphasis was shifting away from the séance room to parapsychology and ghost hunting as we would see it today. The meetings became more relaxed and more socially orientated. After an 18 month suspension in 1936, Price revived the Ghost Club as dinning club for people wishing to hear a serious lecture on psychical research over dinner.
The Club lapsed for a period after the death of Price in 1948 but in 1952 some former members initially organised by the late Philip Paul (see his book Some Unseen Power (1985) for an account; a former President Peter Underwood has also written his version of events. Membership remained by invitation only up until 1993, but about 20 years ago it was decided by the older members to open up the Club to wider membership and today we pursue a wide range of activities and encourage serious research of all kinds and writers in the field.
Has investigating the paranormal personally made your more of a believer, or more of a skeptic?
Neither. What is has shown me is how one – or anyone - really knows about anything. Reality is infinitely complex to and neither scientists, philosophers, theologians nor mystics have ever been able to present anything more than a tiny part of the picture. We are dwarfed by what we don’t know, and that does not simply apply to the paranormal.
We are surrounded by all sorts of mysteries and unexplained phenomena of different varieties, not just in the field of the paranormal.
Many things encountered every day we cannot adequately explain – how the mind, the brain and the body really work and how our senses operate. The nature of consciousness itself is a mystery, as well as the big cosmological questions. On these huge questions some of the best writings I have discovered were by Raynor C. Johnson (1901-1987), an Australian astrophysicist who was Master of Queen’s College at the University of Melbourne, in a number of books published in the 1950s and early 1960s. I would heartily recommend them for the wide ranging scholarship and the depth of thought involved.
In your opinion, what phenomenon is most often mistaken for paranormal activity, when it can be scientifically explained?
In my opinion and in terms of what gets referred to me, so-called ‘orbs’ and other photographic artefacts obtained on digital cameras. Like most people I was intrigued when they were first reported, around 1999. However, I think it has now been demonstrated beyond reasonable doubt by experiment by Philip Carr of the Ghost Club and other researchers such as Steve Parsons that have a natural explanation, arising from dust particles in the air and the fact that the flash unit is much closer to the lens with a modern camera. In fact, the whole issue of ghost photographs has been going round for over 140 years.
The views of Stainton Moses are of particular interest here, as he was one of the most gifted mediums of the late 19th century against whom no allegation of fraud was ever made, let alone sustained. It is therefore interesting to come across his extreme scepticism regarding spirit photography. By 1875 Stainton Moses already personally examined some 600 alleged ghost photographs, showing just how widespread such photos were. But his conclusions were damning:
"Some people would recognise anything. A broom and a sheet are quite enough for some wild enthusiasts who go with the figure in their eye and see what they wish to see...I have had pictures that might be anything in this or any other world sent to me and gravely claimed as recognised portraits'.
This problem is still with us. In no more than about a dozen of his hundreds of example did Moses think that something psychical had been captured on film. Unfortunately, for him one spirit photographer he did give initial credence to was a Frenchman called Jean Buguet, who later confessed to fraud at a sensational trial soon after and was jailed for a year. Understandably, Buguet has been omitted from many pro-spiritualist history books
Virtually none of the photographic images I have seen show anything resembling the often complex apparitional images which people encounter in genuine hauntings or ghost experiences. I have noticed the how people who have seen or actually heard a ghost need no further convincing of the reality of their experience. They simply tell their story. The apparitions they describe are often detailed and a sketch artist could draw an accurate picture based upon their description. Many of these apparitions are initially mistaken for physical human beings, such is their clarity.
In contrast, the people who produce photographs of what they think might be a ghost never actually saw or experienced the apparition at the time. The interpretation is always as post-development construction. The images are often ambiguous. With imagination some can be seen as almost anything one wishes. Frequently they show nothing unusual at all. Furthermore , people who only have photographs want to be told that the picture is of a ghost or spirit. Unlike actual witnesses – who need no further convincing – the majority of those with photographs want to have their existing hopes/beliefs affirmed.
Of the remaining peculiar photographs, the vast majority appear to show fogs, mists and luminous patches. It must be said that - unlike orbs such - effects have been turning up on films for many years. In all such cases it is difficult to decide what they represent; a number can be discounted as infra-red from domestic equipment (e.g TV remote controls) or ordinary light pollution or reflections and water vapour or smoke in out-door locations. Nonetheless, it is the persistence of such cloudy images and smudges over the years which is interesting. The smudges do not look like apparitions – though some people claim to see figures within them – but their repeated appearance in many parts of the world is interesting. The late Maurice Grosse observed that they seem particularly prevalent in photographs taken in allegedly haunted houses and sites with a religious or spiritual significance.
The immediate reaction of many people is to declare that these mists or fogs “must be a ghost” despite the fact, as noted above that most apparitions do not resemble mists or fogs. But it is possible they could signify something unusual but what we don’t know.
How do you think the popularity of paranormal investigation television shows has affected the way people look at this research?
Really these can’t be called paranormal investigation television shows, they are for entertainment and no research is actually being done. One in Britain, one of the best known Most Haunted is correctly marketed as “Entertainment” . Half the time they claim to know the answers already – e.g. they know its spirits at work before they even finished. If you are sure of that already, why bother investigating ? I generally don’t bother with them and these days I am only prepared to be involved with a small number of serious film makers and broadcasters.
From talking to casual viewers in the UK about these shows, I am pleased to find a healthy scepticism and many more not to the extent that is imagined; many people don’t pay much attention and are fairly sceptical, and many casual viewers simply don’t care one way or another. As an example, I know one excellent investigator who works in a fairly routine civil service job in Britain yet has written some really good books on the paranormal. However whilst his work colleagues acknowledge his success as an author, they aren’t interested in reading his books and freely admit they prefer watching a popular British TV soap operas than ever learning about psychic phenomena going on in the neighbourhood in which they all live !
Undoubtedly, the intellectual level of many of these shows is depressingly low, but that’s not new in media treatments not just of the paranormal. Fortunately, I think their impact is pretty minimal; these days there is just simply too much in the way of TV and broadcast images for anything to carry any lasting clout.
Really one must not be surprised. People seriously interested in spiritual issues and in the paranormal are a minority in terms of the mass viewing audience. Along with people who like to read a variety of books, they have different patterns of spending and consumption and some don’t watch TV at all! Compared with many viewers and the bulk of sports and pop music programmes, they are often bad consumers. Consequently do not form a significant part of the mass market audience which commercial television and media are geared towards serving.
What types of technological equipment do you use when investigating?
Personally, very little. To quote a long-serving former chairman of the Ghost Club Tom Perrott, “Quite often my ghost hunting equipment is a notebook, a pencil and a sympathetic ear.” Most of the time we only have ghost reports to study and I think it is as important to record these accurately as much as attempting to set up equipment in apparently haunted properties in the hoping of capturing paranormal activity.
Equipment such as cameras, videos and tape records can certainly be deployed successfully in poltergeist cases, since in these actual physical effects can be recorded, although elusive.
learned publication dating back to 1882, carries an article by scientist Dr Barrie Colvin showing instrumental evidence for an inexplicable and objective banging sound detected in recordings made during alleged poltergeist activity.
Dr Colvin has analysed recordings of alleged poltergeist knocking obtained from around the world over a 40-year period. The earliest was a recording made by a local physician at Sauchie (Scotland) in 1960 and the most recent was obtained from a poltergeist case at Euston Square, London in 2000.
Whilst normal and poltergeist raps sound rather similar, they are actually acoustically different, although the effect is only made apparent when the recordings of raps are submitted to detailed analysis.
In each of the recordings, when subjected to acoustic analysis, a particular sound pattern is detected which has baffled sound experts. Attempt to replicate this pattern in ordinary ways have so far been unsuccessful.
The essential difference between poltergeist raps and those produced by normal means lies in the details of their sound envelope.
In the case of a normal rap, the sound (which often only lasts a few milliseconds) starts loud and decays over a period of time. The loudest part of the sound is right at the beginning. In the case of a poltergeist rap, the loudest part is near the beginning of the sound - but not at the very beginning. The rapping sound starts relatively quietly and works up to a maximum before it then starts to decay. This effect has been seen in all ten of the poltergeist cases studied; it will be interesting to see if it occurs in new recordings.
Beyond this, equipment based ghost hunting in apparitional cases has been very disappointing in terms of results in traditionally haunted houses – probably because phenomena such as ghosts are too subtle having more in common with dreams than anything that can be recorded with material apparatus.
We have not yet invented a technical ghost detecting device. I am afraid that much of the gadgetry by many ghost hunting teams is utterly irrelevant or the persons using it have no real idea of how to use the instruments or what readings may mean or signify. Indeed, some people use them rather as props or ritual objects in a spiritual ritual rather than any scientific or even semi-scientific exercise. Finally, you may also be aware of the frustrating tendency of equipment deployed on ghost hunts to break down!
It may well be that we can no more photograph a ghost than we can a dream or a hallucination. In fact the sensitivity of mammals – certain humans and particularly dogs, cats and horses indicates that there may be far better biological ghost detectors in existence than any technology we have developed or can deploy!
The Ghost Club was founded in 1862 and is the oldest organisation in the world, associated with psychical research. With no premises or paid staff, this wonderfully historic ‘club’ is made up purely of volunteers from around Great Britain, all of whom give their own time to arrange events for the rest of the members.
What fascinates me with your organisation is how long it has been around. I’m a bit of a history buff. What would be your favourite historical case from the archives?
There you ask a good question as the records of the Ghost Club are voluminous, so much so that a group of members having been working on them for several years. So it is very difficult to pin down a favourite historical case with such an enormous variety and number to choose from. A personal favourite of mine, which the Ghost Club has looked into again in the course of the a visit to haunted places in the east of England some years back were the mysterious lights and claimed visions of Virgin Mary at Middleton in Essex reported by a priest by named Clive Luget in 1932-32. Middleton is just a few miles from the village of Borley, the site of the infamous Borley Rectory dubbed ‘the most haunted house in England’ Whilst Borley is remembered the alleged manifestations at Middleton have been forgotten. The other fascinating case from the same period was that of ‘Gef -Talking Mongoose’ a weird poltergeist case on the Isle of Man which intrigued Harry Price and Nandor Fodor, both Ghost Club members who wrote about it. This case is currently being re-examined and certainly is one of the weirdest on record and is fascinating from whatever angle one approaches it, whether psychical research, psychology or social history.
I know the group was originally founded by fellows at Trinity College, and included academia at Cambridge University. Do you think this assisted in giving the club more credence in the academic community?
I don’t think the Ghost Club ever sought credence in academic circles or beyond being a convivial and interesting place for those fascinated by the subject to meet. This is partly because the academic community at the time was very different to that of today. At the time colleges in Cambridge and Oxford were very conservative male institutions, wedded to reproducing orthodox ideas and practice and enjoying themselves in prescribed and traditional ways. One outlet was the formation of Clubs and societies concerning anything that interested them, almost as an escape from the cloistered environment. So in a way, the original formation of an all-male Club such as the Ghost Club would have been as seen as one an extension of college life, yet another student group or body and no wider significance.
Until the mid-19th century religion and science co-existed at an official level without any open conflict within their own spheres problems and with very little open dissent between them. Nor did psychology really exist as a discipline. However, new discoveries and theories in science were beginning to undermine literal interpretations and faith in the Bible as historically true (before this much important scientific work had been done by clergymen without any problems). A more militant form of materialism appeared that openly challenged religion and any spiritual belief. This in turn spread from the materialist philosophers who had arisen in the Enlightenment period in the 18th century
The arrival of spiritualism in Britain in the mid-19th century – arguably one of America’s most successful exports – polarised both science and religion with supporters and opponents in both camps. It also occurred amid concerns that science was revealing an increasingly godless universe in which human beings were just mere biological machines. This disquiet concerns amongst some academics and led to the formation of the Society for Psychical Research to see if what we would today called paranormal phenomena could be studied scientifically and if any conclusions could be formed about their nature and ultimate reality.
It can be said that the Ghost Club helped set the process going, but by the time the Society for Psychical Research was formed in 1882– drawing together some of the greatest thinkers and scientists of the time – many were already convinced of the reality of psychical phenomena and spiritual reality.
However, I believe that the greatest stimulant for the spread of spiritualism and the launch of psychical research was the high mortality rate throughout the 19th century. This meant that people in all classes were liable to die prematurely, from poor babies to Prince Albert, husband of Queen Victoria. Death was often sudden in the 19th century – hence all the cases of crisis apparitions it was possible to record. For those left behind neither science or established religion provided answers and that was why spiritualism flourished.
How has the club evolved over the past 151 years?
It has gone through a number of phases. In the 1860s it was in many ways similar to the more scientific investigative of groups today, in looking for haunted houses and for which it placed an announcement in The Times in 1862. But in the 19th century, generally speaking, you did not tend to go out to haunted houses to investigate ghosts, rather you invited spirits to materialise in the séance room. Modern ghost hunting as we would recognise it only really dates from the late 19th century; before the 1850s the ghost hunter is indistinguishable with the spirit-raiser or necromancer, and later typically becomes a full-blown spiritualist (many ghost hunts ultimately still end up as attempts to contact the dead). Unfortunately, Ghost Club records from this period are exceedingly fragmentary; it seems there was also a similar group the Phantasmagorical Society founded at Oxford University in 1879.
By the time the Society for Psychical Research had been formed in 1882 there had already been over thirty years of reports of mediumistic phenomena and there were many sincere believers. Amongst these were some of the earlier founders of the SPR, including the Revd Stainton Moses who was a vice President of the SPR. Stainton Moses revived the Ghost Club in 1882 and quit as vice president of the SPR in 1886 stating he felt the phenomena already proved.
In fact, then as now, neither the SPR or the Ghost Club have collective opinions, both are open to sceptics and believers alike. Unfortunately, the SPR was adept at catching mediums cheating and the Ghost Club retreated away from this and became rather insular and intensely secretive body of believers who were already convinced of the existence of a spiritual realm. They kept extensive minutes with some extraordinary claims and stories recorded therein, but all too frequently they did not set down precise enough details which can be followed up today.
In some ways the Ghost Club at this stage operated as a mix between an occult society and a discussion group, being convinced that they were in touch with deceased members on an occasional if not frequent basis. Not surprisingly, the records of the Ghost Club were kept confidential and they admitted less than a hundred members in a period of 58 years. In doing so it also provided a confidential meeting place for various individuals who had formally abandoned psychical research, such as the physicist Sir William Crookes following a scandal over his involvement with a teenage medium named Florence Cook. Another controversial figure was Frederick Bligh Bond who was involved with a High Court case over his attempts to channel dead monks from Glastonbury Abbey in the course of archaeological work.
After World War I the Ghost Club began to attract some younger members who were to become significant in the next few years, including ghost hunters Harry Price and Nandor Fodor. The emphasis was shifting away from the séance room to parapsychology and ghost hunting as we would see it today. The meetings became more relaxed and more socially orientated. After an 18 month suspension in 1936, Price revived the Ghost Club as dinning club for people wishing to hear a serious lecture on psychical research over dinner.
The Club lapsed for a period after the death of Price in 1948 but in 1952 some former members initially organised by the late Philip Paul (see his book Some Unseen Power (1985) for an account; a former President Peter Underwood has also written his version of events. Membership remained by invitation only up until 1993, but about 20 years ago it was decided by the older members to open up the Club to wider membership and today we pursue a wide range of activities and encourage serious research of all kinds and writers in the field.
Has investigating the paranormal personally made your more of a believer, or more of a skeptic?
Neither. What is has shown me is how one – or anyone - really knows about anything. Reality is infinitely complex to and neither scientists, philosophers, theologians nor mystics have ever been able to present anything more than a tiny part of the picture. We are dwarfed by what we don’t know, and that does not simply apply to the paranormal.
We are surrounded by all sorts of mysteries and unexplained phenomena of different varieties, not just in the field of the paranormal.
Many things encountered every day we cannot adequately explain – how the mind, the brain and the body really work and how our senses operate. The nature of consciousness itself is a mystery, as well as the big cosmological questions. On these huge questions some of the best writings I have discovered were by Raynor C. Johnson (1901-1987), an Australian astrophysicist who was Master of Queen’s College at the University of Melbourne, in a number of books published in the 1950s and early 1960s. I would heartily recommend them for the wide ranging scholarship and the depth of thought involved.
In your opinion, what phenomenon is most often mistaken for paranormal activity, when it can be scientifically explained?
In my opinion and in terms of what gets referred to me, so-called ‘orbs’ and other photographic artefacts obtained on digital cameras. Like most people I was intrigued when they were first reported, around 1999. However, I think it has now been demonstrated beyond reasonable doubt by experiment by Philip Carr of the Ghost Club and other researchers such as Steve Parsons that have a natural explanation, arising from dust particles in the air and the fact that the flash unit is much closer to the lens with a modern camera. In fact, the whole issue of ghost photographs has been going round for over 140 years.
The views of Stainton Moses are of particular interest here, as he was one of the most gifted mediums of the late 19th century against whom no allegation of fraud was ever made, let alone sustained. It is therefore interesting to come across his extreme scepticism regarding spirit photography. By 1875 Stainton Moses already personally examined some 600 alleged ghost photographs, showing just how widespread such photos were. But his conclusions were damning:
"Some people would recognise anything. A broom and a sheet are quite enough for some wild enthusiasts who go with the figure in their eye and see what they wish to see...I have had pictures that might be anything in this or any other world sent to me and gravely claimed as recognised portraits'.
This problem is still with us. In no more than about a dozen of his hundreds of example did Moses think that something psychical had been captured on film. Unfortunately, for him one spirit photographer he did give initial credence to was a Frenchman called Jean Buguet, who later confessed to fraud at a sensational trial soon after and was jailed for a year. Understandably, Buguet has been omitted from many pro-spiritualist history books
Virtually none of the photographic images I have seen show anything resembling the often complex apparitional images which people encounter in genuine hauntings or ghost experiences. I have noticed the how people who have seen or actually heard a ghost need no further convincing of the reality of their experience. They simply tell their story. The apparitions they describe are often detailed and a sketch artist could draw an accurate picture based upon their description. Many of these apparitions are initially mistaken for physical human beings, such is their clarity.
In contrast, the people who produce photographs of what they think might be a ghost never actually saw or experienced the apparition at the time. The interpretation is always as post-development construction. The images are often ambiguous. With imagination some can be seen as almost anything one wishes. Frequently they show nothing unusual at all. Furthermore , people who only have photographs want to be told that the picture is of a ghost or spirit. Unlike actual witnesses – who need no further convincing – the majority of those with photographs want to have their existing hopes/beliefs affirmed.
Of the remaining peculiar photographs, the vast majority appear to show fogs, mists and luminous patches. It must be said that - unlike orbs such - effects have been turning up on films for many years. In all such cases it is difficult to decide what they represent; a number can be discounted as infra-red from domestic equipment (e.g TV remote controls) or ordinary light pollution or reflections and water vapour or smoke in out-door locations. Nonetheless, it is the persistence of such cloudy images and smudges over the years which is interesting. The smudges do not look like apparitions – though some people claim to see figures within them – but their repeated appearance in many parts of the world is interesting. The late Maurice Grosse observed that they seem particularly prevalent in photographs taken in allegedly haunted houses and sites with a religious or spiritual significance.
The immediate reaction of many people is to declare that these mists or fogs “must be a ghost” despite the fact, as noted above that most apparitions do not resemble mists or fogs. But it is possible they could signify something unusual but what we don’t know.
How do you think the popularity of paranormal investigation television shows has affected the way people look at this research?
Really these can’t be called paranormal investigation television shows, they are for entertainment and no research is actually being done. One in Britain, one of the best known Most Haunted is correctly marketed as “Entertainment” . Half the time they claim to know the answers already – e.g. they know its spirits at work before they even finished. If you are sure of that already, why bother investigating ? I generally don’t bother with them and these days I am only prepared to be involved with a small number of serious film makers and broadcasters.
From talking to casual viewers in the UK about these shows, I am pleased to find a healthy scepticism and many more not to the extent that is imagined; many people don’t pay much attention and are fairly sceptical, and many casual viewers simply don’t care one way or another. As an example, I know one excellent investigator who works in a fairly routine civil service job in Britain yet has written some really good books on the paranormal. However whilst his work colleagues acknowledge his success as an author, they aren’t interested in reading his books and freely admit they prefer watching a popular British TV soap operas than ever learning about psychic phenomena going on in the neighbourhood in which they all live !
Undoubtedly, the intellectual level of many of these shows is depressingly low, but that’s not new in media treatments not just of the paranormal. Fortunately, I think their impact is pretty minimal; these days there is just simply too much in the way of TV and broadcast images for anything to carry any lasting clout.
Really one must not be surprised. People seriously interested in spiritual issues and in the paranormal are a minority in terms of the mass viewing audience. Along with people who like to read a variety of books, they have different patterns of spending and consumption and some don’t watch TV at all! Compared with many viewers and the bulk of sports and pop music programmes, they are often bad consumers. Consequently do not form a significant part of the mass market audience which commercial television and media are geared towards serving.
What types of technological equipment do you use when investigating?
Personally, very little. To quote a long-serving former chairman of the Ghost Club Tom Perrott, “Quite often my ghost hunting equipment is a notebook, a pencil and a sympathetic ear.” Most of the time we only have ghost reports to study and I think it is as important to record these accurately as much as attempting to set up equipment in apparently haunted properties in the hoping of capturing paranormal activity.
Equipment such as cameras, videos and tape records can certainly be deployed successfully in poltergeist cases, since in these actual physical effects can be recorded, although elusive.
learned publication dating back to 1882, carries an article by scientist Dr Barrie Colvin showing instrumental evidence for an inexplicable and objective banging sound detected in recordings made during alleged poltergeist activity.
Dr Colvin has analysed recordings of alleged poltergeist knocking obtained from around the world over a 40-year period. The earliest was a recording made by a local physician at Sauchie (Scotland) in 1960 and the most recent was obtained from a poltergeist case at Euston Square, London in 2000.
Whilst normal and poltergeist raps sound rather similar, they are actually acoustically different, although the effect is only made apparent when the recordings of raps are submitted to detailed analysis.
In each of the recordings, when subjected to acoustic analysis, a particular sound pattern is detected which has baffled sound experts. Attempt to replicate this pattern in ordinary ways have so far been unsuccessful.
The essential difference between poltergeist raps and those produced by normal means lies in the details of their sound envelope.
In the case of a normal rap, the sound (which often only lasts a few milliseconds) starts loud and decays over a period of time. The loudest part of the sound is right at the beginning. In the case of a poltergeist rap, the loudest part is near the beginning of the sound - but not at the very beginning. The rapping sound starts relatively quietly and works up to a maximum before it then starts to decay. This effect has been seen in all ten of the poltergeist cases studied; it will be interesting to see if it occurs in new recordings.
Beyond this, equipment based ghost hunting in apparitional cases has been very disappointing in terms of results in traditionally haunted houses – probably because phenomena such as ghosts are too subtle having more in common with dreams than anything that can be recorded with material apparatus.
We have not yet invented a technical ghost detecting device. I am afraid that much of the gadgetry by many ghost hunting teams is utterly irrelevant or the persons using it have no real idea of how to use the instruments or what readings may mean or signify. Indeed, some people use them rather as props or ritual objects in a spiritual ritual rather than any scientific or even semi-scientific exercise. Finally, you may also be aware of the frustrating tendency of equipment deployed on ghost hunts to break down!
It may well be that we can no more photograph a ghost than we can a dream or a hallucination. In fact the sensitivity of mammals – certain humans and particularly dogs, cats and horses indicates that there may be far better biological ghost detectors in existence than any technology we have developed or can deploy!
More information on The Ghost Club and its facinating history can be found here: http://www.ghostclub.org.uk/