Apparitions, Hauntings & Poltergeists Text Resources Thread

[Laird]

Here's another poltergeist report - a stone-throwing case from South Australia in the early 20th century:
https://thefortean.com/2020/01/01/a-mallee-mystery/

Fascinating. Especially that the stones stopped on threat of police involvement, as well as that they never injured anybody.

In the latest Skeptical Inquirer there is an article by Joe Nickell about several cases of "Firebug Poltergeists" he has investigated/researched, which he feels confirm his characterisation of the phenomenon as "poltergeist-faking syndrome":
https://skepticalinquirer.org/2020/01/fi...tergeists/

Hayley Stevens examines the latest purported ghost photograph to go viral on the Internet, taken at Lauriston Castle in Edinburgh:
https://hayleyisaghost.co.uk/lauriston-c...he-window/

She concludes that there's no reason to think it's anything other than a photo of one of the staff who were present in period costume at an event taking place that day. In fact, she includes a photo showing a member of staff wearing what looks like the same clothing shown in the picture. So no need even to consider the fact that the photo was taken by a mentalist, mindreader and performer of "psychological illusion."
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Drew_McAdam

Courtesy of the SPR Facebook page - here is a scholarly article published last year, based on the SPR's 19th-century "Census of Hallucinations," available at JSTOR:

Christopher Keep
Evidence in Matters Extraordinary: Numbers, Narratives, and the Census of Hallucinations
Victorian Studies, Vol. 61, No. 4 (Summer 2019), pp. 582-607
https://www.jstor.org/stable/10.2979/vic...es.61.4.02

Abstract:
This article examines the Society for Psychical Research (SPR) and its efforts to use quantitative methods to establish the evidentiary value of testimonial narratives. It focuses on “The Census of Hallucinations,” a nationwide demographic survey conducted from 1889 to 1892 that sought to determine the frequency with which people were experiencing auditory or visual illusions. The results of this survey were combined with mortality tables to show that people were seeing apparitions, particularly those that coincided with the death of the person thus figured, more often than chance would allow. Drawing on Derrida's concept of “spectropoetics,” I argue that the SPR's experiments with the statistical analysis of a large textual corpus reveals the haunted structure of the database as a scholarly form.

In case anyone is wondering what the last sentence means, it means that in the database words and numbers confront each other rather as the spectre confronts the living, so that "the database proves to be the most haunted of scholarly forms." Obviously.

A book entitled "Ghost-Hunting for Dummies" (or to all appearances, from the cover, "Ghost Hunting Dummies") by Zak Bagans (2019) has been reviewed by both Kenneth Biddle for Skeptical Inquirer and Steven Parsons for the Society for Psychical Research:
https://skepticalinquirer.org/exclusive/...ny-others/
https://www.spr.ac.uk/book-review/ghosth...zak-bagans

Both agree that Bagans is guilty of plagiarising earlier authors, but they differ slightly in their conclusions. Biddle is unequivocal:
"Purchasing this book would not only be a waste of money, it would be supporting plagiarism."
But Parsons gives a recommendation that's just about as grudging as it possibly could be:
"This is a book that I feel deeply uncomfortable recommending but despite its many flaws and the very serious issues of plagiarism it might, just might, have the potential to become something that is genuinely helpful for its intended readership."

A book entitled "Ghost-Hunting for Dummies" (or to all appearances, from the cover, "Ghost Hunting Dummies") by Zak Bagans (2019) has been reviewed by both Kenneth Biddle for Skeptical Inquirer and Steven Parsons for the Society for Psychical Research:
https://skepticalinquirer.org/exclusive/...ny-others/
https://www.spr.ac.uk/book-review/ghosth...zak-bagans

Both agree that Bagans is guilty of plagiarising earlier authors, but they differ slightly in their conclusions. Biddle is unequivocal:
"Purchasing this book would not only be a waste of money, it would be supporting plagiarism."
But Parsons gives a recommendation that's just about as grudging as it possibly could be:
"This is a book that I feel deeply uncomfortable recommending but despite its many flaws and the very serious issues of plagiarism it might, just might, have the potential to become something that is genuinely helpful for its intended readership."

Courtesy of the SPR Facebook page - Biddle has commented further about the plagiarism aspect. To cut a tangled tale short, it seems that one of the authors involved had told him privately before he wrote his review that Bagans had copied his work without permission, and after a "battle" had given him a payment. But now that author is saying that the work was not used without permission, and that he had acted as an uncredited researcher for Bagans. (My own guess would be that the author may have promised Bagans not to make any allegations of plagiarism, and that he's now trying to cover himself.)
https://skepticalinquirer.org/exclusive/...s-scandal/

Courtesy of the SPR Facebook page - Biddle has commented further about the plagiarism aspect. To cut a tangled tale short, it seems that one of the authors involved had told him privately before he wrote his review that Bagans had copied his work without permission, and after a "battle" had given him a payment. But now that author is saying that the work was not used without permission, and that he had acted as an uncredited researcher for Bagans. (My own guess would be that the author may have promised Bagans not to make any allegations of plagiarism, and that he's now trying to cover himself.)
https://skepticalinquirer.org/exclusive/...s-scandal/

This is both amusing and bemusing. 

I noted that Troy Taylor wrote  "I don’t do the investigation stuff anymore—too silly" yet links to https://www.bumpinthenight.net/ on Twitter. 

On that website one reads "Troy Taylor and the staff from American Hauntings have being taking guests behind the walls of haunted locations since 1993 with one simple approach - ghost hunts without all of the clutter. Our investigations are not overcrowded ..." and "If you're interested in a real ghost hunt without all the distractions, then these are the events for you"

Andreas Sommer, on his "Forbidden Histories" blog, has written a short introduction with extracts from reviews, to a recent book by Michael Hunter - an expert on Robert Boyle - entitled "The Decline of Magic: Britain in the Enlightenment." The book examines the attitudes of Boyle and others to "phenomena including apparitions, faith healing, poltergeist disturbances and second sight," and argues that the decline of magic owed more to the influence of freethinkers than to that of scientists:
http://www.forbiddenhistories.com/hunter...-of-magic/

Courtesy of the SPR Facebook page - here's a post at the Strange Company blog about an interesting poltergeist case in 1909 at Lafayette, Indiana:
https://strangeco.blogspot.com/2020/02/n...l?spref=fb

The SPR has a review by Ashley Knibb of the sequel to this book by Keith Linder, entitled "Attachments: Poltergeist of Washington State Part 2":
https://www.spr.ac.uk/book-review/attach...ith-linder

The book is also reviewed by Tom Ruffles at his blog, "The Joy of Mere Words":
https://tomruffles.wordpress.com/2020/03...th-linder/