The book is about a circle of Brits and Americans (mostly men, but there is one woman!) who in the last few decades of the nineteenth century decided to bring a scientific approach to the question of the afterlife. As most of you know, though, I have quite a stack of library books asking for my attention, so I didn’t get around to actually opening it until three days ago. It sounded intriguing, so I popped over to my library’s website and put a hold on it. I was looking up some other book-I can’t remember which one-and suddenly this popped up on to my screen. I picked up Deborah Blum’s Ghost Hunters.
No matter how many times scientists evoked mental illness, dreams, fantasy, and stupidity as explanations for bumps in the night, people kept reporting them as though they were real. As James noted, the ghosts kept coming back, the visions yet glimmered, the voices yet sounded. "How often has 'Science' killed off all spook philosophy, laid ghosts and raps and 'telepathy' away underground as so much popular delusion?" he would wonder ironically.
Many years later, William James marveled at the ineffectiveness of such scientific strikes against the supernatural. 370 pages includes bibliographical references and index.
Ratings are described on the Book-note ratings page.ĭeborah Blum, Ghost Hunters : William James and the Search for Scientific Proof of Life after Death.
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