Why we keep hunting ghosts

Alice Vernon believes the irrepressible desire to track down spirits reveals more about the living than the dead

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IN 1874, renowned chemist Sir William Crookes sat in a darkened room, eyes fixed on a curtain over an alcove. The curtain twitched, and out came a glowing ghost of a young woman, dressed in a white shroud. He was entranced.

But the ghost was fake, and his involvement in seances nearly ruined his career. The lesson wasn’t learned, however, and Crookes, like thousands after him, continued to search for evidence of spirits.

The popularity of the Victorian seance, and its associated pseudo-religion Spiritualism, spread rapidly across the world. From small parlours hushed with the hopes of the recently bereaved, to grand concert halls, audiences were eager for a spooky spectacle.

Ghost-hunting remains an immensely popular cultural interest. Platforms such as YouTube and TikTok are now awash with investigators trudging through abandoned buildings and well-known haunted houses in order to capture evidence.

I've spent the past few years researching the social history of ghost-hunting for my new book, Ghosted: A History of Ghost-Hunting, and Why We Keep Looking, to examine ghosts from the perspective of the living. Why do we continue to cling to the hope of finding definite proof of a spectral afterlife?

The active investigation of ghosts became an international phenomenon in 1848, when young sisters Kate and Mary Fox popularised a knocking code to communicate with the ghost that allegedly haunted their farmhouse in Hydesville, New York.