As you might have guessed by now, I am a huge fan of anything ghost-related. I love ghost stories and scary movies, I have a deep curiosity for old buildings and family histories. But I often find myself disappointed by both books and cinema on the subject. Other than the classics —M.R. James, Shirley Jackson, Edgar Allan Poe, Lovecraft— I no longer read ghost stories. I have instead turned to accounts of “real” hauntings and sightings of ghosts, and that is how I came to buy myself Ghosts: A Natural History by Roger Clarke.
I adored this book not only because it’s honest and well paced, but also because it succeeded in sending chills down my spine. It had been a while since I had felt that need to look behind me or that strange gut feeling while reading a book.
Clarke begins explaining his obsession with ghosts and tells us a story with which many of us are familiar, the family ghost, an eerie spot in an old house where you get the chills. He later recounts his reading on the subject and his initiation as a “ghost hunter” and the Society for Physical Research.
“In a basic sense, ghosts exist because people constantly report that they see them. This is not a book about whether ghosts exist or not. This is a book about what we see when we see a ghost, and the stories that we tell each other about them.”
As the title says, this book is better described as a natural history of ghosts though. Clarke tries to approach not ghosts but ghosts sightings across Britain as a scientist would approach any phenomenon. And doing so reveals many interesting facts about ghosts and societies: how ghosts have changed, how specters and poltergeists have appeared in ages of moral and political turmoil, even how ghosts have changed their “clothing” depending on the epoch.
To illustrate this natural history, Clarke divides the book into various famous ghost stories from different times, such as the ghost of Hinton Ampner, the Enfield Poltergeist, the spectres of the Tower of London, some renowned spiritist, and so on. Thus, the book is full of the charming mystery that surrounds old fashioned ghost stories.
All in all, I would recommend this book to anyone interested in ghosts, believers and non-believers, or anyone interested in history, for this book is as much about ghosts as about the people that has claimed to see them and the societies that shaped these people.
I am currently reading another ghostly and ghastly tale, The Hunt for the Skinwalker, about which I’ll be writing soon. What are you guys reading?
