Ghost Hunters: William James and the Search for Scientific Proof of Life After Death

5 Responses to “Ghost Hunters: William James and the Search for Scientific Proof of Life After Death”

1. Johns says:

   May 10, 2010 at 8:22 pm

   The author had an agenda to declare spiritualism fraudulent, I noticed. Chapter 8 is titled “The Invention of Ectoplasm”, but it appears she made no effort at all to examine any evidence as to whether it might be an objective phenomenon. Also, I noticed this entry on page 99: “With a excellent distraction, most mediums also showed a flair for opening envelope flaps in time to avoid detection. But Mrs. Piper kept things simple that day.” The author implies that Mrs Piper was a fraud despite nothing in this book to support this smear. There’s no mention of W. Stainton Moses, to some extent surprisingly, considering that he had the same “spirit controls”, Rector and Imperator, as Mrs. Piper. In vol. 2 of his Human Personality book, Myers states that when he and Gurney first visited Moses the evening was “epoch making”.

   I found the book to be irritatingly written, like a fiction novel, with frequent scene changes and unnecessary irrelevancies such as William James’s hair being rimmed with gray and his body being wiry and compact. According to the author, in the late 1800s, the 20th century did not approach, it “drew closer, gleaming with all the bright luster of well-polished metal.” To some extent controversially, she devotes space to “the fantastic Charles Darwin”, of whom one can look up the “genius of” in the index. Never mind that there is not a crumb of evidence to support the theory of macro-evolution and that his questionable “genius” did not extend to the matter of “ghost hunting”. I sought after to throw this book across the other side of the room on occasion, in the direction of the trash. (I didn’t because I’d borrowed it from a library.)

   I would urge The Encyclopaedia of Psychic Science by Nandor Fodor for more objective details on the people and events and phenomenon experimental back then.
   Rating: 2 / 5
2. R. Weaver says:

   May 10, 2010 at 11:07 pm

   If one cares to end speculation on what James really thinks is on the Other Side I highly urge Jane Roberts classic book Ghost Hunters: William James and the Search for Scientific Proof of Life After Death, [...]. Close to 30 years ago Jane channeled the energy of William James who answers so many questions about what lies ahead in that zone we call death.
   Rating: 5 / 5
3. Simon Cleveland says:

   May 11, 2010 at 12:07 am

   I have to admit this book excited my interests in the studies performed by the Society for Psychical Research (The SPR’s former presidents’ list reads like the Who’s Who in Science). One reason may have been my enormous respect for the works of the father of American psychology William James who presided over the SPR from 1894 to 1895.

   Anyone who read my second book on the meaning of existence will know the my current dilemma. For the highest time I found support for my existential convictions in the works of Camus, Sartre and Nietzsche. Their foundation was further fortified by my judge in the theories of evolution and the development of human societies as defined by the works of Darwin and Diamond.

   I don’t tend to accept theories lightly, but this book exposed me to a double-blind study done by SPR in the early part of the twentieth century that still occupies my mind. I still yearn to reveal the reasons behind its consequences. Done by a few prominent scientists (and without going into the details) the study sowed in me if not doubt then some very excellent reasons to reevaluate my knowledge and understanding of human consciousness and brain physiology. I feel thrown back into the race for facts that can help me integrate the consequences with my perceptions of life and existence.

   I urge this book to you if you are firmly customary in your existential beliefs as it will offer some overwhelming facts to the contrary. You will need a very full bucket of scientific proof to quench the fire it’ll start.
   
   Rating: 4 / 5
4. R. F. Sharp says:

   May 11, 2010 at 1:18 am

   Deborah Blum’s “Ghost Hunters.” opens in a Victorian era writhing with spirits and spooks: There are the Fox sisters of New York, a Barnum-promoted trio who summoned table-rapping responses from the dead — two knocks for yes, silence for no. Or their rivals the Davenport brothers, who brought bells and mandolins to crazed life from across a room. Meanwhile in London, D.D. Home uncannily conjured up the dearly late, guaranteeing that money would pour into otherworldliness.

   Enter William James. Famed Harvard philosopher and brother of novelist Henry James, William hesitantly joined maverick Nobel Prize-winners and amateur sleuths to form the American Society for Psychical Research. Blum shows James as restlessly curious and prudently cautious in equal measure. By the side of with the society, scientists from Darwin to Faraday and authors from Twain to Arthur Conan Doyle would weigh in on just what was happening during seances.

   The society’s investigations found far more natural foolishness than supernatural wisdom. The afterlife seems largely populated by grifters of unbounded inventiveness: matches soaked in a jar produced spookily phosphorescent fog, spectral bumps in the dark came from a telescoping rod hidden in pant legs and tables levitated by the key of fishing line. One con artist concealed a ghostly “baby face” by a novel means; behind a curtain in the darkness, she would pop a painted breast out and kiss the “baby’s” soft, luminous skin.

   These parlor tricks pale beside the most sensational instances of ghostly guidance: those who “see” a dead body. Indeed, Blum kicks her book off with the unnerving discovery of a girl drowned in a New Hampshire lake, where her dream-haunted mother directs a diver. But consider (though Blum doesn’t) what a detective today would call someone with such in rank: the prime suspect.

   “Ghost Hunters” does note other vexing questions: For instance, why aren’t ghosts naked? Do they wear “ghosts of clothes”? And even as spirits are splendid at guessing your late cousin’s name, they seem inept at questions relating to their living incarnation’s professional expertise, or indeed questions addressed in any language other than those known by, ahem, the medium. Yet James and others couldn’t just give up. The Italian peasant Eusapia Palladino epitomized the problem they faced: A woman so greedy she’d cheat an 8-year-ancient at croquet, amid her blatant cons she seemingly managed telekinetic feats that stunned even skeptics. It’s small wonder James felt simultaneously seduced and repelled by psychic research.

   Blum offers no explanation for why Spiritualism exploded when it did. It seems curiously matched to the rise of the modern graveyard. The same decade that brought us spirit-knockings and seances also brought park-like and secluded cemeteries such as Mount Auburn. The more we keep the dead at arm’s-part, it appears, the more we feel the guilty need to embrace them again.

   Spiritualism coincided, too, with mills, railroads and telegraphs: modern life. It haunts an era of profound displacement and exponentially multiplying in rank. Our past feels pitifully inadequate at giving us guidance in a vertiginous future; yet here its spirits gallop across astral planes to shout out singular warnings and pleas — Do not ride in that carriage tonight! Dig in the basement for the body! I still like you, my dearest!

   Well, it’s pleasant to reckon so. But death frustrates simple certainties: It’s the one universal experience no living person can converse in about with any real authority. Blum’s book radiates sympathy for these hapless ghost researchers, because their plight is an ancient and upright one. It recalls a pact Ben Franklin made as a strapping young man with a supporter. “He and I had made a serious agreement,” Franklin recounted, “that the one who happen’d to die first should, if possible, make a friendly stay to the other, and acquaint him [with] how he found things in the separate state.” His supporter’s number came up first. Yet like the rest of us, Franklin only found a stonily impassive wall between their two worlds.

   “He never fulfill’d his promise,” he wrote.

   Paul Collins is the author of “The Distress With Tom: The Weird Afterlife and Times of Thomas Paine” (Bloomsbury).
   
   Rating: 3 / 5
5. A. G. Plumb says:

   May 11, 2010 at 2:24 am

   This is such a weird book. Why did such reputable people become engrossed in the paranormal? Of course, we all have private experiences that science would have us brush off as ‘coincidence’, that the church would prefer to be the work of an interested God. But to use scientific methods to explore such ephemeral phenomena seems to me to be fraught with difficulty – if not failure. And yet struggle with this they did.

   The other come forth I would have with these studies as reported engagingly and without bias or prejudice by Deborah Blum, is that they engaged mediums, people with extraordinary (and perhaps suspect) ‘talents’. I would much prefer an examination at the mundane, every day level – that’s where the real data can be collected. To do this you would need a program of education so each individual may possibly explore their own experiences and make their own conclusions in a meaningful way. (I remember J W Dunne’s book ‘An Experiment with Time’ where he outlined such a program for his readers.) Otherwise it is all testimony and hearsay – judge it if you want – have faith in it if you want.

   I am also unpersuaded simply because well-known names like William James are caught up. It is worth noting that Isaac Newton was as much into alchemy as he was physics – the scientific community discussion small about that.

   But science to explore paranormal? I suspect there is a spiritual research paradigm for this sort of study – something not yet found – but just as convincing in its field as science is for the material world.

   There was one strong moment of reflection for me in this book. Deborah Blum wrote a biography of Harry Harlowe called ‘Like at Goon Park’. Harlowe explored the science of affection and was able to exhibit how invaluable it is, especially in the upbringing of infants. It is my belief that society has become immensely more affectionate since his research. (I wondered if psychology may possibly be improved by removing confidentiality, just as medical outcomes had been improved by adding touching.) But then I read of William James and his wife bringing up the rear their much loved youngest son. The boy begged and begged to be cuddled by his mother as she recovered from a contagious illness. They plotting she was sufficiently recovered but it was not so. No wonder adults avoided unnecessary handling of infants in those times (despite the negatives the lack of affection may have brought with it). Perhaps it was only the advance of medical science that enables us to be more affectionate, and we must wait a similar advancement with studies of the mind before confidentilaity can be eased.

   Not compulsory other reading:
   
   Like at Goon Park – Deborah Blum
   
   An Experiment with Time – J W Dunne
   
   The Principles of Psychology – William James
   Rating: 4 / 5