The Ghost Hunters - Deborah Blum [0]
Title Page
Copyright Page
Dedication
Chapter 1 - THE NIGHT SIDE
Chapter 2 - A SPIRIT OF UNBELIEF
Chapter 3 - LIGHTS AND SHADOWS
Chapter 4 - METAPHYSICS AND METATROUSERS
Chapter 5 - INFINITE RATIONALITY
Chapter 6 - ALL YE WHO ENTER HERE
Chapter 7 - THE PRINCIPLES OF PSYCHOLOGY
Chapter 8 - THE INVENTION OF ECTOPLASM
Chapter 9 - THE UNEARTHLY ARCHIVE
Chapter 10 - A PROPHECY OF DEATH
Chapter 11 - A FORCE NOT GENERALLY RECOGNIZED
Chapter 12 - A GHOST STORY
Acknowledgements
NOTES AND SOURCES
INDEX
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GHOST HUNTERS
Deborah Blum is a professor of science journalism at the University of Wisconsin. She worked as a newspaper science writer for fifteen years, winning the Pulitzer Prize in 1992 for her writing about primate research, which she turned into a book, The Monkey Wars. Her other books include Sex on the Brain and Love at Goon Park. She has written about scientific research for the Los Angeles Times, The New York Times, Discover, Health, Psychology Today, and Mother Jones. She lives in Madison, Wisconsin, with her husband, two sons, and a very large boxer.
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First published in the United States of America by The Penguin Press,
a member of Penguin Group (USA) Inc. 2006
Published in Penguin Books 2007
Copyright © Deborah Blum, 2006
All rights reserved
Grateful acknowledgment is made for permission to reprint selections from the following works:
Materials in the archives of the American Society for Psychical Research, Richard Hodgson
Collection and James H. Hyslop Collection. Used by permissions of the American Society for
Psychical Research, Inc. (ASPR), New York, New York.
Letters of William James in the collection of the Houghton Library (bMS Am 1505 and
bMS Am 1938). By permission of the Houghton Library, Harvard University.
eISBN : 978-1-101-04253-3
1. James, William, 1842-1910. 2. Parapsychology—History—19th century.
3. Spiritualism—History—19th century. 4. Ghosts. I. Title.
BF1028.B57 2006
133.909’034—dc22 2006044948
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To the sisterhood-Darcy, Dawn, and Dana
PRELUDE
NO ONE SAW the girl die. It was just a little too early, a morning still too dark, first light barely warming the edge of the sky. The night frost yet shimmered on the ground, a faint ghostly silver. It was barely 6:00 a.m. on a late October morning when sixteen-year-old Bertha Huse stepped out into the quiet. Her parents and her sister were still asleep in the small house they shared in Enfield, New Hampshire.
Later, a few of the town folk, those like the blacksmith’s wife who were up doing morning chores, recalled seeing the girl go by, tying her bonnet as she went. She was a familiar