The Ghost Hunters - Deborah Blum [173]
It is my pleasure to thank the writers in my life, especially my husband, Peter Haugen, a busy and talented popular historian, who took the time out of his own work to read and improve this story and to argue with me about metaphysics, refusing to ever let me settle for the easy answer. I would also like to express my gratitude to Kim Fowler and Robin Marantz Henig, who were unstintingly generous in both time and helpful suggestions regarding the chaotic early versions of my manuscript.
Here’s to my best book friends also: Denise Allen, Pam Ruegg-Morgen, Sue Brown, Julie Hunter, Linde Patterson, Mirriam Rosen, Susan Isensee, Suzanne Wolf, Jody Haun, Jacquie Hitchon McSweeney and Jean Carlson, who cheered me right to the finish.
And as always, here’s to Marcus and Lucas, who never let me forget what matters most.
Deborah Blum
Madison, Wisconsin
February 23, 2006
NOTES AND SOURCES
I WAS FORTUNATE to spend time in two terrific and very different archives: the Houghton Library, at Harvard University, which holds the correspondence of William James (referred to hereafter as Houghton), and the American Society for Psychical Research, in New York (referred to as ASPR), which holds a treasure trove of largely unpublished correspondence and other documents relating to James, Richard Hodgson, James Hyslop, and colleagues, as well as containing one of the best occult libraries in the world. Many of the described interactions in this book are drawn from the archived correspondence in those institutions.
As a point of reference, letters from and to William James have, of course, also been excerpted and published many times over; the best companion to the original letters at the Houghton Library is an annotated series of twelve volumes, The Correspondence of William James (Charlottesville: University Press of Virginia, 1992-2004). Some of James’s more noteworthy correspondence on psychical research and the vast majority of his published articles on the subject are contained in two books: Gardner Murphy and Robert O. Ballou, eds., William James and Psychical Research (New York: Viking Press, 1960); and Frederick H. Burkhardt and Fredson Bowers, eds., Essays in Psychical Research (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1986).
For a general overview of the period and the players, I found the following books most helpful: Frank Podmore, Mediums of the Nineteenth Century (Hyde Park, N.Y.: University Books, 1963; originally published in 1902 as Modern Spiritualism); Brian Inglis, Natural and Supernatural: A History of the Paranormal (London: Hodder & Stoughton, 1977); Janet Oppenheim’s fascinating book The Other World (Cambridge, England: Cambridge University Press, 1985); Alan Gauld’s wonderfully down-to-earth history The Founders of Psychical Research (London: Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1968), and Sir Arthur Conan Doyle’s highly biased and terrifically gossipy and readable History of Spiritualism, published in 1926 by George H. Doran, New York. I also found the Encyclopedia of Occultism and Parapsychology, edited by Leslie Shepard (New York: Gale Research/Avon Books, 1978), to be a great paranormal trivia resource.
In cases where information is widely known and found in numerous sources, I have not provided specific references. I have, however, occasionally attempted to give a sense of the range of references used in portraying a particular psychic or psychical researcher. And I have occasionally tried to give additional context to a particular moment in history or to explain a reference itself. I have not provided citations for every brief quote, but only for the longer ones. And as a further point of clarification, I occasionally provide narratives in the book, mostly ghost stories and accounts of sittings with mediums. Although those are derived from documents of the time, to be referenced below, their telling here is