The fascinating history of 19th century scientists' quest to discover the boundaries between this world and the next.

In Victorian Britain, a group of eminent scientists got together to found a society expressly to prove the existence of ghosts. The age of Darwin represented the greatest scientific advances known to man. The tension between science and religion was exposed by Darwin's "On the Origin of the Species" in 1859, which challenged the basic tenets of belief. Yet, many of those in the forefront of the scientific revolution could not give up the idea of a higher reality. Life after death was the unknown frontier. Victorian society was full of mediums claiming they could communicate with the spirits of the dead. Baffling psychic phenomena occurred every day at seances: mysterious rappings were heard, furniture moved, ghostly forms appeared, the mediums spoke in the altered voices of the dead with information only their nearest could possibly know. Pyschometry involving locks of hair and watches and children's toys; telepathy; ouija boards; apparitions; astral projection: all were commonplace.

In 1882 the Society of Psychical Research was founded in London to investigate all these phenomena: it was a group led by some of the greatest scientists of the age but its membership also included Alfred, Lord Tennyson, Leslie Stephen, Virginia Woolf's father, John Ruskin, the Reverend Charles Dodgson (Lewis Carroll) and Samuel Clemens (Mark Twain). Six months later William James, Professor of Psychology at Harvard, and the brother of Henry James visited London and went on to set up American branch. Their experiments went on for years. Many mediums, like the notorious Madame Blavatsky, were exposed as charlatans yet there were some mediums who continued to communicate directly with another world, who despite every rigorous scientific test seemed to prove that souls survived death. This is the story of this group of forward thinkers: many of whom were driven to the spirit world by personal tragedy, some whose feeling of loss lead to their own suicides. It is the story of the greatest ghost hunt of any age.

The fascinating history of 19th century scientists' quest to discover the boundaries between this world and the next.

This is the true story of the greatest ghost hunt of any age.

Though it was a period of huge scientific advance, the Victorian era was at the same time one of intense superstition.All over Britain and America, séances were being held in darkened rooms: mysterious rappings were heard, furniture moved, ghostly forms appeared, mediums spoke in the altered voices of the dead, and ouija boards spelt out messages from beyond the grave. In front of this paranormal onslaught eminent scientists founded the Society of Psychical Research in 1882 to determine whether life after death could be scientifically proven.

Their experiments went on for years. Many mediums, like the notorious Madame Blavatsky, were revealed as charlatans, yet there were some who were never exposed, who despite every rigorous scientific test seemed to prove that souls survived death. This is the extraordinary story of this group of mediums and forward thinkers: many of whom were driven to the spirit world by personal tragedy, by a zeal to communicate with their loved ones once more.

Pulitzer Prize winner Deborah Blum is a professor of science journalism at the University of Wisconsin. She worked as a newspaper science writer for 20 years, winning the Pulitzer in 1992 for her writing about primate research, which she turned into a book, The Monkey Wars (Oxford, 1994). Her other books include Sex on the Brain (Viking, 1997) and Love at Goon Park (Perseus, 2002). She has written about scientific research for The Los Angeles Times, The New York Times, Discover, Health, Psychology Today, and Mother Jones. She is a past president of the National Association of Science Writers, and now serves on advisory boards to the World Federation of Science Journalists and the National Academy of Sciences.

2007-09-28 Not perfect, but of paramount importance nevertheless

William James's interest in psychical research has typically been neglected or marginalised by James scholars and biographers, most of whom have passed over the roughly forty years of his involvement in psychical research and the question of its impact on the works that made him famous, e.g. 'Principles of Psychology' and 'Varieties of Religious Experience', in seemingly embarrassed silence.

Although not primarily written for an academic audience, 'Ghost Hunters' is an interesting contribution to helping illuminate this important but hitherto largely unexplored chapter in the life and work of one of the greatest and most influential minds of the late 19th and early 20th Centuries. Deborah Blum, a science journalist and Pulitzer Prize winner, explicitly takes the perspective of the outsider with no previous interest in psychical research, which seems to make her contribution particularly interesting in so far as personal investments and biases have typically been among the most stubborn confounding variables in the science business whenever concerned with a certain class of unusual human experiences.

To novices of the study of the history of science, Blum's compilation of excerpts from letters and publications documenting certain goings-on not necessarily apt to flatter Wilhelm Wundt's famous disciples (Münsterberg, Hall, Titchener, etc.) and other eminent contemporaries of James, is likely to smack of conspiracy theory. To the sociologist and historian of science, 'Ghost Hunters' gives much food for thought and provides potentially rich material for the study of another hitherto neglected field of research, namely the social dynamics in academia, particularly on the fringes of established sciences.

Despite sometimes serious flaws (which may, however, to a certain degree be forgivable in a popular book), 'Ghost Hunters' deserves a place on the bookshelf of everyone interested in the history of psychology, psychical research, and the history, philosophy and sociology of science in general. It is compulsory reading, or at least a good starting point, for any James scholar and biographer who may wish to conduct research on the place of psychical research in the psychological and philosophical systems of William James, which then will have to be documented more thoroughly and published in a more scholarly style than in the present book.