Ghosts: A Natural History: 500 Years of Seaching for Proof

Roger Clarke examines five hundred years of ghost sightings and the search for proof of their existence. The book traces key hauntings that have captured public attention, including the true events that inspired Henry James's *The Turn of the Screw*, up to the present day. Clarke explores what people who report hauntings have witnessed, what they believed, and what evidence exists. The narrative spans class conflict, fraudsters, and sincere believers, featuring figures such as royalty, prime ministers, Samuel Johnson, John Wesley, Harry Houdini, and Adolf Hitler. Topics range from religious interpretations to neuroscience, the medical aspects of ghost encounters, and ghosthunting technology. The book covers haunted WWI submarines, houses demolished due to phantom activity, a seventeenth-century Ghost Hunter General, and Victorian crowds of hundreds gathering at rumored haunting sites overnight. Clarke addresses why ghosts fascinate us despite our rational ordering of life, and what explains the persistent human susceptibility to the uncanny and fear of darkness.