William James has an enduring reputation as one of the great figures in the history of American philosophy, as a founder of the academic study of psychology and as an exceptionally thoughtful student and critic of aggressive conduct. He was also, more controversially, an important advocate of the need to consider thought-transference, telepathy and the possibility of communication between the living and the dead.
?Ghost Hunters,? written by Deborah Blum, a professor of science journalism, is a chronicle of the often-ignored story of the great efforts made 100 years ago to delve into those mysteries. Extrasensory conversations have a weird quality, of course; the title of this book is a reflection of that. It is difficult to believe that some men, and more frequently women, can be put in a trance and figure out where bodies are buried ? or talk to dead friends.
Then and now, most people ? and the great majority of scientists ? view the subject as a pastime of superstitious fools or credulous folk searching for impossible comfort. But not everyone. It is a fact, and the chief theme of this book, that many educated and eminently reasonable men and women, including a number of scholars attached to famous universities, were prominent in the study of contact with ?spirits.?
The most famous such individual was William James. He knew that his colleagues at Harvard thought the large amount of time he spent on this matter was a ridiculous waste of his talents. He was troubled by this, but it didn?t affect his determination.
We learn, in this well-written history, about many other dedicated students: Richard Hodgson, Robert Hyslop and Frederic Myers, to name three of the most important. They were acutely aware of the danger of frauds, but they came to confide in a number of mediums, entranced women who seemed to them to be able to relay messages from the dead with fidelity. Their favorite was a comparatively uneducated, unsophisticated woman, Leonora Piper, whose sessions are the central focus of this book.
?Ghost Hunters? begins with the spread of interest in this subject in the mid-19th century, picks up intensity with the growing interest of James and ends with his death in 1910.
Author Blum confesses, in an acknowledgment at the end of the story, that she has been affected by the material that she undertook as simply a scholarly exercise. It is hard not to have similar thoughts as a reader.
?Ghost Hunters: William James and the Search for Scientific Proof of Life After Death?
By Deborah Blum
Published by Penguin Press, 354 pages, $25.95
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