The Ghost Club

by Kate Winkler Dawson Narrated by Kate Winkler Dawson

Overview

This audio original from the acclaimed author of American Sherlock, and the host of multiple true-crime podcasts, including Wicked Words, tells the fascinating story of the supernatural, and the club that united some of the world's most illustrious thinkers.

For more than a century, some of the world's most important thinkers and leaders-men like Arthur Conan Doyle and William Butler Yeats-gathered once a month and discussed the supernatural at The Ghost Club in London. In the early 1900s the club's chairman was Harry Price, the world's most well-known ghost hunter. He and other members, like Harry Houdini, sought to debunk the charlatans who preyed on vulnerable people with fake seances, tarot readings, and spiritual encounters. 

Price went to war with other researchers, as well as fake mediums, like the “witch” Helen Duncan. Price's dramatic confrontation with Duncan during one of her seances ended with her arrest-she would be the last person in Europe ever tried under the Witch Act.

But Price's best-known case, and largest experiment, was the year he spent living in the Borley Rectory in southeast England. Price was determined to prove (or disprove) the existence of poltergeists in the famed rectory using gadgets that many looked at with mistrust. Price's conclusions would solidify both his reputation as the world's greatest ghost hunter, as well as the Borley Rectory's designation as the most haunted house in England.

The legends of The Ghost Club and the Borley Rectory still endure one hundred years later, ripe for fresh investigation.

Editorial Reviews

MAY 2023 - AudioFile

During the Victorian and Edwardian eras, the study of paranormal activity was a gentleman's game. The most exclusive and serious investigators of hauntings, apparitions, and unexplained phenomena were members of The Ghost Club, founded in 1862, with Charles Dickens as a founding member. Narrating this straightforward history with a sense of homespun curiosity, author and podcaster Kate Winkler Dawson guides listeners through a who's who of spiritualists, like Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, who experimented with seances and telepathy; William Butler Yeats, who was fascinated by mysticism; and Harry Price, who excelled at scientific research in these areas. The Club continues to this day, meeting monthly at a pub in central London. The author proudly states that she has become a member. B.P. © AudioFile 2023, Portland, Maine

MAY 2023 - AudioFile

During the Victorian and Edwardian eras, the study of paranormal activity was a gentleman's game. The most exclusive and serious investigators of hauntings, apparitions, and unexplained phenomena were members of The Ghost Club, founded in 1862, with Charles Dickens as a founding member. Narrating this straightforward history with a sense of homespun curiosity, author and podcaster Kate Winkler Dawson guides listeners through a who's who of spiritualists, like Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, who experimented with seances and telepathy; William Butler Yeats, who was fascinated by mysticism; and Harry Price, who excelled at scientific research in these areas. The Club continues to this day, meeting monthly at a pub in central London. The author proudly states that she has become a member. B.P. © AudioFile 2023, Portland, Maine

Product Details

BN ID:	2940178131848
Publisher:	Penguin Random House
Publication date:	03/21/2023
Series:	A Penguin Audiobook Original
Edition description:	Unabridged
Sales rank:	454,269

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