William T. Stead was one of the greatest newspaper editors ever. He invented things that today we take for granted - such as a headline in a bigger typeface than the story and sending reporters to go to interview people. And he died a hero's death when the Titanic went down in 1912. So when I saw this in a second hand bookshop in Hay on Wye, I pounced.
The title is, in fact, rather misleading as only a very few of the incidents recounted here are about ghosts. It is really about the supernatural more generally. Given the date this was written, Stead uses different vocabulary to describe the things he is talking about. We would refer to Crisis Apparitions, Out Of Body Experiences, ESP, Remote Viewing, Near Death Experiences and so forth. To Stead these are all "ghosts" as they are beyond the normal and I suppose he did not really know what else to call them.
Although it is nowhere stated, this book reads very much as if it is a compilation of articles that were published in Stead's newspaper at intervals over the years - most of them date to about 1870 - 1895, though there are a few earlier incidents. So what you have here is a compilation of true incidents that Stead obviously made considerable effort to track down and get eye witness accounts about. He is also keen to emphasise that the eye witnesses are all sober and respectable persons - including a good smattering of clergymen - so as to avoid suspicious that we are dealing with a bunch of uneducated drunks. But that is all this is - a compilation of anecdotes. There is no real effort made to analyse the incidents.
A very interesting book that includes dozens of incidents that I had never heard of before.
£1 well spent!
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