Marc Hartzman’s Chasing Ghosts: A Tour of Our Fascination with Spirits and the Supernatural (2021) is an accessible general introduction to the lengthy history of our relationship with the ghostly realm. He ponders reports of paranormal experiences (the use of supernatural as a synonym for paranormal is unfortunate), and what they reveal about our fears and desires. As well as combing the literature, he speaks to a variety of individuals in the field to obtain a somewhat breathless overview of the subject.
The wide-ranging survey is split chronologically and thematically. Hartzman begins in ancient times, looks at the mediaeval period, and the evolution of Spiritualism and mediumship from the early nineteenth century to the 1920s. He moves on to catalogue some locations, both well known and less so, said to be haunted. The book concludes with a look at the uses to which equipment has been put to try to capture evidence for, and communicate with, the departed, tracking its evolution to detect and record alleged interactions with the spirit world.
While he says in the introduction that the book is an exploration of ‘the different relationships the living have had with the dead, from ancient myths to the beliefs of the Victorian Spiritualists to the ghost stories that have shaped our modern conception of the supernatural world,’ he does not examine recent laboratory research (the Windbridge Institute, for example). Nor does he tackle in depth the role of television ghost programmes in promoting the subject, despite them playing a significant part in shaping the popular conception of the paranormal. However, recurrent spontaneous psychokinesis and the stone tape theory make an appearance in the discussion of poltergeists, so he is willing to entertain non-survival alternatives.
The style is light and accessible and the book is well-illustrated, but because Hartzman covers so much ground the treatment is at times sketchy (but then it is billed as a tour), and the general emphasis is on the United States with only side glances at other countries. Someone new to the field will find the breadth of coverage useful, and it does provide a basis for further explorations, aided by the bibliography. Hartzman takes a balanced approach to a subject that can polarise opinion, highlighting fraud while sympathetic to the claim that some phenomena are evidential. As the book indicates, the dead have much to say to us, and the author has made an enjoyable contribution to the conversation.
The Joy of Mere Words 