The Ghost Club, set up in 1862, included among its earliest members the novelist Charles Dickens, the Cambridge philosopher Henry Sidgwick and other academics and clergymen. He subsequently wrote a book describing this and other similar occurrences elsewhere.Įducated professionals became interested in spontaneous ghostly phenomena in greater numbers following the eruption of the Spiritualist movement in the mid-nineteenth century. He did not claim that the ringing had a supernatural origin, but instead looked for ways to establish a normal cause. 4 Moor, a professional soldier and writer, was among the first to treat such matters objectively. The first serious ghost hunt on record was conducted by Major Edward Moor at Great Bealings house in Suffolk in 1834, following the mysterious outbreak of servants’ bells in his home ringing spontaneously and uncontrollably. 3 Ghost hunting started in earnest in the early Victorian period, as a fascination with the supernatural took hold. A rare late example is the 1662 ‘poltergeist’ episode known as the ‘Drummer of Tedworth’, which was investigated by Joseph Glanvill, and described by him in a form associating ghostly phenomena with the black arts. 2 During the medieval period any attempt to investigate the apparent return of the dead would have risked accusations of witchcraft and heresy, and accordingly there are few reports of such activity.
The earliest recorded reference to a ghost hunt is found in a letter by Pliny the Younger (61-113AD), although the event described took place a century earlier and is most likely based on hearsay and legend.
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