Numlock Sunday: Alice Vernon on the ghosts in the back of our closet

Photo by Cash Macanaya on Unsplash

By Walt Hickey

Welcome to the Numlock Sunday edition.

This week, I spoke to Alice Vernon, who wrote Why we keep hunting ghosts – and what it says about us for The Conversation. Here’s what I wrote about it:

Ghost hunting — that is, the phenomenon where spirits are not simply believed to exist but actively pursued by people claiming expertise in the matter — became an international phenomenon in 1848, when a pair of sisters claimed that they had determined a way to communicate with the dead through a knocking code. The sisters instantly became international celebrities and fabulously wealthy in the process, amassing a fortune of $500,000 (or about $20 million today) within five years. The American Civil War — a massive casualty event that bereaved millions of households — only accelerated interest in spiritualism. The war made the search for ghosts and the means to converse with them a reliable American institution that is still extremely lucrative for …