Ghost Hunters: William James and the Search for Scientific Proof.. - Deborah Blum

Written by Deborah Blum
Read by George K. Wilson
Format: MP3
Bitrate: 64 Kbps
Unabridged

Ghost Hunters: William James and the Search for Scientific Proof of Life After Death

Length: 14hrs 43 min
Publisher: Blackstone Audio, 2007
Original: Sound Library /BBC Audiobooks America, 2006

The Pulitzer Prize-winning author of The Poision Squad and The Poisoner’s Handbook tells the amazing story of William James’s quest for empirical evidence of the spirit world

What if a world-renowned philosopher and professor of psychiatry at Harvard suddenly announced he believed in ghosts?

Publishers Weekly—-
In a compelling tale with resonance for today, Blum evokes a surprising sympathy for her band of tough-minded intellectuals—among them philosophers, psychologists, even two future Nobelists—who, around the turn of the 20th century, pursued the paranormal in an attempt to bridge the gap between faith and science at a time when religion was besieged by the theory of evolution and a new scientific outlook.

Foremost in the Society for Psychical Research in America was the brilliant philosopher and psychologist William James, who like the others, risked his reputation in this unorthodox pursuit. Blum unearths the history of their research, their passionate friendships and debates, as well as their private doubts about the meaning of their work.

Much of the society’s efforts were devoted to exposing charlatans, but Boston’s Leonora Piper, a reluctant medium of rare gifts, baffled even the most dogged of the members, Richard Hodgson. As Hodgson obsessively studies this medium, the story grows weirder and weirder, but Blum, tells it straight, never over dramatizing the strange events. She achieves deep poignancy at moments that in less gifted hands could have seemed most laughable. The result is a moving portrait of a fascinating group of people and a first-rate slice of cultural history.

This is an out of print recording. I found an old torrent where the uploader originally ripped from disk. I removed disk indexing, and chaptered. Deborah Blum’s other two books mentioned are on also ABB.