Around the time of the Norman Conquest (AD 1066 for those who don’t know!) ghostly phenomena was thought to be work of the Devil: re-animated corpses and spirits of the dead brought to ‘life’ to do the Devil’s work. Two hundred years later in 1254 AD, Purgatory was given official recognition by the Pope and the belief which was already widespread became anchored in society.

Purgatory was thought to be the ultimate horror awaiting the souls of those people who had sinned. It was said that the souls of sinners would be tortured by demons according to the acts of sin they had committed in life: writings from the period talk of the souls being torn apart, impaled and branded, thrown into burning furnaces and drowned for eternity in ice cold pools. Luckily, it was said that Purgatory was not a permanent home for those unlucky (or deserving!) souls- rather it was a place where souls could eventually be released from. One of the sources of evidence for the existence of Purgatory itself was in the belief and tales of ghosts. During this period, ghosts were often thought to be ‘visions’ from Purgatory, the apparitions visiting individuals during the night to tell tales of their torture rather than haunting places and locations. These ghosts were often suffering either because of their sinful life, or because a task in life was unfinished – an element of ghostlore that has continued into modern belief.

How long the souls would lie in torment in Purgatory was of course closely linked to the living themselves. According to the church,increased amounts of prayer, money donated to the church and generally pious behaviour could shorten the sentence of family and friends within Purgatory, and could also shorten the time the sinner themselves would have to spend there after death. With tales of ghosts and visions from Purgatory, telling of horrific pain, smells, sights and sounds, it was no wonder that during this period ghosts were greatly feared – especially those of friends and family which might result in expensive trips to the church!

In the sixteenth century, the earlier notion of ghosts being souls re-animated by the Devil or his agents became the accepted norm again, especially with the rise of witchcraft and the notorious country-wide Witch Hunts of the seventeenth century. The belief in possessions by spirits, demons or the Devil increased to widespread general public acceptance during this period as well, the symptoms of a possession similar in almost every respect to alleged cases of possessions in these modern times.

In 1564, the Bishop of Durham found himself confronted by tales of a ghost seen in the village of Blackburn by many people – an account of which he wrote to the Archbishop of Cantebury: “Among many other things that be amiss here in your great cures, ye shall understand that in Blackburn there is a fantastical young man, which says he has spoken with one of his neighbours that died four years since or more. Divers times he says he has seen him, and talked with him, and took with him too. These things be so common here, and none of authority that will gainsay it, but rather believe and confirm it, that everyone believes it. If I had known how to have examined it with authority, I would have done it.”

In 1598 Jesuit Peter Thyraeus had his work, De Daemoniacis published, and in 1600 his second volume, De Apparitionibus was was published overseas in Cologne, both books detailing the theologian’s research into ghosts and hauntings. More references to ghosts can also be found in Compendium Maleficarum written by Francesco Guazzo in 1608.

In the mid-1800s, spiritualism began to spread across America and Europe. Interest in the paranormal was increasing at a phenomenal rate, and in 1855 a group at Trinity College Cambridge began discussions on ghosts and hauntings, resulting in The Ghost Club being founded in 1862 in London, with many well known members including Charles Dickens. In 1864, the North East of England saw the arrival of the Davenport Brothers, originally from New York. In Baker’s Temperance Hotel, Westgate Street in Newcastle upon Tyne, the brothers held two séances. So popular was the idea that the assembled crowd included over twenty of Newcastle’s more prominent citizens, including Joseph Cowen, Newcastle’s MP. Whether the phenomena witnessed during these ‘acts’ was real or not is still a topic open for discussion, as there were several claims of fraudulence against the brothers on their tour. However, these claims of fraudulence didn’t seem to dissuade people from their interest in the paranormal and in 1872 The Newcastle Society for the Investigation of Spiritualism was formed. The society was very active in testing mediums, and in conducting séances to test alleged mediumistic abilities.

In 1882 The Society for Psychical Research was formed by a group of Cambridge Scholars (incidentally this year saw the rebirth of the Ghost Club which had disbanded following the death of Charles Dickens in 1870). The SPR was a society dedicated to investigating alleged paranormal phenomena in a scientific manner, and did their part in unmasking many fraudulent mediums who used stage magic and trickery in an attempt to give the experience of communicating with spirits.

One such exposure occurred in 1905. Reports of a ‘materialising medium’, a certain Mr. Christopher Chambers, caught the attention of a Mr. Arthur T. Neale when he read about Chambers in Light, a spiritualist publication. Neale was native to Newcastle, and went to one of Chambers’ séances when the medium performed in the north. When the lights were dimmed to almost nothing during the séance, and Chambers was ‘safe’ inside a cabinet, a pale form was seen to be rising from the cabinet. Neale however was ready for this and turned on two electric lamps that he had brought along for just such an event, nicely revealing the medium dressed in a sheet and wearing a paper turban. A report of this hit the local Newcastle press, the Newcastle Daily Chronicle in the October of that year, shattering Christopher Chambers’ reputation.

However, this didn’t stop the medium. Determined to ‘prove’ that he wasn’t a fake, he contacted the Society of Psychical Research and agreed to hold four sittings in front of members of the Society. These took place on the twelfth, thirteenth, fifteenth and sixteenth of December. Chambers dimmed the single lamp in the room with red paper before starting each session, but unfortunately for him the Society members were more observant than he had anticipated. During the first session, Chambers was observed wearing a shroud in an attempt to pass himself off as a spirit. On the second session, nothing conclusive was observed. On the third session, Chambers was tied to a chair and the light near-on extinguished. Little did he know however that one of the Society members had placed a luminous patch on his back, and in the darkness he was clearly observed moving across the floor attempting to manipulate objects in the dark. The final session sealed his fate in the eyes of the SPR: Chambers was clearly seen to be waving a piece of muslin cloth around, and also draped a piece of white cloth over his hand and pretended that it was the spirit of a child. To finish his performance, the assembled investigators then witnessed a pale form emerge from the darkness in which the medium was sitting: once again though, the light levels were high enough to expose Mr. Chambers draped in a sheet and wearing a false moustache…

When the SPR revealed their findings, Christopher Chambers denied all charges of fraud, but agreed never to work as a medium again. However, as many in the spiritualist medium refused to believe the debunking evidence of the SPR, it was found out from later reports that the ‘medium’ had indeed resumed his séances in the north of England.

The late 1800s and early 1900s saw another well known figure enter the fray in an attempt to unmask those pretending to be mediums: the escapologist Harry Houdini. Houdini used his abilities to try and duplicate those feats and physical phenomena many mediums claimed were the act of spirits, and throughout his career he never found a single medium whose physical symptoms and showman displays that he couldn’t duplicate. Speaking to his friend and colleague, a certain Arthur Conan Doyle in 1910, he claimed that though the Davenport Brothers (who had come to Newcastle fifty years earlier) had never been proved outright to be fakes, he could easily duplicate the effects and ‘activity’ the brothers had produced – without the help of spirits!

Public interest, and in this case the interest of the police and the Royal Navy, was again perked in 1941 when spiritualist medium Helen Duncan reported during a séance the sinking of a warship before the news was broadcast to the public. This again happened in 1943 when Duncan reported the appearance of a ghost who claimed to have died in the sinking of the Barham – a ship that was declared sunk many months later. It seems that the Government took an interest in Duncan after this, citing her as a risk to the country’s security, speculation claiming that what they feared was for their D-Day plans to be ‘seen’ by Duncan and leaked to the wrong people. On the 19th January 1944, Helen Duncan was arrested, charged with vagrancy. However, instead of the small fine for this alleged crime, she was held in London’s Victoria Prison for four days before she was then charged with conspiracy. This was changed yet again, and Duncan came before the judge at the Old Bailey charged with contravening the Witchcraft Act of 1735. And also a charge of Larceny.

Helen Duncan was found guilty under the Witchcraft Act, but found innocent of other charges. She was sentenced to nine months in jail, and denied the right to appeal. Interestingly though, whilst in jail Duncan had many distinguished visitors, including Winston Churchill.

On 22nd June 1951 the Fraudulent Mediums Act came into being (pushed by Prime Minister Winston Churchill), repealing the Witchcraft Act of 1735. This new act put measures into place to punish those fraudulent mediums willing to make a profit out of those in need of spiritual help and guidance. The punishments are heavy fines and even prison sentences, and between the years of 1984-1992 there were six known prosecutions under the Act in England and Wales, with five of these leading to conviction.

Over recent decades, belief in the paranormal and in ghosts in general has been on the rise, especially with all the media attention the subject has been getting. With television seeing a glut of paranormal series, such as Most Haunted, Ghost Hunters, Jane Goldman Investigates and a host of others, the public’s interest in the subject has grown so much that it ranks among the country’s top interests.

In the twenty-first century, however, the belief in ghosts has had a major dramatic change: not so much in the perception of what ghosts actually are but in the fact that for most, the fascination and interest in ghostly phenomena now rests more in the field of entertainment rather than in religion, a change of perception that until now has never really been seen before. Is this a change for the better? Will it result in more serious investigation taking place as media companies have money to throw at it, or will this simply become another phase in the saga of paranormal tales and stories? Only time will tell on that one…