"The Haunting of Alma Fielding" by Kate Summerscale

 Alma Fielding was a Croydon woman whose house was 'haunted' by a poltergeist in the 1930s. She became a subject of intense scrutiny by psychic researchers led by Nandor Fodor. This book is an account of those investigations.

It is well written but it is little more than a blow-by-blow account of the case and, to be honest, I quickly became tired of the reports of yet another seance. I felt the book could have done with more summary. But then it wouldn't have been long enough for a book. Perhaps the problem was that I was sceptical from the start, quickly deciding that the 'supernatural' occurrences were instances of fraud, and impatient of the credulous researchers.

It was interesting that the interest in spiritualism and 'psychic' phenomena peaked after so many people had been bereaved by the First World War, especially as the threat of a second war became imminent. It was sad that so many of the so-called psychic phenomena were so trivial: the manifestation of white mice and old coins like cheap conjuring tricks. It was bizarre that so many mediums professed to spirit guides that were Native Americans (and if not, from other exotic nationalities). 

Selected quotes:

• "A peculiar, six-digit handprint on the mirror." (Ch 1)
• "The golden age of psychical study was also the heyday of supernatural hustle." (Ch 4)
• "The 'futurity racket' ... was typical of societies on the brink of chaos and destruction: the Italian magician Count Cagliostro flourished in Paris before the revolution of 1789, much as the faith healer Rasputin thrived in St Petersburg before 1917 ... since publication of the first newspaper horoscope in 1930, astrology had become a national craze." (Ch 6)
• "At twenty-three she had contracted anthrax poisoning from a Woolworth's toothbrush that scratched her gum." (Ch 7)
•  "Psychics were natural transgressors, crossing all kinds of boundaries, from waking to trance, from the earthly to the spirit world. Their weaknesses - moral, physical, emotional - were the fissures through which the phantoms came." (Ch 7)
• "The weather was mild and the international situation stable. 'No bad news - official!' announced the Pictorial." (Ch 11)
• "Solid edges seemed to melt, objects to quiver and press. The sitters flinched at the metamorphoses, the breaching of boundaries, the spillages." (Ch 12)
• "One day in about 1900, when she was seven, her Aunt Martha beat her in punishment for 'lying' about the invisible friends with whom she played. Eileen was angry. Afterwards she sat watching her aunt's ducklings paddling on the farm lake. She leant forward from the lake's edge and seized a baby duck, pushed it under the water, held it there until its wings stopped heaving against her hands. ... Then she grabbed another duckling ..." (Ch 13)
• "Her mother had drowned herself in a well in 1893, when Eileen was two weeks old, and her father had shot himself six weeks later." (Ch 13)
• "Many of her actions in this phase were deliberate ... but some so impulsive as to slip the leash of choice or intention." (Ch 17)
• "From Bram Stoker's novel onwards, the characterisation of Dracula as a ruthless rapacious parasite drew directly on anti-Semitic tropes." (Ch 18)
• "The investigation, like an abusive relationship, had moved from enticement to coercion, from flattery to threat." (Ch 18)
• "Justice Singleton questioned whether Fodor had much reputation to lose ... the jury should remember that it was dealing with a man who had gone to the Isle of Man to meet a talking mongoose." (Ch 19)
• "She had enacted a wild, months-long magic-realist extravaganza at the International Institute for Psychical Research, a piece of performance art in which she was both the Lady-sawn-in-half and the magician who cuts a slice through her." (Ch 19)
• "In 1941, the navy launched an inquiry into the Scottish medium Helen Duncan ... after reports that she had psychically intercepted a state secret about the sinking of a warship. The investigation uncovered deceit rather than ethereal espionage, and in 1944 Duncan became one of the last people to be convicted of fraud under the Witchcraft Act." (Ch 20)
• "Many mediums were bereaved mothers, and ... the convulsions of trance could resemble a woman's labour throes." (Ch 20)

February 2022; 314 pages

This review was written by the author of Motherdarling  and The Kids of God

Kate Summerscale also wrote The Suspicions of Mr Whicher, which also seemed too long for the material it contained but became a massive best-seller.