"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.

"The Uncanny" by Nicholas Royle

For an academic book this is astonishingly readable and incredibly daring. The chapter on The Double is illustrated by comparing his own, unpublished novel with the writing of a published novelist who shares his name. His chapter on film consists of staccato paragraphs with pizzicato sentences. Each paragraph on the mole (both underground and blemishing the skin) is contained within parentheses.

This man can write. But what is he writing about?

Essentially, this book is a commentary upon and a footnote to, Freud's essay The Uncanny.

Each chapter heading excited me: The Sandman, The death drive, Buried alive, deja vu, The double, The private parts of Jesus Christ etc. I thought this was going to be an exploration of these themes within the genre of Gothic fiction and horror films. It was mostly about Freud. There was so much more that could have been done.

There were some fascinating bits. For example, he quotes from the famous Hamlet soliloquy the lines:

The undiscover'd country, from whose bourn

No traveller returns

noting the potential wordplay between bourn and born and asks what a 'bourn' is? He quotes the definition from the New Shorter OED: "a boundary (between fields, etc.); a frontier" as well as two definitions deriving from a misunderstanding of this line in Shakespeare. So a bourn is a threshold, a limin (which raised substantial interest for me since I am researching liminality within education). And this prompts him to ask: what are the limits of death? (p 233)

He points out that in The Rocking Horse Winner by DHLawrence the death drive is linked to telepathy.

He points out that as God has disappeared in the west so narrators in fiction are less likely to be omniscient (pp 258 - 259). Telepathy emerges as omniscience disappears (p 261) although there has been "sympathetic clairvoyance" before telepathy (p 260)

Also in Hamlet, Royle points out that the play starts with the guard wishing one another 'good night' three times in the first twenty lines; at the end of the play when Hamlet dies, Horatio says: "Good night, sweet prince". Neat symmetry!

These were some fascinating moments but I might have done better just to have read the Freud.

Quotes:

• "Something comes back because in some sense it was never properly there in the first place." (p 84)
• "The aim of all life is death." (p 84)
• "If silence is golden there will have been something deadly about its glitter." (p 86)
• "The death drive has to do with the figure of a woman" especially a silent woman as in Cordelia in Lear 'Love and be silent' Act 1 scene 1, 54

January 2016