The Ghost Club
Founded in London in 1862, it is believed to be the oldest paranormal and supernatural investigation and research organization.
How it started
In 1855 participants of the Trinity College in Cambridge started a discussion about paranormal phenomena, hauntings, ghosts and supernatural subjects. Started for fun but attracted some very famous personalities, such as the writer Charles Dickens, Cambridge academics, and various clergy men.
In 1862, the ghost club became viral, by starting actual paranormal investigations.
First investigation
In 1862 the Davensport Brother's contacted the ghost club, claiming that they are contacting the dead.
After the investigation was made, their claim proved to be a lie, although the results of the investigation were never made public
The club is shut down
At 1870 the club gets disolved...
The club had been very popular by that time. It undertook a lot of practical investigations, looking for paranormal phenomena. A lot of meeting were made in order to discuss all those paranormal subjects.
Unfortunatelly the death of Dickens led to the disolvation of the club... Temporarily at least
The Ghost Club is back and running
12 years after Dickens death, the Ghost club is still famous and everyone wants it back on, the interest for paranormal activities is so high that in 1882 on All Saints Day, Alfred Alaric Watts, son of a poet and journalist, revitalises the club.
At the same time the Society for Psychical Research (SPR) is founded.
The difference between those two clubs was that the SPR was devoted just to the scientific explanation of the phenomena, while for The Ghost Club psychic phenomena were an established fact.
The membership of the Ghost Club was very very selective, over 54 years it has only 82 members. Some of them were Sir William Crookes who attracted scandal after investigation into the medium Florence Cook, Sir Oliver Lodge, the physicist, Nandor Fodor, psychologist and a former associate of Sigmund Freud; and Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, the creator of Sherlock Holmes.
The Ghost club through time
By now the Ghost Club was more considered to the public as a Victorian occult or spiritualist society celebrating November 2, the Feast of All Souls.
Each November 2nd, at the club's celebration event, all names of the members- both living and dead (as their members were considered members for the eternity), were read out loud. It was also said that the presence of the deceased members was felt.
Entering the 20th century, the Ghost Club undergoes crisis. Since the rise of technology events as seances, no longer take place at the club's old basements, but on equipted research laboratories. The scientific ways of approaching and explaining phenomena that in the old days would be called "paranormal" downgrade the club in the eyes of it's members, so a quite good number of them lost their interest and stop joinning the meetings.
The club will get revived once again on November 2nd 1936. Some wolrd class psychic researchers and psychologists have now joined. Some of them were Harry Price, Dr. Nandor Fodor and Sir Arthur Conan Doyle. The nature of the club changed. Now no longer investigations were made, but it was more like dining meetings of skeptics talking about spiritual and paranormal sumbjects,The downfall of the Club forced Harry Price (the chairman of the club) to start admiting female mebers at the club.
Price passes away at 1948 and the club doesn't schedule meetings once again, until 1962, when Peter Underwood becomes the president of the club. Some new members join through the following years such as Philip Paul and Tom Perrot (who later at 1971 will become the chairman of the Club).
By 1993 the club expands it's subjects of research. Now meetings about dowsing, UFOs and ryptozoology etc are made.
At 1998 Perrott quits as chairman and Alan Murdie takes charge. In 2005 he gets succeeded by Kathy Gearing, who will be the first ever female chairman of the club. In 2009 Gearing will resign and Alan Murdie will become the chairman once again.
The Ghost Club today
The Ghost Club is still active and running. Investigations continue to take place and meetings are arranged every month on a Saturday evening at Victory Services Club in London and the investigations have now expand to Scottland which is indicated for it's huge paranormal actuvity
