Hauntings (Ghosts, Haunts and the Occult)

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Casting our (cob)web a little further across the city, and more tales of the unexpected abound. Here are a few of our frightening favourites: The Albert Hall poltergeist The archive collections include accounts of séances, investigations and case studies of mediums and phenomena, photographs and letters, including Harry Price’s correspondence with many key figures in early 20th century psychical research and spiritualism including Arthur Conan Doyle. At the higher end of culture, the supernatural is increasingly at the heart of art. There was the recent Horror Show! exhibition in London, where artists and filmmakers explicitly asked the question: why is there so much dread in the world? Alongside these are 18th century ‘exposés’ of the conjuror’s arts and 19th century manuals of magic, including numerous editions of Modern Magic. A recent re-igniting of literary small and independent press publishing is represented by zine-like publications Hellebore, Fiddler’s Green, Weird Walk, Ignota Books’s Spells: 21st-Century Occult Poetry (2018) and Camp Books’s poster Sigils For Queers (2019).

The Harry Price Library collection includes over 13,000 books, pamphlets, cuttings, offprints and periodicals dating from the 15th century onwards. Price collected in many areas and the collection is rich on magic, witchcraft, psychical research, parapsychology, prognostication, the occult , hauntings and the paranormal. Now let’s look at the theory. It’s called "Hauntology". Cultural theorists propose that humans are obsessed with ghosts as they’re symbols of a society’s unresolved past traumas.

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Liverpool expert on all things paranormal, Tom Slemen, wrote a guide of haunted places for the Liverpool ECHO in 2013, and he claimed Bidston Hill is one of the "most mysterious supernatural landmarks in the country". As someone who feels deeply connected to spirit and earth, it’s important for me to view my artwork as craft and ritual,” says tan jones. “For me, every choice has meaning, every material is an ingredient in the cauldron that is the artwork.” While emerging artists such as tan jones are gaining recognition, other art movements connected with spirituality and magic are being rediscovered, such as the surrealist movement – which had strong ties to magic, with many artists including ritual and symbols in their work. At Lamb Gallery in London, Surrealism and Witchcraft opens this month, showcasing work by 11 female artists. Lucinda Bellm, Lamb’s founder and director, says surrealism is enduringly relevant. “The tumultuous first half of the 20th century set the stage for the emergence of surrealism,” says Bellm.

Nor does Paganism have the divisiveness of organised religion, yet it still offers some sense of spirituality in an increasingly atomised world where "God is Dead", as Nietzsche said. We could, for example, explain how low-frequency sound waves can cause us to feel discomfort or sense another presence in a room… The Library's buildings remain fully open but some services are limited, including access to collection items. We'reThe game uses a diction based voice recognition system to allow the player to interact with the AI via several different pieces of equipment. The entity will be listening at all times and will respond to predetermined phrases as well. At game launch, English will be the only supported language for voice recognition. However, there will be an in-game action wheel to access the spoken phrases. The foundation collection of the Library’s holdings on The Paranormal, the Occult and the Magical was built by author, psychical researcher and book collector Harry Price over many years before he gave it to the University of London in the late 1930s for the purpose of encouraging research and investigation into the unexplained. Anthropologists have noted that urbanisation leads to an increase in claims of hauntings, and speculate that this is because in our city-dominated lives we’ve abandoned that sense of extended family, and so feel greater guilt at the loss of loved ones. Guilt may trigger claims of ghost sightings. Iona is a small island off the West coast of Scotland with a long religious and mystical history. In the late 1920s it was the scene of the mysterious death of Netta Fornario. Her motives and the manner of her passing have been the subject of much debate over the years.