CONFESSIONS OF A GHOST HUNTER, 1936
I repeat that nothing transcendental has ever been received from any spirit who has ‘returned’. We have discovered no discarnate Shakespeare or Michelangelo; not one iota has been added to our art, literature, or learning. On the contrary, most of the stuff that trance mediums pour forth is the veriest twaddle. Even the spiritualists themselves are beginning to realize this, just as the more reputable spiritualist journals are now ruthlessly exposing the fraudulent medium who battens on the credulity of the ignorant and the wretchedness of die bereaved.
(Harry Price, Confessions of a Ghost Hunter)
If Sir Arthur Conan Doyle had a Moriarty, it was Harry Price. Price became interested in the weird and a wonderful from a very different avenue than most. Instead of attending a séance as a young man that transformed his life, Price visited a fairground. After viewing the theatrical performance of the "The Great Sequah" performing medical marvels and magic tricks, Price himself became an amateur conjurer. At age fifteen, Price conducted his first investigation of a haunted old manor with his school friends, detailed in 1936’s Confessions of a Ghost Hunter:
On the morning of the adventure, I cycled to the nearest town and bought some magnesium powder, a bell switch, a hank of flex wire, two Darnell’s batteries and some sulphuric acid. A big hole was made in my term’s pocket money! In the afternoon I assembled my batteries and switch and prepared the flash powder by means of which I hoped to photograph something! … With the weights was a platinum wire ‘rider’ which I inserted in the electrical circuit in order to ignite the magnesium flash-powder. With the above- mentioned impedimenta, a box of matches, some candles, a stable lantern, a piece of chalk, a ball of string, a box of rapid plates, a parcel of food, the camera and accessories and (forbidden luxury!) some cigarettes, we bade a tender farewell to our friends and made our way across the fields to the Manor House, where we arrived at about 9.30 p.m.
(Harry Price, Confessions of a Ghost Hunter).
Price’s ingenious idea, to prepare a trigger for a camera to go off when the ghost appeared, is a prime example of his methodological and foresighted approach to psychical research. He joined the Socity for Psychical Research in 1920 and began to use his expertise in stage magic to debunk more mediums. This approach angered many original members as they felt the SPR’s purpose was to prove spiritualism, not discredit it. Price’s methods particularly angered Doyle, as he was in fact the one to expose spirit photographer William Hope. After this debacle, Doyle led a mass resignation from the SPR and allegedly found reason to attack and belittle Price for the rest of his life.
After all the drama involving Hope and Doyle, Price decided he was of better use elsewhere and established the National Laboratory of Psychical Research. Unlike the SPR which was founded by people who believed in miracles of spiritualism, Price founded the National Laboratory “to investigate in a dispassionate manner and by purely scientific means every phase of psychic or alleged psychic phenomena”.
Although he was never university educated, Price ran experiments with strict protocol, used scientific equipment, and wrote detailed reports of all his findings. Unlike the flashy celebrity mediums or tunnel-vision psychical investigators of the 19th century, Price was a presented as a reliable and serious source of information. Price frequently collaborated with journalists and the BBC to bring his findings to the public.
He never found proof of the supernatural, but he spent his entire life searching for it.
In his own words,
From fire-walking to hysteriacs, and from a ‘talking mongoose’ to a trip to Mars (via the stance-room) the reader has a wide choice of ‘miracles’ to choose from. I have purposely refrained from stressing the seamy side of spiritualism. The public is sick and tired of the fraudulent ‘psychic’ and his rather stale trick.
(Harry Price, Confessions of a Ghost Hunter).