A second-hand spook (Blogtober #18)

I love second-hand bookshops. I especially love second-hand bookshops that are cramped, have weird corners, oddly-located stairs to a mysterious second floor, and have random piles of books everywhere.

I’m talking about the kind of second-hand bookshop where the owner once had an idea where to put all the books, and there are faded stickers on some of the shelves to indicate what genre should be there, but they have since become overwhelmed with the amount of books they have received and have started just putting books anywhere there is space. You never know what you’re going to find, or where you are going to find it. The whole place feels like it could collapse under an avalanche of books at any second.

And there is a smell. Old, slightly mouldy book smell.

Yes. That’s the stuff.

It was in one of these bookshops that I stumbled across today’s spooky gem. A book titled: Hauntings and Apparitions: An Investigation of the Evidence.

Just look at the book cover – it’s fantastic.

Now, I haven’t had time to dive too far into it yet, but it seems to be a book from the eighties for the Society for Psychical Research – which is totally still a thing. Here is a little quote from their website about page:

THE SOCIETY for Psychical Research was set up in London in 1882, the first scientific organisation ever to examine claims of psychic and paranormal phenomena. We hold no corporate view about their existence or meaning; rather, our purpose is to gather information and foster understanding through research and education.

Spook scientists! Phantom Philosophers! Revenant Researchers! Ghost…

Uh, okay I haven’t got one for ghost.

This society seems to be scientifically researching the possibility of all things paranormal – and that’s cool. You can even report a paranormal experience on their website.

And yes, I do realise there is a Ghostbusters joke here somewhere, but I’m trying to be a serious blogger. This is serious.

Just like the book. A serious book. They are respectable scientists (which is very much the point they want to get across in the first few pages that I have read). I suspect that the scientific community might not respect them as much as they would like. Or perhaps they didn’t when the book was published. It has been a few years since then, and now we all know that aliens (or at least UFOs) are real, so why not ghosts?

Anyway, support your local independent bookshops. Buy all their spooky books.

See you tomorrow.