"A séance takes place in the Monk’s dorms"
photograph taken by James Thurgill during investigations at Waverley Abbey, Surrey , 2009
Join us for
Hosting 5: GHost-hunters 3
Date: 18 January 2011, 6.30pm – 9pm
In the Stately Senate and Jessel rooms, Senate House South Block, University of London
(An apparition known as 'The Blue Lady' has been reported to haunt the Senate rooms)
(An apparition known as 'The Blue Lady' has been reported to haunt the Senate rooms)
Hannah Gilbert, Translation for the Dead
James Thurgill, Ghost hunting and the architecture of Hauntology
This event is free but places are limited - rsvp ghost.hostings@gmail.com to reserve your seat.
Hannah Gilbert, Translation for the Dead
This paper will examine the relationship between spirit mediumship and ghost hunting investigations. While spirit mediums generally communicate with familial spirits connected to their audience or clientele, a significant number are involved in ghost hunting groups. In these situations the medium may be used as a test subject, with the information they produce about the entities who haunt certain locations being either verified or rejected by historical research or scientific methods. However, some ghost hunting investigations are led by mediums who occupy a position of authority when it comes to understanding the nature of, and negotiating interactions with, the ghosts who haunt the site of study. The kinds of spirits encountered by mediums and group members in these situations bare significant differences to those communicated with in other kinds of mediumship demonstrations. Using case studies, this paper will examine the role of mediums in ghost hunting groups, focusing on the ways in which they represent their ghost contacts, how they negotiate and contribute to beliefs about ghosts and haunted houses within a group, and how they manage malevolent encounters which are unusual within the context of other mediumship demonstrations.
James Thurgill, Ghost hunting and the architecture of Hauntology
This paper seeks to draw upon the practice of ghost hunting as a basis for rediscovering the landscape. As public interest in the paranormal continues to grow, more people are taking up ghost hunting and engaging with the deep history that surrounds them, opening up to the resonances of past events, lives and residual memories that saturate the world we live in. Ghost hunting is, in essence, the act of communing with place and history, landscape and memory.
Putting place at the heart of paranormal investigation allows one to focus on the source of ghosts, that is, the matter from which spectres emerge. Such a process might well be thought of as hauntological; hauntology here, pertaining to a reiteration of the past in the present, quite literally through the form of the spectre. Ghost hunting forces a confrontation with our environment, a particular way of understanding our place in time and space. One might consider this the foundations for a spectral ecology.
Taking the foreboding ruins of Waverley Abbey, Surrey as a basis for studying ghost hunters’ engagements with place, it will be shown that paranormal investigation and indeed ghosts themselves belong to a particular tradition of rediscovering history and landscape. Moreover, that ghost hunting provides a framework in which hauntologies are engendered.
This presentation will make use of projected images and sounds recorded within the Abbey ruins, producing a soundtrack to the talk that is rooted in the voice(s) of the Abbey itself. Such a process aids in the transference of the ghosts of Waverley to a new forum where perhaps they might become known and revealed. More importantly; such resources can be used to recreate a sense of place and promote an engagement with our haunted landscape.
