Women and Ghosts in Eighteenth-Century England

The investigation of haunted houses was a serious, scientific practice long before the Victorian era, and the methodologies of night-time vigils and record keeping, which psychical researchers employed in the nineteenth century, were established in the long-eighteenth century. The witnessing, story-telling and recording of paranormal experiences have created a scientific working space for women when other areas of science have, historically, been barred to them. And, because many of the resources available to us today have been written by women, they provide researchers with insight at variance with other areas of historical science which have been recorded by men. Just as Mina Harker’s diary adds empathetic depth to the novel Dracula (1897), the female ghost hunters of a hundred years before help us to understand the emotional impact of ghostly experiences on a society more inclined to believe in the paranormal than today.