Haunted Britain

Spiritualism, psychical research and the Great War

Kyle Falcon

• Publisher: Manchester University Press
• Year: 2023
• Print ISBN: 9781526164971
• eBook ISBN: 9781526164964
• Topic: History
• Subtopic: Modern British History
• Index: History

The Great War haunted the British Empire. Shell shocked soldiers relived the war's trauma through waking nightmares consisting of mutilated and grotesque figures. Modernist writers released memoirs condemning the war as a profane and disenchanting experience. Yet British and Dominion soldiers and their families also read prophecies about the coming new millennium, experimented with séances, and claimed to see the ghosts of their loved ones in dreams and in photographs. On the battlefields, they had premonitions and attributed their survival to angelic, psychic, or spiritual forces. For many, the war was an enchanting experience that offered proof of another world and the transcendental properties of the mind. Between 1914 and 1939, an array of ghosts lived in the minds of British subjects as they navigated the shocking toll that death in modern war exerted in their communities.

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half-Title
• Series
• Title
• Copyright
• Dedication
• Contents
• List of figures
• Acknowledgements
• Abbreviations
• Introduction
• 1 Prophecies of war and peace: spiritualism and the new millennium
• 2 A psychic laboratory: numinous experiences and spiritualism on the Great War’s battlefields
• 3 A war of sensation: telepathy, crisis apparitions and the moment of death on the home front
• 4 Living with the ghosts of war: death and mourning in the séance room
• 5 The army of the living dead: spirit photography and the public denial of death
• Conclusion
• Bibliography
• Index