Ali Karim was a Board Member of Bouchercon [The World Crime & Mystery Convention] and co-chaired programming for Bouchercon Raleigh, North Carolina in 2015. He is Assistant Editor of Shots eZine, British correspondent for The Rap Sheet and writes and reviews for many US magazines & Ezines.
This is a strange book, a non-fiction look into the World of Paranormal Investigations. Part Biography of Tony [Anthony] Cornell a British Naval officer who together with The Society of Psychical Research [SPR] deployed scientific Modus Operandi in their investigations into weird occurrences.
The back-drop is Pre-and-Post WW2 Great Britain and into the Twentieth Century as seen through the eyes of Connell - however Ben Machell’s book starts internationally in the 1800’s. It charts the founding of the SPR, initially in London [in 1837] but also marking the opening of the American Branch. Mention is made of literary figures such as Mark Twain, Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, and Lewis Carroll among others who were interested in these investigations. Scientific and Political figures such Charles Darwin, Sigmund Freud, Winston Churchill and Oscar Wilde soon became intrigued in the work of The Society of Psychical Research. The reach became international with journeys to mystical India when scientific methods became deployed.
The book’s pace ratchets up, when the author introduces Tony Cornell, and his life’s work investigating mysterious occurrences. Initially Cornell appears a sceptic, but his mind grows increasingly open to the idea that perhaps there are ‘things’ occurring in the eponymous “dark” that defy rational explanation.
Though written with an incisive journalistic pen, there lies sufficient gaps for the reader to formulate their own opinions, some of which may become rather frightening.
Mention is made of extra-sensory-perception, poltergeists, ghosts, spectral phenomena, and travels to Russia, to Cambridge, to London; meetings with Scientists, Media interest with Television’s Uri Geller and the like. Together with his friend and colleague, the Psychologist Alan Gauld, they become like partners from an X-Files episodic drama – one that spans sixty years in the pursuit of ‘the truth’ being ‘out there’.
Though there is fascination in the cases that the Author outlines, using Connell as his Agent – the real delight is from how this book explores the human fascination in ‘weird’ and unexplainable occurrences around us; and what this tells us about human nature.
Though not crime-fiction – it would be a crime to miss this intriguing [and thought-provoking] book – one designed to be read on a chilly winter’s evening with the door firmly locked.
It has a subtitle ‘Encounters with the Supernatural’ which should act as a warning, because at times it is terrifying.
Not to be read before bed.
