The Night Side of Nature
Or, Ghosts and Ghost Seers

This best-selling collection of ghost stories, intertwined with supernatural interpretations, is a classic example of early Victorian spiritualist writing.

Catherine Crowe (Author)

9781108027502, Cambridge University Press

Paperback / softback, published 19 May 2011

394 pages
21.6 x 14 x 2.2 cm, 0.5 kg

The novelist and children's author Catherine Crowe (c.1800–1876) published The Night Side of Nature in two volumes in 1848. This lively collection of ghostly sketches and anecdotes was a Victorian best-seller and Crowe's most popular work. Sixteen editions appeared in six years, and it was translated into several European languages. The stories are intertwined with Crowe's own interpretations and commentaries which attack the scepticism of enlightenment thought and orthodox religion. Crowe seeks instead to encourage and re-invigorate a sense of wonder and mystery in life by emphasising the supernatural. Volume 2 probes the mysterious phenomena of troubled spirits, haunted houses, spectral lights, apparitions and poltergeists. Crowe's vivid tales, written with great energy and imagination, are classic examples of nineteenth-century spiritualist writing and strongly influenced other authors, including Charles Baudelaire, as well as providing inspiration for later adherents of ghost-seeing and psychic culture.

1. The power of will
2. Troubled spirits
3. Haunted houses
4. Spectral lights, and apparitions attached to certain families
5. Apparitions seeking the prayers of the living
6. The poltergeist of the Germans, and possession
7. Miscellaneous phenomena
8. Conclusion.

Subject Areas: History of science [PDX]