Haunted Britain: Spiritualism, Psychical Research and the Great War

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.

Author: Kyle Falcon
Publisher: Manchester University Press
Published: 07/18/2023
Pages: 336
Binding Type: Hardcover
Weight: 1.18lbs
Size: 8.50h x 5.50w x 0.75d
ISBN: 9781526164971

About the Author
Kyle Falcon is a historian specialising in the British Empire during the First World War. He received his PhD from Wilfrid Laurier University and is based in Kitchener, Ontario, Canada.