Doubting Ghosts:: Paranormal Investigation and the Paradoxes of Belief

Based on ethnographic research in England, Doubting Ghosts explores the paradoxes faced by paranormal investigators or ＂ghost hunters＂ in spite of spending significant time observing and documenting what they suspect to be paranormal phenomena--in a scientific, secular and rational fashion--many paranormal investigators remain skeptical about the existence of the paranormal. What, then, does it mean to regularly see ghosts and yet to not believe ghosts are real?

Examining the manner in which the scientific approach adopted by investigators produces profound doubts about the existence of the paranormal, the meaning of science, and the nature of modernity, the author demonstrates that doubt itself is central to experiences of secularity and that doubt can constitute a foundation for long-term engagements with the paranormal. Thus, paranormal investigators are able to sustain a relationship, albeit an uneasy one, with the paranormal while maintaining a commitment to a scientific, secular, and rational worldview.

A contribution to understandings of doubt, science, religion, and disenchantment, this book will appeal to scholars of sociology and anthropology.

Michele Hanks is a Clinical Associate Professor at New York University. She is interested in people’s experiences of conviction and doubt. This led to her to conduct ethnographic fieldwork with paranormal investigators in England. More recently, she has been conducting ethnographic fieldwork with psychics in the U.S. to understand the affective and political dynamics of their labor. She is the author of Haunted Heritage: The Cultural Politics of Ghost Tourism, Populism, and the Past (2015).