The haunting of Alma Fielding : a true ghost story / Kate Summerscale.
Record details
- ISBN: 052555792X
- ISBN: 9780525557920
- ISBN: 9780525557920
- ISBN: 052555792X
- Physical Description: xv, 349 pages : illustrations ; 22 cm
- Publisher: New York : Penguin Press, 2021.
- Copyright: ©2020
Content descriptions
Bibliography, etc. Note: | Includes bibliographical references (pages 321-334) and index. |
Formatted Contents Note: | Prologue -- Part I: The ghost hunter. The crack in the teacup -- Feel my heart -- Things are not that simple after you die -- Where the facts are fantastic -- Something is moving -- Part II: The ghost hunt. Fear! We swim in it -- If there are devils -- The face in the mirror -- Knocks on the cupboard -- Mrs. Fielding's mouth was a round O -- A push, a punch, a kiss -- The potato-wine projection -- I want to be nasty -- The fastest invisible rays -- Part III: The ghost. Who is this little child? -- The cunning of ten thousand little kittens -- All dreams are true -- We are body -- Boo! -- A lane to the land of the dead -- Epilogue. |
Summary, etc.: | "London, 1938. In the suburbs of the city, a young housewife has become the eye in a storm of chaos. In Alma Fielding's modest home, china flies off the shelves and eggs fly through the air; stolen jewelery appears on her fingers, white mice crawl out of her handbag, beetles appear from under her gloves; in the middle of a car journey, a turtle materializes on her lap. The culprit is incorporeal. As Alma cannot call the police, she calls the papers instead. After the sensational story headlines the news, Nandor Fodor, a Hungarian ghost hunter for the International Institute for Psychical Research, arrives to investigate the poltergeist. But when he embarks on his scrupulous investigation, he discovers that the case is even stranger than it seems. By unravelling Alma's peculiar history, Fodor finds a different and darker type of haunting, a tale of trauma, alienation, loss and revenge. He comes to believe that Alma's past has bled into her present, her mind into her body. There are no words for processing her experience, so it comes to possess her. As the threat of a world war looms, and as Fodor's obsession with the case deepens, Alma becomes ever more disturbed. With characteristic rigor and insight, Kate Summerscale brilliantly captures the rich atmosphere of a haunting that transforms into a very modern battle between the supernatural and the subconscious"-- Provided by publisher. |
Search for related items by subject
Genre: | True Crime / History. True Crime / History. |
Available copies
- 19 of 19 copies available at Bibliomation. (Show)
- 1 of 1 copy available at Killingly Library.
Holds
- 1 current hold with 19 total copies.
Location | Call Number / Copy Notes | Barcode | Shelving Location | Status | Due Date |
---|---|---|---|---|---|
Killingly Library | 133.1 Sum (Text) | 34040143558563 | Adult Nonfiction | Available | - |
BookList Review
The Haunting of Alma Fielding : A True Ghost Story
Booklist
From Booklist, Copyright (c) American Library Association. Used with permission.
In 1938, while London was terrorized by the looming threat of another world war, one suburban housewife began a public battle against an alleged supernatural enemy. Alma Fielding's account of flying crockery and mysteriously overturned furniture attracted ambitious ghost hunters from across the country who were hungry for a prominent case. None were hungrier than Nandor Fodor. Labeled cynical by the spiritualist press, Fodor was determined to prove the validity of Mrs. Fielding's pesky poltergeist and protect his precarious position at the International Institute of Psychical Research so he secured exclusive access to Fielding. Throughout the investigation, Fodor and others witnessed compelling evidence of a true haunting: jewelry would appear on Fielding's fingers, animals would materialize from nowhere, and inexplicable scratch marks would spring up on her body. Fodor observed each instance with a critical eye as Fielding's condition became increasingly disturbing. His intense scrutiny brought him closer to a truth that jeopardized them both. Using Fodor's original papers, Summerscale (The Wicked Boy, 2016) has produced a thoroughly engrossing tale about the power of trauma and how the past can haunt us all.
Kirkus Review
The Haunting of Alma Fielding : A True Ghost Story
Kirkus Reviews
Copyright (c) Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.
An intriguing story of a man who vowed to find the truth within the murky world of psychical and paranormal research. In her 2008 book, The Suspicions of Mr. Whicher, which won the Samuel Johnson Prize for Nonfiction, Summerscale chronicled the true story of a 19th-century detective who was devoted to solving a child's murder in an English country house and earned nothing but trouble for his efforts. In her latest, Summerscale, who has also won an Edgar and a Somerset Maugham Award, introduces us to a similar protagonist: Nandor Fodor (1895-1964), a Hungarian ghost hunter who worked for the International Institute for Psychical Research. In the 1930s, as England was mourning its dead from World War I and flinching at the possibility of a second, the practice of spiritualism, which was rapidly gaining in popularity, needed an honest man to investigate its claims. When Fodor heard about Alma Fielding, an English housewife who reportedly teleported objects and channeled spirits, he embarked on the difficult mission to prove Alma's claims while preserving his own integrity and reputation. Their relationship forms the heart of the book. Fodor, writes the author, "accepted that Alma might be both truthful and dishonest, gifted and fraudulent. As the pressure mounted for him to prove his case, he demanded ever more of Alma--e.g., stripping naked before a séance to prove she wasn't hiding anything. She resented his demands but kept accomplishing confounding feats. Fodor began to suspect that Alma's past was the key to the present. The narrative is an intimate portrayal of two people locked in a complicated relationship, and while some readers may tire of Summerscale's painstaking documentation of Alma's paranormal activities, her sense of humor and clear style keep the pages moving. Despite a lack of definitive answers, plenty of interesting questions linger at the end of this fascinating book. An astute psychological study enlivened by dry wit, eccentric characters, and informed analyses of 1930s England. Copyright (c) Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.
Publishers Weekly Review
The Haunting of Alma Fielding : A True Ghost Story
Publishers Weekly
(c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved
Edgar winner Summerscale (The Wicked Boy: The Mystery of a Victorian Child Murderer) illuminates the bizarre events that afflicted Alma Fielding, a suburban London housewife, in 1938, in this mind-bending historical investigation. In February of that year, the British press began covering the activities of an alleged poltergeist in the Fielding home. The spirit reportedly broke glasses, threw pots and coins, and even transported an unbroken light bulb from one part of a room to another. The occurrences attracted the interest of Nandor Fodor, the chief ghost-hunter for the International Institute for Psychical Research. Fodor gained the confidence of the Fieldings and spent months observing oddities and exploring rational explanations for them. Fodor's experiments and tests led him to conclude that Alma, who suffered from repressed trauma, faked the incidents. Fodor's analysis won the support of Sigmund Freud and his experiences influenced Shirley Jackson's writing of The Haunting of Hill House. Summerscale vividly recreates the four months in 1938 that fascinated a Britain seeking distraction from Hitler's ominous aggressions, and reconstructs the events and the secret inner torment that led to Alma's brief appearance in the spotlight with sensitivity and a novelist's gift for narrative. Readers will be riveted. Agent: Melanie Jackson, Melanie Jackson Agency. (Apr.)
Library Journal Review
The Haunting of Alma Fielding : A True Ghost Story
Library Journal
(c) Copyright Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.
What begins with the supernatural becomes a haunting of the subconscious in Summerscale's (The Wicked Boy) account of Nandor Fodor's 1938 investigation of paranormal events surrounding Alma Fielding. In an England on the brink of World War II, emotions (and spiritual disturbances) are running high. Fodor, a Hungarian ghost hunter with the International Institute for Psychical Research, sees the headlines in the Sunday paper and decides that Alma's experiences may be just what he needs to help him earn back his shaken credibility within the spiritualist community. As he investigates disappearing light bulbs, flying eggs, and more shattered crockery than you could possibly count, Fodor uncovers Alma's internal trauma a little at a time. It is ultimately left up to the reader to determine their own stance on Fodor's theory-that "repressed traumatic experiences could generate terrifying physical events." VERDICT Likely to appeal to readers of ghost stories and psychology alike, this well-researched chronicle pulls directly from firsthand accounts, interviews, news articles, séances, photographs, and other sources to provide as comprehensive a view as possible from this side of history.--Marissa Mace, Cumberland County P.L. & Information Ctr., Fayetteville, NC