The Haunted Mind

Why can an empty room feel occupied?

A candle. A looking glass. The expectation of a face at your shoulder.

For centuries, people have searched for explanations when ordinary life turns strange. The Haunted Mind follows those experiences into the history of psychology, exploring how expectation, memory, fear and grief shape what feels real.

Michael Faraday investigates the moving tables of Victorian London. William James sits with a medium whose abilities he cannot comfortably explain. A young Carl Jung watches his cousin speak for the dead. On an exhausting journey across South Georgia, three men sense a fourth walking beside them.

Through these encounters, discover why we see faces where none exist, why we sometimes enjoy being frightened, how memory reshapes our stories, and why the presence of someone we have lost can feel so vivid.

From Halloween traditions and Mary Shelley's sleepless night to experiments in suggestion and accounts of the uncanny, this atmospheric work of narrative nonfiction brings together human stories and the questions they leave behind. Some yield to an experiment. Others resist an easy answer.

For curious readers drawn to psychology, history and the mysteries of human experience, The Haunted Mind offers a thoughtful Halloween read with questions that linger long after the season ends.

Part of The Pioneers of Human Behaviour series.