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The mild mannered Englishman who was the most prolific ghost hunter (lithub.com)
32 points by gmays 59 days ago | hide | past | favorite | 4 comments


Enjoyable read. I was left wondering whether Cornell came to any conclusions after a life of studying the paranormal. Wikipedia has:

> [Cornell] believed that many sightings of ghosts, hauntings and poltergeists are products of the human mind.[3] Cornell estimated that of the 800 cases that he investigated, only twenty percent were difficult to explain and only a handful were paranormal.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tony_Cornell

A "handful" is still extremely significant. I'm curious to know which events he felt could not be described naturally.

Going back to the original article, this raised a smile:

> I’m in the Special Collections room of the Cambridge University Library, waiting at the front desk a little nervously. It is my first time here and, hidden away on the top floor of the vast building, there is a peculiar sense of having entered a place where time does not quite pass as it should.

The UL is a forbidding and imposing building reminiscent of the library at the Unseen University (https://wiki.lspace.org/Library). Admittance to the Special Collections room is a rare privilege - I remember hearing rumours that all the best stuff is kept up in the "tower". Again, Wikipedia has a list of some of the really cool books there (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cambridge_University_Library#S...).


"which events he felt could not be described naturally" - let's rephrase this, events which he couldn't explain to the best of his knowledge. I know, I ripped off the entire aura of the situation, but if we claim to be scientific let's give up the illusions of all-knowing.


I agree. Very important to distinguish between "This is supernatural" and "I cannot explain this".

I tried to chase up the Wikipedia reference. The URL has slightly changed but I found it anyway. The quotation is subtly different:

> only a handful seem likely to be of the paranormal ilk

https://ghostvillage.com/investigating-the-paranormal/


I listened to this with Eleven Lab's ElevenReader app & let it use Laurence Olivier's voice, which made it appropriately creepy. But, I had to chuckle everytime he exclaimed "Article continues after advertisement!"

Try it yourself:

https://elevenreader.io/referral/gzI98fFt




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