- Title: Ghost Detectives
- Subtitle: Crime and the Psychic World
- About the subtitle and this edition: I think that was the original title, and that this book was issued twice. First came Crime and the Psychic World, which was published in 1969 by William Morrow and Company. And then Ghost Detectives, with the subtitle Crime and the Psychic World, was published in 1970 in the United Kingdom by The Anchor Press for W.H. Allen and Company.
- Author: Fred Archer. First off, this is not, not, not the Fred Archer who wrote many respected books about history and rural England. This Fred Archer was for 16 years the editor of Psychic News. He also wrote the 1966 book Ghost Writer: A Chronicle of Psychic Experiences. Archer also once went ghost hunting in London with Boris Karloff, according to this 2020 post by Paul Gallagher on Flashbak.
- Cover design: Stanley Glazer
- Pages: 176
- Format: Hardcover
- Dust jacket price: 30 shillings (I think that's about $25 today in U.S. dollars, adjusted for foreign currency and inflation, but someone feel free to check me.)
- Dust jacket excerpt: "In the cases cited, methods best described as supernormal have solved crimes, have foreseen and sometimes prevented crimes, or on occasion have revealed crimes that no one except the perpetrators knew had been committed."
- Dedication: "To Valerie who likes a corpse in every chapter"
- Epigraph: "For murder, though it have no tongue, will speak With most miraculous organ" (Hamlet, Act 2, Scene 2, William Shakespeare)
- Excerpt #1: "I have no dogmatic zeal to overturn convictions that crows are black, and it is far from being the purpose of this book to do so. If the reader finds a number of puzzling grey birds ... well, he can suspect, if he wishes, a white raven lurking somewhere around. Tracking him down is the most fascinating detective quest of any."
- Excerpt #2: "Like other writers and criminologists one of the first things I did when I went to live in London was to search for the scenes of the Jack the Ripper murders. Some of the street names were changed — another tribute to the Ripper! — and the whole locality has vastly altered, slum clearance being the only benefit derived from Hitler's bombing."
- What even? "Holy shit," was my reaction to the callousness of Except #2, too. I figured I'd include it so there can be no question of what you might be getting yourself into with this book, in terms of tone and writing style. It is far from the only example I might have selected.
- Excerpt #3: "Algernon Blackwood told me of an occasion when the Moody half of the celebrated evangelical partnership, Moody and Sankey, had his life saved by an inexplicable warning."
- Excerpt #4: "Today even the governments of America and Russia are taking extra-sensory perception seriously enough to experiment with a view to its possible usefulness in war and espionage. If psychic abilities can be conceivably be employed for such purposes then why not in the battle against crime, which every country is perpetually waging?"
- Rating on Goodreads: 3.6 stars (out of 5), for Crime and the Psychic World. There are no reviews.
- Kirkus review of Crime and the Psychic World (the only review I could find online for either of the book's titles): "Mr. Archer certainly does trot out a lot of evidence in his case for psychic sleuths. The editor of London's Psychic News for sixteen years, he has some startling documented stories — including a fascinating look at the man who may have found Jack the Ripper (substantiated by some recently revealed Scotland Yard reports). There are hundreds of other cases in which a third eye of justice has intervened by solving and even preventing crime. They range from horror to farce as in the story of the famous French Inspector who solved a murder only to discover that he was the guilty party in a crime he committed while sleepwalking. (His sentence must be one of the most unusual in history — he was locked up only at night until the day he died.) Mr. Archer is himself occasionally amusing. As in his comments on reincarnation and the spiritualists who claim to be possessed only by the very best — 'Sitting Bull at every seance? One shudders at the thought.' And his contention that the police should start using psychic bloodhounds may well be heaven scent."
Monday, May 12, 2025
Obscure occult book: "Ghost Detectives"
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