Whisperers The Secret History of the Spirit World

This book was very difficult to read at first because it is like a textbook in many ways.  But it still held my interest and when it reached areas of history I was more familiar with, it got easier for me. Fascinating, even. Briefly, here is how the author summarizes his book: "spirit contact, for centuries, was widely taken at face value as communication with discarnate intelligences inhabiting a nonmaterial reality. With the advent of Victorian materialism, however, this view of the phenomenon began to be questioned and alternative ideas put forward. Although some apparent spirit manifestations were shown to be fraudulent, fraud clearly could not account for them all and, increasingly, psychological explanations began to be advanced. Initially these were confined to ideas like unconscious fabrication, self-deception, or pathological hallucination, but proved unsatisfactory in accounting for certain aspects of the phenomena..."

I thought this book would delve into how the spirit world affected world history. And it touched on that, but only a little it seemed to me. It was really more a history of mankind's view of spirits and how, at different times in history, mankind interacted with spirits according to belief at the time. On a personal level, I now know I'm not weird for my interest in spirits and ghosts. That interest is as old as mankind. And with all the experimentation by people a lot more patient than I am, I believe there is evidence that spirits do exist. Those who wish to ignore that evidence and write everything off as "fraud," well, they've just reached their Boggle Threshold. 

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