When people today venture into haunted houses with cameras, EMF meters, and recorders, they’re unknowingly continuing a tradition that began over a century ago. The hunt for ghosts may look modern, but its roots trace back to figures more grounded and genuine than many of today’s TV personalities—people like John Zaffis and Jason Hawes, who carry a lineage that reaches further back to scholars and spiritualists. There was no such thing as a paranormal pop star then; there were only those who genuinely wanted to understand and not trick a generation.
Yet the modern scene rarely mentions the foundations laid by Sir William Crookes and Harry Price. Today’s investigators might name-drop Edison or Tesla for their “ghost phone” and “spirit radio”—devices meant to pull voices from the aether—but communication is more than asking for a yes or no.
Is Sir William Crookes The Godfather of the Paranormal Art?
In the 1870s, Crookes was already a renowned physicist, credited with discovering thallium and developing the cathode-ray tube. Still, he believed that science shouldn’t shy away from the unseen. When mediums claimed to summon spirits, he treated those séances as experiments waiting to be measured. His London lab became part séance, part observatory.
Crookes tested psychics such as Daniel Dunglas Home and Florence Cook under what he considered controlled conditions. He even claimed to have seen Cook and her “spirit guide,” Katie King, appear together—a sight that convinced him supernatural phenomena were genuine. Critics accused him of gullibility, even infatuation, but his resolve to quantify the invisible gave ghost hunting its first scientific edge.
The challenge he faced remains: how do you measure a feeling? Science demands repetition and control, but hauntings defy both. If ghosts are forms of energy, as some believe, then even they need to recharge like The Energizer Bunny. One repeated fact is that often, these receptacles often lose their power says something about what kind of state these spectres exist in. When you’re chasing a haunting that loops endlessly, you must ask how often it repeats, and whether it truly does. The data we collect in the field may never fit a lab’s definition of proof—but it still tells a story.
Harry Price and the Age of Spectacle
By the early 20th century, spiritualism had become both a comfort and a controversy. In the aftermath of the First World War, grief left countless families searching for voices of the lost. Into this world stepped Harry Price, a man who blended the instincts of a magician with the curiosity of a reporter. Where Crookes sought validation through science, Price pursued credibility through exposure.
A skilled debunker, Price used electrical circuits to restrain mediums and cameras to record every movement. Yet he wasn’t a cynic—he wanted to believe. Many of his ideas were rooted in physics, including what we now call the stone tape theory: the notion that emotional energy can imprint itself on materials and replay like a recording. To prove such a theory requires not just gadgets, but imagination—a willingness to test whether an assumption might be true.
Price’s most famous case, Borley Rectory, “the most haunted house in England,” turned him into a national name. Newspapers followed his every report; radio programs broadcast his findings. He kept meticulous logs, used ordinary objects to test air changes and static fields, and emphasized the value of notes and reproducibility. Even skeptics respected his methodical approach.
But not every night in a haunted place is cinematic. Many are filled with waiting and silence. Anticipation itself can spark hallucinations, feeding the mind’s hunger for activity. Yet when something truly happens—when a noise or light or presence can’t be explained—everyone leans forward, measuring, testing, and questioning. That’s the moment investigators live for.
Between Science and Showmanship
Crookes and Price never met, yet together they defined the extremes of paranormal inquiry. Crookes embodied the scientist’s faith in measurement; Price, the public’s appetite for mystery. Both believed that if ghosts existed, they should leave a trace. Crookes built instruments to detect “psychic force,” while Price used people, photography, and theatre. The technology to record sound permanently wouldn’t exist until Edison entered the picture, but their philosophies prefigured it.
Neither man convinced mainstream science. Crookes was dismissed as naïve; Price, as an opportunist. Yet their influence endures. The modern investigator—part researcher, part performer—is their descendant. The field’s identity is still half laboratory, half stage. Their lives also caution us against the blindness of belief. Crookes’s trust cost him credibility; Price’s flair blurred his facts. But both reveal a truth about human curiosity: the desire to prove can overpower the duty to question.
Even today, public ghost hunts can be thrilling, but results often depend on expectation. Belief can shape the very environment you’re trying to study. This world exists—and ghosts are not performers. They are memories of what was, reminders of moments that refuse to fade.
Perhaps the portal that opens during Halloween is less about summoning and more about remembering. The best investigators know how to stand between excitement and evidence—to question not only what they see, but what they bring to the haunting. Also, when ghost-hunting shows are packaged for ratings and reaction shots, the same tension remains. Every investigation must ask whom it serves—the search for truth, or the hunger for attention.
The Echo in the Modern Era for the Hunt for Ghosts
Modern investigators straddle two worlds: science and superstition, skepticism and faith. What unites them is the same impulse that’s driven humanity since time began—the need to ask whether death is truly the end. Neither Crookes nor Price proved ghosts exist. They both used different approaches and have earned the title of Architect rather than Godfather. What they sought for and got answers is something essential for us: our need for validation, for connection, for meaning beyond the grave.
The goal isn’t always to declare a place haunted, but to understand why a haunting persists or why a story refuses to be forgotten. Ghosts are almost always about someone who did something significant in their life. Even a soldier who gave his life for the Confederation at Gettysburg remains trapped by duty, while prisoners in rusted penitentiaries linger for a simpler reason—they don’t want to be forgotten.
Perhaps that’s the reason behind why people love to go on a hunt for ghosts. It’s not about proof, but about empathy—about meeting what lingers with respect rather than exploitation. Whether or not we ever find that elusive evidence, the search itself is an act of belief.
And in the end, all we really want to do is ask Elvis, “How are you doing? Not too shook up, I hope.”
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