Chasing the Dark: Encounters with the Supernatural

The Society for Psychical Research was founded to shine light on the shadowy world of the supernatural. Distinguished members have included prime ministers and Nobel Prize-winning scientists. But the most prolific of all the SPR’s paranormal investigators was a young British naval officer named Tony Cornell. A rationalist and a sceptic he became haunted by a wartime encounter in India that changed everything. 

Between 1950 and 2010 he became perhaps the world’s most prolific investigator of psychic phenomena and paranormal events. Alongside his colleague the psychologist Alan Gauld they combined the roles of detectives exorcists and psychiatrists returning time and again to the unsettling spaces that exist on the very periphery of our tidy rational lives: Ghosts. Poltergeists. Psychic powers.

Drawing on a previously untapped archive of Cornell’s case files which survive as a unique repository of encounters reported by ordinary people Ben Machell will explore the compelling story of our relationship with the supernatural. What do these atmospheric and often chilling cases teach us about who we are and the anxieties that consume us? And why do the dead still find ways to make themselves known? Ben will discuss what was within these files with artist and paranormal researcher Sarah Sparkes.

Ben Machell has worked for The Times since 2005 and is a principal feature writer interviewer and columnist for the award-winning Times Magazine. His debut book The Unusual Suspect was widely acclaimed and shortlisted for the Gold Dagger at the 2022 Crime Writers’ Association Awards. The drama rights to The Unusual Suspect have been acquired by Pathé UK who are to produce the story into a major TV series. 

He is the author of Chasing the Dark: Encounters with the Supernatural which will be available to buy on the night.

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