A ghost hunter who became an icon of Forteana and not, himself, much of a Fortean.
Harry Price was born 17 January 1881 in London, and grew to become one of the most well-known paranormal researchers in London between the wars. Given his fame, and his marginal connection to the Fortean Society, this biography will be a brief recap of known events. Price had a number of paranormal interests as a youth that may also have butted against the emerging culture of fame as well as a more established culture of fraud. In the 1920s, he became associated with the Society for Psychical Research, but his attention to popular culture—as opposed to the stodgy academia of the SPR—set him at odds with that institution, and he eventually formed his own paranormal laboratory. Part of the difference can be seen in Price’s use of the word ‘ghost’ as opposed to the ‘phantasms’ of the SPR.
For all that he encouraged popular attention and did have a few mediums whom he thought authentic, Price received acclaim as a debunker, and formed a friendship with the magician Harry Houdini, also a skeptic. (Price practiced magic, too.) He investigated a number of famous cases in the 1920s and 1930s, including the Fortean Eileen Garrett, Gef the Talking Mongoose, and Borley Rectory. Among other things, he explained fire-walking as something less than paranormal—participants, he said, tok advantage of the physical characteristics of wooden charcoal, which did not conduct heat well. He knew other researchers in the field, such as the Forteans Eric Dingwall, Hereward Carrington, and Harold Chibbett.
Price died on 29 March 1948, during what was arguably the Fortean Society’s most productive years. He was 67.
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There seems to be very little connection between Price, Fort, Forteanism, or the Fortean Society, given the circles in which he ran. It is not known by me when he first discovered Fort, but likely it was early on—his career in paranormal investigation was coeval with the publication by Fort of his four books, and Price hardly could have been unaware of them. In particular, Fort’s last book, 1932’s Wild Talents, touched directly on Price’s area of expertise, investigating poltergeists and associated phenomena.
I have not surveyed all of Price’s voluminous writings, and so may have missed something, but from what I have examined I have found only a few outright references to Fort. That comes in his 1945 book “Poltergeist Over England.” In a chapter summarizing some of his conclusions. He notes that Fort thought the universe was permeated by a kind of cosmic poltergeist—which flings things at the earth—and also that Fort suspected there may be some people with the rare (wild) talent of being telepathic, telekinetic, or able to start fires from a distance using only the power of their mind. In short, Fort was grist for his mill: his books provided some evidence of poltergeist activity, and Fort himself offered interesting speculations, but nothing definitive, nothing to build upon.
As fas as his involvement with the Fortean Society, it seems to have been minor. He received only one mention in Doubt, and that was at his death, in issue 21, June 1948. Thayer noted that Price was a member of the Society—though whether he regularly paid dues or not is unknown, nor is it known whether Price approached the Society or the Society Price, though the latter seems most likely. Thayer also mentioned that he was asking Carrington and Fodor for remembrances, but if he ever received them they were not published. It seems mostly that Price was the kind of person who should have been associated with the Fortean Society, and so Thayer made it so; that Price was the kind of person’s whose death should be marked by the Society, and Thayer put a minimal effort at that.
Indeed, the expected—as opposed to actual—connection between Price and Fort continued after both of their deaths. Price put together a library of over 13,000 volumes on paranormal topics, many of them rare, and in the 1930s started donating them to the University of London. (An endowment allows the library to continue to grow, with subscriptions to magazines such as Skeptical Inquirer.) After Price’s death, Eric Frank Russell contacted the manager of the Price library and made sure that back and continuing issues of Doubt would be collected there. So though the connection between Price and the Fortean Society seems tenuous at best, there would be an institutionalization of the relationship that outlasted Price, Fort, Thayer, Russell, and the Society.
Harry Price was born 17 January 1881 in London, and grew to become one of the most well-known paranormal researchers in London between the wars. Given his fame, and his marginal connection to the Fortean Society, this biography will be a brief recap of known events. Price had a number of paranormal interests as a youth that may also have butted against the emerging culture of fame as well as a more established culture of fraud. In the 1920s, he became associated with the Society for Psychical Research, but his attention to popular culture—as opposed to the stodgy academia of the SPR—set him at odds with that institution, and he eventually formed his own paranormal laboratory. Part of the difference can be seen in Price’s use of the word ‘ghost’ as opposed to the ‘phantasms’ of the SPR.
For all that he encouraged popular attention and did have a few mediums whom he thought authentic, Price received acclaim as a debunker, and formed a friendship with the magician Harry Houdini, also a skeptic. (Price practiced magic, too.) He investigated a number of famous cases in the 1920s and 1930s, including the Fortean Eileen Garrett, Gef the Talking Mongoose, and Borley Rectory. Among other things, he explained fire-walking as something less than paranormal—participants, he said, tok advantage of the physical characteristics of wooden charcoal, which did not conduct heat well. He knew other researchers in the field, such as the Forteans Eric Dingwall, Hereward Carrington, and Harold Chibbett.
Price died on 29 March 1948, during what was arguably the Fortean Society’s most productive years. He was 67.
***********
There seems to be very little connection between Price, Fort, Forteanism, or the Fortean Society, given the circles in which he ran. It is not known by me when he first discovered Fort, but likely it was early on—his career in paranormal investigation was coeval with the publication by Fort of his four books, and Price hardly could have been unaware of them. In particular, Fort’s last book, 1932’s Wild Talents, touched directly on Price’s area of expertise, investigating poltergeists and associated phenomena.
I have not surveyed all of Price’s voluminous writings, and so may have missed something, but from what I have examined I have found only a few outright references to Fort. That comes in his 1945 book “Poltergeist Over England.” In a chapter summarizing some of his conclusions. He notes that Fort thought the universe was permeated by a kind of cosmic poltergeist—which flings things at the earth—and also that Fort suspected there may be some people with the rare (wild) talent of being telepathic, telekinetic, or able to start fires from a distance using only the power of their mind. In short, Fort was grist for his mill: his books provided some evidence of poltergeist activity, and Fort himself offered interesting speculations, but nothing definitive, nothing to build upon.
As fas as his involvement with the Fortean Society, it seems to have been minor. He received only one mention in Doubt, and that was at his death, in issue 21, June 1948. Thayer noted that Price was a member of the Society—though whether he regularly paid dues or not is unknown, nor is it known whether Price approached the Society or the Society Price, though the latter seems most likely. Thayer also mentioned that he was asking Carrington and Fodor for remembrances, but if he ever received them they were not published. It seems mostly that Price was the kind of person who should have been associated with the Fortean Society, and so Thayer made it so; that Price was the kind of person’s whose death should be marked by the Society, and Thayer put a minimal effort at that.
Indeed, the expected—as opposed to actual—connection between Price and Fort continued after both of their deaths. Price put together a library of over 13,000 volumes on paranormal topics, many of them rare, and in the 1930s started donating them to the University of London. (An endowment allows the library to continue to grow, with subscriptions to magazines such as Skeptical Inquirer.) After Price’s death, Eric Frank Russell contacted the manager of the Price library and made sure that back and continuing issues of Doubt would be collected there. So though the connection between Price and the Fortean Society seems tenuous at best, there would be an institutionalization of the relationship that outlasted Price, Fort, Thayer, Russell, and the Society.
