Charles Dickens: Paranormal Investigator
By Shanon Ping
 Dickens
was born on February 7th, 1812, in Hampshire England. He was the second
of eight children to John Dickens (1786–1851), a clerk in the
Navy Pay Office at Portsmouth, and his wife, Elizabeth (née
Barrow, 1789–1863). He was christened at St Mary's Church in
Portsea March 4th, 1812. When he was five, the family moved to Chatham,
Kent. In 1822, when he was ten, the family relocated to 16 Bayham
Street, Camden Town, in London. In 1833, Dickens was able to get his very first story, "A Dinner at Poplar Walk", published in the London periodical, Monthly Magazine. In 1837 Dickens wrote his first successful novel, "Oliver Twist". Soon after, he would marry and go on to have 10 children. In 1843 Dickens wrote "A Christmas Carol" in a matter of weeks, supposedly to help with the expense of his wife's 5th pregnancy. This is the first of many ghost stories he would write about and showed his interest in the paranormal. In 1862, the first organized group for paranormal investigation was founded in London, named "The Ghost Club", its prime interest focused on paranormal phenomena such as ghosts and hauntings. The club has its roots in Cambridge |
when
in 1855, fellows at Trinity College began to discuss ghosts and psychic
phenomena. Formally launched in London in 1862 (attracting some
lighthearted ridicule in "The Times"), it counted amongst its early
members Charles Dickens and Cambridge academics and clergymen. One of
the club's earliest investigations, in 1862, was of the Davenport
Brothers' "spirit cabinet". The Ghost Club was challenging the
brothers' claim to be contacting the dead, a claim that was later
proved to be a hoax. The results of that investigation, though, were
never made public. On June 9th, 1865, while returning from Paris with his wife, Dickens was involved in the Staplehurst rail crash in which the first seven carriages of the train plunged off a cast iron bridge that was being repaired. The only first-class carriage to remain on the track was the one in which Dickens was traveling. Dickens spent some time trying to help the wounded and the dying before rescuers arrived. Before leaving, he remembered the unfinished manuscript for "Our Mutual Friend", and he returned to his carriage to retrieve it. Typically, Dickens later used this experience as |
material for his short story, "The Signal-Man", in which the
central character has a premonition of his own death in a rail crash.
Dickens would go on to suffer a mild stroke in 1869 and then, after
suffering a second stroke in 1870, passes away never regaining conscientiousness. "The Ghost Club" undertook practical investigations of spiritualist phenomena, which was then much in vogue and would meet and discuss ghostly subjects. "The Ghost Club" seems to have dissolved in the 1870s following the death of Dickens. However, The Ghost Club reorganized in the early 1880's. Another famous member of "The Ghost Club" was Sir Authur Conan Doyle, creator of Sherlock Holmes. "The Ghost Club" is still an active organization today in the UK.  "A Christmas Carol", a 1984 Clive Donner film with George C. Scott was one of many films made of the very popular Dickens story.
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