The Haunting of Alma Fielding

February 1, 2021

What begins with the supernatural becomes a haunting of the subconscious in Summerscale's (The Wicked Boy) account of Nandor Fodor's 1938 investigation of paranormal events surrounding Alma Fielding. In an England on the brink of World War II, emotions (and spiritual disturbances) are running high. Fodor, a Hungarian ghost hunter with the International Institute for Psychical Research, sees the headlines in the Sunday paper and decides that Alma's experiences may be just what he needs to help him earn back his shaken credibility within the spiritualist community. As he investigates disappearing light bulbs, flying eggs, and more shattered crockery than you could possibly count, Fodor uncovers Alma's internal trauma a little at a time. It is ultimately left up to the reader to determine their own stance on Fodor's theory-that "repressed traumatic experiences could generate terrifying physical events." VERDICT Likely to appeal to readers of ghost stories and psychology alike, this well-researched chronicle pulls directly from firsthand accounts, interviews, news articles, s�ances, photographs, and other sources to provide as comprehensive a view as possible from this side of history.--Marissa Mace, Cumberland County P.L. & Information Ctr., Fayetteville, NC

Copyright 2021 Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.

February 15, 2021
An intriguing story of a man who vowed to find the truth within the murky world of psychical and paranormal research. In her 2008 book, The Suspicions of Mr. Whicher, which won the Samuel Johnson Prize for Nonfiction, Summerscale chronicled the true story of a 19th-century detective who was devoted to solving a child's murder in an English country house and earned nothing but trouble for his efforts. In her latest, Summerscale, who has also won an Edgar and a Somerset Maugham Award, introduces us to a similar protagonist: Nandor Fodor (1895-1964), a Hungarian ghost hunter who worked for the International Institute for Psychical Research. In the 1930s, as England was mourning its dead from World War I and flinching at the possibility of a second, the practice of spiritualism, which was rapidly gaining in popularity, needed an honest man to investigate its claims. When Fodor heard about Alma Fielding, an English housewife who reportedly teleported objects and channeled spirits, he embarked on the difficult mission to prove Alma's claims while preserving his own integrity and reputation. Their relationship forms the heart of the book. Fodor, writes the author, "accepted that Alma might be both truthful and dishonest, gifted and fraudulent. As the pressure mounted for him to prove his case, he demanded ever more of Alma--e.g., stripping naked before a s�ance to prove she wasn't hiding anything. She resented his demands but kept accomplishing confounding feats. Fodor began to suspect that Alma's past was the key to the present. The narrative is an intimate portrayal of two people locked in a complicated relationship, and while some readers may tire of Summerscale's painstaking documentation of Alma's paranormal activities, her sense of humor and clear style keep the pages moving. Despite a lack of definitive answers, plenty of interesting questions linger at the end of this fascinating book. An astute psychological study enlivened by dry wit, eccentric characters, and informed analyses of 1930s England.

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March 1, 2021
In 1938, while London was terrorized by the looming threat of another world war, one suburban housewife began a public battle against an alleged supernatural enemy. Alma Fielding's account of flying crockery and mysteriously overturned furniture attracted ambitious ghost hunters from across the country who were hungry for a prominent case. None were hungrier than Nandor Fodor. Labeled cynical by the spiritualist press, Fodor was determined to prove the validity of Mrs. Fielding's pesky poltergeist and protect his precarious position at the International Institute of Psychical Research so he secured exclusive access to Fielding. Throughout the investigation, Fodor and others witnessed compelling evidence of a true haunting: jewelry would appear on Fielding's fingers, animals would materialize from nowhere, and inexplicable scratch marks would spring up on her body. Fodor observed each instance with a critical eye as Fielding's condition became increasingly disturbing. His intense scrutiny brought him closer to a truth that jeopardized them both. Using Fodor's original papers, Summerscale (The Wicked Boy, 2016) has produced a thoroughly engrossing tale about the power of trauma and how the past can haunt us all.

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