Science writer and Pulitzer Prize–winning journalist Deborah Blum speaks with WIE's Tom Huston about her book, Ghost Hunters: William James and the Search for Scientific Proof of Life After Death. Blum's work brings to life the still unresolved struggle between the scientific method and the spiritual experience. Her main character, the Harvard psychologist-philosopher William James, exercised a lifelong interest in some of the Victorian era's favorite diversions: levitation, phantom apparitions, poltergeists, telepathy, and telekinesis. James' sincere explorations into these areas were subjected to intense scrutiny and often ridicule by his peers, but he was ever unrepentant, writing toward the end of his life: “I may be dooming myself to the pit in the eyes of better-judging posterity; I may be raising myself to honor; I am willing to take the risk.” The earnest study of the unexplainable reaches of human consciousness and potential persists to this day, thanks in part to the work of James and those who followed in his footsteps. Blum, a science writer by training and trade, brings warmth, humor, and a richness of detail to the subject of her book, as well as to the substance of this engaging interview.

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