In Da (Ghost) Club.

The first rule of Ghost Club is you do not talk about Ghost Club! So, with that mind, how would Professor Roger Luckhurst, a Gothic specialist from Birkbeck College in Bloomsbury, be able to deliver his talk, The Founding of the Ghost Club, to a small but sold out London Fortean Society crowd at The Bell in Whitechapel?

Well, as luck has it. The first rule of Ghost Club was never that you do not talk about Ghost Club. That was actually the second rule - and it was removed some time ago. Now, talking about Ghost Club is all the rage. Even joining it. Once you needed to be invited. Now you can just ask. They even let cranks in (previously barred). 

Even women. In one early register of Ghost Club there were eighty-four members. Eighty-three of them were men. "All the clubs have been closed down" sang The Specials in Ghost Town back in 1981. But not, it seems, the Ghost Club. That's been running since at least 1882 and some date it even further back. Wikipedia has its inception date as 1862.

The Prof was going for the later date, though, and he had good reasons why. He'd got hold of a load of exhaustively detailed 'minute books' in which transcripts of all the early meetings had been kept and when somebody mentioned a Cambridge (specifically, Trinity College) based ghost club, possibly dating back to 1855 or even earlier, it seems that most, or all, of the Ghost Club in London were completely unaware of it.

Or at least claimed to be. The truth will probably never be known. London's Ghost Club was formed by William Stainton Moses (1839-1892) and Alaric Alfred, usually written as A.A., Watts (1825-1902). Moses was a cleric, born near Lincoln, who'd been attending seances and promoting spirit photography as well as writing books, under the pseudonym, M.A.Oxon promoting spiritualism. Watts was a government clerk who had resigned from the Society of Psychical Research after they dismissed the fraudulent medium William Eglinton.

The Society of Psychical Research was also formed in 1882 but they demanded a higher level of proof, or at least some level of credibility, before entertaining ideas. They wanted to investigate and interrogate but the Ghost Club, more or less, just wanted to get together, have a few brandies, smoke a few cigars, and tell each other ghost stories. In its early years, members were obliged to come forward with at least one story of their own each year.

Nowadays that obligation is no longer there though telling one's own stories is still encouraged and it still seems to be more a social club than anything else. They meet one Saturday a month, in a room above a pub, at 2pm and stay there telling stories until closing time. To be honest it sounds like a piss-up as much as anything. I don't think I'll sign up. I think I'll still to my walking clubs.

Many did sign up though and some of the members were very famous people. Some mentioned in last night's talk and others left out. Among them Charles Dickens, WB Yeats (there was an interesting digression concerning his unusual methods of contraception), Charles Babbage, Sir Arthur Conan Doyle (a well known believer in spiritualism), Colin Wilson, Peter Cushing, Siegrfried Sassoon, evolutionary biologist, and brother of Aldous, Sir Julian Huxley, and Dennis Priestley.

Yeats briefly ran the club. When members died they didn't leave the club, they simply became Brother Ghosts and a roll call was read out at the beginning of each meeting. It was presumed that the Brother Ghosts were still attending, albeit in spirit form.

When Arthur Gray, a Ghost Club member and principal of Jesus College in Cambridge, fictionlised the club in his 1919 book The Everlasting Club he had broken the big rule. He had spoken publicly about Ghost Club. Other authors, among them Henry James, HG Wells, and MR James, had taken inspiration from Ghost Club stories, or indeed inspired them, but had been prudent enough not to mention Ghost Club.

In 1936, after 485 meetings and with attendance, at least of living people, falling The Ghost Club packed up and passed all its records on to the British Museum with the proviso that they would not be opened until 1962. This was either to protect the reputation of those still living or because some members of The Ghost Club genuinely felt that the general public would not be able to handle the incredible revelations, even 'truths', in the records.

But the Ghost Club was relaunched within eighteen months and since then it has continued, on and off, until the present day. Covid gave it a knock recently but now you're welcome to attend Ghost Club. The only trouble is you can't find meeting details on the Internet. You have to meet people in the know and get invited first. So it's still exclusive. 

Just not as exclusive as it used to be. It felt like Professor Luckhurst, a fantastic and funny a speaker as he was a well informed and analytical one, was giving us a little taste of what Ghost Club might be like and for the real experience we'd need to go along. Some of the regular Forteans have been known to do so. They even get together for a big Christmas dinner. Maybe one day I'll go. But not just yet. I'm not ready to become a Brother Ghost right now. I have things to do in this life.

Thanks to Roger Luckhurst for a great talk, thanks to the LFS for hosting, and thanks to Dewi, Tim, Paul, and David for joining me for a quick debrief afterwards. Next week it's stigmata!