The enduring allure of ghost hunting is explored in a new book published by Dr Alice Vernon, Lecturer in Creative Writing at Aberystwyth University.

‘Ghosted: A History of Ghost Hunting and Why We Keep Looking’ is an exploration of the cultural, scientific, and emotional dimensions of ghost hunting.

From Victorian séances to ghost-hunting reality television programmes and the explosion of paranormal investigators on YouTube, Dr Vernon traces the evolution of our fascination with the supernatural and asks why, despite scepticism and technological advances, we continue to search for ghosts.

Embarking on a personal journey to encounter a ghost, Dr Vernon recounts visits to some of the UK’s most haunted locations and invites readers to interrogate their own beliefs.

Dr Vernon said: “So many of us are drawn to the idea of the paranormal, even when we doubt its existence. Writing Ghosted was a way to explore this contradiction. And, whilst it is a book about ghost hunting, it is also about grief, memory, and the stories we tell to make sense of the unknown.

“Whether they are a sceptic or a believer, I hope Ghosted invites readers to reflect on what it means to be haunted — and why that experience is so deeply human.”

Dr Vernon completed her PhD, investigating representations of insomnia in fiction, in Aberystwyth University’s Department of English and Creative Writing.

She now lecturers Nineteenth-Century Literature and Creative Writing there, teaching students the fundamentals of storytelling. Her research focuses on parapsychology, sleep disorders and the horror genre.

Her first book, Night Terrors, published in 2022, explored troubled sleep in literature and culture. The Sunday Times described it as “a remarkable debut” and it was selected as BBC Radio 4's Book of the Week.

Her latest book ‘Ghosted: A History of Ghost Hunting and Why We Keep Looking’ was released on 11 September by Bloomsbury Sigma.