Welcome to Help From My Friends Friday. Inspiration often isn’t instantaneous. Ideas come and go and sometimes like a favorite soup need to simmer. My guest this week joins me to prove that point. Please welcome Katherine Ramsland back to my blog. ~ Donnell
How Historical Paranormal Sleuths Gave Me an Idea
By Katherine Ramsland
Author Katherine Ramsland
When I got the inspiration for my protagonist, Annie Hunter, for my Nut Cracker Investigations series, I was at a reputedly haunted property near Savannah, Georgia. I decided to make her open to investigating cases that had paranormal rumors. But she’s no ghost hunter. Like me, she seeks natural explanations first and dismisses wishful thinking. She can easily see through many of the claims and spot a fraudulent medium. Also like me, she’d be happy to see a ghost…if they exist. Due to her crossover work, she and her PI team get some unique cases.
For Annie’s background, I gave her some ancestors with paranormal leanings. This included a link to the renowned nineteenth-century Harvard professor, William James. In the first two novels in the series, I Scream Man and In the Damage Path, I hinted that one of her relatives was a member of the American Society for Psychical Research (ASPR). By novel three, Dead-Handed, I’d found a way to use this lineage in the plot.
First, let me tell you about these early paranormal scientists. Here’s an excerpt from my nonfiction book, Paranormal Forensic Investigations:
Two related groups, one British and one American, made the first organized effort to approach paranormal phenomena in a measured, objective, and controlled manner. They were inspired during the 19th century by the embrace of the scientific method crossing paths with a popular 1848 publication, The Night Side of Nature. Author Catherine Crowe used her collection of creepy “true” tales not just to entertain but also to challenge scientists. She said they’d been too quick to dismiss paranormal narratives from stable citizens and she wanted “a few capable persons” to undertake a proper investigation.
During the 1850s, a team of Harvard professors met the challenge by investigating a sideshow allegedly aided by spooks, but they resolved nothing. Years later, Harvard professor William James observed that scientists who could not reconcile ghost tales within their systems simply discredited them. He thought this was intellectually dishonest. He wasn’t alone.
At Cambridge in England, British cousins Henry Sidgwick (a classics professor) and Edward White Benson (a future archbishop of Canterbury) founded The Ghost Society. Together, they outed several mediums as frauds, but Sidgwick believed there might be some genuine paranormal phenomena. One of his students, Frederick Myers, joined him. In 1882, they became two of the three founding members of the Society for Psychical Research (SPR).
William James met them and participated in some of their investigations. In 1885, he helped to form a sister organization in the U. S., the ASPR, and founded the Lawrence Scientific School, an entity that would subject paranormal claims to scientific study. For twenty years, James served as a visible leader in the movement. However, no matter how much effort he put into his search for definitive proof of life after death (especially after several like-minded investigators died), he reached the end of his life disappointed.
Allegedly James’ ghost communicated through several mediums, but no one managed to prove it. His wife traveled from one medium to another but received no message. A few former associates said that a spirit had reproduced conversations they remembered, but no one could say for sure.
In 2006, Deborah Blum published a fabulous book about the activities of both societies, Ghost Hunters: William James and the Search for Scientific Proof of Life After Death. I read it and hoped to use this information in some form of fiction. I gave Annie an awareness of her distant link, but that wasn’t enough. Dead-Handed was the story I needed. I’d set it in Concord, MA, not far from Boston, because it’s where Nathaniel Hawthorne had lived and penned many of his spooky tales. His grave is there. I placed one of Annie’s ancestors, Merrick Hunter, in Concord as well. He was close enough to Boston to have participated in the ASPR.
To endow him with membership, I proposed the existence of unpublished records in an obscure ASPR archive. Merrick had arrived as a young man from Scotland with an ambitious idea about psychic perception. When the ASPR failed to respond as he’d hoped, he made trouble and got ejected. He ran into Nathaniel Hawthorne’s son, Julian, and learned about a piece of property outside Concord that came with a curse. It seemed the perfect location for Merrick’s project. His notions, so disturbing to the ASPR, caused trouble in Annie’s family for five generations (so Hawthornean).
I read Blum’s book nearly two decades ago. The idea remained in the back of my mind until I was finally able to use it—after I’d done some Jamesean ghost hunting myself. Annie isn’t a ghost hunter in any traditional sense, but she has the same sentiment as James: stay open to things that go bump in the night.
Are your ideas instantaneous or do they need to simmer?
About the Book: What do Nathaniel Hawthorne, William James, Scottish lore, and a purloined corpse have in common? Cursed land near Concord, Massachusetts, linked to Annie Hunter’s family. When Annie arrives in Concord for her wealthy grandfather’s funeral, she’s stalked by those who want her gone. The more she learns about her crooked kin, the more she wants to be anywhere else. While her PI team investigates murders linked to a cyber game, Annie races to locate a deadly relic. If she fails, people will die, and she’ll lose her only link to her missing father. To stop the impending threats, Annie turns to three brothers whose family her ancestors ruined. In this third Nut Cracker investigation, the stakes are the highest they’ve ever been.
About the Author: Katherine Ramsland began her career as a writer with “Prism of the Night: A Biography of Anne Rice.” She had a bestseller with “The Vampire Companion.” Since then, she has published 73 books and over 2,500 articles, reviews and short stories. She has also been an executive producer for “Murder House Flip” and “BTK: Confession of a Serial Killer.” From ghosts to vampires to serial killers, she has taken on a variety of dark subjects. She holds graduate degrees in forensic psychology, clinical psychology, criminal justice, creative writing and philosophy. Currently, she teaches forensic psychology and criminal justice at DeSales University. Her books include “I Scream Man,” “How to Catch a Killer”, “Confession of a Serial Killer”, “The Forensic Psychology of Criminal Minds”, “The Mind of a Murderer”, “The Serial Killer’s Apprentice” and “The Human Predator: A Historical Chronicle of Serial Murder and Forensic Investigation”. She speaks internationally about forensic psychology, forensic science, and serial murder, and has appeared on numerous documentaries, as well as The Today Show, 20/20, 48 Hours, Dr. Oz, Coast to Coast, Larry King Live and E! True Hollywood. Currently, she’s working on a fiction series, The Nut Cracker Investigations, which features a female forensic psychologist who manages a PI agency. She also wrote a children’s book with the horse she rides, “Sunny Says.”
Katherine, the fact that you had this idea and you wrote this blog is no surprise to me (and I’m not even psychic). I’ll never forget at Lee Lofland’s Writers Police Academy sitting in on your workshop. You gave a lecture talking about Gut Instincts, and gave examples where gut instinct often failed and law enforcement was wrong. From that moment on, I stopped using the crutch of a protagonist having gut instinct to solve cases. Gut instinct is not evidence. Which is probably why I used and related so strongly to Catherine Crowe’s pull quote from your excerpt. Thank you once again for providing such thought-provoking expertise for us writers.
You’re welcome. Thank you for hosting me.
What a perfect time of year for Katherine’s blog!
Agreed! I wonder if her publisher arranged this timed release 🙂
Thank you for reading it.
Hi Katherine. I enjoyed your post and look forward to reading Dead -Handed. The Forensic Psychology of Criminal Minds is my go-to source when I’m looking for credibility and a forensic psychologist’s viewpoint for my novels. Thank you for sharing.
I appreciate that, Steve. Glad my work is helpful. Thanks for visiting and reading my post.
Thanks for the great post, and wishing you continued success, Katherine!
Thank you for reading and commenting.