‘Late one evening the telephone rings, and on the line is a stranger. They tell you that your nine-year-old son gave them your number. Your heart stops. You tell them that your son has been dead for almost 20 years. They know this, they say. He wants you to come and see him.’

We are thrilled to welcome author and journalist Ben Machell to Deansgate to discuss Chasing the Dark: Encounters with the Supernatural.

Appropriately haunting and highly immersive, Machell’s account of one of the Society for Psychical Research’s most prolific investigators shines a chilling light on our relationship with the supernatural, drawing from a previously untapped archive of case files.

Machell joins us to discuss his frightening and fascinating book and answer audience questions, followed by a signing.

Doors at 6pm. Ticket with Book option includes a copy of Chasing the Dark (RRP. 12.99) to be collected at the event.

For any queries regarding accessibility, please get in touch with us in advance by emailing events.manchester@waterstones.com to let us know how we can support your visit.

About Chasing the Dark

Ghosts. Poltergeists. Psychic powers. What do you do when reality begins to fray around you? Where do you go when science cannot explain your experiences? The Society for Psychical Research was founded to tackle these very questions and to shine light on the shadowy world of the supernatural. Distinguished members have included prime ministers and Nobel Prize-winning scientists.

But the most prolific of all the SPR’s paranormal investigators was a young British naval officer named Tony Cornell. A rationalist and a sceptic he became haunted by a wartime encounter in India that changed everything. Between 1950 and 2010 he became perhaps the world’s most prolific investigator of psychic phenomena and paranormal events. Alongside his colleague, the psychologist Alan Gauld, they combined the roles of detectives, exorcists and psychiatrists, returning time and again to the unsettling spaces that exist on the very periphery of our tidy, rational lives.

Drawing on a previously untapped archive of Cornell’s case files, which survive as a unique repository of encounters reported by ordinary people, Chasing the Dark is the compelling story of our relationship with the supernatural. What do these atmospheric and often chilling cases teach us about who we are, and the anxieties that consume us? And why do the dead still find ways to make themselves known?

About the Author

Ben Machell has worked for the Times in London since 2005, and is a principal feature writer, interviewer, and columnist for the award-winning Times Magazine. His debut book, The Unusual Suspect, was widely acclaimed and shortlisted for the Golden Dagger at the 2022 Crime Writers’ Association Awards