NANDOR FODOR & THE ALMA FIELDING POLTERGEIST
S02EP23
SYNOPSIS
The interwar years saw a sharp rise in Spiritualism throughout Europe and the wider world. Family houses in the most benign suburban neighbourhoods curtains hid seance circles, congregated in dark rooms, as mediums addressed the realm of the spirits, pulled objects from flowers to live animals out of thin air and delivered messages from those long deceased. In 1938, the Fieldings from South London became the latest in a long line of victims of ghostly disturbances that ramped into a full blown investigation, as Alma, the young brunette matriarch found herself quickly sucked into a world of mediumship, complete with multiple spirit guides, apparating terrapins and phantom tigers. As the supernormal world around her got more extreme, Nandor Fodor, acclaimed psychical investigator, dug for more earthly explanations into phenomena that he’d later describe as “sending shivers down his spine.”
Hazelgrove, Jenny (2000) spiritualism and British Society Between the Wars. Manchester University press, UK
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Leporiere, Lorenzo (2018) Mediums & Science In Early 20th Century Europe. Nuncius, Journal of the Material and Visual History of Science, Vol. 33 Issue. 1. Brill, Netherlands.
Fodor, Nandor (1958) On The Trail of the Poltergeist. Citadel Press, New York, USA
Timms, Joanna (2012) Phantasm of Freud: Nandor Fodor and the Psychoanalytic Approach to the Supernatural in Interwar Britain. Psychoanalysis and History, January 2012, vo. 14, No. 1 : pp. 5-27. Edinburgh University Press, UK
Summerscale, Kate (2020) The Haunting of Alma Fielding: A True Ghost Story. Bloomsbury Circus, London, UK
Summerscale, Kate (2020) The Daily Telegraph. “Britain’s Strange Interwar Passion for the Paranormal.” 11 October, 2020, p.23.
The Sunday Pictorial (1938) Terror In Home Wrecked By Ghost. 20 February, 1938, p.40.
The Sunday Pictorial (1938) House Is Haunted Declare Experts. 27 February, 1938, p.3.
Norwood News (1938) Is It An Evil Spirit? Mystery Of Eerie Happenings – Poltergeist Suggested. 25 February, 1938, p.3
Daily Mirror (1938) I Start My Strangest Search! 09 March, 1938, p.12
Daily Mirror (1938) This Man Can Read Your Secret Thoughts! 23 March, 1938, p.10
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