Chasing The Dark - The Paranormal Podcast 919

The Paranormal Podcast

Jim Harold

Documentary, Society & Culture

4.6 • 5K Ratings

🗓️ 30 December 2025

⏱️ 48 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

In this episode of The Paranormal Podcast, Jim is joined by journalist and author Ben Machell. His book Chasing the Dark explores more than a century of investigations by the Society for Psychical Research. Ben brings listeners inside a largely forgotten world of serious inquiry into the paranormal, long before ghost hunting became entertainment. We talk about why the subject attracted some of the sharpest scientific and literary minds of the last 140 years, and how careful documentation, patience, and intellectual humility shaped an approach that still feels surprisingly modern today. At the heart of the conversation is the remarkable life and work of SPR investigator Tony Cornell, a man who spent decades quietly examining real-world paranormal cases without chasing fame, certainty, or easy answers. Ben shares how Cornell balanced skepticism with open-mindedness, why some cases stubbornly resisted explanation, and what these investigations reveal about human psychology, belief, and the limits of materialist thinking. This is a thoughtful, wide-ranging discussion about mystery, method, and what it really means to confront the unknown. You can find Ben's book at Amazon: https://amzn.to/3MY2rEE Thanks Ben! --- This post contains Amazon affiliate links that benefit Jim Harold Media when you make a qualifying purchase. Thank you for your support! Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Transcript

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0:00.0	Chasing the Dark. That is the subject of this edition of The Paranormal Podcast.
0:19.7	Welcome to the paranormal podcast. I'm Jim and so glad to be with you again. And I think this year will enter our 21st year of the paranormal podcast. Believe it or not, amazing. Very cool and happy holidays to everybody. So I think sometimes there is the feeling out there that the search for the paranormal
0:39.1	and the supernatural started in the early 2000s with the ghost hunting shows, most haunted over
0:46.4	in the UK, you know, ghost hunters over here in the U.S., but that is not the case. There have been
0:53.0	a lot of people doing a lot of serious work
0:55.0	for a long time. And we're going to talk about some of that, and one particular paranormal
1:01.2	investigator, parapsychologist, who is very interesting. And there's a new book out. Our guest is
1:07.8	with us today, Ben Magell, and he has a new book out called Chasing the Dark.
1:13.7	The Society for Psychical Research is 100-year investigation of paranormal activity.
1:20.8	And that's a very interesting organization, the Society for Psychical Research.
1:25.4	Very interesting, and we're going to get into that more.
1:28.0	And a very interesting person that we have on the line
1:31.6	because Ben has worked for The Times, The Times, in London since 2005.
1:39.2	He's a principal feature writer, interviewer, and commonest for the award-winning Times magazine.
1:45.5	His debut book, The Unusual Suspect, was widely acclaimed and shortlisted for the Golden
1:51.0	Dagger at the 2022 Crime Writers Association Awards.
1:56.8	Ben, thank you for joining us to talk about this, and I'm always glad to hear more about the
2:01.6	Society for Psychical Research. I think that they're not paid as much attention to as they should
2:08.6	be. So I was so really glad to see this book come out, and thank you so much for joining us today.
2:14.0	Oh, such a pleasure to be with you, Jim. So let me ask you, I got to ask you right off the bat.
2:18.6	I mean, you work for the Times of London.
2:21.5	You write for Times Magazine, serious journalist across the board.
	...

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