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Hello and welcome to The Spectator's Book Club podcast. I'm Sam Leith, the literary editor of The Spectator, and my guest

this week is Kate Somerscale, a former colleague and a brilliant historical nonfiction writer,

whose newest book is The Haunting of Alma Fielding, a true ghost story, which is about a sort of

instance of poltergeist activity, haunting, ghostly manifestation,

possible demonic possession taking place in 1930s Croydon.

Okay, welcome. Tell us first of all, why you gave it that subtitle, a true ghost story.

Because most people today would think, well, it can't be.

Well, I enjoyed the sort of questions that a subtitle raised about truth and ghosts. And most

ghost stories, most published ghost stories are fictional, in form and genre. But actually in the

1930s, I I discovered while researching

this story there was a great vogue for true ghost stories anthologies of true ghost

stories were published and there was a fascination with the connection between

ghosts and science spiritualism and so the idea between ghosts and science, spiritualism,

and so the idea of truth and ghosts was not as contradictory as it might seem now.

No, I was going to say, I was thinking the books contemporary readers,

or the people reading this contemporary story,

would read that subtitle differently, wouldn't they?

Yes. So I was sort of playing with that with the sort of period resonance of it,

which I hoped would emerge while reading the book,

but also to draw attention to the fact that this is a non-fiction book.

And to say a ghost story would be misleading in that it would imply

...