The history of ghosts is ancient, but the history of active ghost-hunting is relatively recent, and investigations into the paranormal have developed hand-in-spirit-hand with scientific discoveries, from radio waves to smartphone apps. Now, more than ever, we want to find our own ghosts. Is it to help process grief? Become influencers? Or ease our fears of death?

Ghosted follows the story of paranormal investigations from the Victorian era to the modern day, examining how our fascination with ghost hunting has changed alongside technology and culture. Where we once gathered around tables, observing and recording every movement of the medium, we now take electronic equipment and app-laden phones around haunted locations to catch ghosts digitally. Where theatres and concert halls held sold-out performances by conjurers recreating the tricks of fraudulent mediums, we now delight in picking apart and exposing the evidence presented on reality television programmes.

In this book, Alice Vernon embarks on a journey to encounter a ghost, travelling to some of the UK’s most haunted locations and encouraging readers to interrogate their own scepticism and belief. Ghosted examines what we are looking for, why we are looking for it, and why have we never given up the ghost.

‘Curious, lively, humble, utterly genuine … a remarkable debut.’ SUNDAY TIMES

Alice Vernon often wakes up to find strangers in her bedroom.

Ever since she was a child, her nights have been haunted by nightmares of a figure from her adolescence, sinister hallucinations and episodes of sleepwalking. These are known as ‘parasomnias’ – and they’re surprisingly common.

Now a lecturer in Creative Writing, Vernon set out to understand the history, science and culture of these strange and haunting experiences. Night Terrors, her startling and vivid debut, examines the history of our relationship with bad dreams: how we’ve tried to make sense of and treat them, from some decidedly odd ‘cures’ like magical ‘mare-stones’, to research on how video games might help people rewrite their dreams. Along the way she explores the Salem Witch Trials and sleep paralysis, Victorian ghost stories, and soldiers’ experiences of PTSD. By directly confronting her own strange and frightening nights for the first time, Vernon encourages us to think about the way troubled sleep has impacted our imaginations.

Night Terrors aims to shine a light on the darkest parts of our sleeping lives, and to reassure sufferers from bad dreams that they are not alone.