'Having worked with Margrit Coates, I can vouch for her healing ability. Her gift to animal healing is enormous.'

Simmering as it is with personal reflections, this handsome volume ... is bursting with a giddy passion, buoyed further by an expert's thirst for abstruse facts. The main pleasure of reading this book is Clarke's own enthusiasm, intelligence and seriousness ... a deeply interesting, revealing read

Splendid ... compelling ... Clarke manages to give goose-flesh and a giggle while informing the reader - an enviable feat

A highly enjoyable (and disturbing work) ... I am in awe of [Clarke's] intrepidity

Outstanding ... Clarke's dissection of the shocks, sadnesses and sexiness of the seance tables from the late Victorian era is brilliantly done ... The book is deeply enjoyable, hugely informative and at times distinctly unsettling

Britain has over 500-years' worth of ghost stories in the cupboard and in The Natural History of Ghosts, Roger Clarke makes them dance ... the most original and readable book exploring our ghost-rich culture to appear for years ... fascinating

Clarke's examination of the need people have to believe remains insightful and illuminating throughout

An intriguing, shivers-down-the-spine book

Lively and absorbing ... [Clarke] has proven himself an ideal guide to this troubled and disorderly realm

A fascinating social history ... exceptionally well written and researched

Why do ghosts wear clothes? This is just one of a number of interesting questions raised by this jaunty book ... In a series of short, snappy chapters, Clarke examines the evidence for just about every ghost who ever drew, or withdrew, breath ... but A Natural History of Ghosts is also haunted by another story, lurking not very far beneath: the story of the author's childhood need to believe in ghosts, and the gradual erosion of that belief

A gripping history that traces the scientific and social aspects of ghostly sightings

Compelling ... Research into the paranormal necessarily involves a fair degree of debunking, and Clarke is careful to be sceptical. The narrative of ghost-hunting is simultaneously a history and exposure of fraud and popular delusion ... [yet] Clarke retains a boyish and ... well-informed enthusiasm for his subject

[A] voyage through the half-lit world of lost souls ... tales told with ghoulish relish