Mysteries Unveiled

The Victorian Origins of Ghost Hunting Long before night-vision cameras, digital voice recorders and electromagnetic field detectors became familiar equipment in paranormal investigations, a group of men in Victorian Britain were asking a question that continues to fascinate people today. Could the dead really make their presence known to the living? In the middle of the nineteenth century, stories of apparitions, unexplained noises and mysterious encounters were capturing the public imagination. Some people believed that spirits could communicate through séances. Others suspected that supposed supernatural events were elaborate tricks, misunderstandings or the products of an overactive imagination. Rather than simply accepting the stories they heard, a small circle of educated men began discussing whether such claims could be examined and investigated. Their interest helped establish a tradition of organised paranormal enquiry that would eventually become associated with one o...

The Cupboard Time Forgot Somewhere beneath the volcanic deposits of Pompeii, an ordinary piece of Roman furniture had been waiting for almost 2,000 years to be discovered again. It was not a golden statue, a forgotten temple or the treasure chest of a wealthy emperor. It was a wooden cupboard, the kind of practical household furniture that would once have stood quietly against the wall of a Roman home. Yet when archaeologists began investigating the remains of the building, they uncovered something remarkable: the impressions of the cupboard and the possessions that had been stored inside it when Mount Vesuvius erupted in AD 79. Among the objects were 38 bronze coins, a small collection of perfume and cosmetic equipment, household vessels and something far more personal: a group of tiny charms traditionally associated with Roman childhood. These were not objects deliberately buried for future generations. They were everyday possessions, gathered together inside a home by people...