from Hacker News

The mild mannered Englishman who was the most prolific ghost hunter

by gmays on 10/23/25, 4:23 AM with 4 comments

  • by n4r9 on 10/23/25, 8:47 AM

    Enjoyable read. I was left wondering whether Cornell came to any conclusions after a life of studying the paranormal. Wikipedia has:

    > [Cornell] believed that many sightings of ghosts, hauntings and poltergeists are products of the human mind.[3] Cornell estimated that of the 800 cases that he investigated, only twenty percent were difficult to explain and only a handful were paranormal.

    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tony_Cornell

    A "handful" is still extremely significant. I'm curious to know which events he felt could not be described naturally.

    Going back to the original article, this raised a smile:

    > I’m in the Special Collections room of the Cambridge University Library, waiting at the front desk a little nervously. It is my first time here and, hidden away on the top floor of the vast building, there is a peculiar sense of having entered a place where time does not quite pass as it should.

    The UL is a forbidding and imposing building reminiscent of the library at the Unseen University (https://wiki.lspace.org/Library). Admittance to the Special Collections room is a rare privilege - I remember hearing rumours that all the best stuff is kept up in the "tower". Again, Wikipedia has a list of some of the really cool books there (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cambridge_University_Library#S...).

  • by pogue on 10/23/25, 7:34 PM

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