The Haunting of Alma Fielding

The Haunting of Alma Fielding reconstructs a reported 1938 poltergeist case in suburban Croydon, where crockery and eggs were said to fly, jewellery appeared on Alma’s fingers, and white mice emerged from her handbag. The incidents attracted newspaper attention and brought Nandor Fodor, a Hungarian investigator with the International Institute for Psychical Research, to the Fielding home.

Kate Summerscale follows Fodor’s increasingly intense enquiry while tracing Alma’s personal history and the pressures surrounding her. Drawing on archival material, the book considers how reports of supernatural events became entangled with trauma, alienation, loss and revenge. Its setting is a London overshadowed by fascism and the approaching war, placing a celebrated haunting within the anxieties of late-1930s Britain.