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Sir Arthur Conan Doyle (1859-1930)

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Best known as the creator of Sherlock Holmes. Doyle was a committed Spiritualist and spent a great deal of time and money promoting the cause. By modern standards he spent £5 million of his own money in doing so! In 1879 he lived at Clifton House, Aston Road, Birmingham and worked as a chemist for Dr. Reginald Ratcliffe, earning £2 a month. The house is no longer there.

Sir Oliver Lodge (1851-1940)

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Born in Stoke-on-Trent. Professor of Physics at Liverpool University (1881-1900) and from 1900 to 1919 he was Principal of the newly created Birmingham University. He lived at a house called Mariemont on Westbourne Road, Birmingham. Visitors to the house included George Bernard Shaw, the scientist and psychical researcher, Charles Richet and the renowned medium Leonora Piper. Lodge is best remembered for his work on physics, especially radiation and the relation between matter and ether. His inventions on Hertzian waves led him to invent a coherer which he used to accomplish wireless telegraphy before Marconi. Sir Oliver Lodge was President of the Society for Psychical Research and a leading and influential psychical researcher and proponent of survival after death.

Daniel Douglas Home (1833-1886)

1860s drawing of Douglas Home levitating

Probably the most celebrated physical medium of all time. He levitated tables and even himself in good visible conditions infront of eminent witnesses. Home stayed at the well known hydropathic clinic at Malvern run by Dr. James Gully. It was Gully who introduced Home to the scientist and psychical researcher Sir William Crookes.

Harry Price (1881 - 1948)

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Without doubt the best known "ghost hunter" of all time. Price is best remembered for his flamboyant investigation methods, especially of Borley Rectory in Essex. Price was born in Shrewsbury, and in 1896 he took part in his first ghost hunt at The Lees, Walcot, near Withington in Shropshire. The outcome of the investigation was the unmasking of a fraudulent poltergeist which fell down the stairs, blinded by a camera flash which Price had set up!