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Long before ghost hunting shows hit our TV screens, Cambridge University had already become a hub for serious supernatural investigation. Home to secret societies, psychic scholars, and the world’s oldest paranormal research organisation, this ancient city has been at the heart of ghostly inquiry for nearly two centuries. In this article, we explore how Cambridge helped shape the modern world’s obsession with the afterlife.
It was within the cloisters of Trinity College in 1862 that two curious students launched what would become the oldest paranormal society in the world: The Ghost Club. Originally a semi-secret society, its goal was to investigate ghost sightings and other supernatural phenomena in a serious, systematic way.
Far from being fringe eccentrics, the club’s members included future bishops, scholars, and even a future Archbishop of Canterbury. They addressed each other as “Brother Ghost” and held annual meetings on November 2nd—All Souls’ Day. Once initiated, membership was for life… and the afterlife too.
In 1882, the desire to study paranormal phenomena expanded beyond college walls. A new organisation emerged from the university’s intellectual elite: the Society for Psychical Research (SPR), founded by Cambridge academics including philosopher Henry Sidgwick and his wife Eleanor Balfour. Their aim? To apply scientific methods to questions surrounding the existence of spirits, telepathy, and life after death.
One of their most famous efforts was the “Census of Hallucinations,” which collected over 17,000 personal accounts of ghost sightings and supernatural experiences. Their approach was rigorous and scholarly—and many within the society genuinely believed they were on the verge of proving the existence of the afterlife.
Several of Cambridge’s colleges played direct roles in these movements. Trinity, the cradle of The Ghost Club, has its own haunted rooms and legends—tales of ghostly children and cursed chambers that have driven students out in fear.
The Perrott-Warrick Fund, established at Trinity College in 1937, continues to this day. This endowment supports academic work into “phenomena which suggest the existence of supernatural powers of cognition or action in humans... or the persistence of the human mind after bodily death.” A real-world fund for investigating the unknown—founded in the very place where it all began.
Trinity College was also home to some of Britain’s most notorious and mystically-inclined figures. Lord Byron, who kept a bear in his rooms and may have inspired the aristocratic vampire trope, and Aleister Crowley, dubbed "the wickedest man in the world", both studied here. Crowley was said to have performed his first dark rituals in his rooms overlooking Trinity Lane, while Byron's eerie poetry and fascination with death still cast a long literary shadow.
For modern ghost hunters and curious minds, Cambridge remains a treasure trove. You can explore haunted sites, hear tales of psychic experiments and Victorian séances, and even walk the very paths where The Ghost Club once gathered.
The best way to experience it all? Join a guided ghost walk with Terrible Tours’ Creepy Cambridge Ghost Tour. You'll hear first-hand accounts, visit real haunted locations, and uncover the eerie academic history that put Cambridge at the centre of supernatural study.
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