Séances, Suicides, and Spiritualism: AJ West discusses a true scandal in Edwardian Belfast

AJ West stops by to discuss the thrillingly dark true story that inspired his début novel, "The Spirit Engineer". In the summer of 1920, a professor's suicide in the northern Irish seaside town of Bangor lifted the lid on a Belfast Spiritualist church headed by a working-class blouse cutter called Kathleen Goligher, who attracted the attention of Sir Arthur Conan Doyle and Harry Houdini with her claims to be able to speak to the Dead. Now, this forgotten drama, long overshadowed by the "Titanic," the First World War, and the creation of Northern Ireland, takes centre stage - and I found it so interesting to discuss the truth behind the scandal with AJ. We also have a first - a short dramatisation from "The Spirit Engineer" for our listeners - voiced by actors Cáilum Carragher and Ashley Montgomery.