Despite supernatural scepticism, stories about spirits were regularly printed and shared throughout the 18th and 19th centuries. This case-study in the transmission of a single story (of a young gunsmith near Bristol conjuring spirits, leading to his early death) reveals both how and why successive generations found meaning in such accounts.

Frontispiece 1. Introduction 2. Thomas Perks and his Circle 3. Arthur Bedford and his Circle 4. The Second Phase: Bristol and London 1760-79 5. Evangelical Publishing 6. Astrologers 7. The Nineteenth Century: Medicine, Spiritualism and Christianity 8. Conclusion 9. Appendix Select Bibliography

Jonathan Barry is Professor of Early Modern History and a Wellcome Trust Senior Investigator in medical humanities at Exeter University, UK. He has published widely in urban, social, cultural, religious and medical history, including Witchcraft and Demonology in South-West England 1640-1789 (Palgrave Macmillan, 2012) and edited many books including Witchcraft in Early Modern Europe (1996) and (with Owen Davies) Palgrave Advances in Witchcraft Historiography (Palgrave Macmillan, 2007).