ABSTRACT
This chapter demonstrates how the modern ghost story has evolved in its relationship with science, firstly via the influence of visual science and the figure of the doctor, and secondly through the emergence of psychology and the seemingly haunted nature of the modern condition. Many Victorian ghost stories thus question vision’s status as the primary means of knowing the world, invoking invisible spectral presences or employing hallucinations to highlight the capriciousness of visual experience. Although psychology had existed as an “open discourse” from 1850 onwards, it was only in the late Victorian period that the rapid professionalization of the discipline reorientated and defined its methods and outlook. As Hilary Grimes notes, the term ‘typewriter’ during the Victorian period could refer to both a woman and a machine, and typewriting was often associated with both ‘automatic writing’ and “the New Woman, who often chose to work as a typist to earn a living”.
