Elliott O’Donnell: Was he a Legitimate Ghosthunter or fake?

Elliott O’Donnell is known as one of history’s greatest ghosthunters – or was he just a paranormal embellisher, says CHRISTINE MILLER 

Even in death, O’Donnell continues to be a contentious figure in the paranormal world.

Born in Bristol in 1872, O’Donnell became fascinated by ghosts at a young age after an alleged paranormal experience when he was a child.

As a young adult, he began writing ghost stories before progressing onto paranormal investigations.

There have been numerous reports that O’Donnell overdramatised what he reported throughout his years as a self-titled ghost hunter.

Elliott O’Donnell died on 8 May, 1965, at the age of 93. However, his legacy continues to endure some 60 years after his death. 

Elliot O’Donnell’s Foretold Death 

Described by P.G. Wodehouse as “the Sherlock Holmes of the ghost world”, O’Donnell’s obsession with the paranormal was cemented when he was just a five year old boy.

What he experienced at this tender age, he claimed was an elemental.

Somewhat unsurprisingly after that, Elliott O’Donnell grew into being of a nervous disposition; the dark and the paranormal were the two things young Elliot feared above all else, yet he remained utterly fascinated by the latter. 

As an adult, and after some years in America, O’Donnell made Cornwall his home, and it is here he wrote his first novel For Satan’s Sake, which was published in 1905.

Residing in England however, did nothing to quash his immense pride in his Celtic heritage, and of the supposed family banshee which would emit a bloodcurdling wail when one of his kinfolk was about to expire.

The story goes that when Elliott O’Donnell was only days old, his mother and the servants awoke to hear a stomach-churning screaming coming from just outside of the O’Donnell family home.

Bewildered, O’Donnell’s mother questioned to one of the servants what the noise could be, with the servant ominously replying that it was a Banshee who had come to tell of the death of one of the O’Donnells.

What was even more chilling was the fact that the wailing would, at times, transcribe into spoken word, but the collective group were wholly unable to understand what the screaming banshee was saying – only an O’Donnell by blood would understand what doom it was foretelling, 

Sure enough, in the next few days, news soon arrived to the O’Donnell family that Harry O’Donnell had been murdered during a robbery in Abyssinia the same that the banshee visited. 

Spooky fishing trip in Ireland

Another spooky experience Elliott O’Donnell had as an adult was on a fishing trip in Ireland.

He enlisted the help of a local fisherman to take him to a particularly scenic fishing point and agreed to collect him later that evening.

While fishing, O’Donnell claimed that the water began to separate and the distinct face of an old friend, who had drowned appeared to him.

Later when the fisherman collected O’Donnell, he asked him specifically if he had anything untoward occur during his afternoon down at the river.

When O’Donnell explained what he saw, the fisherman explained to him that his occurrence would be witnessed by anyone of Irish decent who would succumb to an unnatural death. 

The paranormal, it seems, was never far from Elliot’s consciousness. This might have been to do with his deeply held belief that the Celts were a more spiritual people, and supposedly predisposed to sensing the paranormal around them.

While writing ghost stories, O’Donnell decided that he would also like to attempt to be ghost hunter.

Somewhat eclipsed by his contemporary, Harry Price, O’Donnell can however lay claim to being the first ‘celebrity’ ghost hunter. He was wanted up and down the country to conduct investigations and lay on talks about his work.

Was O’Donnell a hoaxer?

It has widely been thought that O’Donnell fabricated many paranormal events he claimed to have borne witness to as a ghost hunter, or at the very least embellish them with an additional pinch of spooky poetic licence.

His approach was not deemed to be objectively rigorous enough for the scientific community. Certainly, the Society of Psychical Research (SPR) never approached him to work with them, perhaps due to the added fact that he was at one time employing actors to actually stage hauntings.  

One such legend that Elliott O’Donnell was said to have fictionalised was the now famous story of two sailors who, in 1887, stayed the night in 50 Berkeley Square, London, only for one to die as he fled the house in terror, while the one who lived to tell the tale, told of seeing an angry spectre approaching both men. 

Elliot O’Donnell perhaps summed his life as a ghost hunter most effectively when he stated:

“I lay no claim to being what is termed a scientific psychical researcher. I am not a member of any August society that conducts its investigations of the other world, or worlds, with the test tube and weighing apparatus; neither do I pretend to be a medium or clairvoyant — I have never undertaken to “raise” ghosts at will for the sensation-seeker or the tourist.

I am merely a ghost hunter. One who lays stake by his own eyes and senses; one who honestly believes he inherits in some  degree the faculty of psychic perceptiveness from a long line of Celtic ancestry; and who is, and always has been, deeply and genuinely interested in all questions relative to phantasms and a continuance of individual life after physical dissolution.”

O’Donnell’s Legacy 

The fascination with O’Donnell endures almost 60 years after his death.

His personal archives sold for £25,000 at auction in 2016, and included a lock of his own hair, and numerous private letters.

Somewhat surprisingly, this collection seems to suggest that O’Donnell had more of an appreciation for scientific research of the paranormal that has previously been suggested. 

The auction listing lists O’Donnell as a “lecturer, broadcaster, rancher, criminologist, genealogist, Irish patriot, stage and film actor”.

Certainly, Elliott O’Donnell was a man of many talents, but whether or not he was as legitimate a ghost hunter as he might have liked to be been seen as, we may never know. 

Here’s the collection of Elliot O’Donnell books:

• For Satan’s Sake (1904)
• Unknown Depths (1905)
• Some Haunted Houses (1908)
• Haunted Houses of London (1909)
• Reminiscences of Mrs.E. M. Ward (1910)
• Byways of Ghostland (1911)
• The Meaning of Dreams (1911)
• Scottish Ghost Stories (1912)
• The Sorcery Club (1912)
• Werewolves (1912)
• Animal Ghosts (1913)
• Ghostly Phenomena (1913)
• Haunted Highways and Byways (1914)
• The Irish Abroad (1915)
• Twenty Years’ Experience as a Ghost Hunter (1916)
• The Haunted Man (1917)
• Spiritualism Explained (1917)
• Fortunes (1918)
• Haunted Places in England (1919)
• Menace of Spiritualism (1920)
• More Haunted Houses of London (1920)
• Ghosts, Helpful and Harmful (1924)
• The Banshee (1907)
• Strange Disappearances (1927)
• Strange Sea Mysteries (1926)
• Confessions of a Ghost Hunter (1928)
• Great Thames Mysteries (1929)
• Famous Curses (1929)
• Fatal Kisses (1929)
• The Boys’ Book of Sea Mysteries (1930) Dodd, Mead & Company
• Rooms of Mystery (1931) London: Philip Allan & Co. Ltd.
• Ghosts of London (1932)
• The Devil in the Pulpit (1932)
• Family Ghosts (1934)
• Strange Cults & Secret Societies of Modern London (1934)
• Spookerisms; Twenty-five Weird Happenings (1936)
• Haunted Churches (1939)
• Ghosts with a Purpose (1952)
• Dead Riders (1953)
• Dangerous Ghosts (1954)
• Phantoms of the Night (1956)
• Haunted Waters, and Trees of Ghostly Dread (1958)
• The Unlucky Theatre
• Haunted Britain

Have you read any of Elliott O’Donnell’s works? Tell us what you thought in the comments section below?