In this episode I’m joined by author and historian Dr Shane McCorristine, to talk about his 2018 book The Spectral Arctic: A History of Dreams and Ghosts in Polar Exploration.

In the book Shane's research ventures beyond the familiar concepts of Arctic exploration in the 19th Century and reveals a wealth of strange stories and supernatural phenomena encountered by people travelling to the frozen north, as they partook in missions to find the near mythical Northwest Passage.  Embodying that endeavour was the legendary Franklin expedition, whose disappearance in 1848 prompted rescue missions across the globe as well as the use of clairvoyants to try and locate the lost ships, HMS Terror and HMS Erebus. The fate of the crews of those vessels also inspired a host of macabre tales, both among the native peoples of the Arctic as well as back home in Britain, and these too play their part in understanding what Victorian society really considered the frozen north to be like.

For more information on Shane and his books please visit https://www.shanemccorristine.net/.

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