Harry Price is one of the most well known figures in 20th century psychical research; a maverick investigator who created controversy, both within the Spiritualist movement and in the world of organised paranormal inquiry. With his National Laboratory he investigated the most famous mediums of the inter-war period including Helen Duncan and the Schneider brothers. After his death in 1948, Price was accused of fraud in what remains his most famous inquiry — the haunting of Borley Rectory, and his research remains both inspirational and problematic.

Of all of his investigations, the case of the spirit child, ‘Rosalie’ is the most astonishing and controversial. In 1939, Harry Price claimed to have visited a house in London where he experienced the solid materialisation of a six-year-old girl who had been dead for over fifteen years. Was Price telling the truth, or had he been duped by scheming fraudsters? Was ‘Rosalie’ genuine evidence of the reality of life after death and spirit materialisation, or not?

In The Enigma of Rosalie, Paul Adams, co-author of The Borley Rectory Companion, offers the most detailed study undertaken of Harry Price and ‘Rosalie’. Extensively researched from public and private collections, this book finally reveals the truth behind one of psychical research’s most enduring and engaging mysteries.

Paul Adams was born and grew up in south-west London. Through an eclectic mix of children’s fiction, Hammer Films and visits to haunted houses, he has been interested in psychical research and the paranormal since the 1970s. Personal experience in both public and private home circles also created a specific interest in physical mediumship and similar séance room phenomena.

He has written articles on mediumship for Psychic News and Paranormal magazine and is the co-author of The Borley Rectory Companion (2009) and Shadows in the Nave (2011), a guide to the haunted churches of England, as well as Ghosts & Gallows (2012), an account of true crime cases and the paranormal, Written in Blood (2014), a history of vampirism in British culture, and several regional books of British hauntings. He lives in Luton, Bedfordshire.