Dr Rosemarie Pilkington’s book divides into three sections. The first documents, mostly in his own words, the experiences of the late Gilbert Roller and a few New York friends who held regular séances from 1929, when Roller was only 14, to 1934. These must have been highly precocious teenagers, capable of devouring texts by the likes of Thomas Jay Hudson, as well as FWH Myers, Charles Richet, Cesare Lobroso and Albert von Schrenck-Notzing, plus the publications of the Society for Psychical Research.

The boys were dedicated to the task and a core of half a dozen, with a floating periphery, sat regularly. One of the members was Montague Ullman, later to become a noted parapsychologist and founder of the Maimonides Dream Laboratory. Ullman has written his own account of his experiences with the group and also ensured that surviving materials created during séances were donated to the Parapsychology Foundation in New York.

Sittings generated a variety of phenomena: table levitation, raps, direct writing, and most notably a rather grumpy entity called ‘Dr Bindelof’, the primary communicator, who made himself useful by providing healing and medical advice. They produced thoughtographs, of which examples are shown, and they managed to take Dr Bindelof’s portrait. He eventually lost patience with the youthful participants and vanished in a huff, just as they were ready to move on to other pursuits and rather losing interest in the project.

The Bindelof section only takes up 70 pages of the book. Pilkington next provides a history of physical mediumship to set the group’s activities in a wider context, briefly recounting some well-known stories – the Fox sisters, DD Home, Katie King, Eusapia Palladino – and less familiar, Franek Kluski, Indridi Indridason.

The third part covers more recent manifestations of curious talents, though not all of them mediumistic ones, such as Helen Duncan, Nina Kulagina, Ted Serios, the Toronto ‘Philip’ group, SORRAT – whose fishtanks were spoofed so beautifully by SPR vice-president Tony Cornell – the Scole investigation, and Pilkington’s ex-husband Nick (“a person of average intelligence” he will be pleased to hear). Finally she draws together points from all of these case studies to give useful advice to any readers who feel inclined to try sittings themselves, and provides some rather cursory sources for further reading, significantly not including the heavyweights that Roller and his colleagues absorbed.

Pilkington and Roller both concluded that the phenomena were probably produced by the sitters’ subconsciousnesses rather than by discarnate entities, but whatever the source, unless wholesale fraud was carried out, these sittings remain an intriguing mystery.

Pilkington is in no doubt that paranormal phenomena are possible and she can be sniffy about sceptics. She is very unkind about the early investigator Richard Hodgson, who tended to extreme scepticism (until, that is, he met mental medium Mrs Piper, whom Pilkington fails to mention); and although more recent criticisms by Professor Richard Wiseman of a Palladino investigation in Naples are alluded to, she cannot bring herself to repeat his name.

One is left with the feeling that Pilkington could have subjected the phenomena recorded by Roller and Co to closer scrutiny, but she has provided a useful service in rescuing their work from obscurity, presenting a very readable portrait of testosterone-filled youngsters (as we are frequently told) who chose to spend their Saturday evenings sitting in the dark around a table, conjuring up the peevish Dr Bindelof.