Although Price claimed his birth was in Shropshire he was actually born in London in Red Lion Square[1] on the site of the South Place Ethical Society's Conway Hall.

[6] At 15, Price founded the Carlton Dramatic Society[7] and wrote plays, including a drama, about his early experience with a poltergeist[8] which he said took place at a haunted unnamed manor house in Shropshire.

He set up a receiver and transmitter between Telegraph Hill, Lewisham and St Peter's Church Brockley and captured a spark on a photographic plate.

In 1910 Professor Francis J. Haverfield of Oxford University, the country's foremost expert on Roman history and a Fellow of the Royal Academy, declared the ingot to be a fake.

[12] At the start of the First World War he attempted to enlist for service but was medically rejected because of heart strain though he offered the Royal Flying Corps assistance with colour filters for aerial photography.

[18][19] In the same year he travelled to Germany together with Eric Dingwall and investigated Willi Schneider at the home of Baron Albert von Schrenck-Notzing in Munich.

[21] Price wrote that the photographs depicting the ectoplasm of the medium Eva Carrière taken with Schrenck-Notzing looked artificial and two-dimensional, as if made from cardboard and newspaper portraits, and that there were no scientific controls as both her hands were free.

[29][30] Price exposed Frederick Tansley Munnings, who claimed to produce the independent "spirit" voices of Julius Caesar, Dan Leno, Hawley Harvey Crippen and King Henry VIII.

[35] Price's psychical research continued with investigations into Karachi's Indian rope trick and the fire-walking abilities of Kuda Bux in 1935.

This year also saw the transfer of Price's library on permanent loan to the University of London (see external links below), followed shortly by the laboratory and investigative equipment.

In 1937, he conducted further televised experiments into fire-walking with Ahmed Hussain at Carshalton and Alexandra Palace, and also rented Borley Rectory for one year.

The following year, Price re-established the Ghost Club, with himself as chairman, modernising it and changing it from a spiritualist association to a group of more or less open-minded sceptics that gathered to discuss paranormal topics.

[38] Doyle threatened to have Price evicted from his laboratory and claimed if he persisted to write "sewage" about spiritualists, he would meet the same fate as Houdini.

[43] Price did not come to any definite conclusion about Garrett and the séances: It is not my intention to discuss if the medium were really controlled by the discarnate entity of Irwin, or whether the utterances emanated from her subconscious mind or those of the sitters.

[45] However, the researcher Melvin Harris who studied the case wrote no secret accomplice was needed as the information described in Garrett's séances were "either commonplace, easily absorbed bits and pieces, or plain gobbledegook.

"[41] In the 1920s and early 1930s Price investigated the medium Rudi Schneider in a number of experiments conducted at the National Laboratory of Psychical Research.

[55] Duncan reacted violently at attempts to X-ray her, running from the laboratory and making a scene in the street, where her husband had to restrain her, destroying the controlled nature of the test.

It proved to be paper, soaked in white of egg, and folded into a flattened tube ... Could anything be more infantile than a group of grown-up men wasting time, money, and energy on the antics of a fat female crook.

[57] In his report Price published photographs of Duncan in his laboratory that revealed fake ectoplasm made from cheesecloth, rubber gloves and cut-out heads from magazine covers which she pretended to her audience were spirits.

[59] In 1932, Price travelled to Mount Brocken in Germany with C. E. M. Joad and members of the National Laboratory to conduct a 'black magic' experiment in connection with the centenary of Goethe.

"[61][62] In July 1935 Price and his friend Richard Lambert went to the Isle of Man to investigate the alleged case of Gef the talking mongoose and produced the book The Haunting of Cashen's Gap (1936).

[64] Price asked Reginald Pocock of the Natural History Museum to evaluate pawprints allegedly made by Gef in plasticine together with an impression of his supposed tooth marks.

[70] The "Borley Report", as the SPR study has become known, stated that many of the phenomena were either faked or due to natural causes such as rats and the strange acoustics attributed to the odd shape of the house.

In their conclusion, Dingwall, Goldney, and Hall wrote "when analysed, the evidence for haunting and poltergeist activity for each and every period appears to diminish in force and finally to vanish away.

This novel was subsequently adapted for television as Harry Price: Ghost Hunter, starring Rafe Spall, Cara Theobold and Richie Campbell.

Price was suspicious that the supposed spirit of the child was no different than a human being but after the séance had finished the starch powder was undisturbed and none of the seals had been removed on the window.

[76] Eric Dingwall and Trevor Hall wrote the Rosalie séance was fictitious and Price had lied about the whole affair but had based some of the details on the description of the house from a sitting he attended at a much earlier time in Brockley, South London where he used to live.

According to Wiseman "Price devoted the scientific study to weird stuff ... that both delighted the world's media and infuriated believers and sceptics alike.

"[81] The stage magician and scientific sceptic James Randi wrote Price accomplished some valuable and genuine research but lived "a strange mixture of fact and fraud.

[85] The latest biography by Richard Morris (2006) is also critical, concluding that Price should best be remembered as a "supreme bluffer, a hedonistic con man, a terrific raconteur, a great conjuror, a gifted writer and a wonderful eccentric.