I never met Trevor Hall, but I knew Eric J(ohn) Dingwall quite well and had many long talks with him. "Ding" was certainly an extreme critic with one or two eccentricities and obsessions of his own, but on the whole he was scrupulously fair and genuinely interested in psychical research. He was also one of the honest few who resigned from The Committee for the Scientific Investigation of Claims of the Paranormal (CSICOP) after the Gauquelin shambles.[1]
Some time in the mid 1980s, I remember him telling me that Hall had asked him to collaborate or help on a book debunking Fredric Myers, presumably as a sequel to Hall's hatchet job on Edmund Gurney.[2] Ding had huge respect for Myers and was horrified, backing off relations with Hall for good.
I don't recall anything specific Ding said about Borley. I think he felt Harry Price had become too much of a showman and publicity seeker after starting out as an excellent researcher, which indeed he was. I suspect that any negative contribution he may have made to the Borley Report may have been influenced by the extreme scepticism and negativity of Hall and Mrs. Goldney.
Ding may well have chagned his mind about poltergeists in general when a close relative of his had one in his home. When he told me about this I could see he was pretty shaken, and he said he couldn't possibly doubt the word of a kinsman. Pity this didn't happen earlier!
All I would add about Hall, at least on the record, is that in my experience, extreme sceptics often have nasty skeletons in their cupboards - often a parent or relative who "dabbled in the occult" with unfortunate results. People do not become as negative and destructive as he was without reason.
© June 2002 Guy Lyon Playfair
notes by Vincent O'Neil
1. Michel Gauquelin. French psychologist and writer. Wrote Cosmic Clocks in 1967, which "served as part of the catalyst for the formation of CSICOP, which began a project to refute the data. . . . the committee falsified the results." Encyclopedia of Occultism and Parapsychology, 4th edition, pp. 509-10. This became known as the "Starbaby scandal."
2. The Strange Case of Edmund Gurney. London: Duckworth, 1964.