Charles Dickens sought house where he would meet a real ghost

The kitchen at 48 Doughty Street, now the Charles Dickens Museum, and a portrait of the author. Photograph: Alamy, Siobhan Doran

For many people, a haunted house is a place to avoid. But in 1859, Charles Dickens was actively seeking a place where he might be “molested” by a ghost.

Dickens had a lifelong fascination with the paranormal – an interest reflected in the inclusion of spirits, spectres and phantoms in his stories. From October, it will be the subject of an exhibition at the house in central London where the author and his family lived in the late 1830s, now the Charles Dickens Museum.