Skeletal remains rotting behind cellar walls, temple priests removing brains with iron hooks, phantom locomotives roaring across midnight plains—Brian Righi isn't making this stuff up. The ghost stories he finds in history are far more chilling than any Hollywood horror scene. Join the seasoned paranormal investigator on a tour through mankind's millennium-old obsession with death and the afterlife. Ghosts, Apparitions and Poltergeists surveys 4,000 years of hauntings and ghost huntings—from the embalming rituals of ancient Egypt to the Ouija boards and séances of nineteenth century Spiritualism—highlighting a few outlandish tales and colorful characters along the way. Once you've learned the history, launch a paranormal investigation of your own with Righi's guide to modern ghost hunting, full of detailed advice culled from his seven years of experience in the field.

Few people can claim the distinction of experiencing first-hand such occurrences as hauntings and the presence of poltergeists, but countless numbers of people are fascinated by these unexplainable events. Written by the world's most knowledgeable authorities in this field, the essays in this work promote a better understanding of the manifestations of and various reasons for hauntings and poltergeist phenomena. The experts come from such backgrounds as anthropology, history, philosophy, psychiatry, and sociology, and provide sober yet highly readable in-depth discussions of numerous ideas and rationalizations for hauntings and poltergeists, from a critical and scientific perspective. Divided into three major sections--sociocultural, physical and physiological, and psychological perspectives--this work provides an overview of each perspective and also addresses the general psychology of belief in the paranormal and how that belief relates to experiences with ghosts and poltergeists.

Explores stories and legends of ghosts, poltergeists, and hauntings, including discussion of saeances and ghost hunting.

Ghosts traces the cultural and literary origins of the paranormal, reveals the secrets behind many mysterious myths and legends, and analyzes our continued fascination with visitors from the other side. With chapters on the origins of ghosts, poltergeists, ghosts from around the world, exorcism, haunted houses, and more, this book will keep you on the edge of your seat. Belief in ghosts is nothing new. Uncertainty surrounding death is part of the human condition and the existence of an afterlife is deeply rooted in most worldwide cultures and religions. In Taoism and Buddhism, the Hungry Ghost Festival celebrates the belief that, once a year, ghosts and spirits are released from the afterlife and walk among the living. In the west, ghost stories were established in ancient folklore and tend to embrace the same classic themes as today's horror movies: romance, tragedy, and terror. Writers of antiquity used ghosts and hauntings as a way to provide background information or foretell coming events, and Shakespeare, the father of English literature, used the same techniques in his plays. Glamis Castle, the infamous haunted Scottish setting for Shakespeare's Macbeth, is said to be on of the most nerve-wracking places on earth—but are these feelings imagined or real? At one time or another, most people have experienced a creepy, spine tingling, someone's watching you sort of sensation that they can't explain. Scientists may try to account for these fears by attributing them to the natural fear of the unknown. Cold spots are nothing more than an open window and creaking floorboards are nothing more than old wood shifting in place. Regardless, millions of people believe that there is much more to these strange phenomenons than can be explained by modern science. And really, who can say that they're wrong? Be informed, entertained, and frightened by this comprehensive volume about "the other side."

This is a new release of the original 1953 edition.

Apparitions, Hauntings and Poltergeists - Ghosts - Have Fascinated philosophers and scientists for millennia. Parapsychologists have made significant inroads into understanding what is really going on. Hauntings seem to be a kind of recording that becomes attached to a place or object and keeps replaying. Poltergeist is a kind of paranormal stress relief valve. Dubbed noisy ghosts, poltergeists are actually the manifestation of rage or another intense emotion of an "agent" who is often, but not always, a teenager.

In graphic novel format, illustrates three cases of humans interacting with ghosts or poltergeists.

The story of violent ghost phenomena through the ages. The poltergeist of 'noisy ghost' phenomenon is commonly thought to be the result of a dead person's angry spirit expressing that anger by violence in the physical world, or the projected energies of an emotionally volatile human being, often a teenager. In fact, poltergeists are more interesting than either of those suggested explanations, because they are actually something of a mystery. Are they spirits of some kind, natural or anomalous forms of energy, or the products of trickery or self-delusion, or something else altogether? This account sets out to seek answers to those and other questions by providing examples of poltergeist activity from late antiquity to the present day, and discussing who recorded them, why, and for what kind of audience. It also clarifies the mystery and presents the reader with explanations of increasingly common, well-documented and intriguing manifestations of apparently paranormal phenomena.

What poltergeist accounts through the ages reveal about our own worldviews • Provides a wide array of case studies from ancient Greece and Rome to medieval Europe to the modern world • Explores the relationship between poltergeists and troubled adolescence • Looks beneath the Christian adulteration of pagan practices to reveal the hidden ancestral beliefs tied to poltergeists and haunted houses Stories of poltergeists and their mischievous and sometimes violent actions--knocking, stone or chair throwing, moving objects with invisible hands, and slamming or opening doors--are a constant through the ages. What changes is how we interpret this activity. For our pagan ancestors this phenomenon was caused by helper spirits whose manifestations revealed their unhappiness with a household. The medieval Christian church demonized these once helpful spirits and held exorcisms to expel them from the houses they haunted--which proved effective less than half the time. The Age of Enlightenment cast these incidents as clever hoaxes, and many still believe this today. But poltergeist manifestations continue to appear and often defy attempts to debunk them as pranks. What then is behind this phenomenon? Exploring accounts of poltergeists from ancient Greece and Rome, medieval Europe, and the modern world, Claude Lecouteux finds that while our interpretations of poltergeists may change, the manifestations always follow a similar course and evolution. He shows how modern scientific studies of poltergeist manifestations have found a strong tie between these visitations and the presence of a troubled adolescent in the house. Looking beneath the Christian adulteration of pagan practices to reveal the hidden ancestral beliefs tied to poltergeists and haunted houses, the author shows how these unhappy spirits serve as confirmation of the supernatural beings that share the earth with us and of our relationship with the natural and unseen world, a relationship we must take care to keep in balance.