Ghosts?

As far as we can look back into our past, humanity has both interacted with and been haunted by the spirits of the dead. The tales of apparitions and hauntings pervade not only our most popular art but also our psyche; seemingly everyone has a ghost story to tell. While modern skepticism waves away ghosts as being merely the product of fear and imagination, many these days are saying that it is not so simple. Ghosts still have much to tell us, if we allow ourselves to be willingly haunted by the ideas that they bring forth.

I also released a 90 minute follow up episode to this show on my Patreon. If you’d like to hear a few personal ghost stories as well as a few further thoughts regarding some of the things I bring up in this show, Patreon is the place to head to!

Show Notes and Book Recommendations

• A History of Ghosts, Spirits and the Supernatural – This is an exceptional book. If Ghosts and spirits are interesting to you, grab it
• Ghosts: A Natural History by Roger Clarke – Great work, well worth reading
• The Haunted: A Social History of Ghosts by Owen Davies – Excellent read
• Will Storr Vs. the Supernatural: One Man’s Search for the Truth about Ghosts by Will Storr- One of my favourite books that I’ve read in the last 5 years, absolute must read
• Ghosts: A History of Phantoms, Ghouls & Other Spirits of the Dead by P. G. Maxwell-Stuart
• The Siren Call of Hungry Ghosts: A Riveting Investigation Into Channeling and Spirit Guides by Joe Fisher – Excellent book
• Manifesting Spirits: An Anthropological Study of Mediumship and the Paranormal by Jack Hunter – Must Read
• Engaging the Anomalous: Collected Essays on Anthropology, the Paranormal, Mediumship and Extraordinary Experience by Jack Hunter
• The First Ghosts: Most Ancient of Legacies by Irvin Finkel – Also check out Dr. Finkel’s appearance on Glitch Bottle
• Care to read an early 1800s Book on apparitions? Here you go!
• Ghosts: Appearances of the Dead & Cultural Transformation by Ronald C. Finucane
• The Secret History of Poltergeists and Haunted Houses: From Pagan Folklore to Modern Manifestations by Claude Lecouteaux
• The Departed Among the Living: An Investigative Study of Afterlife Encounters by Erlendur Haraldsson PhD
• Intrusions: Society and the Paranormal by Hilary Evans
• Ghosts, Spirits, and Psychics: The Paranormal from Alchemy to Zombies by Matt Cardin – good stuff
• Hauntings and Poltergeists: Multidisciplinary Perspectives
• The Encyclopedia of Parapsychology by Courtney Block
• This House is Haunted: The True Story of the Enfield Poltergeist by Guy Lyon Playfair – A touch dated but still a worthy read
• Enfield Poltergeist – Really great 2007 no-nonsense documentary
• The Enfield Poltergeist – 2023 Documentary
• The Scole Experiment
• The Battersea Poltergeist – BBC Podcast – This is an absolutely bonkers haunting. Worth your time
• Testimony: The Terrifying Story of Britain’s Most Haunted House by Mark Chadbourne
• The above story was turned into a BBC Podcast series called The Witch Farm
• Phantasmagoria: Spirit Visions, Metaphors, and Media Into the Twenty-First Century by Marina Warner – A somewhat idiosyncratic read
• The Contribution of Apparitions to the Evidence for Survival by Ian Stevenson
• Apparitions, ghosts, and mediumistic communications
• Ghosts and Apparitions in Psi Research
• Ghosts of Place and Spirits of War: Spectral Belief in Early Modern England and Protestant Germany
• The Return of the Dead: Ghosts, Ancestors, and the Transparent Veil of the Pagan Mind by Claude Lecouteaux
• Fate of the Dead: A Study in Folk-Eschatology in the West Country After the Reformation by Theo Brown – A recommendation from Dr. Al Cummins
• The Haunted House Handbook by D. Scott Rogo
• Apparitions by G. N. M. Tyrell
• Human personality and its survival of bodily death by Frederic Myers- A Classic!
• Phantasms of the Living by Edmund Gurney – Another Classic!
• ESP, Hauntings and Poltergeists: A Parapsychologist’s Handbook by Loyd Auerbach M S
• The Field Guide to North American Hauntings: Everything You Need to Know About Encountering Over 100 Ghosts, Phantoms, and Spectral Entities
• The Element Encyclopedia of Ghosts & Hauntings : The Ultimate A-Z of Spirits, Mysteries and the Paranormal by Theresa Cheung
• Encyclopedia of Haunted Places, Revised Edition: Ghostly Locales from Around the World by Jeff Belanger
• The Ghost Handbook by John & Anne Spencer
• Unquiet Voices: The Magical Art of Laying Ghosts by Noine & Rob Douglas – An interesting read with some interesting practical advice and some archaic cosmology of the dead/soul
• Subtle Spirits: A Handbook of Hauntings, Spirits, and Mediumship by Keith Miller
• Nimataion · Talk with Douglas Batchelor on his favourite Story when he was younger – Screaming Skulls!
• Lafcadio Hearn