The Haunted: A Social History of Ghosts

Owen Davies traces how ghosts have been perceived, encountered and discussed from the medieval period to the present. Rather than assembling a catalogue of famous hauntings, he examines the social settings in which apparitions are reported, the geography of haunting and the practices used by people seeking evidence of spirits.

The book also considers competing explanations, including psychological interpretations, alongside the ways ghosts are represented through imitation, projection, theatre and literature. Its historical account follows changing attitudes towards belief, with particular attention to 19th-century spiritualism and the continuing presence of psychics in modern culture. Ghost stories appear here as evidence of changing ideas about society, memory, death and the boundaries of credible experience.