Michigan's beautiful Upper Peninsula plays host to some of the state's most spine-tingling ghost stories. At Old Victoria, a ghostly apparition continues to rock in her favorite chair. Visitors can still hear the screams of miners trapped and killed in the wreckage of the Mansfield Mine disaster. Trampled to death over false claims of fire, the victims of the Italian Hall Disaster linger on in Calumet. And Mackinac is home to more than one hundred ghosts, making the island one of the state's most haunted places.

Given the popularity of television shows such as Finding Bigfoot, Ghost Hunters, Supernatural, and American Horror Story, there seems to be an insatiable public hunger for mystical happenings. But who believes in the paranormal? Drawing on these diverse and compelling sources of data, the book offers an engaging account of the social, personal, and statistical stories of American paranormal beliefs and experiences.

Interest in preternatural and supernatural themes has revitalized the Gothic tale, renewed explorations of psychic powers and given rise to a host of social and religious movements based upon claims of the fantastical. And yet, in spite of this widespread enthusiasm, the academic world has been slow to study this development. This volume rectifies this gap in current scholarship by serving as an interdisciplinary overview of the relationship of the paranormal to the artifacts of mass media (e.g. novels, comic books, and films) as well as the cultural practices they inspire.

In this volume, ghost stories are studied in the context of their media, their place in history and geography. From prehistory to this day, we have been haunted by our memories, the past itself, by inklings of the future, by events playing outside our lives, and by ourselves. Hence the lure of ghost stories throughout history and presumably prehistory. Science has been a great destroyer of myth and superstition, but at the same time it has created new black boxes which we are filling with our ghostly imagination. In this book, literature from the Middle Ages to Oscar Wilde and Neil Gaiman, children's stories, folklore and films, ranging from the Antarctic and Russia to Haiti, are covered and show the continuing presence of spectral phenomena.

Many people have experienced such unusual phenomena as dreams that later seem to correspond with unforeseeable events, thinking of a long-lost friend just before he or she unexpectedly calls, or the ability to "feel" the presence of deceased loved ones. What many do not realize is that these types of experiences have been researched for more than a century by eminent scientists, including Nobel laureates. Most of these researchers have concluded that some of these phenomena do occur, although we are far from explaining them to everyone's satisfaction. This book is the first in almost 40 years to provide a comprehensive scientific overview of research in the field of parapsychology, explaining what we know and don't know about so-called psi phenomena, such as "telepathy," "precognition" or "psychokinesis."

In this book Tiya Miles explores the popular yet troubling phenomenon of "ghost tours," frequently promoted and experienced at plantations, urban manor homes, and cemeteries throughout the South. As a staple of the tours, guides entertain paying customers by routinely relying on stories of enslaved black specters. But who are these ghosts? Examining popular sites and stories from these tours, Miles shows that haunted tales routinely appropriate and skew African American history to produce representations of slavery for commercial gain. "Dark tourism" often highlights the most sensationalist and macabre aspects of slavery, from salacious sexual ties between white masters and black women slaves to the physical abuse and torture of black bodies to the supposedly exotic nature of African spiritual practices. Because the realities of slavery are largely absent from these tours, Miles reveals how they continue to feed problematic "Old South" narratives and erase the hard truths of the Civil War era. In an incisive and engaging work, Miles uses these troubling cases to shine light on how we feel about the Civil War and race, and how the ghosts of the past are still with us.

The imagined ghosts of Native Americans have been an important element of colonial fantasy in North America ever since European settlements were established in the seventeenth century. Native burial grounds and Native ghosts have long played a role in both regional and local folklore and in the national literature of the United States and Canada, as settlers struggled to create a new identity for themselves that melded their European heritage with their new, North American frontier surroundings. In this interdisciplinary volume, Colleen E. Boyd and Coll Thrush bring together scholars from a variety of fields to discuss this North American fascination with "the phantom Native American."

The central theme of this volume is to re-examine the received concepts and images of ghosts in various religious cultures ranging from the Ancient Near East and Egypt to the Old Testament, the Classical Era, Early Medieval and Early Modern Europe, Early India, and Medieval China. As a religious phenomenon, the realm of ghosts has been less studied than the realm of the divine. Through a collaborative effort by scholars from different disciplines, this volume proposes a multi-cultural approach to construct a wider and complicated picture of the phenomenon of ghosts and spirits in human societies and to have a grasp of the various problems involved in understanding the phenomenon of ghost.

Ghost stories aren't always the province of creaky old Victorian hotels and medieval palaces. This fascinating collection brings together some traditional tales of the supernatural from China. If you're a horror buff who's looking to expand your horizons a bit, Some Chinese Ghosts is a must-read.

The Japanese have ambivalent attitudes toward death, deeply rooted in pre-Buddhist traditions. In this scholarly but accessible work, authors Iwasaka and Toelken show that everyday beliefs and customs--particularly death traditions--offer special insight into the living culture of Japan.

How does it feel to live in a 'haunted home'? How do people negotiate their everyday lives with the experience of uncanny, anomalous or strange events within the domestic interior? What do such experiences reveal of the intersection between the material, immaterial and temporal within the home? How do people interpret, share and narrate experiences which are uncertain and unpredictable? What does this reveal about contested beliefs and different forms of knowledge? And about how people 'co-habit' with ghosts, a distinctive self - other relationship within such close quarters? This book sets out to explore these questions. It applies a non-reductive middle-ground approach which steers beyond an uncritical exploration of supernatural experiences without explaining them away by recourse only to wider social and cultural contexts.

In Spooky Archaeology author Jeb J. Card follows a trail of clues left by adventurers and professional archaeologists that guides the reader through haunted museums, mysterious hieroglyphic inscriptions, fragments of a lost continent that never existed, and deep into an investigation of magic and murder. Card unveils how and why archaeology continues to mystify and why there is an ongoing fascination with exotic artifacts and eerie practices.

Spectres of the Self is a fascinating study of the rich cultures surrounding the experience of seeing ghosts in England from the Reformation to the twentieth century. Shane McCorristine examines a vast range of primary and secondary sources, showing how ghosts, apparitions, and hallucinations were imagined, experienced, and debated from the pages of fiction to the case reports of the Society for Psychical Research.

Pull up a chair or gather round the campfire and get ready for twenty-five creepy tales of ghostly hauntings, eerie happenings, and other strange occurrences in Michigan. Set in Michigan's historic towns and sparsely populated backwoods, the stories in this entertaining and compelling collection will have you looking over your shoulder again and again. Michigan folklore is kept alive in these expert retellings by master storyteller S. E. Schlosser, and in artist Paul Hoffman's evocative illustrations. You'll hear otherworldly voices and things that go bump in the night, and feel an icy wind on the back of your neck on a warm summer evening. Whether read around the campfire on a dark and stormy night or from the backseat of the family van on the way to grandma's, this is a collection to treasure.

Follow along with one of the oldest ghost-hunting groups in Michigan: the SouthEast Michigan Ghost Hunters Society (SEMGHS). Journey through 13 investigations of cemeteries, a comedy club, library, business, hotel, theater, private home, and an old prison. Find out what it's like to have a ghost follow you home. Meet the spirits at the Purple Rose Theater and discover why they never left. Consider what is growling at Blood Cemetery and run with a black form seen at the Durand Union Station. If you have ever wanted to go on a ghost hunt, but found that you were too afraid, it's time to put yourself right in the middle of some of the most haunted locations in Michigan. Read this book if you dare, but do so with the lights on!

All you need to track and record paranormal activity! Ectoplasm...cold spots...orbs...everyone loves a real-life ghost story! Ghosthunter Melissa Martin Ellis takes you on an exciting journey into the supernatural world of haunted sites, restless souls, and messages from beyond the grave. You'll learn about the most up-to-date technology, such as motion sensors and highly sensitive digital cameras, as well as the supernatural phenomena themselves, including: Poltergeists Electronic-voice phenomena (EVP) Possession Photo anomalies Seances and voodoo rituals With expert advice on everything from picking a haunted location to setting up cameras and dealing with unwieldy ghosts, The Everything Ghost Hunting Book, 2nd Edition shows you how today's investigators use the tools of modern science to study a wide range of paranormal activity.

"Ghost Hunting" is a common sense approach to the investigation and resolution of cases of reported ghostly happenings, including apparitions, hauntings and poltergeists. Written so that the reader quickly grasps what parapsychologists think ghosts are and how to best deal with the phenomena and the experiences of the people having them. Covers the investigative process, a discussion of the use of technology and the use of psychics in paranormal investigations, information resources and organizations that the new ghost-hunter and the person who encounters a ghost can find to learn more about the subject.

From that cheerful puff of smoke known as Casper to the hunkiest potter living or dead, Sam Wheat, there is probably no more iconic entity in supernatural history than the ghost. And these are just recent examples. From the earliest writings such as the Epic of Gilgamesh to today's ghost-hunting reality TV shows, ghosts have chilled the air of nearly every era and every culture in human history. In this book, Lisa Morton uses her scholarly prowess--more powerful than any proton pack--to wrangle together history's most enduring ghosts into an entertaining and comprehensive look at what otherwise seems to always evade our eyes. Tracing the ghost's constantly shifting contours, Morton asks the most direct question--What exactly is a ghost?--and examines related entities such as poltergeists, wraiths, and revenants.

Beyond Belief takes the reader straight into the world of the unexplained; apparitions, poltergeists, possession, clairvoyance, precognition and psychometry are among the phenomena that Brian Branston has encountered and investigated. His researches are supported by tape-recordings and photographs made during seances and he describes how, at first totally skeptical, he was brought through personal experience face to face with events for which he could find no rational explanation.

Amy Bruni, co-star of Kindred Spirits and one of the world's leading paranormal investigators, has learned a lot about ghosts over her years of research and first-hand experience. Now, in Life with the Afterlife, she shares the insight she has gleaned and how it has shaped her unique approach to interacting with the spirits of the dead and those who encounter them. From her earliest supernatural encounters as a child, through her years appearing on Ghost Hunters and the creation of her company Strange Escapes, which offers paranormal excursions to some of America's most notoriously haunted destinations, and into her current work on The Travel Channel's Kindred Spirits, this book is full of astonishing and deeply moving stories of Amy's efforts to better understand the dead but not yet departed. With Amy's bright humor and fierce compassion for both those who are haunted and those who are haunting, Life with the Afterlife is an eye-opening look at what connects us as people, in life and beyond.

"True skepticism has nothing to do with disbelief," says Susan Blackmore. "It is about taking people's claims seriously and trying to understand them." As a starry-eyed student, Blackmore was convinced of the reality of astral planes, telepathy, and life after death. She was determined to devote her life to parapsychology, but what she found wasn't what she had bargained for. None of her cleverly devised experiments revealed a hint of the psi she was seeking. In a determined effort to find it somehow, she tested young children in play groups, trained students in imagery and altered states of consciousness, and even put Tarot cards to the test. She visited haunted houses and was regressed to a "past life." Finally, accused of being a "psi-inhibitory experimenter" with the power of abolishing paranormal effects, she visited other, more successful, experimenters. Here she found only errors in their experiments. In this new and updated edition of The Adventures of a Parapsychologist, Blackmore is at last at liberty to explain just what she found in those ill-fated experiments at Cambridge. She brings her story up to date in a lively and personal account of one scientist's never-ending search for the paranormal.

For "Ghost Writers: Us Haunting Them," editors Keith Taylor and Laura Kasischke asked twelve celebrated Michigan writers to submit new stories on one subject: ghosts. The resulting collection is a satisfying mix of tales by some of the state's most well-known and award-winning writers. Some of the pieces are true stories written by non-believers, while others are clearly fiction and can be funny, bittersweet, spooky, or sinister. All share Michigan as a setting, bringing history and a sense of place to the eerie collection.