{"product_id":"ghosts-a-haunted-history-9781780235172","title":"Ghosts: A Haunted History","description":"\u003cp\u003eFrom 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 todays 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 prowessmore powerful than any proton packto wrangle together historys most enduring ghosts into an entertaining and comprehensive look at what otherwise seems to always evade our eyes.  Tracing the ghosts constantly shifting contours  Morton asks the most direct questionWhat exactly is a ghost?and examines related entities such as poltergeists  wraiths  and revenants. She asks how a ghost is related to a soul  and she outlines all the different kinds of ghosts there are. To do so  she visits the spirits of the classical world  including the five-part Egyptian soul and the first haunted-house  conceived in the Roman playwright Plautuss comedy  Mostellaria. She confronts us with the frightening phantoms of the Middle Ageswho could incinerate priests and devour childrenand reminds us of the nineteenth-century rise of Spiritualism  a religion essentially devoted to ghosts. She visits with the Indian bhuta and goes to the Hungry Ghost Festival in China  and of course she spends time in Mexico  where ghosts have a particularly strong grip on belief and culture. Along the way she gathers the ectoplasmic residues seeping from books and film reels  from the Gothic novel The Castle of Otranto to the 2007 blockbuster Paranormal Activity  from the stories of Ann Radcliffe to those of Stephen King.  Wide-ranging  informative  and slicked with over fifty unearthly images  Ghosts is an entertaining read of a cultural phenomenon that will delight anyone  whether they believe in ghosts or not.\u003c\/p\u003e","brand":"My Store","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":67929923321909,"sku":"ByrdShop_1780235178","price":99.96,"currency_code":"USD","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0627\/8139\/0901\/files\/9781780235172.jpg?v=1794201265","url":"https:\/\/atxbooks.com\/products\/ghosts-a-haunted-history-9781780235172","provider":"ATX Books","version":"1.0","type":"link"}