First published in 1890, this book details the history and method of carrying out the nineteenth-century stage illusion, 'Pepper's Ghost'.

The father of "Ghostbusters" star Dan Aykroyd shares the blockbuster movie's real-life inspiration: his own family's colorful history and experiences with the paranormal. color photo insert.

Peter Aykroyd spent his childhood watching his family's parlor séances through the crack of a basement door. Here, for the first time, Aykroyd tells the strange and delightful story that inspired his son, Dan, to make the mega-hit, Ghostbusters. Part history, part family legend, A History of Ghosts starts in 1848 in upstate New York, where the spiritualist craze first began. Aykroyd introduces the reader to notable mediums while telling the story of the development of spiritualism, interweaving a personal history marked by a fascination with ghosts and spirits with the larger narrative about the role the paranormal has played in our culture. Such legendary figures as Sir Arthur Conan Doyle and Harry Houdini appear and vanish. Everyone loves a good ghost story. Successful TV shows such as Medium and Ghost Hunters are proof that our national obsession with ghosts is here to stay. Millions of Americans believe in the paranormal—and even skeptics have heard a bump in the night and suspected it might be something supernatural.

A New York Times Book Review Editor's Choice A comprehensive, authoritative and readable history of the evolution of the ghost in the west, examining the behavior of the subject in its preferred environment: the stories we tell each other. "Roger Clarke tells this [the story that inspired Henry James' The Turn of the Screw] and many other gloriously weird stories with real verve, and also a kind of narrative authority that tends to constrain the skeptical voice within... [An] erudite and richly entertaining book." —New York Times Book Review No matter how rationally we order our lives, few of us are completely immune to the suggestion of the uncanny and the fear of the dark. What explains sightings of ghosts? Why do they fascinate us? What exactly do those who have been haunted see? What did they believe? And what proof is there? Taking us through the key hauntings that have obsessed the world, from the true events that inspired Henry James's classic The Turn of the Screw right up to the present day, Roger Clarke unfolds a story of class conflict, charlatans, and true believers. The cast list includes royalty and prime ministers, Samuel Johnson, John Wesley, Harry Houdini, and Adolf Hitler. The chapters cover everything from religious beliefs to modern developments in neuroscience, the medicine of ghosts, and the technology of ghosthunting. There are haunted WWI submarines, houses so blighted by phantoms they are demolished, a seventeenth-century Ghost Hunter General, and the emergence of the Victorian flash mob, where hundreds would stand outside rumored sites all night waiting to catch sight of a dead face at a window. Written as grippingly as the best ghost fiction, A Natural History of Ghosts takes us on an unforgettable hunt through the most haunted places of the last five hundred years and our longing to believe.

"From the notorious Lizzie Borden to the innumerable, haunted rooms of Sarah Winchester's mysterious mansion this offbeat, insightful, first-ever book of its kind from the brilliant guides behind 'Boroughs of the Dead,' featured on NPR.org, The New York Times, and Jezebel, explores the history behind America's female ghosts, the stereotypes, myths, and paranormal tales that swirl around them, what their stories reveal about us--and why they haunt us"--

This spellbinding book exposes some of Baltimore, Maryland's unknown histories and uncovers 37 hauntings along the water. From the ghost of a drowned boy in Canton to famous ghosts of Fort McHenry, these tantalizing stories pay homage to the more "spirited" residents of the Canton, Fell's Point, Inner Harbor, Federal Hill and Locust Point neighborhoods.

Old Louisville in Louisville, Kentucky, is the third-largest National Preservation District in the United States and the largest Victorian-era neighborhood in the country. Beneath the balconies and terraces of the district's Gothic, Queen Anne, and Beaux Arts mansions, current residents trade riveting stories about their historic homes. Many of these tales defy rational explanation. When David Dominé moved into one of these houses, he dismissed local rumors of a resident poltergeist named Lucy. However, before long, unnerving, disembodied footsteps and mysterious odors caused him to flee his home in the middle of the night. Since that night, David Dominé not only embraced the possibility of supernatural phenomenon but also turned it into a popular tour series and best-selling collection of books, which have brought new attention to this iconic neighborhood. The book that launched the guided tours, Ghosts of Old Louisville, introduced readers to the hauntingly beautiful Lady of the Stairs and the Widow Hoag, who waits eternally near Fountain Court for a lost child who will never return. These tales of things that go bump in the night not only reveal why Old Louisville is considered the "most haunted neighborhood in America," but also help to preserve this historically and architecturally significant community.