Download or read book Ghosts in Popular Culture and Legend written by June Michele Pulliam and published by . This book was released on 2016 with total page 0 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "Ghosts are the only monsters that most people actually believe in." A folklorist friend of mine said this to me when I was in the early stages of working on this project. His words really colored the scope of this book, which in its entries not only explains certain ghost lore and ghost-related phenomena, but considers the psychological and sociological reasons that representations of the ghost exist almost by necessity in different cultures and throughout time. Of course, most of the entries deal with tales and motifs associated with legend and popular culture, but readers of this text should be cognizant that despite the nature of these tales, such stories of ghosts and hauntings are believed by many. This makes the ghost a different sort of monster. While there are extensive bodies of folklore about zombies and vampires, most people in modern societies do not believe them to be real--these same people who rationally deny the possible existence of vampires and zombies are also the same people who will admit, in confidence, that they experienced what they call a feeling, something not quite right, while touring a plantation home that is reputed to be haunted, or while explaining that they saw a parent's image, which appeared to them on the night of his/her death. The television genre that can be termed paranormal television attests to this belief in ghosts: the vast majority of these programs concern ghost hunters who go in search of the truth behind a legend of a haunting, or seek to debunk a medium who claims to be able to speak to the dead"--

Download or read book Ghosts in Popular Culture and Legend written by June Michele Pulliam and published by Greenwood. This book was released on 2016-09-26 with total page 0 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "Ghosts are the only monsters that most people actually believe in." A folklorist friend of mine said this to me when I was in the early stages of working on this project. His words really colored the scope of this book, which in its entries not only explains certain ghost lore and ghost-related phenomena, but considers the psychological and sociological reasons that representations of the ghost exist almost by necessity in different cultures and throughout time. Of course, most of the entries deal with tales and motifs associated with legend and popular culture, but readers of this text should be cognizant that despite the nature of these tales, such stories of ghosts and hauntings are believed by many. This makes the ghost a different sort of monster. While there are extensive bodies of folklore about zombies and vampires, most people in modern societies do not believe them to be real--these same people who rationally deny the possible existence of vampires and zombies are also the same people who will admit, in confidence, that they experienced what they call a feeling, something not quite right, while touring a plantation home that is reputed to be haunted, or while explaining that they saw a parent's image, which appeared to them on the night of his/her death. The television genre that can be termed paranormal television attests to this belief in ghosts: the vast majority of these programs concern ghost hunters who go in search of the truth behind a legend of a haunting, or seek to debunk a medium who claims to be able to speak to the dead"--

Download or read book Ghosts in Popular Culture and Legend written by June Michele Pulliam and published by Bloomsbury Publishing USA. This book was released on 2016-09-26 with total page 424 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: With entries that range from specific works to authors, folklore, and popular culture (including music, film, television, urban legend, and gaming), this book provides a single-volume resource on all things ghostly in the United States and in other countries. The concept of ghosts has been an ongoing and universal element in human culture as far back as recorded history can document. In more modern popular culture and entertainment, ghosts are a popular mainstay—from A Christmas Carol and Casper the Friendly Ghost to The Amityville Horror, Ghostbusters, Poltergeist, The Sixth Sense, and Ghost Whisperer. This book comprehensively examines ghost and spirit phenomena in all its incarnations to provide readers with a holistic perspective on the subject. It presents insightful information about the contribution of a specific work or author to establish or further the evolution of ghost lore, rather than concentrating solely on the film, literature, music, or folklore itself. The book focuses on ghosts in western culture but also provides information about spirit phenomena and lore in international settings, as many of the trends in popular culture dealing with ghosts and spirits are informed by authors and filmmakers from Germany, Japan, Korea, and the United Kingdom. The writers and editors are experts and scholars in the field and enthusiastic fans of ghost lore, ghost films, ghost hunting, and urban legends, resulting in entries that are informative and engaging—and make this the most complete and current resource on ghost and spirit lore available.

Download or read book Haunting Experiences written by Diane Goldstein and published by University Press of Colorado. This book was released on 2007-09-15 with total page 325 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Ghosts and other supernatural phenomena are widely represented throughout modern culture. They can be found in any number of entertainment, commercial, and other contexts, but popular media or commodified representations of ghosts can be quite different from the beliefs people hold about them, based on tradition or direct experience. Personal belief and cultural tradition on the one hand, and popular and commercial representation on the other, nevertheless continually feed each other. They frequently share space in how people think about the supernatural. In Haunting Experiences, three well-known folklorists seek to broaden the discussion of ghost lore by examining it from a variety of angles in various modern contexts. Diane E. Goldstein, Sylvia Ann Grider, and Jeannie Banks Thomas take ghosts seriously, as they draw on contemporary scholarship that emphasizes both the basis of belief in experience (rather than mere fantasy) and the usefulness of ghost stories. They look closely at the narrative role of such lore in matters such as socialization and gender. And they unravel the complex mix of mass media, commodification, and popular culture that today puts old spirits into new contexts

Download or read book Famous Ghost Stories written by Brian Haughton and published by The Rosen Publishing Group, Inc. This book was released on 2011-08-15 with total page 198 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Presents a history and critique of a selection of the famous ghost stories from different countries, organized by such common themes as spectral armies, phantom women in white, haunted houses, screaming skulls, crisis apparitions, and ghostly lights.

Download or read book Popular Ghosts written by Esther Peeren and published by Bloomsbury Publishing USA. This book was released on 2010-04-01 with total page 356 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Haunting has long been a compelling element in popular culture, and has become an influential category in academic engagements with politics, economics, and aesthetics. While recent scholarship has used psychoanalysis and the Gothic as frameworks with which to study haunting, this volume seeks to situate ghosts in the cultural imagination. The chapters in Popular Ghosts are united by the impulse to theorize the cultural work that ghosts do within the trans-historical contexts that comprise our understanding of everyday life. These authors study the theoretical and aesthetic genealogies of the spectral, while also commenting on the multiple everyday spaces that this category occupies. Rather than looking to a single tradition or medium, the essays in Popular Ghosts explore film, novels, photography, television, music, social practices, and political structures from different cultures to reopen the questions that surround our haunted sense of the everyday.

Download or read book Subversive Spirits written by Robin Roberts and published by Univ. Press of Mississippi. This book was released on 2018-01-17 with total page 181 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The supernatural has become extraordinarily popular in literature, television, and film. Vampires, zombies, werewolves, witches, and wizard have become staples of entertainment industries, and many of these figures have received extensive critical attention. But one figure has remained in the shadows--the female ghost. Inherently liminal, often literally invisible, the female ghost has nevertheless appeared in all genres. Subversive Spirits: The Female Ghost in British and American Popular Culture brings this figure into the light, exploring her cultural significance in a variety of media from 1926 to 2014. Robin Roberts argues that the female ghost is well worth studying for what she can tell us about feminine subjectivity in cultural contexts. Subversive Spirits examines appearances of the female ghost in heritage sites, theater, Hollywood film, literature, and television in the United States and the United Kingdom. What holds these disparate female ghosts together is their uncanny ability to disrupt, illuminate, and challenge gendered assumptions. As with other supernatural figures, the female ghost changes over time, especially responding to changes in gender roles. Roberts's analysis begins with comedic female ghosts in literature and film and moves into horror by examining the successful play The Woman in Black and the legend of the weeping woman, La Llorona. Roberts then situates the canonical works of Maxine Hong Kingston and Toni Morrison in the tradition of the female ghost to explore how the ghost is used to portray the struggle and pain of women of color. Roberts further analyzes heritage sites that use the female ghost as the friendly and inviting narrator for tourists. The book concludes with a comparison of the British and American versions of the television hit Being Human, where the female ghost expands her influence to become a mother and savior to all humanity.

Download or read book Haunted Objects written by Christopher Balzano and published by Penguin. This book was released on 2012-06-04 with total page 257 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A Haunted Past Can an object really be haunted? The answer is a resounding YES. Discover for yourself in this eerie, spine-chilling, and alarming collection of true tales and classic stories of possessed possessions. Unearthed by veteran ghost hunters Christopher Balzano and Tim Weisberg, each page of Haunted Objects reveals unsettling accounts of unexplained paranormal activity surrounding everyday items. From dolls to rings, these innocent looking items have disturbing tales to tell. You'll never look at chairs, dresses, paintings, and the common items in your home the same way again.

Download or read book The Paranormal and Popular Culture written by Darryl Caterine and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2019-02-18 with total page 449 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: 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 artefacts of mass media (e.g. novels, comic books, and films) as well as the cultural practices they inspire. After an introduction analyzing the paranormal’s relationship to religion and entertainment, the book presents essays exploring its spiritual significance in a postmodern society; its (post)modern representation in literature and film; and its embodiment in a number of contemporary cultural practices. Contributors from a number of discplines and cultural contexts address issues such as the shamanistic aspects of Batman and lesbianism in vampire mythology. Covering many aspects of the paranormal and its effect on popular culture, this book is an important statement in the field. As such, it will be of utmost interest to scholars of religious studies as well as media, communication, and cultural studies.

Download or read book Famous Ghosts written by Hans Holzer and published by Open Road Media. This book was released on 2012-09-25 with total page 633 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: DIVJoin paranormal expert and storyteller extraordinaire Hans Holzer as he tracks the ghosts of Americans who made history, including national heroes, Hollywood stars, and famous and infamous figures who made headlines /divDIV In this groundbreaking book, Hans Holzer tracks down the most famous and infamous ghosts who lurk among national monuments, historical houses and mansions, and even museums. Holzer searches for true encounters with eminent politicians such as Alexander Hamilton and Woodrow Wilson; literary ghosts such as Robert Louis Stevenson; and Hollywood ghosts, including Jean Harlow. Each new encounter is more fascinating than the last, as Holzer investigates notable souls who have moved to the world beyond./div

Download or read book The Science of Ghosts written by Joe Nickell and published by Prometheus Books. This book was released on 2012-07-03 with total page 438 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Are ghosts real? Are there truly haunted places, only haunted people, or both? And how can we know? Taking neither a credulous nor a dismissive approach, this first-of-its-kind book solves those perplexing mysteries and more--even answering the question of why we care so very much. Putting aside purely romantic tales, this book examines the actual evidence for ghosts--from eyewitness accounts to mediumistic productions (such as diaphanous forms materializing in dim light), spirit photographs, ghost-detection phenomena, and even CSI-type trace evidence. Offering numerous exciting case studies, this book engages in serious investigation rather than breathless mystifying. Pseudoscience, folk legends, and outright hoaxes are challenged and exposed, while the historical, cultural, and scientific aspects of ghost experiences and haunting reports are carefully explored. The author--the world's only professional paranormal investigator--brings his skills as a stage magician, private detective, folklorist, and forensic science writer to bear on a topic that demands serious study.

Download or read book Top 15 Creepy Legends from Different Cultures A Historical Look at The Supernatural written by Jade Summers and published by Jade Summers. This book was released on 2024-07-02 with total page 205 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: 🕵️‍♂️ Explore the Dark Side of Folklore! 🌍 Dive into the spine-chilling world of supernatural legends from around the globe with "Top 15 Creepy Legends from Different Cultures: A Historical Look at The Supernatural". From the misty mountains of Scotland to the sunburned vistas of Australia, uncover the eerie tales that have both terrified and fascinated humanity for centuries. Each story is meticulously crafted with historical context and cultural significance, offering not just a scare but a deep understanding of the cultures they originate from. Highlights: Historical Context: Each legend is rooted in its cultural and historical background. Global Journey: Stories from various cultures, including Latin America, Japan, and Europe. Creepy Illustrations: Visuals that bring the eerie tales to life. Cultural Insights: Learn about the societal impacts and historical origins of each legend. For Everyone: Whether you're a skeptic, believer, or just love a good story, this book is for you! 🌌 Prepare to encounter ghosts, ghouls, and otherworldly beings! 🕯️

Download or read book Ghosts and Poltergeists in History written by Anita Croy and published by The Rosen Publishing Group, Inc. This book was released on 2019-07-15 with total page 48 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: One reason why supernatural ghost films are so terrifying is simple: ghosts may actually exist. Ghosts pop up everywhere in popular culture, but the ideology behind them has its roots deep in history. The belief in life beyond death and hauntings started in ancient Mesopotamia and Egypt, then grew over time, as did ghost traditions and superstitions around the world. It's difficult to ignore the numerous accounts of ghost and poltergeist sightings, so readers beware: some of these tales may seem a bit too realistic for comfort.

Download or read book Ghosts written by Rebecca Felix and published by Raintree. This book was released on 2015-09-10 with total page 32 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Stories about spooky ghosts haunting the living have been around for thousands of years. Take young readers on a trip through time to learn about ancient and medieval lore about ghosts. Then explore how ghost stories have changed over time until they became the lonely and restless spirits often seen in today's popular culture.

Download or read book A Haunted History of Invisible Women written by Leanna Renee Hieber and published by Citadel. This book was released on 2022-09-27 with total page 369 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "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"--

Download or read book A History of Ghosts written by Peter H. Aykroyd and published by Rodale Books. This book was released on 2009-09-29 with total page 266 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: 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.

Download or read book Ghosts along the Mississippi River written by Alan Brown and published by Univ. Press of Mississippi. This book was released on 2011-09-01 with total page 253 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Some of the nation's most compelling ghost stories owe their origin to “The Father of Waters.” Ghosts along the Mississippi River is the first book-length collection of ghost tales from the small towns and bustling cities that have grown up along its banks. The states represented in this book include Arkansas, Illinois, Iowa, Louisiana, Minnesota, Mississippi, Missouri, Tennessee, and Wisconsin. Unlike most collections of “true” ghost stories, Ghosts along the Mississippi River draws from the folk traditions of the northern and the southern United States. These tales are populated with Federal and Confederate soldiers, Native Americans, wealthy entrepreneurs, actors, college students, hotel owners, preachers, slaves, and planters. According to some paranormal investigators, the large number of ghost stories from the Mississippi's river towns, and from watery sites all over the world, are proof that large bodies of water are conductors of psychic energy. Granted, no concrete proof exists that there is a definite connection between the river and any actual ghosts or spiritual phenomena. What is indisputable, though, is the fact that the ghost stories included in Ghosts along the Mississippi River are an invaluable record of the values, dreams, fears, and lives of the people who have called the river home.