Introduction

It is, perhaps, something of a truism to state that there have been ghosts, spirits, phantoms. It is nonetheless accurate to suggest that there has been an interest in haunting generally, for as long as there have been narratives. It is not inaccurate to say that tales of terror and uncanny manifestations which resist rational explanation and empirical verification abound in many cultures, whether one speaks of the persistence of the spectral as a seemingly intrinsic component of religious or cultural belief, or whether one is speaking of sensationalist journalism and the tele-media’s perpetuation of narratives of the unexplained and other-worldly. While there is a risk in resorting to the truism above, what is striking is that it is undeniably true in large part: ghosts are always with us, and perhaps now more than they have ever been before.