The Ghost World

The Ghost World is a book by Thomas Firminger Thiselton-Dyer, first published in 1893, that offers a wide-ranging Victorian survey of ghosts, apparitions, hauntings, and related folk beliefs. Written with the antiquarian eye of a seasoned folklorist and clergyman, Thiselton-Dyer gathers accounts from Britain and beyond — from banshees and phantom lights to second sight, animal ghosts, and tales of the unburied dead — weaving literary examples, local legend, and reported eyewitness experience into a systematic account of supernatural belief.

The tone is curious rather than credulous: the book records strange phenomena while remaining rooted in the period’s attempt to classify and explain them. For modern readers and researchers, it stands as both entertaining ghost lore and a valuable piece of social history, illuminating Victorian attitudes toward death, the afterlife, and the persistence of superstition.

Practical for ghost-story enthusiasts as well as students of cultural history, the chapters — on phantom birds, ghostly death warnings, phantom dress, and the “raising” or “laying” of ghosts — make this a rich source for writers, collectors of antique ghost stories, and anyone curious about the historical roots of today’s paranormal vocabulary.