The Ghost World by Thomas Firminger Thiselton-Dyer

Description

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 collects 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 curious phenomena while remaining rooted in the period’s attempt to classify and explain them. For modern readers and researchers, the volume stands as both entertaining ghost lore and a valuable piece of social history: it illuminates Victorian attitudes toward death, the afterlife and the persistence of superstition, and it remains useful for anyone researching folklore, paranormal history, or comparative accounts of apparitions. Practical for ghost-story fans as well as students of cultural history, the work’s chapters — on phantom birds, ghostly death-warnings, phantom dress, and “raising” or “laying” ghosts, among others — make it a rich source of material for writers, collectors of antique ghost stories, and those curious about the historical roots of today’s paranormal vocabulary.

This book is available for free download in PDF, EPUB, and Kindle formats. Or you can read it online. No registration is required. Just click the links below the donation buttons.