A Natural History of Ghosts: 500 Years of Hunting for Proof

by Roger Clarke

So, what are ghosts seen as, now? To some extent, the idea of the demonic ghost has been re-imported to the UK by the descendants of the East Coast Jacobeans, who took the idea over to the New World with them in the seventeenth century. There are a collection of contemporary beliefs in popular culture, but people are very clear about what’s possible. The overwhelming primacy is of the mood and atmosphere, having your head touched on ghost hunts, feeling a sudden breeze, falling temperatures, doors opening by themselves, then sudden noises, staccato or single words. Apparitions in plain sight are rare, but they do turn up on camera, and on digital cameras now, there are ‘orbs’, which, we are told, are ghosts before they dress themselves for the human eye.13