A History of Ghosts
The True Story of Séances, Mediums, Ghosts, and Ghostbusters
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- $14.99
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- $14.99
Publisher Description
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.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
Squarely aimed at the fans of Ghostbusters (and just in time for its nascent revival in family rooms, video games and, reportedly, the big screen), this look at the paranormal is written by none other than the father of that blockbuster's co-creator and star, Dan Aykroyd; what fans might not know is that the Aykroyd family's interest in s ances, mediums and apparitions was what inspired the hit supernatural comedy. The author's own grandfather was a spiritualist: he believed the human personality survives after bodily death, and practiced regular communication with ghosts-much of which he documented in journals. Aykroyd broadens the discussion with historical figures like Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, creator of Sherlock Holmes, who joined the Society of Psychical Research three weeks after his father's death. He also disarms skeptics with a chapter on the s ance as theatrical performance, not much different from a movie, in which the ultimate goal is "the willing suspension of disbelief" in an audience, whom can then be "frightened, amused, touched, moved" by illusions. Less a Ghostbusters also-ran than a knowing, historical origin story, this is a smart consideration of the paranormal and a curious artifact of the Aykroyd legacy.