The Ghost: A Cultural History by Susan Owens

Ghosts aren’t always as recognisable as they are now in the guise of trick-or-treaters. “Ghosts have grown up,” Elizabeth Bowen wrote in a preface to a new book of ghost stories in 1952. They had laid aside their original bag of tricks – “bleeding hands, luminous skulls and so on” – and were now more likely to be found in a prosaic scene. “Today’s haunted room has a rosy wallpaper.” Most frighteningly, “contemporary ghosts are credible”. They lurked at the border of known reality, just believable enough to unnerve those who encountered them in life or art.

In fact, the growing up that Bowen describes began much earlier. Ghosts in Britain have a long history since Grendel crashed through the door in Beowulf, eating the warriors who get in his way, and Susan Owens has set out to tell it in an eloquent and lively account. For Owens, ghosts – and especially their appearances in art and literature – offer a window on to “the great changes that, over time, have made us see the world in new ways”. The Reformation, the Enlightenment, the age of technology – all have shaped the development of ghosts, and look different when seen through a ghostly lens.

According to Owens, ghosts have performed two functions. The first is to scare us, reminding us of the presence of death. The second is to reassure us, promising that death may not be as final a state as it seems.

Full Article: https://www.theguardian.com/books/2017/oct/29/the-ghost-a-cultural-history-susan-owens-review