Appearances of the Dead : A Cultural History of Ghosts

New York: Prometheus Books. Very Good in Very Good- dust jacket. (1984). First Edition. Hardcover. 0879752386 . No signatures. Rubber stamp on endpapers and a couple of other pages, "N.Z. Rationalist Association Inc." Some wear to corners of dust-jacket and ends of dust-jacket spine. Fading to dust-jacket. Dust-jacket protected in archival cover.; First US edition. [viii], 232 pages. Blue cloth boards with silver lettering on spine. Page dimensions: 227 x 147mm. Illustrated. Contents: Acknowledgements; Introduction; Classical Ghosts; Christianity and Early-Medieval Revenants; Purgatory, Penance and the Restless Dead in the Later Middle Ages; Reformation Controversies: Demons and Ghosts; Baroque Hauntings of the Seventeenth Century; Enlightenment and 'Atheism'; The Thirst for Immortality; Twentieth-century Ghosts; Index. "Throughout history, people have reported seeing 'ghosts.' But a Victorian ghost is in many respects a very different phenomenon from a ghost in Classical Greece, or medieval Europe. In 'Appearances of the Dead,' R. C. Finucane surveys reports of ghosts from Ancient Greece, the early Christian era, the Reformation, the Victorian age, through the twentieth century." - from dust-jacket blurb. .