The Secret History of Poltergeists and Haunted Houses

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What poltergeist accounts through the ages reveal about our own worldviews• Provides a wide array of case studies from ancient Greece and Rome to medieval Europe to the modern world• Explores the relationship between poltergeists and troubled adolescence• Looks beneath the Christian adulteration of pagan practices to reveal the hidden ancestral beliefs tied to poltergeists and haunted housesStories of poltergeists and their mischievous and sometimes violent actions--knocking, stone or chair throwing, moving objects with invisible hands, and slamming or opening doors--are a constant through the ages. What changes is how we interpret this activity. For our pagan ancestors this phenomenon was caused by helper spirits whose manifestations revealed their unhappiness with a household. The medieval Christian church demonized these once helpful spirits and held exorcisms to expel them from the houses they haunted--which proved effective less than half the time. The Age of Enlightenment cast these inci