"When you ask someone whether they have ever seen a ghost, you are asking them whether they believe in the inexplicable. Some people are more accustomed to the idea than others: In different folklores, throughout history, ghosts appear as omens and lost spirits; they signify regret, pain, open endings. Then there are the ghosts that haunt not a culture, but a person."
"Each evening, he would dissolve into screams that grew more earsplitting when the nurse carried him past a large, empty closet in the room-"indeed, it seemed to her most unaccountable that the baby appeared, by an irresistible fascination, always to turn his head towards the closet and to scream so that she feared he would go into convulsions," H. B. K. wrote."
"In a telltale twist, when the family left the house and the landlord tore down the structure, a skeleton was found under the closet floorboards. "A very old woman remembered to have heard in her youth of the mysterious disappearance of a young girl," according to the minister, "who was never heard of again." H. B. K. pronounced no judgment on each account she transcribed."
Belief in ghosts covers both cultural omens and intimate personal hauntings, with apparitions framed by folklore as signs of regret, pain, and unfinished business. Oral accounts from the 19th century preserve individual hauntings, including a French minister's report of a once-sweet infant who screamed whenever carried past a certain empty closet, later linked to a skeleton found beneath the floorboards. Collectors of such accounts often refrained from judgment while noting social attitudes toward spectral tales; by the 19th century, stories of the supernatural persisted in mixed company despite being regarded as unfashionable in polite circles.
Read at The Atlantic
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