Why would a person seek out ghosts and supernatural occurrences? What compels someone to sit in a graveyard at midnight waiting in the hope that something might occur? What drives a person to explore dark rooms in ancient castles, or to wander around haunted sites where people have reported having their hair pulled, being tapped on the shoulder by unseen hands, or even being violently shoved?

Ghosts seem to be common and a large percentage of people in the Western world have possibly experienced something of a supernatural origin. Can all these people be wrong or have they simply misinterpreted what they have experienced?

From Australia’s convict past at Port Arthur, to the wilds of England’s Bodmin Moor and the brooding serenity of Woodchester Mansion in leafy Gloucestershire, cultural historian JG Montgomery takes readers on a social, historical and cultural journey of discovery into the shadowy and often unexplainable world of ghosts and the supernatural.