Digital List Price:	$25.95
Kindle Price:	$24.65 Save $1.30 (5%)
Sold by:	Amazon.com Services LLC

Promotions apply when you purchase

Read with our free app

You've subscribed to ! We will preorder your items within 24 hours of when they become available. When new books are released, we'll charge your default payment method for the lowest price available during the pre-order period.

Update your device or payment method, cancel individual pre-orders or your subscription at
Your Memberships & Subscriptions

There was an error. We were unable to process your subscription due to an error. Please refresh and try again.

Ghostly Encounters: The Hauntings of Everyday Life Kindle Edition

by Dennis Waskul (Author), Michele Waskul (Author) Format: Kindle Edition

3.8 10 ratings

See all formats and editions

“In the top corner of the window a pale, milky-white wisp is rising almost to the top of our ten-foot ceiling…. I am startled but not afraid…. Mostly, I am engrossed; I have never seen anything like this before (or since) and it fascinates me.”

Dennis Waskul writes these lines—about his first-hand experience with the supernatural—in the introduction to his beguiling book Ghostly Encounters. Based on two years of fieldwork and interviews with 71 midwestern Americans, the Waskuls’ book is a reflexive ethnography that examines how people experience ghosts and hauntings in everyday life. The authors explore how uncanny happenings become ghosts, and the reasons people struggle with or against a will to believe. They present the variety and character of hauntings and ghostly encounters, outcomes of people telling haunted legends, and the nested consequences of ghostly experiences.

Through these stories, Ghostly Encounters seeks to understand the persistence of uncanny experiences and beliefs in ghosts in an age of reason, science, education, and technology—as well as how those beliefs and experiences both reflect and serve important social and cultural functions.

Editorial Reviews

About the Author

Dennis Waskul is a Professor of Sociology and Distinguished Faculty Scholar at Minnesota State University Mankato, and has served as president of the Society for the Study of Symbolic Interaction. He has authored or co-authored several books including Body/Embodiment: Symbolic Interaction and the Sociology of the Body (with Phillip Vannini), The Senses in Self, Culture, and Society (with Phillip Vannini and Simon Gottschalk), and Popular Culture as Everyday Life (with Phillip Vannini).

Michele Waskul is an independent scholar with a focus on special education.

Product details

ASIN ‏ : ‎ B01GLBWSTM
Publisher ‏ : ‎ Temple University Press (June 16, 2016)
Publication date ‏ : ‎ June 16, 2016
Language ‏ : ‎ English
File size ‏ : ‎ 7338 KB
Text-to-Speech ‏ : ‎ Enabled
Screen Reader ‏ : ‎ Supported
Enhanced typesetting ‏ : ‎ Enabled
X-Ray ‏ : ‎ Not Enabled
Word Wise ‏ : ‎ Enabled
Sticky notes ‏ : ‎ On Kindle Scribe
Print length ‏ : ‎ 184 pages

Best Sellers Rank: #2,337,147 in Kindle Store (See Top 100 in Kindle Store)
- #2,556 in Occult Ghosts & Haunted Houses
- #3,086 in Occult Supernatural
- #5,427 in Ghosts & Hauntings

Customer Reviews:
3.8 10 ratings

Brief content visible, double tap to read full content.

Full content visible, double tap to read brief content.

Videos

Help others learn more about this product by uploading a video!

Upload your video

Customer reviews

3.8 out of 5

10 global ratings

3 star

0%

How customer reviews and ratings work

Sort reviews by

Top reviews from the United States

There was a problem filtering reviews right now. Please try again later.

Amazon Customer

Five Stars

Reviewed in the United States on May 16, 2017

Verified Purchase

Good research methods. Fun read.

Reviewed in the United States on March 21, 2017

Verified Purchase

Horrible book. No beginning. No direction. Author appears to have no interest in the subject he is writing about. There is no point to this book. No insight or conclusion. Talks excessively about his research however he simply interviewed people. At one point he makes fun of a man living in a basement who work in a fast food place. Amazing this thing got published

5 people found this helpful

Helpful

carlos g rivera

Five Stars

Reviewed in the United States on October 31, 2016

Great book

I purchased this book after listening to the author on ...

Reviewed in the United States on October 11, 2016

Verified Purchase

I purchased this book after listening to the author on a podcast. He was extremely engaging but I feel the book fell short. It was hard for me to follow, not sure where he was trying to go.

5 people found this helpful

Helpful

lilbangladesh

Don't bother with the Audiobook

Reviewed in the United States on June 8, 2020

The book itself may be interesting to read. I was interested in this book because of an excerpt I read in a magazine, but I ended up getting the audiobook because at the time, there was no ebook version (and I have no mail delivery) and now that there is an ebook, the audiobook is still cheaper. But oy! It's really hard to follow this at all via audiobook. For one thing, the material is far too dry to be interesting read aloud, while it would be interesting enough if read in a book, but the WORST part of the audiobook experience is the narrator, who reads in this sing-songy voice that renders it devoid of all meaning because the inflection never changes regardless of what he's reading about. It is beyond annoying. However, if your goal is to fall asleep quickly and not to learn about the sociological impiications of ghostly encounters, then I highly recommend this. Put this on at bedtime, and you will quickly fall into a deep, albeit confused, slumber.

One person found this helpful

Helpful

Lantern Books

Interesting read for the open-minded

Reviewed in the United States on November 2, 2017

This is not a pop book full of ghost tales and spooky stories. If that is what you are looking for, look somewhere else. This book is one of few sociological investigations into ghostly experiences. This means that, unlike most scholarly accounts of ghosts, Waskul's main concern is not whether such things literally exist, but what their social significance is. Unlike other social accounts, he doesn't just assume that ghosts are useful metaphors for other things (e.g. fear of death, guilt over historic wrongs, etc.) nor is he interested in falsifying claims for the existence of the supernatural. Instead, he examines what it is like for people who experience them. Sociology and cultural studies are full of 'symbolic readings' (I'm looking at you Derrida), so this is a refreshing approach. It is true that the book is largely exploratory. This means that he is not testing specific hypotheses or asserting some pre-determined argument. Rather, he primarily explores patterns of experience as his interviewees report them. This could give the impression that there is no central argument, but it also provides perspective on some very important but ignored aspects of ghost experience. Also, this is not a one stop shop. For readers seriously interested in the sociology of religion, belief, and the supernatural, this is an interesting and an accessible read, but it is not an introductory textbook and would work best when supplemented with other research in the area. Overall, an interesting and worthwhile addition to the literature, but not necessarily what most people interested in the supernatural would be expecting from a book with this title.

Buy for others

Buying and sending eBooks to others

Image Unavailable

Ghostly Encounters: The Hauntings of Everyday Life Kindle Edition

Customers who bought this item also bought

Editorial Reviews

About the Author

Product details

Videos

Customer reviews

Top reviews from the United States

There was a problem filtering reviews right now. Please try again later.