Musiccosmos

Ghosts: Appearances of the Dead and Cultural Transformation, by R.C. Finucane (Prometheus, 1996) looks at the history of ghosts with a wide-angle lens. The author opens with classical Greek and Roman accounts and closes with a brief look at how ghosts manifest in the twentieth century. His emphasis is on Western Civilization with an open bias toward British specters. This book is not for those seeking spooky ghost stories, though there are numerous, purportedly true spectral reports summarized. Instead, it deals more with the purposes ghosts were given in major historical periods as well as the shapes and sounds attributed to them. Regarding those sounds, Finucane writes: “The squeaker and twitterer of Homeric and Mosaic society turned into the basso profundo of the medieval era, took on more ordinary vocal qualities up to about the eighteenth century, then began to lose his voice entirely. Today most apparitions are mute and, apparently, deaf to the entreaties of their percipie...