WHAT IS BEHIND THE STRANGE PHENOMENA AT OUR WORLD's ANCIENT SITES? Haunted Spaces, Sacred Places is a fascinating and thoroughly researched exploration of the archaeology, legends, and modern mysteries of 32 ancient places throughout the world - from the mysterious megaliths of Britain and Ireland, the haunted tombs of the Etruscans, and the Pagan origins of Germany's Aachen Cathedral to the ancient Native American city of Cahokia, the enigmatic Cambodian Temple of Angkor Wat, and the sacred Aboriginal rock formation of Uluru. Why are strange phenomena so often connected with these ancient sites? Are certain sacred places somehow able to generate or attract paranormal phenomena? Or can such events be explained in terms of modern myth and contemporary folklore? What can the legends and folklore of ancient places throughout the world reveal to us about the beliefs and ideas of our ancient ancestors? These are just some of the questions answered in Brian Haughton's enthralling book.
Enhanced with photos and illustrations, this account tells what intellegence officer Major Jesse Marcel witnessed at Roswell prior to and after the crash of the most controversial UFO in U.S. history, including the physical characteristics of the craft and the items found at the debris field.
The fundamental nature of the tree as a symbol for many communities reflects the historical reality that human beings have always interacted with and depended upon trees for their survival. Trees provided one of the earliest forms of shelter, along with caves, and the bounty of trees, nuts, fruits, and berries, gave sustenance to gatherer-hunter populations. This study has concentrated on the tree as sacred and significant for a particular group of societies, living in the ancient and medieval eras in the geographical confines of Europe, and sharing a common Indo-European inheritance, but sacred trees are found throughout the world, in vastly different cultures and historical periods. Sacred trees feature in the religious frameworks of the Ghanaian Akan, Arctic Altaic shamanic communities, and in China and Japan. The power of the sacred tree as a symbol is derived from the fact that trees function as homologues of both human beings and of the cosmos. This study concentrates the tree as axis mundi (hub or centre of the world) and the tree as imago mundi (picture of the world). The Greeks and Romans in the ancient world, and the Irish, Anglo-Saxons, continental Germans and Scandinavians in the medieval world, all understood the power of the tree, and its derivative the pillar, as markers of the centre. Sacred trees and pillars dotted their landscapes, and the territory around them derived its meaning from their presence. Unfamiliar or even hostile lands could be tamed and made meaningful by the erection of a monument that replicated the sacred centre. Such monuments also linked with boundaries, and by extension with law and order, custom and tradition. The sacred tree and pillar as centre symbolized the stability of the cosmos and of society. When the Pagan peoples of Europe adopted Christianity, the sacred trees and pillars, visible signs of the presence of the gods in the landscape, were popular targets for axe-wielding saints and missionaries who desired to force the conversion of the landscape as well as the people. Yet Christianity had its own tree monument, the cross on which Jesus Christ was crucified, and which came to signify resurrected life and the conquest of eternal death for the devout. As European Pagans were converted to Christianity, their tree and pillar monuments were changed into Christian forms; the great standing crosses of Anglo-Saxon northern England played many of the same roles as Pagan sacred trees and pillars. Irish and Anglo-Saxons Christians often combined the image of the Tree of Life from the Garden of Eden with Christ on the cross, to produce a Christian version of the tree as imago mundi.
This book explores Victorian and modernist haunted houses in female-authored ghost stories as representations of the architectural uncanny. It reconsiders the gendering of the supernatural in terms of unease, denial, disorientation, confinement and claustrophobia within domestic space. Drawing on spatial theory by Gaston Bachelard, Henri Lefebvre and Elizabeth Grosz, it analyses the reoccupation and appropriation of space by ghosts, women and servants as a means of addressing the opposition between the past and modernity. The chapters consider a range of haunted spaces, including ancestral mansions, ghostly gardens, suburban villas, Italian churches and houses subject to demolition and ruin. The ghost stories are read in the light of women’s non-fictional writing on architecture, travel, interior design, sacred space, technology, the ideal home and the servant problem. Women writers discussed include Elizabeth Gaskell, Margaret Oliphant, Vernon Lee, Edith Wharton, May Sinclair and Elizabeth Bowen. This book will appeal to students and researchers in the ghost story, Female Gothic and Victorian and modernist women’s writing, as well as general readers with an interest in the supernatural.
History’s Mysteries is an absorbing and meticulously researched exploration of the archaeology, history, and mysteries of 35 ancient places worldwide. Haughton’s book takes the reader on an unforgettable journey, from the 8,000-year-old stone circle of Nabta Playa to India’s magical Taj Mahal; from Rhode Island’s controversial Newport Tower to the enigmatic Royston Cave in the UK; from the strange medieval castle-village of Rennes-le-Château to the massive ancient walled city of Great Zimbabwe. Using the latest archaeological evidence, History’s Mysteries explores: The incredible archaeological discoveries at the 11,000 year-old sanctuary of Göbekli Tepe in Turkey. The heated debate over the 47-million-year-old ‘Ida Fossil’—could it be the missing link in our evolutionary history? The reality behind controversial ancient artifacts such as the Iron Pillar of Delhi, the Oak Island Treasure, and Egypt’s “Dendera Lamps.” What really happened to the Neanderthals? With 36 photographs and illustrations, this is the perfect reference work for those fascinated by the great mysteries of ancient history.
The heavens and hells of the world’s religions and the “far, far away” legends cannot be seen or visited, but they remain an integral part of culture and history. This encyclopedia catalogs more than 800 imaginary and mythological lands from all over the world, including fairy realms, settings from Arthurian lore, and kingdoms found in fairy tales and political and philosophical works, including Sir Thomas More’s Utopia and Plato’s Atlantis. From al A’raf, the limbo of Islam, to Zulal, one of the many streams that run through Paradise, entries give the literary origin of each site, explain its cultural context, and describe its topical features, listing variations on names when applicable. Cross-referenced for ease of use, this compendium will prove useful to scholars, researchers or anyone wishing to tour the unseen landscapes of myth and legend.
Lore of the Ghost is an original and thought-provoking exploration of the numerous categories of ghosts and hauntings throughout the world. It discusses the possible motives for each type of haunting? from phantom white ladies and spectral black dogs to haunted highways and ghostly vehicles—what they represent, why they occur, and their possible functions.
