Joseph Braddock was one of those people who `seriously’ believed in ghosts, carefully researching out the more famous instances of encounters with the supernatural, and telling the tales in a sober, analytic manner. His book Haunted Houses, with his matter-of-fact approach, was the scariest thing in the school library, and still is because of Felix Kelly’s simple and unnerving illustrations. I never at any time believed in ghosts, and even though I knew that no ghost in history has ever hurt anybody, that didn’t mean they couldn’t scare the living daylights out of me.
    But the facts of ghost lore are very interesting, as Braddock carefully explains. Ghosts never interact with the people who encounter them and are never aware of the watcher. The idea that, if they exist, they are the result of a momentary glimpse through a time warp offers the most satisfactory explanation. Can it be, then, that we are the ghosts of other universes? A more banal explanation is that there is something in the varnish of old houses that causes very realistic delusions.
    Poltergeists are different—throwing rocks at houses and moving furniture around violently and people have been hurt. But all serious spook-hunters dismiss cases where there are small children in the house, especially small girls, which, they are convinced, have tele-kinetic powers.
    One of the most frightening delusions a person can suffer is considered to be a sub-conscious dread—nothing in the real world frightens the person but some terror takes hold of the Id—with the effect that there is a diminishment of the eyesight, a chill throughout the body and a serious constriction of the throat. The effect for the subject is that a shadowy figure has rushed upon them riding on an icy wind and grabbed them by the throat. A true waking nightmare.