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    The Skeptical Poltergeist: Paranormal Parlor, A Weiser Books Collection
    The Skeptical Poltergeist: Paranormal Parlor, A Weiser Books Collection
    The Skeptical Poltergeist: Paranormal Parlor, A Weiser Books Collection
    Ebook25 pages14 minutes

    The Skeptical Poltergeist: Paranormal Parlor, A Weiser Books Collection

    By J.D. Beresford

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    About this ebook

    Varla Ventura, fan favorite on Huffington Post’s Weird News, frequent guest on Coast to Coast, and bestselling author of The Book of the Bizarre and Beyond Bizarre, introduces a new Weiser Books Collection of forgotten crypto-classics. Magical Creatures is a hair-raising herd of affordable digital editions, curated with Varla’s affectionate and unerring eye for the fantastic.

    Imagine yourself to be a practicing scientist and dabbler in the psychic arts, trying in vein to make contact with the spirit world. At last you succeed, but the specter from beyond is not at all as you imagined. Rather than asking questions regarding the Hereafter you find yourself being grilled, not unlike being questioned by a detective. In this tale, Edwardian era Sci-Fi and horror writer J.D. Beresford presents the quirky and very skeptical poltergeist, who won't settle for an ordinary answer when it comes to questions it has regarding matters of the sprit!

    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherRed Wheel Weiser
    Release dateDec 1, 2011
    ISBN9781619400177
    The Skeptical Poltergeist: Paranormal Parlor, A Weiser Books Collection
    Author

    J.D. Beresford

    John Davys Beresford (1873-1947) was an English journalist and author noted for his science-fiction and horror stories, particularly his ghost stories. His most notable novels are The Hampdenshire Wonder, What Dreams May Come... and The Riddle of the Tower.

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      Book preview

      The Skeptical Poltergeist - J.D. Beresford

      The Questioning Spirit

      My first Halloween costume was Casper the Friendly Ghost. You can imagine, for an infant this was a fairly simple construction, essentially a white one-piece sack with a place for the face to show through. A baby bunting of the paranormal persuasion! And since I was (according to my parents) a happy smiling baby, the friendly part seemed easy. My sister was dressed as Wendy the Witch. I still have the photograph of the two of us, grinning wildly in front of a haphazardly carved jack-o'-lantern.

      When I ventured into the following story of spirit communication, I couldn't help but think of Casper. What is the antithesis of Casper the Friendly Ghost? Some might say it is an evil sprit—the kind that makes you carve Latin phrases into your own flesh or take a hatchet to the bathroom door in an attempt to kill your wife and son. But relax, sweet readers. This isn't about that sort of a ghost. It isn't the demonic kind, and when you are done reading, you won't have to call in a man of the cloth for an exorcism. Your eyes won't roll back in your head in trance, and you needn't worry about that mysterious knocking at your door in the middle of the night.

      The opposite of Casper in this tale is the Skeptical Poltergeist. The author, J.D. Beresford, was an Edwardian-era English writer of early science fiction and horror. Among his

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