I thought there were some interesting historical details in the introductions. For example:
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In 1854 the U.S. Senate was petitioned to appoint “a scientific committee to investigate spirit communication,” and the death culture resulting from Civil War casualties further promoted spiritualism
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Victorians, who enjoyed increasing levels of leisure and technology, devoted a portion of each to developing a robust culture of death and mourning, including photography of deceased children and picnicking in cemeteries (Carpenter and Kolmar xix).
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Dog ghosts occasionally feature in Victorian stories, but the active spirits typically belong to dead people until the late nineteenth century. At that point, the “many late Victorian horror stories concerning objects seem to be at least in part a reaction to developments in late nineteenth century capitalism and consumer culture.”
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