9 h 8 minAudiobook8 minSummaryRead it, hear it, the 15-minute summary, and print and large print at costPaperback · 6 × 9 in · printing soonHardcover · 6 × 9 in · printing soonAbout this book
What should you trust when a dream seems to know the future, or a witness sees someone no one else can?
In The Book of Dreams and Ghosts, Andrew Lang explores dreams that seem to foretell events, figures seen at a distance, and houses said to be haunted. His starting point is not the chill of a strange tale, but the person who tells it. Who sees the apparition, and how does the story reach us?
Lang brings a folklorist’s curiosity to a question that troubles scholars and the public in 1897: can science explain these experiences? He looks for ordinary causes, including forgotten memories, without dismissing every report. Ancient writings, folk beliefs and accounts from his own day offer echoes of spirits, warnings and haunted places.
What you’ll discover
- Witnesses before wonders Follow Lang as he weighs the teller and traces the path a strange story takes.
- Dreams and forgotten memories Explore dreams of future or distant events, with ordinary explanations kept firmly in view.
- Figures no one else sees Consider reports from sober, healthy witnesses who describe apparitions without any wish to deceive.
- Folklore across time Discover how old tales of spirits and warnings echo accounts from Lang’s own day.
- Room for doubt Meet a curious guide who values evidence over rumour, without promising proof or firm debunking.
Who will love it
Readers who love ghost stories, folklore, Victorian curiosity and the puzzles of the mind, and anyone who enjoys a witty guide weighing a strange tale against the facts.
What’s inside
The key ideas, in the 15-minute summary
- Start with dreams, because everyone believes them
- The sleeping mind reasons and remembers more than we know
- Coincidence explains many fulfilled dreams but not all
- Test each famous dream story against its sources
- Sane people see things, and crystals make it easy
- A ghost is a hallucination that happens to be true
- Telepathy explains much, and ghosts with a purpose strain it
- Haunted houses are noisy, and explanations pile up
- Old sagas show how a small fact grows into a legend
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El libro de los sueños y los fantasmas in 25 languages, side by side, paragraph by paragraph, once the book texts are online: the way to learn a language with a book you love.
El libro de los sueños y los fantasmas
by Andrew Lang · 1897
A professor dreams of a priest who explains two broken stones.
Medium level5–10 hours to read25 languages
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In short
A professor dreams of an ancient priest who explains two broken pieces of agate, and drawings of the pieces support the dream. Andrew Lang built The Book of Dreams and Ghosts on stories like this one.
From the 15-minute summary · Key idea 1
Start with dreams, because everyone believes them
Lang argues that a storyteller should begin with what is familiar and credible, then move toward the startling. Dreams are the natural first step. Everyone dreams, so everyone accepts that people see absent friends, visit distant places and speak with the dead while asleep.
He then claims that ghostly experiences are the same stuff as dreams, only met while awake. A vision of a living person far away is a wraith. A vision of a dead person is a ghost. He shows how widely dreams can be shared. In one story, Mrs. Ogilvie, her son and three daughters all dream that the family poodle Fanti goes mad, and the dog stays perfectly sane.
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What is The Book of Dreams and Ghosts about?
It gathers dreams, visions, wraiths and haunted house stories, arranged from the most familiar to the most startling, while Lang explains how hallucination, coincidence, memory and possible telepathy might account for them.
Does Andrew Lang believe in ghosts?
He says it depends on how you define one. He accepts that sane people have hallucinations, but he remains in doubt whether such visions can be caused by other minds, living or dead. For him it is a question of evidence.
Who is Glam and why is the story in this book?
Glam is a restless dead shepherd in an Icelandic saga who terrorises a farm. Lang includes it to show how plain haunting facts could grow into a dramatic legend.
The author
Andrew Lang
1844–1912 · Scottish poet and folklorist
Andrew Lang was a Scottish writer born in Selkirk in 1844. He lived in London and died in Banchory in 1912. He wrote poetry, novels, literary criticism, and works on folklore. He edited The Blue Fairy Book, published in 1889, and other fairy-book collections, including The Violet Fairy Book in 1901.
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