9 h 8 minAudiobook14 minSummaryRead it, hear it, the 15-minute summary, and print and large print at cost
Audiobook edition · 9 h 8 minPaperback · 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
You will enjoy this book if you love ghost stories with names, places and dates, or if you wonder how dreams, memory and the strange fit together.
What’s inside
The key ideas, in the 15-minute summary
- The strange begins with ordinary dreams
- Forgotten knowledge can return in disguise
- A striking story needs reliable sources
- Waking visions need not mean illness
- An apparition matters for its information
- Remember the visions that came to nothing
- A haunting can grow around ordinary noises
- One exposed trick does not explain everything
- Legends grow from seeds of experience
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The Book of Dreams and Ghosts
by Andrew Lang · 1897
A professor dreams of a priest and wakes to solve a riddle in two stone fragments.
Medium level5–10 hours to read16 languages
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In short
What would you do if a dream told you where your lost cheque lay, and you found it there at dawn? Andrew Lang, the Scottish writer and folklorist, asks questions like this in The Book of Dreams and Ghosts, first printed in 1897.
The Book of Dreams and Ghosts at a glance
- Reading time
- About 5 h 25 min4 h 15 min fast, 6 h 25 min slow
- Length
- 77,100 words
- Library level
- Medium longer sentences, everyday words
- First published
- 1897by Andrew Lang
Reading time at 238 words a minute (fast 300, slow 200). How long the classics take to read · Updated
From the 15-minute summary · Key idea 1
Begin with dreams, because everyone has them
Lang builds his book like a staircase. The first step is the one nobody doubts, the nightly dream. The reader starts on firm ground and is led upward by degrees.
His central claim is simple. A ghost seen by someone awake is the same sort of thing as a dream, except that the dreamer is not openly asleep. A vision of an absent person he calls a wraith, and a vision of a dead one a ghost.
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Which edition is right for me
- 15-minute summary
- The key ideas of the whole book in about 14 minutes. A good first look, or a refresher.
Details
- First published
- 1897
- Language
- English
- Level
- Medium level
Cite this edition
Lang, Andrew. The Book of Dreams and Ghosts. Library of Alexandria, 2026, libraryofalexandria.com/products/the-book-of-dreams-and-ghosts.
Lang, A. (2026). The book of dreams and ghosts. Library of Alexandria. https://libraryofalexandria.com/products/the-book-of-dreams-and-ghosts (Original work published 1897)
Lang, Andrew. The Book of Dreams and Ghosts. Library of Alexandria, 2026. https://libraryofalexandria.com/products/the-book-of-dreams-and-ghosts.
@book{lang2026book,
author = {Lang, Andrew},
title = {The Book of Dreams and Ghosts},
publisher = {Library of Alexandria},
year = {2026},
url = {https://libraryofalexandria.com/products/the-book-of-dreams-and-ghosts},
note = {First published 1897}
}
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What is The Book of Dreams and Ghosts about?
It gathers dream stories, visions, wraiths, ghosts and haunted house cases, arranged from the familiar to the startling. Andrew Lang tells each tale, checks its sources, and weighs it against chance, memory and fraud.
Does Andrew Lang believe in ghosts?
He says it depends on how you define a ghost. He accepts that sane people have hallucinations, but he stays in doubt about whether any come from other minds. For him it is a question of evidence.
When was the book written and are the stories true?
It was first printed in 1897, with a note added in 1899. Lang draws on letters, newspapers, the Society for Psychical Research and old chronicles, and he shows where versions differ, so you can judge for yourself.
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.
More by Andrew Lang
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