Presence review: A lively look at why we experience ghostly presences

Presence
Ben Alderson-Day (Manchester University Press)

THE idea that we experience ghostly presences through sensory phenomena is as old as time. But for some time now, we have accepted that many people hear voices, see unexplained phenomena and experience presences for which there is no rational account.

So how do we explain them? What do they tell us about how the human brain is wired – or what we mean by the concept of “self”? These …