What would Christianity be like without the soul? While most people would expect the Christian bible to reveal a highly traditional opposition of matter and spirit, the spirit forces of the Old and New Testaments are often surprisingly physical, dynamic, and practical, a matter of energy as much as ethics. The Secret History of the Soul examines the forgotten or suppressed models of body, soul, and human consciousness found in the literature, philosophy and scripture of the ancient and classical worlds. It shows how the spirit forces of Homer, Plato, Aristotle, and the Old and New Testaments...

"Dare you enter the Labyrinth of Fear?" A man cutting his own mother as a witch; parents murdering their children as fairy changelings; villagers staking the living as vampires... Ghosts in towns, on farms, on ships; poltergeists that baffle all investigators; spectral cats, owls, dogs and sheep; a man shot dead as a ghost; an apparition which the witness falls right through; magical candles made from human fat and human hands... Not that long ago, the world was haunted: by superstitions, imaginary terrors, and even seemingly crude hoaxes which might cause their victims to quite literally die...