Haunted Europe offers the first comprehensive account of the British and Irish fascination with a Gothic vision of continental Europe, tracing its effect on British intellectual life from the birth of the Gothic novel, to the eve of Brexit, and the symbolic recalibration of the UK’s relationship to mainland Europe. By focusing on the development of the relationship between Britain and Ireland and continental Europe over more than two-hundred years, this collection marks an important departure from standard literary critical narratives, which have tended to focus on a narrow time-period and have missed continuities and discontinuities in our ongoing relationship with the mainland.

Recounts famous ghost stories from Europe.

Recounts famous ghost stories from Europe.

The Pulitzer Prize-winning look at the collapse of Communism in Eastern Europe

“Masterful...An indispensable warning for our own time.” —Samuel Moyn “Magisterial...Covers this dark history with insight and skill...A major intervention into our understanding of 20th-century Europe and the lessons we ought to take away from its history.” —The Nation For much of the last century, Europe was haunted by a threat of its own imagining: Judeo-Bolshevism. The belief that Communism was a Jewish plot to destroy the nations of Europe took hold during the Russian Revolution and quickly spread. During World War II, fears of a Judeo-Bolshevik conspiracy were fanned by the fascists and sparked a genocide. But the myth did not die with the end of Nazi Germany. A Specter Haunting Europe shows that this paranoid fantasy persists today in the toxic politics of revitalized right-wing nationalism. “It is both salutary and depressing to be reminded of how enduring the trope of an exploitative global Jewish conspiracy against pure, humble, and selfless nationalists really is...A century after the end of the first world war, we have, it seems, learned very little.” —Mark Mazower, Financial Times “From the start, the fantasy held that an alien element—the Jews—aimed to subvert the cultural values and national identities of Western societies...The writers, politicians, and shills whose poisonous ideas he exhumes have many contemporary admirers.” —Robert Legvold, Foreign Affairs

Ghosts of Old Europe offers a very different kind of tour to the armchair traveler. Wander through the haunted castles and cottages of Europe with Hans Holzer, the world’s most famous psychic investigator, and explore a full range of psychic phenomena from the spirits of the British Isles to the haunts of Imperial Vienna. In England, Anne Boleyn's legendary ghost walks headless within the Tower of London; a procession of transparent monks appears in the Cathedral at Winchester, where no monks have trod since the sixteenth century; and Bloody Queen Mary still visits the four-poster bed where she slept in the dark days of 1553. At Kilkea Castle in Kildare, it is said that the Wizard Earl and his companions ride at night and will return someday from the beyond to “put things right in Ireland.” Room No. 2 in the Hotel de l’Europe in Avignon holds a shocking surprise for the unwary guest; and in Paris, No. 3 avenue Montaigne offers a special concert of ghostly piano music from a spectral grand. Ghosts occur wherever a great tragedy has left an unfortunate person stranded between the next world and this one, someone who has not yet been freed from their own emotional turmoil. The true accounts presented in this book are based on Dr. Holzer's personal investigations. Should you have occasion to visit some of these special sites yourself—if you are psychically gifted (and nearly everyone is to a varying degree)—chances are you may also have a true experience, ranging from a psychic “impression” of past events to an apparition, or perhaps you will hear an unworldly sound. Meanwhile, with this volume in hand, you can read of the long-dead Black Knight of Pflindsberg galloping wildly up the mountain—from the comfort of your own home.

"Travel around the globe to uncover some of the world's most terrifyingly haunted places. With eerie images and lots of bone-chilling information, you won't want this spine-tingling world tour to end!"-- Back cover.