Presence from another world. An ethnography on paranormal investigation and the social interaction with ghosts

Abstract

The contemporary “paranormal turn”, that is the fascination with mystery and occult in contemporary popular imaginary gave cultural relevance to the figure of ghost. An example of this trend is the practice of ghost hunting, the investigation conducted by amateur groups in alleged haunted places. This paper focuses on an ethnography carried out within Italian ghost hunter teams aimed at studying the ways in which the liminal experience of encountering ghosts is realized. The analysis shows how such an encounter is not reducible to spiritual beliefs, but is the outcome of a process of construction of a dimension that eludes the five-sense perception through strategies implemented in the social interaction by which human actors confer agency to non-human entities, defining two forms of the presence of ghosts in the field: “acted” and “agent” presence.