What counts as a ghost?
90 minBuild a vocabulary for apparitions, revenants, ancestors, place memories and fictional effects.
Foundations of Ghostlore
Build the vocabulary and source discipline needed to compare ghost traditions without flattening experience or belief.
The syllabus.
Six 90-minute guided modules account for approximately nine hours. Source work, the field notebook capstone, revision and final assessment add approximately three hours.
The restless dead in antiquity
90 minExamine burial, memory, curse and unfinished obligation in ancient sources.
Revenants, purgatory and medieval return
90 minStudy embodied return, moral warning and the changing geography of the afterlife.
Haunted place and social memory
90 minUnderstand how landscapes and buildings gather stories of unresolved pasts.
Oral legend and experience narrative
90 minDistinguish a traditional story from a first-person account while tracking how each circulates.
Building an evidence ladder
90 minRank claims without ridiculing witnesses or confusing an unexplained event with proof.
Timed project route
Three-hour capstone studio
Turn the six notebook checkpoints into a coherent beginner-level inquiry. The result should demonstrate how to build a reliable vocabulary and learn to separate source observation from interpretation, not merely repeat lesson summaries.
- 01Frame and plan20 min
Rewrite the capstone as one bounded research question. List the six notebook components you will reuse, identify the intended audience and state what the finished work will not claim.
- 02Audit the evidence40 min
Select at least four authoritative public resources and build a citation ledger. For every source, record the item or page, institution, date, access date, direct evidence, interpretive use and one limitation.
- 03Build the synthesis55 min
Draft the required exhibition, dossier, protocol, atlas or case study. Connect each claim to a source or notebook observation, preserve local terminology and keep observation separate from interpretation.
- 04Challenge the argument30 min
Write the strongest reasonable rival interpretation. Test it against the same evidence, retain one unresolved disagreement and revise any sentence that carries more certainty than its source.
- 05Edit and document25 min
Finish the 200-word evidence-limit statement, standardise citations, add useful headings and check that a reader can distinguish fact, historical claim, interpretation and reflection without assistance.
- 06Revise for assessment10 min
Review the six module explanations and your corrected knowledge checks. Note three reasoning rules you will apply in the final assessment and one area that requires another source check.
Completion checklist
- A bounded question and clearly identified audience
- Evidence from all six notebook checkpoints
- At least four complete public-source citations
- A rival interpretation and unresolved disagreement
- A 200-word evidence-limit statement
- A conclusion that respects this pathway boundary: testimony and images are evidence of an experience or representation; neither automatically establishes its proposed cause
Research foundations.
Lessons are independently written and source-led. These starting collections support the pathway; individual modules explain interpretation limits.
A Ghostly Image: Spirit Photographs
The Perfect Medium: Photography and the Occult
Seers, Spiritualists, and the Spirit World
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Foundations of Ghostlore
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