In 1896, Maxim Gorky declared cinema "the Kingdom of Shadows." In its silent, ashen-grey world, he saw a land of spectral, and ever since then cinema has had a special relationship with the haunted and the ghostly. Cinematic Ghosts is the first collection devoted to this subject, including fourteen new essays, dedicated to exploring the many permutations of the movies' phantoms.Cinematic Ghosts contains essays revisiting some classic ghost films within the genres of horror (The Haunting, 1963), romance (Portrait of Jennie, 1948), comedy (Beetlejuice, 1988) and the art film (Uncle Boonmee Who Can Recall His Past Lives, 2010), as well as essays dealing with a number of films from around the world, from Sweden to China. Cinematic Ghosts traces the archetype of the cinematic ghost from the silent era until today, offering analyses from a range of historical, aesthetic and theoretical dimensions.

Acknowledgements IntroductionMurray Leeder, University of Calgary, CanadaGhosts of Pre-Cinema and Silent CinemaChapter 1Phantom Images and Modern Manifestations: Spirit Photography, Magic Theater, Trick Films and Photography's UncannyTom Gunning, University of Chicago, USA Chapter 2"Visualizing the Phantoms of the Imagination": Projecting Haunted Minds Murray Leeder, University of Calgary, Canada Chapter 3Specters of the Mind: Ghosts, Illusion, and Exposure in Paul Leni's The Cat and the CanarySimone Natale, Humboldt University, Germany Chapter 4Supernatural Speech: Silent Cinema's Stake in Visualizing the Impossible Robert Alford, University of California, Berkeley, USA Cinematic Ghosts from the 1940s through the 1980sChapter 5Bad Sync: Spectral Sound and Retro-effects in Portrait of Jennie René Thoreau Bruckner, University of Southern California, USA Chapter 6"Antique Chiller": Quality, Pretention and History in the Critical Reception of The Innocents and The Haunting Mark Jancovich, University of East Anglia, UK Chapter 7Shadows of Shadows: The Undead in Ingmar Bergman's Cinema Maurizio Cinquegrani, University of Kent, UK Chapter 8Locating the Spectre in Dan Curtis's Burnt Offerings Dara Downey, University College Dublin, Ireland Chapter 9The Bawdy Body in Two Comedy Ghost Films: Topper and Beetlejuice Katherine A. Fowkes, High Point University, USA Millennial GhostsChapter 10"I See Dead People": Visualizing Ghosts in the Horror Film Before the Arrival of CGI Steffen Hantke, Sogang University, KoreaChapter 11Spectral Remainders and Transcultural Hauntings: (Re)iterations of the Onryo in ContemporaryJapanese Horror Cinema Jay McRoy, University of Wisconsin - Parkside, USA Chapter 12Painted Skin: Romance with the Ghostly Femme Fatale in Contemporary Chinese Cinema Li Zeng, Illinois State University, USA Chapter 13"It's Not the House that's Haunted": Demons, Debt and the Family in Peril in Recent Horror CinemaBernice M. Murphy, Trinity College, Dublin, Ireland Chapter 14Glitch Gothic Marc Olivier, Brigham Young University, USA Chapter 15Showing the Unknown: Uncle Boonmee Who Can Recall His Past Lives Mitsuyo Wada-Marciano, Carleton University, Canada Afterword: Haunted Viewers Jeffrey Sconce, Northwestern University, USA