Charles Fort's classic recording of unexplained, paranormal events and phenomena offer fascinating insights into bizarre occurrences the author felt had been unjustly damned from formal, scientific study. The title derives from the author's perception that the book's subjects were so stigmatized and excluded from ordinary scientific inquiry that they had become 'damned'. Perhaps permanently forbade for formal study, the oddities and unexplained events in this text were felt worthy of attention by the author, who eventually became an authority on anomalous phenomena. The topics in Fort's thesis include unexplained disappearances of large groups of people, frogs and fish suddenly raining from the sky, the possibility that mythical beasts such as giants exist, UFOs manifest as glowing and sometimes moving lights in the sky, and bizarre weather phenomena. Fort attributes credence to many of these oddities, and argues that science - by dismissing them - has become a religion in itself.

Many people believe they have seen ghosts, many others are doubtful, but despite the rationalism of the present day, there has been no decrease in the number of sightings: old ghosts have survived for centuries and have been joined by modern ones, haunted houses retain their eerie reputations, apparitions are studied by parapsychologists, poltergeists still wreak havoc in homes. Ghost Sightings is a wide-ranging guide to ghostly phenomena from all parts of the globe up to 2015. It covers cases throughout history: many of them famous, others less well known. It examines malign spirits and gentle ghosts, apparitions, wraiths, haunted houses and spooky urban myths. Each entry gives details of the date, location and course of events, as well as providing a historical context and analytical assessment of the phenomenon. The book's extensive appendices provide fascinating additional information, including the differing roles of ghosts in the world's religions, an exploration of out-of-body and near-death experiences, and modern theories offered to explain ghosts by figures such as Sigmund Freud and Carl Jung. Ghost Sightings is a thorough study of a subject that has intrigued, amazed and terrified mankind throughout history.