基督教傳統認為，死者的靈魂會上天堂或下地獄，並永遠留在那裡，因此聖經中只有兩處明確提到鬼魂也就不足為奇了。在舊約中，以色列的掃羅王向撒母耳的鬼魂請教如何打敗非利士人；在新約中，耶穌復活後要說服大家他不是鬼魂。不過，儘管教會阻止人民相信鬼魂，但幾百年來仍有許多看到鬼魂的傳聞，可見教會的控制成效不彰。
 
Ghosts enter the modern era
 
Ghost stories had long been popular with Victorian readers, but it was the work of Scottish writer Catherine Crowe that brought belief in ghosts into the modern era. In The Night Side of Nature, published in 1848, she collected accounts of ghost sightings and haunted houses from all over Europe. What made Crowe’s book different from other collections of ghost stories was the fact that she carried out careful research, requiring at least two firsthand witnesses for each account included.
 
傳入現代的鬼魂
 
鬼故事長久以來一直深受維多利亞時代的讀者歡迎。但將鬼魂信仰帶入現代的，是蘇格蘭作家凱瑟琳克羅維的作品。她在1848年出版的《自然的夜界》中，收錄歐洲各地看到鬼魂和鬼屋的報導。克羅維的書和其他鬼故事選集的不同之處在於她精心進行研究，所收錄的每篇報導，都至少有兩位第一手目擊證人。
 
The rise of spiritualism
While Crowe’s book did much to raise public awareness of the supernatural, it was an event on the other side of the Atlantic that turned belief in ghosts and the afterlife into a new religious movement called spiritualism. In the spring of 1848, when the Fox family of New York State was kept up by strange noises in their house, sisters Maggie and Katie discovered the source was a ghost, and that they could communicate with him by asking questions and interpreting the rapping sounds that he made.