The Penguin Book of the Undead
Fifteen Hundred Years of Supernatural Encounters

Although I'm no longer doing serious research, writing, or publishing in the scholarly terrordrome, I try to keep up with topics of interest from my former life and things that might be applicable to the courses that I still teach--Dante's Commedia, Medieval Italian lit., and Gothic lit. I've long b......more

Yes! YES!! Primary sources about walking revenants, disease-spreading ghouls and resentful ghosts, right back from classical times? What's not to love! This nifty volume has enough to interest anyone from the student of history to the devoted fan of popular culture, and is, of course, a super useful......more

Too many of the samey kind of stories where it's ghosts coming back to haunt monks etc to ask for intercessory prayers like...once you have read a few of those they all start sounding the same. Needed more of the Norse ghosts which included one making an apparition of a seal just slowly appear throu......more

Do you like cool books about the undead and other creepy stories? Then this is not the book for you. If you are into very dry, boring stories about the near death experience of medieval monks however then you'll be in hog heaven.......more

2.5 stars; while the book is informative and the various excerpts and stories included are entertaining, I couldn't help but leave this book feeling a little disappointed. As the book and many of its selections state, the undead are varied and every culture has its own versions of spirits, ghosts, z......more