A Curious Presence: An Exploration of Ghosts and the People Who Haunt Them

Hauntings happen. But why? Are they caused by ghosts, or something else? What is a ghost, anyway? After centuries of ghost-hunting by experts and amateurs alike, are we any closer to knowing?

Like many, Margo MacDonald once believed that all hauntings were the work of restless spirits, but after two decades spent engaging with firsthand accounts of paranormal encounters — and having a few of her own — she has more questions than answers.

MacDonald asks: Why are we haunted by tragedy but not by joy? If a ghost lives in a house but no one experiences it, does it make a haunting? And what does our desire to believe in ghosts say about us?

With insight and humor, A Curious Presence explores the theories that have shaped MacDonald's understanding of hauntings and the paranormal. Told through conversations with skeptics, sensitives, parapsychologists, investigators, and haunted-house dwellers — interwoven with vivid accounts of real experiences and visits to famously haunted locations — MacDonald proposes an unsettling idea: Perhaps it isn't the places that are haunted, but the people who move through them. Perhaps we have more in common with ghosts than we think.