E X T E N S I O N GHOSTS, SPIRITS OR HUMAN IMAGINATION? Ghosts are thought to be disembodied1 spirits of dead persons or souls that sometimes, at least in popular accounts or legends, appear as silvery or shadowy apparitions. Beliefs about ghosts have varied over time and place and there have always been different opinions about the nature (or supposed nature) of ghosts and about the real existence of such things. Recent studies indicate that many Westerners believe in ghosts and in afterlife, and belief in an afterlife is an essential part of Islam and Hinduism, too. In the West, those who believe in ghosts sometimes think they are souls that could not find rest after death, and so they wander on Earth. The inability to find rest is often explained by the desire to carry through2 unfinished business; this could be the case of a victim seeking justice or revenge after death, or of a sinner trying to avoid Purgatory or Hell. In the East (for example in China), many people believe in reincarnation. Ghosts are those souls that refused to be recycled because they have unfinished business similar to those in western belief. In Chinese belief, a ghost can also become immortal, turn into a demigod, it can go to hell and suffer for eternity, or it can die again and become a ghost of a ghost . In most cultures, the appearing of ghosts is associated with a chilling sensation. Some believers affirm that ghosts are related to some kind of negative energy. But a natural animal response to fear is hair-raising which can be mistaken for chill. People tend to perceive ghosts in old buildings or in places where real unpleasant events took place. Such buildings, where ghosts take up residence, are defined as possessed or haunted. It is not clear why ghosts should confine themselves to a specific place, since, with all their supposed powers, they could be anywhere or everywhere at any time. In any case, ideas about haunted houses often originate in movies such as The Amityville Horror (USA 1979), a fictional movie based on a true fraud3. In the case of Amityville, the real ghosts were two normal people, George and Kathy Lutz, who built up a story to avoid a mortgage4 they couldn t pay. Yet not all hauntings are obvious frauds: some cases involve otherwise normal people hearing strange noises or having visions of dead people or of objects moving with no visible 1. disembodied: incorporeo, senza corpo. 2. carry through: portare a termine. 3. fraud: frode, inganno. 4. mortgage: ipoteca. 113