Spectres, spirits, and scholars gather in Limerick for ghost conference

MARY Immaculate College (MIC), played host to a unique conference this summer with Ghosts in Britain and Ireland, 1500–1950, over the course of two days in June.

Organised by Dr Clodagh Tait (MIC), Dr Charlotte-Rose Millar (University of Melbourne), and Professor Andrew Sneddon (Ulster University), the conference brought together international scholars to examine historical encounters with the dead — from spectral visitations to haunted landscapes and everything in between.

Discussing the conference ahead of its kick-off, Dr Tait posed some of the central questions behind the event; “If you met a ghost, how would you know they were a ghost? Would they be solid or transparent, talkative or quiet? What would they wear? Where would you expect to find them? What might you assume they wanted? Would you need an intermediary – a cleric, a medium, a ghosthunter – to find out? The answers to those questions would have varied greatly 100 or 400 years ago. This conference explores how perceptions of the dead have evolved across time, place, and belief.”

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Covering the period from 1500 to 1950, speakers investigated and discussed how people in the British and Irish Isles understood ghosts within their historical contexts. Topics included religious interpretations of the dead, folklore, gendered hauntings, local ghost stories, and what accounts of ghosts reveal about larger societal change.

Standout sessions across the two-day event included Ghosts as a Way of Understanding Political and Historic Events; a keynote Session by Dr Shane McCorristine (Newcastle) titled Resurrections, Resuscitations, and the Restless Dead: The Ghostly Landscape of Post-mortem Punishment in Ireland and Britain; and an exploration of The Cultural Function of Apparitions.

Participants across the two days included scholars from Ireland, the UK, Europe, and Australia, reflecting the growing international interest in the study of ghost belief and spectral traditions.