No abstract available / English Studies / M.A. (English)

Ghost images are caused by the inter-reflections of light from optical surfaces that have transmittances less than unity. Ghosts can reduce contrast, provide misleading information, and if severe can veil parts of the nominal image. This dissertation develops several methodologies to simulate ghost effects arising from an even number of light reflections between the surfaces of multi-element lens systems. We present an algorithm to generate the ghost layout that is generated by two, four and up to N (even) reflections. For each possible ghost layout, paraxial ray tracing is performed to calculate the locations of the Gaussian cardinal points, the locations and diameters of the ghost entrance and exit pupils, the locations and diameters of the ghost entrance and exit windows, and the ghost chief and marginal ray heights and angles at each surface in the ghost layout. The paraxial ray trace data is used to estimate the fourth order ghost aberration coefficients. Petzval, tangential, and sagittal ghost image surfaces are introduced. Potential ghosts are formed at the intersection points between the ghost image surfaces and the Gaussian nominal image plane. Paraxial radiometric methodology is developed to estimate the ghost irradiance point spread function at the nominal image plane. Contrast reduction by ghosts can cause a reduction in the depth of field, and a simulation model and experimental technique that can be used to measure the depth of field is presented. Finally, ghost simulation examples are provided and discussed.

This project examined, by qualitative investigation, the actual content and mechanics of ghost beliefs in Britain today. Through questionnaire, personal interview, and email correspondence, the beliefs and experiences of 227 people were assessed, and considered against historical and international analogous material. The research began with some basic questions: who believes; what do they believe; how do they narrate their stories; and how do they understand this in the context of other beliefs? This research found a broad social spread of ghost belief. The circulation of ghost narratives takes place within social groups defined in part by their seriousness about the discussion. This does not preclude jokes, disagreements or the discrediting of specific events, so long as the discussion considers ghosts attentively and seriously. Informants brought a sophisticated range of influences to bear on narratives and their interpretation, including some scientific knowledge and understanding. Informants discussed a broad range of phenomena within a consideration of ‘ghosts’: there is no easy correlation of a narrator’s interpretation and the kind of manifestation being described. Some accounts were related as polished stories, but this did not impact directly on their belief content. The interrelationship between oral narrative and artistic representation highlights the shaping and exchange of stories to accommodate belief content. This ability to adjust between apparently different registers of discussion also illustrates how ghost beliefs fit the structures of other, more institutional, belief systems held by informants. A key finding, considering sociological discussions of secularisation and historiographical associations of heterodox beliefs with political radicalism, is that personal folk beliefs are slower developing and more conservative than institutional forms, which respond more quickly to socio-economic changes. Immediate institutional responses to changed conditions may not, therefore, correlate directly with a corresponding change in ghost belief.

While there have been many studies of Henry James's ghost stories, there has been surprisingly little scholarship written on postcolonial tensions in these works. In American literature, the figure of the Native American ghost is a common expression of Western settler guilt over native erasure and land seizure. In both his American and British ghost stories, though, James focuses more on the horror within the colonizer than the terrifying, ghostly other from the edge of the empire. As such, these ghost stories serve as a more significant critique of colonialism and imperialism than Gothic texts that merely demonstrate the colonizer’s fear of the racial and ethnic other at the edges of the empire. James’s earliest ghost stories address to the legacy of American colonialism, staging narratives of indigenous erasure and land seizure by centering hauntings around property disputes. The later ghost stories—written after James had emigrated to Britain— engage in a critique of the imperial British military and colonial power structures that systematically oppress indigenous groups in the name of the empire. These ghost stories all focus on the figure of the Western settler-colonizer and his guilt in creating hauntings; James’s living characters often realize they have been complicit in the wrongdoings that result in revenge-seeking ghosts, and this realization is more terrifying than the ghosts themselves. In this way, James's ghost stories present a means of questioning the validityof colonizer identity, and thus a means of deconstructing the binary of the Western “self” and the indigenous “other.”

Male or female, young or old, the characters of this collection inhabit a liminal space of trauma and social dislocation in which elements of the real and fabulous coexist in equal measure. The ghosts that populate the stories are as much the ghosts of the living, as they are the ghosts of the dead. They represent individual conscience and an inescapable connection to the past.

Mémoire numérisé par la Division de la gestion de documents et des archives de l'Université de Montréal.

An experiential thesis, this document begins at dawn, travels through storms and calm air and ends at night in Argentina. It details the circumstances and influences leading to my thesis exhibition at the Anderson Gallery, including an artist’s statement told through a creative reading of Ray Bradbury’s “All Summer in a Day” and the excitement I found in an out-of-print text on scuba diving.

Four strangers are stranded in an old farmhouse by a winter storm. Gilley lives on the farm. Shadows move of their own volition on the farm, and Gilley talks to echoes and sees the dead reflected in mirrors. Gilley's husband, Frank, disappeared over forty years ago. Jason is a college student who seeks Gilley out for an interview. He agrees to help Gilley find Frank. Jesse is a young boy who finds his way to the house after an accident. August is a private investigator whom Jason calls for help in finding Frank. August does not have a shadow nor a reflection of his own, and he can't remember how he lost them. Each wants something that only the others can provide, but each wants to keep their own secrets.

The untold account of the countless Americans who believe in, or personally experience, paranormal phenomena such as ghosts, Bigfoot, UFOs and psychics Given the popularity of television shows such as Finding Bigfoot, Ghost Hunters, Supernatural, and American Horror Story, there seems to be an insatiable public hunger for mystical happenings. But who believes in the paranormal? Based on extensive research and their own unique personal experiences, Christopher Bader, Joseph Baker and Carson Mencken reveal that a significant number of Americans hold these beliefs, and that for better or worse, we undoubtedly live in a paranormal America. Readers will join the authors as they participate in psychic and palm readings, and have their auras photographed, join a Bigfoot hunt, follow a group of celebrity ghost hunters as they investigate claims of a haunted classroom, and visit a support group for alien abductees. The second edition includes new and updated research based on findings from the Baylor Religion survey regarding America’s relationship with the paranormal. Drawing on these diverse and compelling sources of data, the book offers an engaging account of the social, personal, and statistical stories of American paranormal beliefs and experiences. It examines topics such as the popularity of paranormal beliefs in the United States, the ways in which these beliefs relate to each other, whether paranormal beliefs will give rise to a new religion, and how believers in the paranormal differ from “average” Americans. Brimming with fascinating anecdotes and provocative new findings, Paranormal America offers an entertaining yet authoritative examination of a growing segment of American religious culture. / https://dc.etsu.edu/etsu_books/1125/thumbnail.jpg

Basin Ghosts is a collection of original poems by Jesse Graves, author of Tennessee Landscape with Blighted Pine. Many poems in Basin Ghosts address places and themes that resonated in Graves's first collection, which won the Weatherford Award, the Thomas and Lillie D. Chaffin Award, and the Appalachian Writers' Association Book of the Year Award in Poetry. The poems in Basin Ghosts examine life in the rural South, changes that have occurred over generations in communities there, and the ways in which the past lives on through memory and attachment to the land. / https://dc.etsu.edu/etsu_books/1056/thumbnail.jpg