Dancing for the Queen of the Fairies

Appropriately enough – this being Halloween don’t you know- Slate has this week been running a series of dispatches from my own native heath (Part 1 here, Part 2 here and Part 3 here). Kate Bolick asks, essentially, why are there so many haunted castles and ghostly apparitions in Scotland?

Think what you want. I’m not here to convert you. Either you believe in ghosts or you don’t, and if you don’t—well, it’s probably because you haven’t seen one. They say the best believers are those who began as skeptics. Take Bella Beck (not her real name; she asked that I not use it), a suitably matter-of-fact academic at the University of Edinburgh’s School of Scottish Studies. The week before I flew to Scotland to look at ghosts—for reasons I’ll get to in a moment—I’d e-mailed her to ask why, when casting around for haunted castles and houses to visit, I had 300 to choose from.