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As a rule during interviews, research and respondent share the same sense of reality. In contrast, how should researchers handle phantasmal narratives during interviews, or descriptions of events that are impossible according to natural law? In this chapter, I report on 38 interviews upon people who encountered ghosts, apply theoretical concepts (James, Schutz, Pollner, Blumer), and, through autoethnographic reflection, suggest three approaches (“debunking,” “distancing,” “detouring”) to handling such phantasmal narratives. I conclude that they are best handled by complete suspension of skeptical thought, concentrating on ghost beliefs and not ghost existence.

In this chapter, I take a symbolic interactionist look at the anthropomorphic projections of 38 people in four large Canadian cities who report having encountered ghosts. As part of a larger project on perceived encounters with ghosts, I interviewed these people using audiotape, transcribed the interviews, and identified themes within them. Together, they mentioned 195 ghosts and described their appearances and actions. I identified anthropomorphic projections in four areas: (1) Physicality – pertaining to the bodies of the ghosts, (2) Relational – pertaining to kinship ties, e.g., mothers, fathers, grandmothers, (3) Rational – the ghosts' motivations and justifications, and (4) Affective – pertaining to the ghosts' emotions. These anthropomorphic projections were the respondents' efforts at sense making after having encountered what they believed to be phantasmal.

The rapid growth in volume and value of on-demand restaurant food delivery, accelerated by the COVID-19 pandemic, is causing a paradigm shift in the food service sector. However, there is a lack of hospitality management research into this emerging phenomenon. To address this gap, this paper defines and develops a novel conceptual model and typology and proposes a research agenda for ghost production in the context of food service.

This paper uses the Servuction model to explore, define and model the radical separation between food service production sites, points of sale and consumer interaction from the perspective of on-demand restaurant food delivery. A novel typology is developed and illustrated with eight industry examples from the UK and an accompanying cost benefit analysis. Future research priorities are identified.

In the hospitality literature, little attention has been paid to changes on-demand restaurant food delivery brings to production and business models of food service organisations, resulting in significant gaps between food service practice and theory. The knock-on effects to stakeholders include increased convenience for customers, uncertain employment status of riders and, for restaurants, striking a balance between capturing new markets and losing control of the customer. Additionally, for aggregators, there is a lack of profitability in existing models, despite holding the balance of power (and data).

The concept of “ghost production” and its associated typology is novel and offers a contribution to hospitality management literature by defining the term, scope and scale of this new phenomenon. Practical implications are proposed.

Ghost tours are an important part of tourism in many towns and cities around the world. Described as light dark tourism, they are a mix of the macabre and entertainment. Ghost tours are usually small business enterprises. In order for their venture to be sustainable, ghost tour operators must engage in effective entrepreneurial marketing (EM) practices. This study aims to evaluate the extent to which ghost tour operators use EM within their business.

A qualitative bricolage approach is used as a way to explore the use of EM practices within ghost tourism; that is, a niche tourism product. Data were collected using 21 in-depth interviews, participant observation and analysis of venture websites. This study used a two-stage data analysis procedure.

Findings reveal that ghost tour operators practice several dimensions of EM that are often simultaneously present and interwoven through the practices ghost tour operators use, as identified by thematic analysis.

This study adds an EM lens to the light dark tourism literature.

The purpose of this paper is to contribute to a more nuanced understanding of Asian consumer culture by exploring how hungry ghost death ritual in the Buddhist world reconciles spiritual asceticism and materialism.

This is an interpretive study that incorporates elements of visual semiotics, ethnography and qualitative data analysis. The native-speaking first author interviewed local ritual leaders of the Pee Ta Khon festival in Dansai, Thailand, while both authors witnessed examples of other Buddhist death rituals in Thailand and visited temples and markets selling death ritual paraphernalia. Data include translated semi-structured interview transcripts, field notes, photographs and videos, the personal introspection of the first author and also news articles and website information.

The paper reveals how hungry ghost death ritual resolves cultural contradictions by connecting materialism and spirituality through consumption practices of carnival celebration with feasting, music, drinking, costumes and spirit offerings of symbols of material wealth, such as paper money and branded goods.

Further research in the form of full ethnographic studies of the same and other rituals would add additional detail and depth to the understanding of the ritual in Asian consumer culture.

The paper extends existing qualitative consumer research into death ritual into a new area and sheds light on the way managers must locate Asian marketing initiatives within distinctively local contexts.

David Punter and Glennis Byron note how the Gothic novel has been divided into two categories: the ‘Male’ and ‘Female’ Gothic. Where the former emphasizes violence and ghosts, the latter focuses on female representation and the disavowal of the supernatural. The Hollywood Gothic films of the 1940s can be said to translate this aspect of the Female Gothic onto the cinema screen: Rebecca (1940), Gaslight (1944) and Secret Beyond the Door (1947) all feature narratives stressing the haunting nature of domestic spaces but there are no actual ghosts present. Robert Zemeckis’s What Lies Beneath (2000) breaks this convention. The film clearly draws on the Female Gothic lineage, situating Claire as a Gothic heroine, and yet there is an important difference: the supernatural is now an integral – and acknowledged – part of the story. This chapter explores this twenty-first century change, arguing that whilst the inclusion of the supernatural can be said to break with previous definitions of the Female Gothic, What Lies Beneath’s depiction of a ghost actually re-imagines and re-emphasizes the concerns at the centre of this tradition: the dramatization of marital and domestic experiences; an interrogation of feminine perception; and the reality of male violence against women.

This chapter considers the environmental damage related to Ireland’s recent ‘ghost estates’, placing this disastrous waste of resources in the long historical context of ancient ruins that also dot the land.

It considers ruins from an ecocritical perspective, as material artefacts attesting directly to people’s relationship with their environment.

From ancient megaliths and sacred sites to imposing castles, Ireland’s impressive ruins ignite romantic reflections in many. Yet, just like the modern ruins of ghost estates, they also tell of an often oppressive relationship between human cultures and the natural environment. Ironically perhaps, stone circles and tombs that seem to speak of people living in much closer relation to non-human nature than we moderns do are also associated with the environmental scourge of deforestation. Yet, they at least stand testament to an ethic of timelessness and robust building, as well as resistance to a seemingly irresistible process of capitalistic modernisation; the recent ruins are devoid of such ethical commitments. Given this, however, creative responses should also be noted to the logic of the ghost estates, including Cloughjordan’s Ecovillage and the NamaLab project.

Three sets of responses that all work more realistically with a recognition of the limits of sustainable development are considered in the conclusion: Transition Towns, an Ecovillage and architectural reutilisation of defunct buildings.

The purpose of this study is to explore the paranormal tourist experience on ghost tours, taking into account the participants’ perceptions and their prior knowledge of the paranormal, in order to determine the principal components of the future of paranormal tourist experience.

The study is divided into two phases. The first phase is based on participant observation during a ghost tour. The second phase is based on a previously published framework for paranormal tourism. It introduces a qualitative adaptation of the orchestra model to look in-depth at how experiences with paranormal tours might shape the future of tourism as a major subtype.

Paranormal tourism has external (situational-enchantment, historical, mystical, ghostly and unsolved mysteries) and internal (affective, cognitive, sensory, behavior and relationship) components that are inter-linked. Future paranormal tourist experiences (FPTEs) must be focused on enhancing these aspects in order to offer an immersive experience.

Consequently, this paper proposes the FPTE model.