This book is not your average, superficial, catalog of ghost stories. Indeed, this book is a dense (and very academic) read about how Chinese society views the supernatural. Strong writing and research! ( )

This is incredibly academic and very dense and is really not for the lay people. I am an academic, but I somehow thought it was going to be a little more easy to understand, it was not. Some interesting work for the cultural anthropologists out there for sure though. ( )

I was not very familiar with Chinese supernatural beliefs prior to this. I found it an enjoyable read. ( )

Chinese ghosts revisited isn't so much about the ghosts themselves as it is mainly about proving and researching into proving that they exist. It is also about the cultural surroundings about the spirits and the stories based around the ghosts. I found it very fascinating and loved the idea. ( )

Charles Emmons's Chinese Ghosts Revisited: A Study of Paranormal Beliefs and Experiences is an excellent presentation of the author's findings based on thousands of interviews and questionnaires conducted in Hong Kong in 1980-1981. Considered a classic in some circles, this is a unique parapsychology study, as it overlays the sociological and anthropological aspects of Chinese culture atop the reported paranormal phenomena, and considers how the former factors may have influenced the reporting (and perhaps the under-reporting) of supernatural experiences. This revised edition presents the original 1982 along with Emmons's 2017 updates and new perspectives appended throughout.

Most of the reported cases fall into the category of ghost sightings, but there are also reports of ESP, fortune telling, poltergeists, reincarnation, spirit mediums, and spirit possessions. The book can be enjoyed on the elementary level of simply reading the reported incidents, some of which we ourselves may have experienced in some manner. But on a more scholarly level, students of parapsychology and/or Chinese culture and social history will find Emmons's book quite intriguing, as it is a well-organized, well-researched, and well-documented work. ( )