Looking for Ghosts!

Pre-reading

• Do you believe in ghosts?

Reading comprehension questions

• What are ghosts thought of as?

• What are the reasons why ghosts come back to Earth?

• Ghosts are often the spirits of the dead who come back to Earth.

• While some ghosts are reluctant to leave their favorite place, others are said to avenge their own murders.

Grammar

• Among all the things in the world that frighten people, ghosts are among the scariest.

What that reason is, supposedly differs from ghost to ghost.

Subject-verb agreement

• What are the common ways to contact the spirit world?

• Playing a board game in which people put their fingers on the board and are directed to certain messages.

• Seeking people who claim to speak to ghosts and write down their thoughts.

• Speaking to spiritualists in seances, where several people gather to hear messages from dead relatives and friends.

• How do scientists think about these contacting ways?

• A board game is just a trick of our brains, which have deep thoughts about what we want the board to say.

• People writing down the dead’s thoughts can display the brain reworking familiar styles.

• Seances are not given an explanation in the article.

Grammar

• Who was Harry Houdini? What was he well known for?

• What did Houdini disguise himself as when going to seances?

• Do you think Houdini thought ghosts existed?

• How is it explained that some people can feel ghosts present in a haunted place?

• Houdini was a magician who wanted to talk to his mother after her death in 1920.

• In disguise with a journalist and a policeman

• He did not believe in ghosts, so no one could fool him in seances.

• The explanation might be that a cluster of features, such as changes in light and temperature, make certain people “feel”that a ghost is there.

Grammar

• He also helped Scientific American magazine, which offered a huge cash prize to anyone who could prove ghosts existed.

• He also helped Scientific American magazine, which offered a huge cash prize to anyone who could prove (that) ghosts existed.

Grammar

• Psychologists in the United Kingdom had volunteers visit so-called haunted mansions and vaults in England.