Saturday, February 7, 2009

Spook: Chapter 10

5 Comment:

1. Sir Falke Greville lived in Warwick Catsle from 1605 to 1628.
2. Greville was stabbed by his manservant Ralph.
3. Sir Falke's ghost was lost.
4. People made a version of Sir Fulk's ghost in the wax museum.
5. His ghost is the highest-grossing at the wax museum.

4 Question:

1. How did the ghost get lost?
2. Why did Ralph murder Sir Falke?
3. Does it mean Sir Falke's ghost is the scariest looking at the museum?
4. Is the person who keeps saying "Really?" the ghost of Sir Falke?

3 Vocabulary:

1. Linoleum - a hard, washable floor covering formed by coating burlap or canvas with linseed oil, powdered cork, and rosin, and adding pigments to create the desired colors and patterns
2. Normalcy - the quality or condition of being normal
3. Hertz - the SI unit of frequency, equal to one cycle per second

2 Literary Term:

1. "listening to Casper" [allusion]
2. "...powerful operative voice on a wineglass..." [metaphor]

1 Overview:

This chapter is about finding out what happened to the ghost of Sir Falke Greville.

Spook: Chapter 9

5 Comment:

1. Sudbury, Ontario is a mining city 150 miles north of Toronto.
2. For the first time the researchers are experiencing fear in an investigation.
3. Conciousness Research Lab at Laurentian University was believed to be "haunted".
4. Electromagnetic field activity can cause hallucination.
5. EMFs stands for electromagnetic fields.

4 Question:

1. What is hallucination?
2. Is there another cause of hallucination other than EMFs?
3. Did the university used to be a mining area?
4. Why would a certain type of EMFs make on hear things or sense presence?

3 Vocabulary:

1. Indiscrimable -
2. Sham - something that is not suppose to be; imitation
3. Freight - goods, cargo, or lading transported to pay

2 Literary Term:

1. "Nevertheless, fear is on the agenda tonight." [irony]
2. "The door shut with a heavy whispering clumpf."

1 Overview:

This chapter is about studying hallucination.

Spook: Chapter 8

5 Comment:

1. 14 emigrants died by savage snow and being starved in 1846 in California.
2. The EVP movement started in 1959.
3. Swedish opera singers were interested in recording "bird songs".
4. Some people recorded sounds that could be coming from the dead, such as hissing sounds between stations in a radio.
5. Rob Murakami is a ghost hunter.

4 Questions:

1. What does EVP stand for?
2. Does it mean Swedish people believed in ghost and wanted to find them?
3. What do they mean by "bird songs"?
4. EVP was basically first invented in Europe?

3 Vocabulary:

1. EVP - [not found in dictionary]
2. Amateur - a person who engages in study for pleasure rather than professional reasons
3. Rasp - to scrape with a rough instrument

2 Literary Term:

1. "...we look like other tour groups..." [simile]
2. "...it's like a tornado..." [simile]

1 Overview:

This chapter is about telecomunicating with the dead.

Spook: Chapter 7

5 Comment:

1. Arthur Findlay was the president of the Spiritualist's National Union and he was a wealthy man.
2. Arthur Findlay died in 1964.
3. Spirit communication is unteachable.
4. The gift shop at the hotel contains a wide range or dolphins and fairies.
5. The place they are doing their research at right now have a hot weather condition.

4 Question:

1. Why does the gift shop have so many dolphins and fairies?
2. Can people become a medium?
3. What is a medium school?
4. How did they feel a contact from a spirit?

3 Vocabulary:

1. Optimism - the blief that goodness pervades reality.
2. Potent - powerful, mighty
3. Bequeathed - to leave of give (personal property) by will

2 Literary Term:

1. "...poosh..." [pun]
2. "John, a soft-spoken, reticent man of maybe fifty, with a heavy Midlands accent..." [imagery]

1 Overview:

They are doing a spirit reading at a medium school.

Spook: Chapter 6

5 Comment:

1. They are trying to reach out to the dead in a University of Arizona lab.
2. Gary Schwartz is a psychology professor at the University of Arizona.
3. Schwartz have a data to show people can communicate with the dead.
4. John Edwards (of Crossing Water) was tested in the Afterlife Experiment.
5. Allison DuBois is also part of the their research called Asking Question Study.

4 Questions:

1. Are there angels?
2. Do afterlives eat?
3. Does it mean in the afterlife, people still behave like normal humans?
4. He keeps switching universities, does that mean all universities in America study the afterlife?

3 Vocabulary:

1. Robust - strong and healthy
2. Dateline - a line giving the place or origin and usually the date of a news dispatch
3. Discarnate - without a physical body

2 Literary Term:

1. "...showing up in a double-breasted suit, with a white Jaguar parked in the lot..." [imagery]
2. "...a stout woman with gray hair..." [imagery]

1 Overview:

Finding out more about the afterlife at the University of Arizona by asking questions.

Spook: Chapter 5

5 Comment:

1. This chapter takes place in Cambridge.
2. There is a lot of Buddhist work in the Cambridge library.
3. Cambridge library have the most important collections of Buddhist Sanskrit manuscripts in the world.
4. Spiritualism, in a nutshell, is a religious movement used to communicate with the dead.
5. Spiritualism happens in the U.S. more than England due to WWI.

4 Question:

1. Where/How did Cambridge University get so many work of Buddhist?
2. Does it mean more U.S. people died in WWI than people in England?
3. Is Sorbonne and Harvard University trying to find artifacts also?
4. What is Crawford's discoveries that are so "enormously important"?

3 Vocabulary:

1. Ectoplasm - outer portion of a cytoplasm
2. Thermoreregulation - the regulation of body temperature
3. Séances - a meeting of people to receive spirtitualistic messages

2 Literary Term:

1. "... ankle length robe with a massive key on a chain around his neck..." [imagery]
2. "...felt like bones..." [simile]

1 Overview:

This chapter is about the different discoveries of researchers.

Spook: Chapter 4

5 Comment:

1. The year 1911 Ducan Macdougall is still continuing with soul weighing.
2. Ge said on the newspaper about finding out how souls look like.
3. Six years later Dr. Ducan was diagnosed with cancer and wrote one last poem.
4. Ducan's soul is 38 billion miles away.
5. "Heaven Is Perhaps Just Outside Earth" was in 1914 Boston Sunday Post.

4 Questions:

1. Souls forget their own name?
2. Why is this chapter titled "Vienna Sausage Affair"?
3. Do 38 billion miles consider far away or near for a soul?
4. X-Rays can help detect souls?

3 Vocabulary:

1. Vienna - a port in and capital of Austria
2. Consumptives - destructive, wasteful
3. Spectrum - a broad ranged of varied but related ideas or object

2 Literary Term:

1. "...from the lips like a yawn" [simile]
2. "...sounding like a robe wearing doomsday cult..." [simile]

1 Overview:

This is about the studies Dr. Ducan had made when he was weighing souls.

Spook: Chapter 3

5 Comments:

1. Blue Hill Avenue belongs to T.K. Jones, a wealthy merchant in China trade.
2. The home was later bought by Charlie Cullis who turned it into a Consumptive's House.
3. Macdougall was literally eager waiting for people to die to weigh their soul.
4. Culprits are called "insensible loss".
5. Ducan Macdougal went to medical school.

4 Questions:

1. Why is Blue Hill Avenue in Dorchestor a good place to die?
2. Does Macdougal like experimenting with weighing souls?
3. What happens when a man (or leech, or mouse) dies on a scale?
4. Point Seven Ounces is a movie about what?

3 Vocabulary:

1. Porticoed - a porch or walkway supported by columns
2. Nutter - a person who gathers nuts
3. Sanitariums - an institution for the preservation or recovery of health

2 Literary Term:

1. "Nahum is like the discombobulated animals" [ simile]
2. "The mansion on Blue Hill Avenue" [imagery]

1 Overview:

This chapter is about Macdougal experimenting with soul weighing.

Spook: Chapter 2

5 Comments:

1. They started hunting the souls with microscopes and scalpels.
2. Took man 6,000 years to figure out how life started.
3. They didn't know about life because they couldn't see specifics.
4. In 1675, Leeuwenhock discovered the life of bacteria and protozoa.
5. Harvey was atonished to find out how life of a dear began.

4 Questions:

1. What is Chamberlain of the Council-Chamber of Worship Sherifts of Delt?
2. Did he find animacules?
3. What is the material of human soul?
4. If the souls would arrive in conceptiors, what would happen then?

3 Vocabulary:

1. Globules - a small spherical mass
2. Minted - to produce (money) by stamping metal; coins
3. Rennet - a lining membrane on the fourth stomach

2 Literary Term:

1. "...some with tails straight look like hat pins..." [simile]
2. "the luz is shaped like a chickpea" [simile]

1 Overview:

This chapter is about discovering how life began.

Spook: Chapter 1

5 Comments:

1. It is about a visit to the reincarnation nation.
2. Six to seven researchers are researching about children who talks about the past.
3. They drove a 1965 Ambassador with one functioning windshield wiper.
4. Most of Ian Stevon's case write-ups includes a chart summarizing the allegedly reborn child's statement about a past life and about people s/he recognize.
5. The traffic man fades in and out of the street.

4 Questions:

1. Why don't he get into the fast lane and stay there?
2. Did the child used to be a poet?
3. How is the driver submissive?
4. What made the researchers research in India?

3 Vocabulary:

1. Allegedly - representing as existing but not proved; supposed
2. Flailing - to beat of strike
3. Dignitaries - a person who holds high rank or office

2 Literary Terms:

1. "...honking and flashing his lights like his team has just won the world cup..." [simile]
2. "...a flickery black and white T.V." [imagery]

1 Overview:

Researchers are beginning a research about people of the past.