Visions of the afterlife in late medieval Europe (1300-1500) circulated in collections of saints’ legends and sermons, in religious manuals, mystics’ writings, stand-alone pieces, and literary works. Along with the stories inherited from earlier centuries, there were many new accounts. Together they demonstrate how the medieval Church’s teachings on heaven, hell, and purgatory, as well as on prayers and masses for the dead, on engaging in the sacrament of penance, on accruing merit, on fighting against the demonic realm, and on devotion to the saints, were conveyed to, assimilated, and adapted by the laity. This chapter draws on several categories of these otherworld narratives, including visitations by ghosts, demons, and saints, and explores three primary spiritual dynamics illustrated by the visions:purgatorial ‘transactions of satisfaction’ with the ghosts, spiritual warfare with the demons, and ‘reciprocated devotion’ with the saints. The glimpses of the otherworlds and their inhabitants shored up the religious beliefs and practices of the late medieval laity.

Chapter Two surveys what we call ‘physical-psychical scientists’ - physical scientists who, from the early nineteenth to the early twentieth century, showed some kind of interest in psychical phenomena. It uses the membership of Society for Psychical Research to identify many such physical-psychical scientists.Analysing this membership, and individuals who expressed their psychical interests outside the organisation, the chapter argues that these interests were far more extensive and complex than historians have argued.The chapter analyses the ways in which this collective interest was facilitated by existing institutional and other connections.It explores the range of intellectual, religious, moral and emotional reasons that underpinned this interest, the different positions and conclusions that different scientists reached after their investigations, and the reaons why so many scientists abandoned their interest in such studies or were actively hostile to them.