Q 01/05

The English word 'ghost' comes from an Old English word meaning what?

A) Breath or spirit

B) Grave or tomb

C) Shadow or shade

D) Fear or dread

Answer · why

A) Breath or spirit

Anthropologists link the classic pale ghost to the visible white mist of breath in cold air, seen as the person's spirit leaving the body.

Q 02/05

According to a 2005 Gallup poll, roughly what share of Americans said they believe in ghosts?

A) About 8 percent

B) About 80 percent

C) About 32 percent

D) About 55 percent

Answer · why

C) About 32 percent

A poll of Chinese office workers reported by the China Post put belief there at nearly 87 percent.

Q 03/05

Which Roman writer recorded the haunted-house story of the philosopher Athenodorus in Athens?

A) Ovid the poet

B) Pliny the Younger

C) Suetonius the biographer

D) Tacitus the historian

Answer · why

B) Pliny the Younger

The ghost, rattling its chains, led Athenodorus to a spot where a skeleton in chains was later dug up.

Q 04/05

Why did the sheet-draped ghost replace the armoured ghost on 19th-century stages?

A) Sheets were cheaper than tin

B) Audiences found armour too frightening

C) Fire regulations banned metal costumes

D) Armour clanked and needed pulleys and elevators to move

Answer · why

D) Armour clanked and needed pulleys and elevators to move

The clanking suit could not deliver the spookiness the age demanded, so the shroud took over and became the Halloween cliché.

Q 05/05

What does the German word poltergeist literally mean?

A) House ghost

B) Child ghost

C) Noisy or rumbling ghost

D) Angry ghost

Answer · why

C) Noisy or rumbling ghost

Skeptics tend to explain poltergeist cases as juvenile pranksters fooling credulous adults.