Post-Secular Spirituality

The Re-Enchanted Ghost with Karen Frances McCarthy

New Thinking AllowedNov 6, 2026

Irish author, scholar, and Spiritualist medium Karen Frances McCarthy discusses her book The Re-Enchanted Ghost in Contemporary American Fiction, which grew out of her doctoral dissertation. She describes a shift in recent American novels in which ghosts become protagonists with their own agency, inhabiting in-between afterlife spaces free of conventional religious doctrine. Drawing on her work as both a literary scholar and a practicing medium, she links this trend to post-secular spirituality, near-death experiences, and the cultural search for meaning beyond organized religion and materialism.