In the sixth month, the angel Gabriel was sent from God to a city of Galilee, named Nazareth,

to a virgin betrothed to a man whose name was Joseph at the house of David, and the

virgin's name was Mary.

And he came to her and said, greetings, O favorite one, the Lord is with you.

And there were shepherds out in the field, keeping watch over their flock by night.

And an angel of the Lord appeared to them, and the glory of the Lord shone around them,

and they were filled with great fear.

And the angel said to them, fear not, for behold I bring you good news of great joy.

The association of Christmas with angels, spiritual beings one step down from God who were,

our God's messengers to humans, is right there in the gospels.

But angels were ubiquitous in many even early modern thought.

Some, like Gabriel, are named.

The feast of Micromus on the 29th of September was the one day in the church calendar named

after an angel, St. Michael.

But there were also other forms of spiritual being who preoccupied the minds of our ancestors,

and among them were ghosts, who could be hard to distinguish from angels or even demons.

And Christmas is a good time for a ghost story too.

My guest today is not only the author of the book Angels and Belief in England, 1480-1700,

but has recently published an article in the historical journal on the social, personal,

and spiritual dynamics of ghost stories in early modern England.

She is Dr. Laura Sanker, who is a senior lecturer at the University of Exeter and co-writes

the blog, manyheadedmonster.com.

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