In the last week of 1915, the Irish poet and nationalist Patrick Pearse issued a pamphlet, Ghosts, in which he summoned the shades of Ireland's dead patriots to his side.

Four months later, on Easter Monday, Pearse and a contingent of rebels seized control of the Dublin General Post Office and proclaimed the rebirth of Ireland “in the name of God and of the dead generations from which she receives her old tradition of nationhood.” Appropriate to its date, the Easter Rising witnessed a blurring of the boundaries between this world and the next, with spirits crossing over in both directions. For a few days under English bombardment, a mundane public building played host to an eerie gathering of living men on the threshold of death and dead men – Wolfe Tone, Parnell, Cuchulainn – who on that day of national resurrection had duly risen.