Haunted Landscapes

DOCUMENT Citation Only Alena R. Pirok.

In the 1930s a swath of Williamsburg, VA became Colonial Williamsburg. The newly minted Colonial Williamsburg Foundation funded a major reconstruction effort to turn the dejected neighborhood into the picture of colonial architecture and colonial revival esthetic. Since that time visitors have noticed that colonial era ghosts have reemerged in the houses and meeting places they were once known to frequent. Parapsychologists have argued that archaeological investigation has stirred ghosts from...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Julia King.

Ghosts and other spectral forms have a history of use as literary devices for safely ‘remembering’ particularly traumatic events. Beyond the literary, in the everyday, lived world of the vernacular, ghost stories can also reveal trauma—what geographer Steve Pile refers to as a "fractured emotional geography cut across by shards of pain, loss, and injustice." Like ruins, ghosts and other haunted places are often about coming to terms with grief and with loss. Nowhere is that more true than at...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Alison Bell.

Solar-powered bulbs and flapping-winged ladybugs, wind chimes, whirligigs, jack-o-lanterns, valentines to the deceased, and much else adorn gravesites in the Valley of Virginia. A 2003 bowling trophy sits on the headstone of a person who died in 2001. A stuffed rabbit faces another stone and holds recent photos of children, as if showing them to the buried teen. These objects relate not only to the deceased’s personal histories and interests but also represent gestures, through exchange and...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Brenna E Adams.

This paper examines material culture as well as the ghost tourism of Colonial Park Cemetery in Savannah, Georgia. Colonial Park is a hot spot not only for ghostly activity but also for stops on numerous Savannah walking ghost tours. However, the information presented on many ghost tours often ignores or alters the history of the cemetery. The tours often embellish certain events, such as the 1820 yellow fever epidemic, but perhaps more importantly, they ignore aspects of the cemetery’s history,...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Meagan E. Brooks. Dena Doroszenko.

Landscapes are an imbroglio of structures (abandoned buildings, ruins), spaces, social memory, oral tradition and at times, the materialization of ghosts in places which are sometimes apart from the communities that once thrived in those villages, towns, cities. Whether actively or indirectly, the stories that develop around these sites continue to play a role in building their communities. A number of historic sites and industrial landscapes in Ontario will be discussed in this paper, unveiling...

DOCUMENT Citation Only April Beisaw.

Archaeological sites can be haunted by past peoples if we convey the stories necessary to presence them; no paranormal powers required. The magic of a ghost story lies in its ability to conjure the emotions of the listener. Many ghost stories are warnings of things that happened, and might happen again. Telling the tale provides listeners with worse-case scenarios and vague instructions on how to avoid a similar fate. Historic sites that contain standing ruins are ripe for such tales because...

DOCUMENT Citation Only LouAnn Wurst.

Metaphors connecting capitalism and the phantasmagorical have always been rampant. References to the ghostly and ghastly point to the contradiction that capitalism is equally pervasive and invisible or, at least, elided. While all aspects of the monstrous have become important narrative tropes in the modern world, we seldom use this same discourse to name capitalism as a monstrous system. And yet, the ghosts are restless; capitalism as a system has created a ‘nightmare world’ where the products...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Kyle Somerville. Christopher P. Barton.

Fringe archaeology is one of the most controversial and inflammatory aspects of archaeology, occupying an uncomfortable position between academic rigor, public perceptions of the field, and interpretive value. Historical archaeology in general has also encountered these issues in a number of different ways. This paper briefly outlines fringe archaeology, and we examine case studies from Rhode Island, Masssachussetts, and the Northeast to better understand the appeal of fringe archaeology to its...