Commemorative Hauntings: Race, Ghosts, And Material Culture At A Civil War Prison Camp

Summary

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 Point Lookout, the now-state-owned site of a Civil War-era POW camp for Confederate war prisoners. This paper explores how race, ghosts, and the ruins of the prison camp intersect in a landscape now focused on water-based recreational activity. At Point Lookout, ghosts have come to serve a commemorative function, keeping the forces of the modern world at bay.

This Resource is Part of the Following Collections

• Haunted Landscapes   •
• Society for Historical Archaeology 2016

Keywords

Spatial Coverage

Individual & Institutional Roles

Contact(s): Society for Historical Archaeology

Record Identifiers

PaperId(s): 755