Ghostland: An American History In Haunted Places

Ghost stories often reveal more about the living than the dead. Their purpose isn’t merely to instill fear in those who believe in them: they speak volumes about how human beings perceive history and culture. It is at once preservation and erasure; a way to blur the line between fact and fiction. In the book, Ghostland: An American History in Haunted Places, by Colin Dickey, ghosts serve as a narrative for analyzing the stories that surround certain buildings and landmarks. *The author implies that ghosts stories are tools for preserving history, shaped by past events and cultural views.

A majority of ghost stories revolve around tragedies that have miraculously endured the test of time, like the buildings and places they reside in. Dickey

The author illustrates how a ghost story reflects a particular culture by examining the tragic love story of Annabel Ravenel, which he felt was “archetypal of the ghost stories of the old South...a universal fairytale inflected with the genteel manners and diseased miasmas of South Carolina.” The romantic elements of the story were expected from the genre: the strict father who disapproved of his daughter’s lover, and his efforts to keep them apart is a familiar storyline. Dickey speculates that the other aspects of Ravenel’s ghost story, “the elements of a gothic romance,” were influenced by South Carolinian culture. Her death due to yellow fever, and the old-fashioned nuances of their relationship are state relics preserved in the amber of a tragic ghost story. The author presents an underlying paradox to these stories: “To

The former carries the values, troubles and ideals of the cities they develop from. Dickey points out that “Ghost stories have become an important tool for preservationists, as a means to keep alive buildings that have civic and cultural value, buildings that might otherwise get plowed under.” Detroit’s Masonic Temple is a prime example of storytelling as both preservation and a reflection of culture. A ghost story began to circulate around the creator of the Masonic lodge, George D. Mason, and his untimely death. After construction of the lodge left him bankrupt, Mason allegedly “jumped to his death from the roof of the temple.” The story gained traction when Detroit, along with the lodge, fell into hard times, suggesting that it might’ve been an attempt to preserve the city and lodge. The timing is convenient, and one can surmise that the threat of the building becoming obsolete played a part in the story’s development. At the heart of preservation is a fear of loss, one that extends to both people and buildings. Dickey remarks that Detroit, in contrast to the architecture of Manhattan or Chicago, places weight on preserving old buildings, and thus its ghosts protect the places they haunt. In the case of the ghost haunting the Two-Way Inn, Colonel Philetus Norris, it is a reminder of a city that was once plagued by arsonists. Dickey states that “It is rare for the supernatural to adopt such a civic responsibility,