Play Book Tag discussion

The full title of this is Ghostland: An American History in Haunted Places. It isn't about ghosts as such, although some famous ghost stories are included, but more about human beings and how we deal with history. From the author's note at the start of the book - "This book instead focuses on questions of the living: how do we deal with stories about the dead and their ghosts, and how do we inhabit and move through spaces that have been deemed haunted?"

The chapters range through different places in America and different times in history including such diverse examples as Nathaniel Hawthorne's House of Seven Gables and witch trials to New Orlean's slave history and Hurricane Katrina.

I found the New Orleans chapter particularly thought-provoking because of the treatment of a story about a slave-owning couple who were found to have particularly ill-treated their slaves to an extent that was considered horrifying even by their own time. But the author makes the point that some of the gruesome stories such as severed body parts completely overlooks the fact that, for example, cutting off of ears was a legal punishment at the time for runaway slaves. So have previous generations deliberately made this individual story sound as if it was a standalone outrage rather than the norm? And do we still gloss over the details because it's too uncomfortable to accept?

Another quote from the introduction - "Ghost stories are a way of talking about things we're not otherwise allowed to discuss: a forbidden history we thought bricked up safely in the walls. They cover over the gaps and in the process help us assuage our anxieties, providing a rationale after the fact."

As well as being thought- provoking, this book is also very entertaining and although I can't entirely decide if the author does or doesn't believe in ghosts there are interesting little snippets of ghost-hunting lore as well as plenty of de-bunking.

Wow - how absolutely fascinating and interesting....