University of South Florida Scholar Commons Graduate Theses and Dissertations Graduate School July 2017 The ommonC Uncanny: Ghostlore and the Creation of Virginia History Alena R. Pirok University of South Florida, [email protected] Follow this and additional works at: http://scholarcommons.usf.edu/etd Part of the United States History Commons Scholar Commons Citation Pirok, Alena R., "The ommonC Uncanny: Ghostlore and the Creation of Virginia History" (2017). Graduate Theses and Dissertations. http://scholarcommons.usf.edu/etd/6929 This Dissertation is brought to you for free and open access by the Graduate School at Scholar Commons. It has been accepted for inclusion in Graduate Theses and Dissertations by an authorized administrator of Scholar Commons. For more information, please contact [email protected]. The Common Uncanny: Ghostlore and the Creation of Virginia History By Alena R. Pirok A dissertation submitted in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy in History Department of History College of Arts and Sciences University of South Florida Major Professor: Philip Levy, Ph.D. K. Stephen Prince, Ph.D. S. Elizabeth Bird, Ph.D. Julia King, Ph.D. Date of Approval: May 25, 2017 Key words: Public History, Thanatourism, Dark Tourism, The Old Dominion, Hauntings Copyright ©2017, Alena R. Pirok DEDICATION To the hosts, tour guides, storytellers, curators, volunteers, and fans who knew Virginia’s spectral history all along. ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS There are many people who contributed to this dissertation in comments, support, direction and encouragement. I would like to name them all, but for lack of room I will name a few. First, I want to thank Philip Levy, Nathaniel Fryburger, and Jenna Pirok. I would be nowhere without this trio. I am also thankful to my readers Julia King, K. Stephen Prince, and S. Elizabeth Bird for reading my manuscript and providing helpful feedback. A host of generous people who accompanied me on research trips, listened to my ideas, read and provided helpful comments and support along the way deserve recognition as well. Among them were; Gretchen Adams, Meredith Kambic, Sarah Junke, Jessica Wells, Sarah Carleton, Justin Fewless, Erin Holmes, Danielle Lucas, and Joe Corbett. Thank you all. Alena Pirok May 2017 TABLE OF CONTENTS Abstract ......................................................................................................................................................................... ii Introduction ................................................................................................................................................................. 1 Chapter One: Where Ghosts Walk ................................................................................................................... 31 Chapter Two: Good Ghosts Always Mind Their Own Business. ......................................................... 77 Chapter Three: Goodwin’s Ghosts .............................................................................................................. 116 Chapter Four: Old Haunts, New Mediums ............................................................................................... 161 Chapter Five: Virginia is for Ghost Lovers: Thanatourism and the Old Dominion ................. 202 Bibliography ........................................................................................................................................................ 242 i ABSTRACT Ghost stories have a long and diverse history, they appeared in religious contexts, in secular traditions, in entertainment, and in therapy and healing. Few elements of human culture have been as dynamic as the idea that the dead return to the living world as immaterial beings. Since the late nineteenth century Virginians have used ghost stories to talk about, interpret, and understand the historical significance of place. This dissertation argues that Virginians have used ghost stories to identify and make meaning of historical sites since the turn of the last century. These historical ghost stories sought to highlight the presence of the past, as well as Virginians’ close relationship with long-dead historical figures. Virginias used the ghost stories to argue that the commonwealth’s old structures and cities were especially historical and worthy of restoration. Founders of historical sites in Virginia used ghost stories as a way to offer their guests emotional, intimate, and personal connects to the celebrated past. The stories erased the distance of time, and suggested that past and present people cohabited in specifically defined historical places. Scholars who study historical sites often focus on the transition from volunteer to professional museum and public history workers. They argue that the professionalized workers rejected and silenced the public’s emotional understandings of place-based history, gave rise to more nuanced understandings of the field, and developed rich discussions on the roles that race, class, and gender play at historical sites. In that turn scholars have tended to ignore the publics’ emotional fascinations with historical sites, as seen through ghost stories. This dissertation illustrates that hauntings’ meanings and associations outlasted the professional turn and not helped establish the public’s trust in professional historical institutions, but continue to do so in the present day. ii INTRODUCTION One of the most haunted houses in America is in Williamsburg, Virginia—right in the heart of the nation’s best-known open-air historical museum. Colonial Williamsburg boasts eighty-eight original eighteenth-century buildings, but the Peyton Randolph House is special. Originally built in 1715, it was later home to its namesake when he served as the first president of the Continental Congress. After its notable Revolutionary use, it served as a way station on the Marquise de Lafayette’s 1820s American tour and as a hospital after the 1862 Civil War Battle of Williamsburg. Eventually, John D. Rockefeller Jr. bought the home as he and local Reverend W. A. R. Goodwin transformed the city into a museum in the late 1920s. Today, it is restored to its original eighteenth-century look—a deep-red brick paint covering its entire exterior. In 1998, researchers at Colonial Williamsburg did a paint analysis of the home’s colonial-era exterior and found that it was not white, as they had long painted it, but rather sported a brownish red on all of its exterior surfaces—siding, trim, doors, shutters, and all. Always striving for accuracy, the Colonial Williamsburg Foundation had workers quickly restore the home to its original color. The new paint job did much more than bring the home visually back to the eighteenth century—the change significantly altered the present day’s visual landscape. A dark-red inkblot consumed a spot where once there was light. 1 At night, the already dark house becomes eerie. The sparsely lit road makes the structure hard to look at and somehow strange to the eye. Its edges and corners fade into the trees and empty streets. Neighboring homes still wear the incongruous white paint. Their bright angles and clapboard walls catch the lowest light and seem to glow in the twilight. After the sun sets, the Peyton Randolph house appears as a pocket of oblivion framed by eerily luminous homes. The odd vision is fitting, really, since the home and the city are rumored to be teeming with ghosts. The Peyton Randolph House’s best-known ghost is a heartbroken woman. Guests have reported the wraith lurking over them while they sleep in the oak-paneled room at the top of the stairs. The ghost is Mrs. Peachy; her family moved into the house in the nineteenth century. Their tenure in the home was far from happy; tragedy and death stalked the family. Most of Mrs. Peachy’s children died in the house—her son, most notably, fell out of a nearby tree, which can still be seen today. The often-told story relates that Peachy’s ghost stayed at the home because she could not bear to part with her children, or perhaps because she blamed herself for their deaths. Mrs. Peachy is not the only ghost that guests claim to see in the Peyton Randolph house. Guests have reported seeing a Revolutionary War soldier who sits in a parlor, a young child who haunts the basement, and a few other spirits who have visited from time to time since at least the eighteenth century. Even combat veteran Lafayette himself found their presence a bit too much for his liking and reportedly left the house in midvisit. The last full-time residents were all too happy to hand the keys over the Colonial Williamsburg Foundation in the 1990s for the same eerie reason. 2 Today, these stories are alive and well. On any pleasant night, there are hundreds of people outside of the house, eagerly listening to tour guides recount the home’s many ghost stories and more recent creepy rumors. All four of Williamsburg’s independently run ghost tour companies make the Payton Randolph home a regular stop for their patrons, and night after night the visitors come in droves, cash in hand. As one observer of this booming ghost tour trade said, “there is gold in them thar ghosts.”1 Gold indeed, and not just the monetary kind. The ghosts themselves were emotional “gold.” They were the much sought after “valuable thing” that brought guests to historical sites. Lafayette may not have been a fan of ghosts and haunted homes, but Virginians have had a genuine and enduring fascination with ghost stories—one that