Haunting Experiences: Ghosts in Contemporary Folklore

Utah State University DigitalCommons@USU All USU Press Publications USU Press 2007 Haunting Experiences: Ghosts in Contemporary Folklore Diane E. Goldstein Sylvia Ann Grider Jeannie B. Thomas [email protected] Follow this and additional works at: https://digitalcommons.usu.edu/usupress_pubs Part of the American Popular Culture Commons, and the Folklore Commons Recommended Citation Goldstein, D. E., Grider, S. A., & Thomas, J. B. (2007). Haunting experiences: Ghosts in contemporary folklore. Logan, Utah: Utah State University Press. This Book is brought to you for free and open access by the USU Press at DigitalCommons@USU. It has been accepted for inclusion in All USU Press Publications by an authorized administrator of DigitalCommons@USU. For more information, please contact [email protected]. Haunting Experiences Ghosts in Contemporary Folklore Haunting Experiences Ghosts in Contemporary Folklore DianeDiane E. GoldsteinGoldstein Sylvia Ann Grider Jeannie Banks Thomas Utah State University Press Logan, Utah Copyright ©2007 Utah State University Press All rights reserved Utah State University Press Logan, Utah 84322-7200 Manufactured in the United States of America Printed on recycled, acid-free paper ISBN: 978-0-87421-636-3 (paper) ISBN: 978-0-87421-681-3 (e-book) Portions of chapter 5 were previously published in Sylvia Grider, 1999, The haunted house in literature, tradition, and popular culture: A consistent image, Contemporary Legend, New Series 2:174–204. Portions of chapter 2 were previously published in Diane E. Goldstein, 1991, Perspectives on Newfoundland belief traditions: Narrative clues to concepts of evidence, in Studies in Newfoundland folklore: Community and process, eds. G. Thomas and J. D. A. Widdowson, 27–40 (St. Johns, Newfoundland: Breakwater Books). Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Goldstein, Diane E. Haunting experiences : ghosts in contemporary folklore / Diane E. Goldstein, Sylvia Ann Grider, Jeannie Banks Thomas. p. cm. Includes bibliographical references. ISBN 978-0-87421-636-3 (pbk. : alk. paper) 1. Ghosts. 2. Supernatural. 3. Haunted places. I. Grider, Sylvia Ann. II. Thomas, Jeannie B. III. Title. GR580.G65 2007 398’.47--dc22 2007025178 For their support and encouragement, dedicated to John Banks and Dorothy Pingree, Rochelle Goldstein, the folks at I.S.C.L.R., and to Rowdy Grrlz everywhere. Contents Illustrations viii Acknowledgments ix Introduction: Old Spirits in New Bottles 1 Part I: Taking Ghosts Seriously One: The Usefulness of Ghost Stories 25 Two: Scientifi c Rationalism and Supernatural Experience Narratives 60 Part II: Narrating Socialization and Gender Three: Gender and Ghosts 81 Four: Children’s Ghost Stories 111 Part III: Old Spirits in New Contexts Five: Haunted Houses 143 Six: The Commodifi cation of Belief 171 Conclusion: The “Spectral Turn” 206 Notes 228 Bibliography 234 Filmography 250 Index 253 Acknowledgments Without the help of a great many friends, we three authors would never have been able to manage the logistics and complexities of putting this book together. Spread across the continent from Newfoundland to Utah to Texas, e-mail served us well, but our friends made the book happen. We would like to thank the fol- lowing people: Joan Alessi for her haunted house photograph; John Alley and Utah State University Press for their preternatural patience; John Ashton for the book title; the nameless bar in Edinburgh where we conjured up the topic; Nancy Banks for accompanying Jeannie on ghost tours and through the infamous Winchester Mystery House; Ian Brodie for technical assistance with the electronic versions of the photographs; Bill Ellis for his prescient reading of an earlier version of the manuscript; Burt Feintuch for technical assistance with PhotoShopping; Janet Langlois for serving as discussant on our AFS panel at which we introduced some of this material; Carl Lindahl for his photographs at the San Antonio railroad tracks; Lynne McNeill for photographs, bibliographical assistance, and for participating in our AFS panel on this topic in 2003; Wayne Smith for pho- tography and technical assistance; Madison and Rio Thomas for their artwork; and the International Society for Contemporary Legend Scholarship for bringing the three of us together. ix Figure 1: Bottle chimes, Winchester Mystery House gift shop. San Jose, California. (Photo by Jeannie Banks Thomas) Illustrations Bottle chimes x The House of the Seven Gables 35 MacLellan’s store, Cape Breton 41 Gathering at haunted railroad tracks 55 Looking for ghostly palm prints 56 Spider web window panes 97 Mechanical fortune teller 99 Staircase leading to nowhere 101 Mabou Harbor poltergeist site 105 Brocklebank House, Massachusetts 107 Sixteenth-century painting of plague burials 114 Skeletons dancing on a grave 116 Haunted house in Newfoundland 145 Halloween party haunted house 148 Haunted house in New Mexico 150 Child’s drawing of a haunted house 154 Playing with a haunted house pop-up book 163 Reverend Zombie’s Voodoo Shop 187 Ghost tour guide in plain street clothes 188 Ghost tour guide in period costume 196 Introduction Old Spirits in New Bottles Bottle Trees and Cell Phones Bright wind chimes composed of enticing, candy-colored, pastel bits of glass are for sale at the Winchester Mystery House gift shop (fi gure 1). Some of the glass is formed into colorful bottles reminiscent of those in the southern supernatural tradition of bottle trees, a custom depicted in movies such as Ray (2004), a biopic about African American musician Ray Charles, or Because of Winn-Dixie (2005), a children’s fi lm about a beloved dog. The famous southern writer Eudora Welty photographed them. A contemporary southern author, Dennis Covington, describes them: “If you happen to have evil spirits, you put bottles on the branches of a [bare] tree in your yard. The more colorful the glass, the better, I suppose. The evil spirits get trapped in the bottles and won’t do you any harm. This is what Southerners in the country do with evil spirits” (1995, xv). Bottle trees are a product of southern African American culture. Jim Martin says that glassblowing and bottle making existed as early as the ninth century in Africa. The practice of hanging objects from trees to ward off evil spirits is also African, and the bottle tree itself is Kongo-derived. He adds that as the wind moves the tree, the spirits in the bottles moan (1988, 495). Martin maintains this type of bottle tree is less common today than in the past. However, certain variants for “upscale neighborhoods” have come into vogue: for example, sculpted metal trees are sold 1 2 Haunting Experiences in nurseries, and rural and urban sophisticates alike place their empties—mainly wine bottles—on them (Marquez 2004). The idea of bottle trees is appealing: they capture spirits that frighten or could harm us while still bravely keeping them in front of us. Right before our own doorsteps the bottles fl ash color and light, and then moan testimony to the uncanniness of both nature and the supernatural at the same time. Bottle trees are arresting, beautiful, and bizarre reminders that unseen forces move in the world. Ghost stories are like these bottle trees. The stories contain spirits; they capture them for us and keep them before our eyes, scaring us but containing that fright in narrative form, which captures our attention and also reminds us of the variegated hues and shapes of the numinous world. Like the spirit-bottle chimes for sale in the Winchester Mystery House gift shop, contemporary ghost lore—while rooted in tradition—is also wedded to and embedded in mass culture. Ghost narratives and supernatural beliefs are the ancestors of mass-mediated forms such as the Scooby Doo cartoons (1969–1972) mentioned in chapter 4—but today they are marketed as mass media’s creation, its offspring. However snarled their genealogies, mass culture ghosts and folk ghosts are clearly family and despite generations of rationalism and the infl uence of the enlightenment (Motz 1998), consumers still buy into the supernatural (see chapter 6). Consumption is a hallmark of contemporary American culture, and the other darling of the age is technology. Consider the cell phone, for example. It is a “superartifact” (Ascher 1999, 335), a ubiquitous object indicative of the time and culture from whence it has sprung. It fl aunts its high-tech nature as it brings unseen voices into every space of life. Technology accomplishes what we once thought only the supernatural could. However, the cell phone has an intriguing relationship to the supernatural. A few years ago, a member of the Society for Psychical Research in England asserted that cell phones were to blame for a decrease in ghost sightings. According to Tony Cornell, ghostly visitations have dropped dramatically since the introduction of the cell phone; he maintains, “With the introduction of mobile phones Old Spirits in New Bottles 3 15 years ago, ghost sightings began to decline to the point where now we are receiving none.” His theory is that the “electrical noise” produced by cell phones drowns out ghosts (FarShores ParaNews, 2005a). Even if one were to accept Cornell’s theory, however, one might still have to conclude that the exiled ghosts may beat cell phones by joining them. Now stories about ghostly voices on cell phones—much like earlier narratives about haunted telephones—circulate both orally and on the Internet, and numerous games with ghostly motifs have been developed for cell phones. Other paranormal researchers assert that TV, not the cell phone, is behind the spectral decline. Steve Parsons, of the Parascience Society of Wirral, England, argues that the drop in ghost sightings is due to the decline in the number of supernatural-themed television programs, such as The X-Files (1993–2002). He says, “In the run-up to the year 2000 there was loads of stuff on the telly about the paranormal and that made the public more aware.

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