Into the World of American Ghost Hunters
Total Page:16
File Type:pdf, Size:1020Kb
UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA, IRVINE Spectral Science: Into the World of American Ghost Hunters DISSERTATION Submitted in partial satisfaction of the requirements for the degree of DOCTOR OF PHILOSOPHY in Anthropology by Janny Li Dissertation Committee: Chancellor’s Professor George Marcus, Chair Associate Professor Mei Zhan Associate Professor Keith Murphy 2015 ii © 2015 Janny Li ii DEDICATION To My grandmother, Van Bich Luu Lu, who is the inspiration for every big question that I ask. And to My sisters, Janet and Donna Li, with whom I never feel alone in this world. ii TABLE OF CONTENTS Page LIST OF FIGURES IV ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS V CURRICULUM VITAE VII INTRODUCTION 1 CHAPTER 1: A Case of Quasi-Certainty: William James and the 31 Making of the Subliminal Mind CHAPTER 2: Visions of Future Science: Inside a Ghost Hunter’s Tool Kit 64 CHAPTER 3: Residual Hauntings: Making Present an Intuited Past 108 CHAPTER 4: The Train Conductor: A Case Study of a Haunting 137 CONCLUSION 169 REFERENCES 174 iii LIST OF FIGURES Page Figure 1. Séance at Rancho Camulos 9 Figure 2. Public lecture at Fort Totten 13 Figure 3. Pendulums and dowsing rods 15 Figure 4. Ad for “Ghost Hunters” 22 Figure 5. Selma Mansion 64 Figure 6. Thermal imaging pad 66 Figure 7. Static pod 76 Figure 8. EMF meters 82 Figure 9. Gotham Paranormal Research Toolkit 91 Figure 10. Collecting baseline measurements 91 Figure 11. Dowsing rods 94 Figure 12. Intersection of Wall Street and Water Street 124 Figure 13. Collecting EMF measurements 126 Figure 14. EVP session 127 Figure 15. Paranormal investigation at Fort Totten 169 Figure 16. Ad for “Haunted Encounters” at the Queen Mary 173 iv ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS I would like to express my deep gratitude and appreciation for the warmth and generosity of the men and women I met in New York City, Chicago, and Southern California. Without their patience and willingness to share their lives and stories, there would be no dissertation. I am also especially grateful to Patrice Keane, Helen Mulholland, Junelle James, and Jeff Twine at the American Society for Psychical Research for introducing me to the fascinating history of their organization and for helping me navigate their wonderful library collections. Thank you to my dissertation committee. It has been an honor to work under the supervision of my chair, George Marcus, who gave me the intellectual freedom to chase every rabbit down every rabbit hole. Thank you for your patience, humor, and wisdom, which has undoubtedly made me a better thinker and made graduate school a much saner experience. I am indebted to Mei Zhan for teaching me about “other” worlds and “other” knowledges. Thank you for introducing me to some of my favorite ethnographies. It has been a pleasure reading them with you and your influence is felt throughout this dissertation. Keith Murphy has provided unwavering support throughout my undergraduate and graduate career. Our twelve years of friendship has made me a better scholar, writer, teacher, and person in the world. I have had the great fortune of working with innumerable colleagues and professors who have provided me with encouragement along the way. At UC Irvine, Michael Montoya, Julia Elyachar, Angela Garcia (currently at Stanford University), Karen Leonard, Mike Burton, Tom Boellstorff, Kris Peterson, Leo Chavez have taught me how to “think like an anthropologist.” I am also grateful for the many conversations I have had with Valerie Olson, Sylvia Nam, and Angela Jenks who have provided me with much needed motivation to finish the dissertation and courage to look ahead. I owe a special thanks to Carrie Noland and Gabriele Schwab, who both served on my committee for advancing to candidacy. Carrie Noland was the first person to sign onto my committee and was present for the nascent stages of this project. Thank you for believing in this project. I can’t count all of the lessons that Gabriele Schwab has taught me over the past years. Your intellectual depth, creativity, and kindness are an inspiration to me as a woman and as an academic. I would be remiss if I did not thank my early mentors at UCLA, Sherry Ortner, Candy Goodwin, Jason Throop, Brent Luvaas (currently at Drexel University), Cameron Hay-Rollins (currently at Miami University), and Jonathan Silk (currently at Leiden University), who instilled me in love for anthropology and who inspired me to become an anthropologist in the first place. I am indebted to my cohort, Stevie Rae, Taylor Nelms, Ather Zia, Caitlin Fouratt, Michael Hurley, Mark DuRocher, Lydia Zacher, Sana Zaidi, and Lee Ngo, who generously read and offered feedback on various course papers, conference papers, grant applications, chapter drafts, and manuscripts. I could not have asked for a more supportive cohort to get me through graduate school. A special thank-you to Taylor Nelms for daring me into studying ghost hunters on that fateful road trip and providing the initial encouragement for this dissertation. I am particularly grateful to Damien Droney, Sean Mallin, Robbie Kett, Leksa Lee, Jenn Henry, Eva Yonas, Anna v Kryczka, Diana Leong, Marc DaCosta, Smoki Musaraj, Ivan Small, Nate Coben, Simone Popperl, Emily Brooks, Tom Douglas and Jenny Fan for their friendship, generous support, and encouragement. These cherished friends have been an indispensable part of my life. I am immeasurably grateful for Kalin Agrawal. There is no “thank you” that can speak to all the tangibles and intangibles that he has given me. I also extraordinary indebted to my family for their love and support, despite the fact that my parents don’t quite understand my research. I would also like to express my deepest appreciation for the institutes that have generously supported my research. The Department of Anthropology, School of Social Sciences, and Center for Ethnography at the University of California Irvine supported my education and research throughout my graduate career and provided funding for preliminary research. My dissertation was funded by a Wenner-Gren Doctoral Dissertation Fieldwork Grant and a Lita Osmundsen Initiative Grant. vi CURRICULUM VITAE Janny Li 2005 Benjamin A. Gilman International Scholarship funded study abroad at the Chinese University of Hong Kong 2006 BA, Anthropology and Asian Humanities, University of California, Los Angeles 2007 Development Assistant, Rosemary Children’s Services 2008-2014 Teaching Assistant, School of Social Sciences, University of California, Irvine 2012 University of California, Irvine Center for Ethnography Travel Grant 2012 Wenner-Gren Dissertation Fieldwork Grant 2012 Lita Osmundsen Initiative Grant 2013 Mentor, University of California, Irvine Undergraduate Research Opportunities Program 2013-2014 Instructor, Department of Anthropology, University of California, Irvine 2013-2014 Curriculum Analyst, University of California, Irvine, Department of Anthropology, Undergraduate Committee 2014 MA, Anthropology, University of California, Irvine 2014 University of California, Irvine Associate Graduate Students Travel Grant 2014 Associate Dean’s Fellowship 2014-2015 Intern, University of California, Irvine Community College Internship Program at Orange Coast College 2015 Instructor, Department of Anthropology, California State University Long Beach 2015 PhD, Anthropology with a specialization in Medicine, Science, Technology, and Society studies, University of California, Irvine Publications 2009 Caitlin Fouratt, Janny Li, Taylor Nelms. “AAA encounters: Challenging boundaries and rethinking ethics, American Anthropological Association 107th Annual Meeting.” Anthropology Today 25(2): 27-28. vii ABSTRACT OF THE DISSERTATION Spectral Science: Into the World of American Ghost Hunters by Janny Li Doctor of Philosophy in Anthropology University of California, Irvine 2015 Chancellor’s Professor George Marcus, Chair This dissertation follows American ghost hunters in their search for answers to questions of the afterlife and ultimate “truth.” It is an account of how they piece-meal disparate knowledges and paradigms—including traditional religions, New Age philosophies, and even popular understandings of science—to transform invisible and ephemeral ghosts into empirical objects of inquiry. In this dissertation, I trace paranormal research to a movement from within the scientific community. In the wake of Darwin’s theory of evolution, American psychologist and philosopher William James and a small group of distinguished scholars formed the American Society for Psychical Research to scientifically investigate exceptional mental states and more controversially, the possible postmortem survival of human consciousness. Fearing that the advance of science threatened to render the role of religion obsolete in modern society, James developed a theory of pragmatic truth, treating God and other supernatural beliefs as “real” insofar as they fulfilled personal needs and produced practical consequences. I engage with James’ psychical research and pragmatism to historically situate ghost hunting within longstanding theoretical debates on how to empirically study the supernatural and how to account for the endurance of spiritual beliefs amidst an increasingly “rational” technoscientific viii society. More precisely, I treat James’ pragmatism as both a historical milieu and an analytic to understand how ghost hunters conceive of and do the work of paranormal research within the legacy of early psychical researchers. Paranormal research is, and has always been, defined by uncertainty: nonstandard and competing theories, research protocols,