Ghostland - Colin Dickey

This is not a book of ghost stories.  Let's get that out there right now.  There are some ghost stories in it, yes, of various turns and origins.  However, ghost stories are not the focus of this book.  Instead, what Dickey turns his attention to is the historical and cultural atmospheres that contributed to these stories, as most of them--as Dickey demonstrates--have absolutely zero basis in fact.

The United States has a tumultuous history, and it shows in the ghost stories that populate it.  Dickey digs into a lot of different areas, both geographically and topically, examining such things as: Why aren't there more stories of Native American ghosts, given the violence rained upon them by whites?  Why aren't there more black ghosts in areas that are fraught with dismay and death for Africans or those of African descent, such as former slave markets and places where slaves were tortured?  Why do the details of ghost stories change, sometimes dramatically, over time--things like race, age, and origin all altering on the same ghost?  He answers all of these in turn, and some others to boot.  Though the details vary somewhat, what it all boils down to is that ghost stories reflect cultural hopes and fears at the time they are told, and so the areas that are important at the time of telling are sometimes altered for emphasized in order to emphasize these tensions, whether the alteration is deliberate or not.  For example, a ghost can be a slave in a time when tensions about race and brutality by masters was of cultural importance, but the same ghost can be a white lower-class woman in a time when matters of economic tension are more predominant in the psyche.

Dickey's book works its way from the small to the large, from haunted houses to civic buildings to entire towns and cities and to an idea that our entire country is haunted.  While he touches on some of the places that are particularly renowned for hauntings, such as Eastern State Penitentiary in Pennsylvania, he mostly focuses on places that aren't quite as well known.  He doesn't really explain why he does this, but it seems likely that it's because the less-known places are actually easier to track, as stories might go through fewer permutations if there are fewer people telling the tales.  He also touches on some other areas of ghost stories that might not occur to everyone every day.  For example, by case law in New York State, if a building is said to be haunted it is, by law, haunted--because whether hauntings are a matter of fact or fiction, the belief that a building is haunted affects its value. 

This book had a lot of interesting aspects.  However, because Dickey has a lot of points he wants to make--and many of those points have overlapping and repetitive aspects--none of them are really delved into too deeply, and each point has one or possibly two examples at the most.  I think it would have been interesting to see how some of his theories played out in the context of places said to be more haunted--like the Eastern State Penitentiary, or the White House.  Seeing some of the stories completely debunked was interesting, but then there was no real context for how some of the stories came to be in the first place.  For the Winchester House, there were some rumors started by a paper, but even that can't really indicate the absolute plethora of stories that surround it, and the details are, as Dickey pointed out earlier in the book, what is so very important.  But none of those are touched on.

Overall, a fascinating book, but one that probably could have been a bit stronger in constructing its central argument.  Great for fans of history or fans of ghosts, or skeptics of ghosts!  Or someone who is all of the above.

4 stars out of 5.