Gender, Heroes, and the Social Dynamics of Ghost Hunting

...this is the hour that vanquishes even the coldhearted, with the limpid sky, the inexplicable serenity of the world, the smell of smoke, the bats, and in the ancient houses, the stealthy tread of ghosts. --Dino Buzzati, The Saucer has Landed, from his book of short stories Restless Nights.

It is hard to ignore all these ghosts. There are the enormously popular ghost hunting television shows Ghost Hunters, Most Haunted, Medium, The Ghost Whisperer, and other very popular shows documenting and portraying hauntings and all manner of ghostly phenomena. Every state now has organized ghost hunting groups galore, and most tourist destinations and cities now offer ghost tours and walks. Bookstore shelves are packed with books about ghosts, mediumship, ghost hunting, and kitschy, free 'ghost detectors' are now available for cell phones.

Ghost hunting has become a full blown pop culture craze-and there is an entire industry built around it. But it's not necessarily all steeped in novelty or all in 'fun.' Those ideas and a notion of unbiased investigation sometimes become lost and self-proclaimed experts and authorities (i.e., demonologists) can take the ghost hunt into the realm of fanaticism, psychology or religion with their rigid belief systems and dubious constructs. What's going on? To find out, it may be helpful to take a look at its earliest American origins.

The year 1848 saw the United States in deep transit. It was a time & place of cultural and economic reform; generally of movement and change. Elizabeth Cady Stanton's Women's Rights Convention in Seneca Falls, New York convened to address the limitations upon women, largely brought into focus by involvement with the anti-slavery movement. Indeed, Cady's friend, former slave Frederick Douglass spoke at the convention of over 300 people. The boiling issue of slavery was about to literally rip the country in two.