Ghostland

An American History in Haunted Places

De: Colin Dickey

Narrado por: Jon Lindstrom

One of NPR’s Great Reads of 2016

“A lively assemblage and smart analysis of dozens of haunting stories...absorbing...[and] intellectually intriguing.” (The New York Times Book Review)

From the author of The Unidentified, an intellectual feast for fans of offbeat history, Ghostland takes listeners on a road trip through some of the country's most infamously haunted places - and deep into the dark side of our history.

Colin Dickey is on the trail of America's ghosts. Crammed into old houses and hotels, abandoned prisons and empty hospitals, the spirits that linger continue to capture our collective imagination, but why? His own fascination piqued by a house hunt in Los Angeles that revealed derelict foreclosures and "zombie homes", Dickey embarks on a journey across the continental United States to decode and unpack the American history repressed in our most famous haunted places. Some have established reputations as "the most haunted mansion in America" or "the most haunted prison"; others, like the haunted Indian burial grounds in West Virginia, evoke memories from the past our collective nation tries to forget.

With boundless curiosity, Dickey conjures the dead by focusing on questions of the living - how do we, the living, deal with stories about ghosts, and how do we inhabit and move through spaces that have been deemed, for whatever reason, haunted? Paying attention not only to the true facts behind a ghost story, but also to the ways in which changes to those facts are made - and why those changes are made - Dickey paints a version of American history left out of the textbooks, one of things left undone, crimes left unsolved. Spellbinding, scary, and wickedly insightful, Ghostland discovers the past we're most afraid to speak of aloud in the bright light of day is the same past that tends to linger in the ghost stories we whisper in the dark.

©2016 Colin Dickey (P)2016 Penguin Audio

Reseñas de la Crítica

“The spectral map Dickey creates is as broad and packed as his book’s title implies ... Ghostland amounts to a lively assemblage and smart analysis of dozens of haunting stories, some better known than others. In each chapter, Dickey spins riveting tales and then carefully unwinds these narratives, exposing the materials and motivations of their construction ... The most fascinating moments in Ghostland are Dickey’s etymological musings and his many turns down unusual paths of American history ... All of these are absorbing ... With Ghostland, Dickey achieves a capacious geographical synthesis that is both intellectually intriguing and politically instructive.” (The New York Times Book Review)

“For a relatively young nation, America is overrun with spirits. Mr. Dickey visits with Salem’s witches, spectral lights at a Nevada brothel and the eccentric widow who designed the sprawling, never-finished Winchester Mystery House...[to] suggest that by analyzing them we can learn a great deal about ourselves." (The Wall Street Journal)

"The good news: Nothing's really haunted except by the spirits we imagine for ourselves. The bad news: We'll make anything haunted. The great news: There's Ghostland. Colin Dickey gets to the heart of the matter over and over, skirting any tourist-trap sensationalism in favor of historical context that touches on the longing and tragedy underneath ghost stories. It's a tour of America's haunted places that takes an insightful look at how ghost stories are made, how ghosts and historical visibility are so tightly intertwined, and why we keep looking for the dead." (NPR)

The magic of ghost stories replaced by insight

I loved this book. It takes ghost stories, both well known and obscure and tells us about how people use them to describe their own prejudices or use for control, or even our own narcissism.

The chapter on the Winchester House was my favorite, since I've been there many times.

I'm kind of sad about losing some of the veneer of ghost stories. The tales have been fun, but what is a deeper understanding of people who lived in our history and now.

EXCELLENT read

Perfect book for the lovers of history, folklore and the supernatural alike. All from the point of view of a well documented author who gives all the needed evidence that enriches so many stories told from generation to generation. Excellent in every way.

Interesting and Informative

This book reads as part history, part meditation on place and space. Beyond telling stories of cruel events and their resulting hauntings, Dickey explains how we use ghost stories as a culture, as cautionary tales or to make sense of tragic events or, stranger still, to explain why certain spaces and places make us feel uncomfortable.

Very Informative. And Very interesting.

Very informative and very interesting. The subjects really make you think. It makes you want to go back and research certain topics such as the Winchester House and The LA Laurie House.

My Favorite Audio Book in Over 50 listened.

Wonderful stories, well written and excellently presented.
A thoroughly enjoyable experience.
Don't miss this, please.

It had a lot of good variety of stories

It did a good job of telling a lot of stories from all over the country

Some good intentions, but sidelined . . .

**Disclaimer: I want to keep this brief. In doing so, I may fail to be very articulate and risk making more of a negative impression about myself rather than an objective review of the audiobook. That's my disclaimer and I hope you'll accept that as I mean it to be.**
There are two main things I want to say about this book:
1) It is more about the legends and stories *behind* any accounts moreso than about accounts themselves. I actually like that about the book. If you like to watch those reality-TV shows where teams go into places and do a lot of infrared video, and show you EVP graphs and such, this book will probably disappoint you.
2) The author repeatedly discusses racial injustice and discrimination in this book. I understand. I get it. Honestly, I genuinely do. But they come back to it, chapter after chapter after chapter in such a way as to leave me thinking they should have either titled the book differently, or should simply write a book geared toward and discussing racial injustice in the arena of folklore. (And that would probably make a great book. I very well might buy it, with a transparent approach from the author intact.) It just got to the point of where you felt they had a second agenda they were trying to sell, the way the author would touch on it, move on to another location and another set of legends, only to come back to it again, move on and come back to it again. If it was a solid thread that weaved through the entire book, it would have been more enjoyable (but would, as I said, be better suited with a relevant title). Overall, I enjoyed the book enough to stick with it, though.

Repetitive but informative; strained performance

I didn’t like this one. I’ll start with the positives regarding the book itself:I would say for a folklorist in academia this is an informative research-worthy work to cite. Be warned though—the thesis overall is a bit repetitive at times. The last chapter was probably the most interesting and thought-provoking.

Here’s my real trouble with this audiobook: it was SO HARD to listen to—a real struggle—because of the use of accents for quoted material, which has no place in a work like this. From the exaggerated Louisiana creole accent attempts to the odd West-London dialects, the performance was ridiculous and even a bit offensive at times. Again, for a non-fiction work such as Ghostland, different “voices” are not necessary for reading quoted passages from interviews or newspaper articles. This is not fiction and there is no dialogue—only quoted material. A straight reading would be just fine and less distracting. The performance was indeed a performance—dialogue and accent assignments based on somewhat offensive caricatures of what southern African Americans or New York residents might sound like. It really did bother me on many levels. I felt like the accents were a crude stereotype of what the person—the real, actual person from history or the current researcher being quoted—really was/is. I would have been mortified to have been a researcher who was “performed” in this book. I just can’t wrap my head around how and why certain “voices” were assigned to quotes from researchers—did the author have a say in this at all or provide recordings for reference? Were accents chosen based on geography, supposed gender, or race? Socioeconomic background? This was so disappointing.

Interesting

A very interesting look into ghost stories and ghost culture. The book, though written from an unbiased perspective, mostly disproves ghosts and yet sheds a new light on the way our perceptions, culture, history and brains work to create these stories, and, perhaps, for good reason.

The reader does a great job, my only complaint is that he reads all female quotes in a bit of a stereotypical way.
This isn't a deal breaker, he has a great voice.

Well Thought-Out and Written

The author tackles the subjects of ghosts and haunted places from a variety of angles and presents a well-rounded overview with an appropriate degree of skepticism. This isn't just a collection of ghost stories, but an examination of ghosts and hauntings in historical, literary, religious, philosophical and sociological contexts. This turned out to be so much more than I had expected. It is entertaining, informative and well-written.