In a haunting, we always focus on the ‘materialization’ (in some sensory form) of past presence. However, the fact that the contemporary approach of ghost research (as a ‘hunt’ for anomalies using tech sweeps) also produces its own ruined materialities, and its own marginalized “contemporary pasts’, is less spoken about (if at all!). The globalization of travel, and the proliferation of ghost tourism tour packages and investigations (see G.H.I.), increases this “ruination” of contemporary haunted locations!
Because of this, the processes of “destruction” (the submersion of the historical past presence) are intensified, although largely overlooked by ghost hunters, tour operators, and even “professional” investigators! The outcome is a ruined landscape of historically haunted locations creating a phantom world of modern residual haunting. If you don’t resonate, you “create” new layers of “past” (contemporary) presence!
My research has always focused on eliminating these additional, accumulative layers at haunted locations by focusing on:
- The materiality of cultural memory, and resonate with it;
- The significance of cultural scenarios and actively participate in them; and,
- Developing and using theoretical approaches to fieldwork (E.O.C., P.O.P.) as a means for re-affirming the cultural element and its significance, at haunted locations.
The contemporary presence of tech devices blurs established cultural categories. As a result, at haunted locations, the contemporary presence of tech devices, as the sole “instrument” of unearthing and documenting past material presence at haunted locations becomes a manner that is out of place and out of time! We must concern ourselves with how these tech processes of “othering” reflect contemporary (not historic) preferences. We must see how the “ghost hunt”, and its economic benefits to the “few”, alters the past in the form of cultural and historical presence!
The crucial issue in ghost research is the past cultural event, not the measuring of an anomaly. We must mediate that past presence by “remembering” it through excavation embodiments. Ghost excavation is another method of recalling that memory. It is an implicit act of remembering embedded in our bodily routines (not the measurements of the tech devices) and ways of mediating the past. A “ghost excavation” reveals the gaps in “ghost hunting” field practices! The alternative to creating new residual haunting at an historical site (by “ghost hunting”) is to use the alternative, but resonating, modes of cultural and social engagement that are found in a “ghost excavation”!
