Numerous social and anthropological studies have focused on modernity’s destructive effect on “traditional” cultures and past worlds most of which remain as “ruins”, without heritage tourism considerations.  This contemporary destruction also involves, I propose, those non-contextual and non-resonating acts associated with “ghost hunts” and “ghost tourism” at “ruined” sites and landscapes perceived to be “haunted”.  Real past presence (both residual and interactive) is made inaccessible or become difficult to unearth by these evasive activities (some of which are highly provocative).  They further bury the material remains of past actions.  These processes of “destruction” (and suppression) are largely overlooked and forgotten, compared to those “visions of standard fieldwork” seen on TV and executed in the field by those whose intent is to technologically document an “anomaly”, which many perceive as a manifestation of past presence.

Of central importance to this project is the study of how these processes of haunting destruction and suppression are affecting many haunted ruins.  Through this intrusive methodology, the haunted site becomes, in large measure, untimely non-manifestation reminders of “normal” ambiguity, death, and decay.  Absence, rather than presence, becomes the standard rather than “active” sites of past manifesting cultural behaviors, leading to the perception that any “anomaly” in these places is a “ghostly” presence.  What is manifesting, however, maybe the “presence” of prior contemporary ghost hunting practices”!