The following articles were authored by Mary

Excerpt From Published Book – “Ghost Culture Too: Expanding the Contemporary Reality of Past Interactive Interactions”

By on August 2, 2012
This entry is filed under Future "Excavations".Comments Off

A Multi-Species Haunting Auto-Ethnography

“Once upon a time……”

It starts with the end of one reality and the beginning of another. The changeling in the woods, the wolf at Wolvesey, the “Squatch” in the swamp, and the snake at the door are part of the “archaeology of me”. They form various episodes in my books. Through the years, and covering spaces of separate realities, these experiences have become a multi-species ethnography of my human consciousness. It has its beginnings with man’s best friend who I treated as an enemy, and where it might end is a “trail of tears” located along a cemetery route of memory. Along the way, I have been guided by an “archaeological poet” (Seamus Heaney) and an anthropological seer (Loren Eiseley). It has been both an “immense journey” and a caravan of extra-ordinary encounters. Foremost, it has become a wilderness trek along a path of ghosts that led to an avenue of the dead in Mexico. It is an “excavation story” of an archaeology that continues to haunt.

This “excavation story” is peopled by human and ghostly presences. It is also an exotic story framed in a familiar landscape. This makes the experiences unique and commonplace. It is walking the surface and experiencing the multiple layers of reality that are deposited there, and which continue to percolate into the present. Oft times, the journey has been an isolated one, devoid of human companionship, but not of life. As explored, I was accompanied by mythic creatures, cinematic heroes, and “speechless” animals. All of these presences (human, fictive, and animal) “voiced” their comradeship with me, and each contributed equally to my comprehension of what beauty and realism lies beyond the mundane and the habitual.

Those who have not experiences this richness, I say, have not been really blessed with the “spirit” that “haunts”! These stories, archaeological-ethnographic-theatrical in nature, are “naturally” personal. They are part of the continuing journey of my life and research, a haunting auto-ethnography of my occupation of (and cultural expression in) this world………

 

The Ghosts of “Indiana”……and Characterization in Fieldwork

“It’s a ruined lost city, isn’t it”? She replied sourly…. “With a God-damned lost treasure in it somewhere. All that’s lacking are pygmy natives with blowguns. Classic archaeological stuff, like those movies back in the seventies with the temples, and the big rolling stone balls and giant snakes and the idols, with emeralds in their eyes……”. (In the Courts of the Crimson Kings by S.M. Stirling 2008:137).

The saga and legend of Indiana Jones does not only haunt past presence, it also haunts the future. And it is not only ghosts! Archaeology as a science is also the spectral traces of “excavation” in science fiction.

Archaeology and movie directors also tell different stories about the past. In movies containing archaeological themes and storylines, there is always romance, danger, and violence, coupled with spectacular special effects. This “storyboard” achieves box office success, but comes at the expense of real ordinary past presence, mundane acts, and meticulous fieldwork. As S. M. Stirling further states in his book, the truth of archaeological work is often quite boring:

“And real archaeologists don’t do ruined cities and treasures. That’s for tomb robbers, not archaeologists. Archaeologists spend years excavating antique latrines and rubbish dumps with toothbrushes and whisk brooms” (2008:137).

Still, archaeologists are limited in their abilities to tell individual stories about a specific historical personage or an individual’s role in a particular event. Hollywood sometimes fills that gap, but the data is usually contrived, not historical or based on archaeological context and ethnographic situation. The past is more complicated than what archaeologists excavate or directors film. Today, we work with what remains in and of the present. This is what is, not what was. These contemporary remains are only some of what still exists. There are other material remains that lie hidden, are ignored, are misjudged, or are unable to be “recovered” (or “unearthed”) due to contemporary visions of reality or contemporary applications of technology. And some of these remains can be quite uncanny. There are stories, “excavation” ones not “ghost stories” that predate the contemporary popular cultural trend of paranormal reality TV (or movie reels). And they have occurred among archaeologists and have been documented in the historical record.

Let me tell you an archaeological story that stirred my interest in the relationship between “ruins” and “ghosts”, and the unearthing of haunting manifestations as part of an archaeological field approach. The story belongs long before my professional career as an archaeologist, and its origin were in books, not fieldwork. It began with my reading of various archaeological works, and historical accounts, of the Mayan Culture in Mexico and Central America. And it centered on the extensive ruins of Tikal in Guatemala.

During the Colonial Period in Mexico, there were numerous and horrific racial wars between Maya Indians and Europeans in the Yucatan Peninsula that continued into the 20th century. During the mid-19th century, a number of Mayan refugees migrated south from the Yucatan Peninsula and settled in the abandoned ruins of Tikal. Here they defaced the stone monuments and wrote graffiti on the stone walls. However, a swarm of vampire bats drove out the refugees, and perhaps saved further damage to the Tikal ruins. Were ancient Mayan deities responsible for this defense of Tikal?

In Maya cosmology, “Camazotz” was the “bat god” and was associated with night, death, and sacrifice. “Camazotz” was also considered the guardian of the Mayan underworld. Glyph 56 is considered the “bat sign”, and is a reasonable representation of the vampire bat. The glyph was a powerful symbol to mark against enemies. But was it more than just a symbol? During the 1880’s and 1890’s, Englishman Alfred Maudsley made numerous visits to all of the known Maya sites in the region. His meticulous drawings and photographs of Tikal are still used by archaeologists today. In a passage, Maudslay writes:

“All the mozos had fled back to the plain being frightened to sleep in the ruins because of the ‘Spirits of the House’” (quoted in Norman 1988:179).

In the Mayan language the name “Tikal” means “the place where spirit voices are heard” (Ibid:179), or “Place of the Voices”. The name “Tikal” probably dates from the time of the defacement of the monuments by the Mayan refugees (cf. Tickell 1991:110). Were these “spirit voices” the God “Camazotz” who sent vampire bats to stop the destruction of the ruins? Teobert Maler, an archaeologist who did extensive surveys of the ruins of Tikal some 20 years after Maudslay wrote:

“The Mayans believe that at midnight….their ancestors return to earth and, adorned as in the days of their glory, wander about in the forsaken temples and palaces, where their spirit voices are heard in the air” (Norman 1988:179).

Whether these “voices” were the “ancestors” of the contemporary Maya, or their god, “Camazotz” (in the form of vampire bats) makes no difference. A connection was made, more than 150 years ago, between archaeological ruins, an ethnographic culture, and specific haunting phenomenon! This is a connection that I continue in my fieldwork at locations perceived to be haunted by past presence. And for me, one does NOT need a “Hollywood” script to make it interesting, entertaining, and adventurous. One merely needs a “resonating contextual cultural” script!

How infrequently we have overlooked the “excavation stories” that have come out of fieldwork, especially those dealing with the ordinary or mundane field methodologies that do “unearth” past presence. But we must go beyond the surface “digs” of Hollywood’s versions of archaeological adventure, intrigue, and spectacle (aka “Indiana Jones”). By deepening our excavations into what (and who) does remain from the past, we can alter the contemporary reality of our views of past presence.

This, I propose, is a return to the “art” of excavation, a re-assessment of theatrics, and a re-focus on directing our energies, cameras, and audio equipment to what lies on the surface of the mundane regarding “active” past presence. Though focusing on the ordinary and mundane of the past, we can still unearth and record spectacular finds in unique, thrilling, and scientific ways. We don’t need the “ghosts” of “Indie” to guide us, just to show us that there is something more to re-cover in our archaeological fieldwork!

Archaeology has always been framed by its perceived limitations on what is considered “remains” from the past, and reflective of an “archaeological record”. Couched into this narrow perspective is the practice of excavation as ideally objective. That objective aspect hinders a personal approach to “who” remains and what may still lie hidden but recoverable. Filmmaking is also subjective. It involves choices. This makes it intensely personal.

What is needed (in both archaeology and archaeologically-themed filmmaking) is a documented process that involves choice, is highly personal, and recovers what a “typical” excavation has missed. At the same time, we must seek data in such a way that is both exciting and advances the science of archaeology as a discipline that recovers past cultural behaviors and patterns. This must be participatory in the adventurous journey of cultural immersions into the past, and objectively observing and recording the results of our personal (and emotional) efforts. This stance lies beyond the documentary record and expands to that of a continuing human record of past presence. This is “storytelling”, not just “movie-making” for profitable ends. This is:

“…following the guidance of one’s own experience, intuition, and imagination beyond the limits of basic empirical evidence toward the creation of a more compelling presentation of our rather lifeless archaeological data” (Noble 2007:241).

I do not agree, however, with the notion that “it is unlikely that we can ever present the products of archaeology in a fashion that is as entertaining as the visual artistry of good film….” (Noble 2007:241). We can present a feel and vision of the past that archaeologists have not previously excavated, or film directors have exhibited through their cinematic productions. This must be, however, the approach of a trained archaeologist who uses immersions into other cultural worlds to recover what is lost, has been forgotten, or even previously ignored.

The way to the past, and the unearthing of its presence is not cinematic, though it does involve acting, and it does utilize camera work (both video and photographic) to record the journey to and from. This trek, through excavation, is no “flight of fancy”, though it does require an “out of body” experience and direction. And this experience is a “possession”, of having the body “possessed” by another. This is not paranormal or demonic. It is the “way of the actor” (Bates 1987):

“…for some actors possession is not only what they experience, it is what they seek to experience” (1987:69).

This “possession experience” is “getting into” the character. At a haunted location, it is the historical character that may still be actively present. It is behavioral (contextual) acts so participated in/performed that the historical personage “speaks” as that active presence. This is not an “Indiana Jones” scripted sub-plot. It is real, and it occurs during fieldwork!

This experience of being “possessed” or “taken over” is a method to identify with an historical character, such that the cultural resonance (“possession”) stimulates a past memory, and creates an “identity”. The investigator has an internal presence (one of his own) that is expressed externally to the entity. During this process of internalization/externalization, an “eternal present” emerges, changing contemporary reality. This is a “treasured” moment, and a recovery of the past. And I believe it is more exciting and eventful than any Indiana Jones exploit that is preserved on celluloid!

If our performance acts do affect what is occurring (manifesting) in the present, then these actions, focused on specific past situations and spaces, allow events and individuals from that past to become present. Past experience is also brought to “light” (and “life”), however fragmented it may be. The development of past character and identity in fieldwork involves the investigator assuming the role, as actors do, of a “psychic explorer”, a real character, not quite like the reel character of Indiana Jones! In this authentic real-life investigative role, the fieldworker (as actor) is acting “psychic”:

“When people sense what we mean without any outward sign from us, we assume they are psychic. Actors are attempting to be psychic all the time. They are transmitting thoughts, experiencing desires, exerting wills, inducing states – and sending out all varieties of emanations to an audience…..” (Marowirz 1978:103).

In fieldwork, that “audience” is the “interactive cultural apparition”. If they respond to our participatory acts, this psychic link is achieved through cultural resonance with what occurred in the past. What was once “buried” is now exposed, a cinematic touch that “Indiana Jones” would appreciate! The manifesting past is not imagined (as in a movie script), it is recalled, relived, and reproduced as “live” event. This event is not paranormal. It is the preparation and execution of a specific role by an actor/investigator in fieldwork!

This investigative “acting act” is a demonstration of a degree of sensory communication “beyond those we normally accept” (Bates 1987:203). Yet, it is not beyond our present notions of reality! It is the investigator (as actor) “extending the powers of communication” (Ibid:203). This communication is a resonance between present and past, the living and the “dead”, and between two or more human beings. And it is an experience that “keeps us in contact with the mystery which lies at the heart of life” (Bates 1987:205).

 “…..modern actors are bringing to us powers from the beyond. Healing energies. Spirits………”.

  • Brian Bates

 

***Copyrighted and trademarked 2012 by John Sabol and New Forest Books, Portsmouth, NH, USA.  All rights reserved.  No parts of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording or by any information storage and retrieval system without written permission from the publisher.  For additional copyright/trademark information, contact John Sabol, c/o New Forest Books, 1500A Lafayette Rd. #143, Portsmouth, NH 03801 USA

The Spirits, Shadows, and Secrets International Symposium

By on July 28, 2012
This entry is filed under Conferences.Comments Off

 

 

 

http://www.youtube.com/jamikkola

GHost Requests The Pleasure Of Your Company At…Hostings 7: Presence – Manifesting Ghosts

By on February 3, 2012
This entry is filed under Appearances, Conferences.Comments Off

John Sabol to give a presentation at The University of London, England:

Hostings 7: Presence – Manifesting Ghosts

Date: March 14th  2012, 6.30pm – 9.00pm

An evening of interdisciplinary talks and presentations exploring the desire to materialise what is absent.

Venue: The Court Room, First Floor,  Senate House South Block, University of London, WC1E 7HU

(An apparition known as ‘The Blue Lady’ has been reported to haunt the adjoining Senate room)

Presenters:
Hollington & Kyprianou, “Technology & the Uncanny”
Jack Hunter, “Expressions of Spirithood”
John Sabol, “The Forgotten Soldier: Manifestations of the Continuing Presence of Colonel William Holmes (1862-2011)”
This is a free event but places are limited so please email: ghost.hostings@gmail.com to reserve your seats
More information: www.host-a-ghost.blogspot.com
You can also reserve places for “Hostings 6: Absence – Haunted Landscapes”- Sharon Kivland, Mark Fisher & Andy Sharp, Laura Joyce and Hayley Lock – 29th February, 6.30pm – 9.00pm. Venue as above.

PROGRAMME FOR HOSTINGS 7

Hollington & Kyprianou -Technology & the Uncanny, LCC – EVA, London

Far from empirical science and technological progress dampening the enthusiasm for magical or spiritual readings, the use and improvement of technology trades on the same sense of awe and the uncanny previously provided by mystical phenomena. The symbiotic relationship between technology and the uncanny is not only one of a shared notion of the sublime, but also one of appropriation.

This paper will discuss the relationship between technology and the uncanny through historical and contemporary examples as well as referencing our own collaborative artist practice.

Hollington and Kyprianou are London based artists who have been collaborating for over ten years.

Their work investigates how competing representations of science and politics shape the boundaries of debate and the locus of the rational. Their materials are drawn from archives of primary objects, scenarios from film and mainstream culture, oral history, interviews and hearsay to create new narrative spaces that are simultaneously funny and un-nerving.  Their work as been shown widely in the UK including Tate Modern and ICA London and internationally at The 51st Venice Biennale, as well as in Europe, North and South America and Australia.

Their latest project, a time travel murder mystery can be seen here:

http://www.electronicsunset.org/node/1813

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Jack Hunter – Expressions of Spirithood

The body is the primary tool for the expression of personality. It is our interface with the physical world and our everyday means of communicating with each other, both verbally and non-verbally. The way in which we use our bodies, therefore, is of key importance to the way we are perceived as individual personalities. In trance mediumship, and spirit possession, practices the human body is used for the expression of multiple personalities and non-physical entities. This paper will explore the differing ways in which the human body is utilised as a means for the expression of spirits in a variety of different cultural contexts, from the ecstatic dancing of Afro-Brazilian Candomble mediums to the relatively static demonstrations of Euro-American trance mediums. It will explore the different methods employed by mediums to signify the presence of spirits and will examine the role of performance in making the spirit world tangible. These techniques will be contrasted with the methods of contemporary ghost hunters (i.e. the use of electronic equipment to infer the presence of spirits), and will address the similarities and differences in the ways in which the presence of spirits is recognised during trance demonstrations and modern ghost hunts. All of this will be presented with the aim of furthering our understanding of the nature of spirits and their culturally specified modes of expression in the physical world.

Jack Hunter is a PhD student in Social Anthropology at the University of Bristol, UK. His research looks at contemporary trance mediumship in Bristol, and focuses on themes of personhood, personality, altered states of consciousness and anomalous experience. He is the founder and editor of “Paranthropology: Journal of Anthropological Approaches to the Paranormal.” In 2010 he received the Eileen J. Garrett scholarship from the Parapsychology Foundation, and in 2011 was awarded the Gertrude Schmeidler award by the Parapsychological Association.

http://paranthropology.weebly.com/index.html

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John Sabol – The Forgotten Soldier: Manifestations of the Continuing Presence of Colonel William Holmes (1862-2011)

What occurs at a location perceived to be haunted, who continues to manifest years, even centuries, after physical death and why? Avery Gordon, in her book Ghostly Matters (1996), states that the ghost is a social figure, and one who manifests as one form by which something lost or forgotten makes itself known. A haunting, according to Gordon, is a very particular way of knowing what has happened and what continues..  So much has already been lost, forgotten or destroyed in the accelerated pace of contemporary life and technological advancement. Yet, it is this same technology that may write that forgotten history and tell, with voices echoing from the past, individual ghost stories.

The battle of Antietam, September 17th 1862, was the single bloodiest day of combat in American History. Colonel William Holmes of the 2nd Georgia became the last soldier to die in combat here at Burnside Bridge. Holmes’ story had become lost to history and his burial site near the bridge was undiscovered until our “ghost excavations” there in 2010/2011. Through contextual scenarios, enacted by our female investigators and RT-EVP audio recordings, the postscript to his death emerges as auditory manifestations of a plea to “go home” to Georgia and be properly buried. His voiced responses haunt us still today, 150 years after his remains were lost to history.

John Sabol is an archaeologist, cultural anthropologist, actor, and “ghost excavator”. He has a M.A. in Anthropology/archaeology (University of Tennessee), and a B.A. in Sociology/Anthropology (Bloomsburg University). As an archaeologist, he has worked on excavations and site surveys in England, Mexico, and at various sites in the United States.  His anthropological fieldwork includes the studies of “ghosts” and native religious beliefs in the afterlife among various groups in Mexico. His acting career includes “ghosting” performances of various characters and scenarios in more than 35 movies, TV shows, and documentaries. He has conducted “ghost excavations” (an archaeological-ethnographic-theatrical approach embodied in the P.O.P. Theory) in the USA and Europe. He has appeared in the A&E TV series, Paranormal State as an investigative consultant. Publications include, Ghost Excavator (2007), Ghost Culture (2007), Digging Up Ghosts (2011), and the Haunted Theatre (2011).

www.ghostexcavation.com

State of the (Dis-) Union Address: Ghost Research – 2012 and Beyond….

By on December 31, 2011
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Our fieldwork, involving “ghost excavations”, will continue in earnest in 2012 (and beyond). This is critical work! So much of the past and its cultural heritage is being lost, forgotten, and suppressed by those “ghost hunts” and “ghost tours” whose sole purpose is to entertain and/or create a basis for promoting TV exposure and personal gain. The “ghost” has evolved from an “uncertainty” to a “probability” to be entertaining, and a figure that entertains! The influence of paranormal TV, and its unfortunate consequences, the “celebrity” ghost hunt, have not only suppressed serious work in the field, it has re-configured haunted space! Instead of the traditional haunted house, there is an emergence of new sites of perceived haunting characteristic of modern culture (prisons, hospitals, military sites/forts, public lodgings, even amusement parks), with new technologies (still largely unproven), and changing political landscapes (depending upon current (even past) popularity). This is not a “bad” thing in itself, but it is characterized within an atmosphere of petty in-fighting, jealousy, territoriality, hate e-mail, and egocentric marketing techniques on social networks and websites.

It’s a sad (and intolerable) state of affairs (something that must be addressed in 2012) when, in a recent book entitled Popular Ghosts: The Haunted Spaces of Everyday Culture (2010) edited by Maria del Pilar Blanco and Esther Peeren, we read the following:

“present-day ghost hunters seek out the ghostly in general, approaching it more like a coin collector looking to build a collection or as an extreme sport than as a quest for personal, scientific, or social enlightenment” (p. XIII).

The authenticity (and extent of the supposition) of this remark is irrelevant. What is important is that if this is the public (and academic) image of “ghost hunting”, it’s time for a RADICAL CHANGE!! Unfortunately, many of these same “ghost hunters” believe that change begins and ends with technology, framed by physical science. There are, however, other scientific realities out there, and concepts other than “paranormal”, “supernatural”, “alternative universe”, “hidden dimensions”, or similar concepts. All one has to do is READ the recent ethnographic, anthropological, and archaeological literature on theories and methodologies.

Lost in the translation of “ghost tech” are the new developments in the social sciences so relative to the development of legitimate research on interactive past presence. These include transductive ethnographies, multispecies/multisensory ethnography, the recording and documentation of “extraordinary experiences” in the anthropological literature, the ethnography of the particular, the anthropology of past soundscapes, the archaeology in and of the present, to name a few.

Our “ghost excavation” fieldwork will continue to evolve and improve, as it uses these new orientations and methodologies. We believe that the best kind of fieldwork integrates a whole range of different, relevant, and resonating methods. All of them will focus on making visible and sensorially-perceived and recorded the cultural reality of the presence of the past in the actual, through these resonating acts and techniques in the field. To do otherwise would be to effectively erase (or suppress) the materialities of everyday past presence.

As an anthropologist, I am concerned with the evidence for human (not demonic/supernatural) behaviors. As an advocate of cultural geography (and the traces of spectral geographies), I am interested in the spatial analysis of human (and past human) phenomena in specific areas during particular uncertain historical events. As a former history major, I rely on historical archives and material traces that point toward past activities. As an actor, I actively shape and construct scenarios and situations that recall past memory. And as an archaeologist, I work within sensugraphic layers that have become, in the present day, either lost, forgotten, or remain buried on the surface of contemporary reality.

In 2012, I will continue to do my humble part to legitimize this field, without altering my focus or convictions. What is seen, heard, and programmed on paranormal TV, I have done (many years) before. I don’t need to step back, and join the parade of “mimics” and copycats”. I have long since progressed beyond that “stage”, as I now occupy a limited synecdochic “stage” with past presence as my primary (and only important) audience! It is through the use of the aforementioed methodological toolkit that I will continue to explore the possibilities of uncertainty in the ruined hauntscapes of locations around the world. A “ghost excavation” will remain a place and a technique for thinking about how space, time, presence, and hauntscapes are produced and recorded.

The Extended Mind of a “P.O.P.”

By on December 15, 2011
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“Much of what matters about human intelligence is hidden not in the brain, nor in the technology, but in the complex and iterated interactions and collaborations between the two….The study of these interaction spaces is not easy, and depends both on new multidisciplinary alliances and new forms of modeling and analysis…a new kind of cognitive scientific collaboration involving neuroscience, physiology, and social, cultural, and technological studies in about equal measure”.

- Andy Clark, “Mindware: An Introduction to the Philosophy of Cognitive Science”, 2001.

 

This is the extended mind thesis. The central issue is that mental states and processes can spread across physical, social, and cultural environments, as well as bodies and brains, through time and accumulated layers of occupied spaces. Cultural practices from the past can be unearthed as the manifestations of intelligent “dead” individuals.

I believe the use of “P.O.P.” (Participate-Observe-Perform), as a scientific collaboration between theories and field techniques in archaeology, anthropology, and performance studies can unearth the “extended mind” of these (still) interactive “dead” individuals!

The “Extended Mind” Hypothesis and Manifestations of Interactive Past Presence

By on December 14, 2011
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A good basis for a relationship between neuroscience, layers of archaeological haunting strata, and an intelligent past presence is the extended mind hypothesis. This is an argument which proposes that both the mental content of an individual and the mental process can be external to the individual.

What occurs in a haunting is a manifesting fragment of mental content and mental process of a dead individual. When externalized, it creates a “substitute situation” of a life that once existed at a particular place. The REAL existence of this situation allows contemporary human activity to interact with “something” that is normally absent, or otherwise unavailable.

These substitute situations are characterized by:
-the suppression of concrete details. A haunting is a visual, auditory, olfactory, etc. fragment of what once was; and
-it relaxes temporal constraints on reasoning and activity. Time unfolds. There is no “past”. “Death” did not occur, or “dying” is still an ongoing event.

This makes it physically possible (not a paranormal possibility) for the human mind to experience something that would not ordinarily be experienced. Cultural resonance provides the mediational means to understand AND communicate within this embedded “substitute situation”.

This is a” radical idea that human cognitive, affective, and emotional states and/or processes, literally, comprise elements in their surrounding environment”( L. Malafouris & Colin Renfrew in their book, “The Cognitive Life of Things”, 2010:8). Manifestations of past presence are not only EXPRESSED in material cultural remains (as residual recordings), but now can also be experienced as CONSTITUTED (in a fragmented form) by past cultural behavior.

Past presence can now be directly studied with material cultural behavior furnishing parts of (no longer functionally-complete) human minds. This centers cultural immersion and resonating contextual activity into the frame for documenting a manifesting intelligent entity. Such an idea forces ghost research to take material culture, immersion, and resonance as serious elements in any excavation of haunted locations!

Extraordinary Anthropology and Ghost Research

By on December 14, 2011
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The concept of extraordinary anthropology is a way of thinking (and a mode of fieldwork) that recognizes that “Western styles of knowledge, which typically give priority to detachment over engagement……are to be exposed to radically different ways of understanding and inhabiting reality” ( Robert A. Orsi, “Between Heaven and Earth”, 2005). This becomes a radical change in ghost research, and the study of particular “ghost cultures”, the vestiges and remains of “what was” that remain “active” in contemporary reality. It entails giving oneself  to different means of learning and knowing, including immersions and full participation (as far as humanly possible) into past lifeways. Through immersion, participation, and performance, we experience changes in what we are witnessing:

“Unlike Galileo’s contemporaries, who refused to look through his telescope, experiential ethnographers are brave enough to stand inside what may be to them a foreign means of encountering the world” ( Eva Marie Garroutte, “Real Indians: Identity and the Survival of Native America”, 2003). What is involved is a modification of “our previous cognitive structures to include those new features of the environment learned through new or unexpected perceptions” ( Robert C. Fuller, “From Emotion to Spirituality”, 2006). This is what we hope to accomplish in each and every “ghost excavation” we enact in the field at haunted locations: the “extraordinary anthropology” of a “ghost culture”!!

ParaNormal(cy) in Ghost Research

By on November 30, 2011
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“Anthropology’s function is to present to the world, among much else, the world’s own ritual systems, this one among many; and therefore, Anthropology is less and less able to resist the rich reports that are coming in from far-fling places….about conscious live people in the midst of communications with spiritual beings of many kinds….it seems to me that this ‘spirit’ – this ‘consciousness-extends-beyond the body’…..might persist beyond a lifetime, being beyond the body. I reckon it is what we see in ghosts…..” (Edith Turner, “Heart of Lightness: The Life Story of an Anthropologist”, pages 213, 264.).

A “ghost excavation” attempts to go deeper, where no complete ethnographic account has gone before, to unearth these “spirits” of past presence. We seek out new experiences through the recovery of alternative ( past – NOT “paranormal”) states of consciousness. We document events that are “actualities”, not subjective sensations. We unearth an empirical presence that emerges from a set investigative field process that is repeatable at some future date and time.

A “ghost excavation” is a team effort, each participant is involved within a specific role and “mind print” that works together in cognizant of one another AND the entities that continue to linger within a “hauntscape” of distinct sensugraphic layerings on the contemporary surface. This holistic investigative archaeological-ethnographic-theatrical approach is achieved by people who participate together in the immersion and engagement with past presence. This is no “ghost hunt” or “ghost tour”! There is no “I” when we “excavate the ghosts”! There is no ego when we engage the past, nor a demand and command!! And there certainly is no sense of “everyone doing their own thing”!

A “ghost excavation” is experiencing something social, both present and past. That sociality is both cultural and contextual. It initiates (and becomes) a change in current reality and in collective non-ordinary consciousness. It is accomplished, as Edith Turner has said, “when a number of people get into flow together in a collective enterprise”. That “collective enterprise” is a “ghost excavation”!

The Politics of “Paranormal” Presence

By on November 28, 2011
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What’s going on at a haunted location? There is no definite answer (yet), and it therefore cannot be answered in only way (“paranormal”)! So, the questions become: how do we take photographs of all that? how do we make a video? what do we measure, etc. The issue is clear: what is the definitive record or representation of something that is the past, an historical event, and a “dead” entity?

Documentation is about empowering. It is about opening (slightly) the door, and “playing” to the performances: remixing, reworking the processes of immersion and engagement. This means a change is “blowing in the wind”, uncovering the site of excavation. The ritual formula of tech sweep, monitor, EVP sessions, watch and wait, a prolonged audio/video review, and “the reveal” is “dead”! Ghost research, in the form of this excavating “wind”, involves participatory acts, observations, and targeted performances which must replace the old field routines.

There are many ghosts lurking unseen that will take generations and multiple excavations of inventive social science to understand a site’s complex haunted scenarios. A “politics of presence” (the title of one of my books) is what is made present and what is kept absent and invisible by contemporary ghost hunting! This “politics” is a crucial issue and determines what we are able to recall, to document, to trace, to measure, and also what should be documented, traced, and measured, and not kept invisible!

It’s about power over the processes of mediation. It’s a critical concern. So much has already be destroyed, concealed, or forgotten. It’s the “politics” that write the history and tell the ghost stories. It is “who” is altering our conception of ghost research! It is not the “what” of a haunted location, nor the “ghosts” that haunt the present. It is the “who”, the contemporary, tech-oriented, “ghost hunter” that is haunting the Past!

Ghost Culture as Theatrical Ghosting: “Play it Again Sam”!

By on November 27, 2011
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There are those of us who keep talking, who follow a seemingly endless scripted story line, who continue to follow the ways learned early and throughout a lifetime….and beyond. These talking, storied, and learned cultural traits survive as the analects of a shared experience and individual memory within a particular “ghost culture”.

This haunted history is constituted as a continuous and selective replaying of patterns of behavior, and the “still points” of an individual’s storied life. A haunting is the creation of a solo cultural performance which places an interactive entity at the center of events, both past and present. Such a ghost becomes both the narrator of an individual story, and the subject of narration by contemporary investigators who “hunt” for these ghost stories.

The haunted site becomes a theatrical play(back), a way of continuing the talk, and a means to record it. Fragments of the past manifest as fractured plots, providing an investigative team with mixed information (and emotions)! It is the task of the fieldworker, as ghost excavator, to unearth something that remains extremely personal, and which contains specifics regarding form, function, behavior, habit, and memory. These artifacts of excavation must be pieced together in order to define a separate “identity”, one that differs from the present company of actors, “paranormal politicians”, psychics, and other reverants.

At such sites, there is an endless contemporary cry of “what have I got”? The investigator, as critic, makes a different set of judgements than the ghost concerning the suitability, accuracy, and form of each particular material remains that chooses to manifest. The ghost, on the otherhand, uses his/her cultural memory, rather than an electronic devise, for unintentional dramatic purposes. Besides, these phantoms function according to personal principles (not physical laws) that lead the hunter through sudden shifts, and endless repetitions of “sensefull activity” at these locations.

Is it possible to maintain this personal haunting “voice”, while addressing changes to space, time, and participants? How does the ghost do this, one investigator after another? Around such paranormal scenes, all the “players” become actors, forever portraying ghostly characters in a continuing, ongoing haunting scenario of episodic “replay”. After all, what occurs at a haunted location is principally a theatrical ghosting of what had occurred in the past, remains today, and, like a critically-acclaimed movie, will be ongoing as a future presentation of more of the same “Ghost Culture”!

Play it again Sam….or is that Sally? Your one-act play warrants a continued encore performance. There are so many more ghost-hunters waiting in line to enter your “haunted theatre”!

Sometimes, a little subtle humor (?) goes a long way (back to the past) to relieve the tensions, frustrations, and politics of competitive ghost hunting! Pardon my “burying” the “science” for this archaeological moment at “digging” the field I love so much!!

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