Ghostland

An American History in Haunted Places

By: Colin Dickey

Narrated by: 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 that takes readers 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.

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

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.