ABSTRACT
This chapter explores the ways the perceived failure of imagination became a prolific source of Canadian hauntings. Susanna Moodie’s dismay at the absence of ‘superstition’ is linked to a broader settler anxiety about secondariness, cultural deficiency, and inheritance. Moodie is not the only early Canadian writer to identify the “present absence” of ghosts in Canada, but she is certainly the most well known. The parodic strain in the Canadian ghost story has given rise to a number of overtly post-colonial ghost stories that seek to ‘write back’ to Canadian ghosts from outside the Anglo-white mainstream. Canadian authors have long been using the ghost story for subversive purposes. Motivated less by a fear of the supernatural than by a pursuit of authentification, many of these tales defy generic expectations and work to reinforce local cultural histories. Canadian authors have long been crafting local hauntings, concocting ghosts that would infuse a reinvented tradition.
