ABSTRACT
This chapter focuses on three broad and interconnected roles that ghosts and ghost stories play in American culture: the creation of national myths, the highlighting of patterns of exclusion that critique those national myths, and the offering of consolation, particularly in light of historical ruptures and trauma. Ghosts of course perform these general functions in other regional, national, and cultural traditions; what therefore differs are the particular ways in which American authors and, later, filmmakers put ghosts to work, and the ways in which those ghosts reflect the specific terroir of their historical contexts. American ghost stories function in this capacity not only in relation to indigenous people, but other historically disenfranchised groups as well, including women and persons of colour. “The Giant Wistaria” is a ghost story that literally shows the roots of American women’s oppression in the sour ground of patriarchal Puritan.
