ABSTRACT
Psychoanalytically speaking, ghosts haunt individuals for particular reasons, decrying the misdeeds, traumas, and silences that belie proper genealogy. This chapter explores how the ghosts of individuals and families collectivize to haunt the spatial and psychical 'hollows' of popular culture more broadly. The Winchester Mystery HouseTM, an historic residence of approximately 160 rooms located at the outskirts of San Jose, California, offers a rich case study in this regard. Whether people visit the place in person or watch one of the many documentaries about it, they likely to get the same explanation for it's 'mystery:' the mansion, with its elaborately enfolded interiors, is reputed to be the haunted result of a grieving woman's madness. Ghosts confound our categories of experience, complicating conventional distinctions between memory, space, and emotion. Sarah Lockwood Winchester was born in New Haven, Connecticut in 1839, the fifth of seven children.
