ABSTRACT
“Ghostly play” for children and adults has been a cultural meaning making activity for centuries. From telling ghost stories around the campfire to turning ghost hunting into a scientific expedition, ghosts as subjects and objects of narrative, experience, or entertainment have a long cultural history. In this chapter, we interrogate the ways in which ghost hunting and thanatourism; paranormal and Spiritualist movements; and our continual cultural fascination with hauntings and ghost stories are ongoing rhetorics of history, science, and expansion. Ghost stories bring history alive, and some serve as cautionary tales that construct appropriate cultural and gender performance. The logic, scientific jargon, claims of evidence, and scientific measurements used in paranormal investigations are rhetorical strategies intended to prove the existence of life after death. Finally, ghost hunting mirrors our cultural fascination with questing and expanding boundaries. We explain how stories about, visions of, and interactions with the dead, remind us of our cultural and interpersonal identities, reify our culturally scripted behaviors, and reinforce our culturally constructed ideas and beliefs about the afterlife.
