美国国家公共电台 NPR Skeletons In The Closet: What Ghost Stories Reveal About America's Past

Skeletons In The Closet: What Ghost Stories Reveal About America's Past

play pause stop mute unmute max volume 00:0000:00repeat repeat off Update Required To play the media you will need to either update your browser¹ to a recent version or update your Flash plugin. AUDIE CORNISH, HOST: 

Colin Dickey has been traveling the country with a singular mission - find ghosts. But forget the image that might have just popped into your head - paranormal detectives with night vision goggles². Colin Dickey is interested in ghost stories because of what they say about the living.

To truly understand a place, he says, you should skip the guided tours of monuments and plaques³ and instead explore the graveyards⁵, the abandoned psychiatric hospitals, the eerie⁶ hotels. He visits many of those places in his new book "Ghostland: An American History In Haunted Places." And he told me you can learn a lot just from the way a ghost story changes over time.

COLIN DICKEY: There's a ghost story in Leeds, N.Y., about a woman who appears at night through the middle of town being dragged by a horse. And that story involves her being a servant of some kind who was cruelly treated by her master and punished in this terrible way and died as a result and now haunts that main street. And that story has evolved throughout the years.

There is an abolitionist who tells that story in the mid-19th century, but when she tells it, the servant girl is actually a slave, and the moral of the story is the terrors of slavery. And then that same story appears a few decades later by somebody who's far more interested in class politics. And the - she's now a servant again, but she is a European immigrant. And she is a member of the poor working-class who's being mistreated by the rich. And so this story seems to sort of evolve through the years depending on what kind of morality tale the teller⁷ wants to tell.

CORNISH: So a ghost story essentially⁸ tells us more about the person telling it, it sounds like.

DICKEY: Yeah in a lot of ways - and not just the person but also the community. When you see the way a town will coalesce⁹ around, you know, certain stories and certain houses and graveyards and things like that, that will come to reflect the way that town sees itself.

CORNISH: One example you write about is Richmond, Va., which you've bestowed¹⁰ a kind of title on, right? Like (laughter), what's there? What's their place when it comes to ghost stories?

DICKEY: Yeah, Richmond was really fascinating to me because when I first started, you know, just drawing up lists of most-haunted city in America, most-haunted hotel, most-haunted graveyard⁴, Richmond came up as having a particularly haunted downtown. It's an area called Shockoe Bottom.

But when I looked into the kinds of stories that get told there, something jumped out at me right away, and that is nearly all the stories of ghosts in Shockoe Bottom are white ghosts. They are Confederate soldiers and women who worked in brothels and, you know, miners who were trapped in disasters. But Shockoe Bottom has this other history, which is, outside of New Orleans, it was the most heavily populated slave trading market.

And it was fascinating to see the way that when Richmond tells the stories about all of the tragedies that have taken place in Shockoe Bottom, at least as far as the ghost stories go, they seem to leave the most glaring example out. And there's really not a lot of ghost stories about the slave trading markets that enter into the folklore¹¹ of Richmond despite the fact that untold¹² cruelties happened there.

CORNISH: But there's a lot of historians and historical, like, houses and places in Richmond. What did people say about this when you asked?

DICKEY: Yeah. I mean it's not that it's, like, some deep, dark secret. I mean obviously there's great historical work being done. There's great archaeological work that's being done. And certainly Richmond is not hiding behind this. There are monuments, and there are - there's a trail you can walk.

But what seemed to me really fascinating is that I went into this book thinking that ghost stories would express the kind of unspeakable things we might not otherwise say. And in Richmond, it sort of turned out to be the opposite, that the ghost stories in Richmond kind of construct a more I guess you could say genteel vision of the past where terrible things happen, but they were accidents and things that didn't reflect, say, poorly on the history of the city as a whole.

CORNISH: You mentioned the idea of soldiers, but there are other kind of classic ghost categories I learned about from your (laughter) book, like spinster lady trapped in a house and a Native American burial ground - like, that that was a whole thing (laughter) basically.

DICKEY: Right.

CORNISH: ...And hotel guest that never leaves. Which one do you want to tackle?

DICKEY: Well, the spinster lady - so I grew up near the Winchester Mystery House in San Jose, Calif. And I think some of your listeners may know that Sarah Winchester, the daughter-in-law of the man who founded the Winchester rifle company - the story was that she had lost her husband and her infant daughter in a short period of time and became convinced that she was being haunted by the ghosts of anyone who had ever been killed by a Winchester rifle and built this insanely large labyrinth¹³ - like, 160-room Victorian mansion¹⁴ to ward¹⁵ off these spirits.

And when I dug into the story, first of all, that legend is not, as it turns out, entirely¹⁶ accurate. But what I found more fascinating was the idea that here was a woman who was both a woman of means and a widow who had decided¹⁷ for whatever reason never to remarry. And in many ways I think the ghost stories that grew up around Sarah Winchester had as much to do with our apprehension¹⁸ towards women who choose not to remarry, choose not to have children again.

CORNISH: And this is because this is a pretty common kind of ghost story, right? You will find estates or old homes where people say, like, she never married, and she never had children; and she roams the halls to this day. And you're supposed to be like, that sounds horrible - like, terrible fate for this woman.

DICKEY: Right, exactly, yeah, and you see it in New York in the Merchant's House Museum with another old spinster lady. And it draws a lot from the Charles Dickens Miss Havisham character - this woman who's sort of trapped, frozen in time.

CORNISH: You poke¹⁹ holes in a lot of the origin stories of ghosts in this book, but you don't actually say whether you believe in ghosts. So do you? Or has your thinking about this changed over time?

DICKEY: Yeah, it's a complicated question. I feel like when you talk about ghosts...

CORNISH: Nope. It's, do you believe in ghosts?

(LAUGHTER)

CORNISH: That's a pretty straightforward²⁰ one. Happy Halloween.

DICKEY: I'm going to plead the Fifth on that question. I think that when you talk about ghosts, there are people who are 100 percent believers, and there are people who are 100 percent skeptics. And I've always found that middle ground a lot more interesting - people who are maybe not willing to admit that the paranormal or the supernatural exists but yet have felt something or have seen something or have experienced some things that are not necessarily rationally explained but not necessarily the paranormal.

CORNISH: What is the most ludicrous thing you heard over the course of researching the book - like, activity that a ghost allegedly did or, like, a specific kind of haunting?

DICKEY: Well, one of my favorite stories was about a town in Bedford, N.Y. I was told that if you go to the center of town, there's this great old oak tree. And if you on Halloween walk backwards²¹ around the tree three times with a dead cat on your shoulder, a ghost will appear...

CORNISH: (Laughter).

DICKEY: ...Which sounds like a...

CORNISH: That's so specific.

DICKEY: Right, and it begs the question, who was the first person who figured that out? How do you just happened to be walking around town on Halloween with a dead cat on your shoulder and decide to walk backwards around a tree three times? It - there's a lot of questions that that story brings to mind to me.

CORNISH: Colin Dickey is the author of "Ghostland: An American History In Haunted Places." Thanks so much for talking with us.

DICKEY: Thank you so much for having me. This has been great.

1 browser   

n.浏览者

参考例句：

• View edits in a web browser.在浏览器中看编辑的效果。
• I think my browser has a list of shareware links.我想在浏览器中会有一系列的共享软件链接。

2 goggles   

n.护目镜

参考例句：

• Skiers wear goggles to protect their eyes from the sun.滑雪者都戴上护目镜使眼睛不受阳光伤害。
• My swimming goggles keep steaming up so I can't see.我的护目镜一直有水雾，所以我看不见。

3 plaques   

（纪念性的）匾牌( plaque的名词复数 )； 纪念匾； 牙斑； 空斑

参考例句：

• Primary plaques were detectable in 16 to 20 hours. 在16到20小时内可查出原发溶斑。
• The gondoliers wore green and white livery and silver plaques on their chests. 船夫们穿着白绿两色的制服，胸前别着银质徽章。

4 graveyard   

n.坟场

参考例句：

• All the town was drifting toward the graveyard.全镇的人都象流水似地向那坟场涌过去。
• Living next to a graveyard would give me the creeps.居住在墓地旁边会使我毛骨悚然。

5 graveyards   

墓地( graveyard的名词复数 )； 垃圾场； 废物堆积处； 收容所

参考例句：

• He takes a macabre interest in graveyards. 他那么留意墓地，令人毛骨悚然。
• "And northward there lie, in five graveyards, Calm forever under dewy green grass," 五陵北原上，万古青蒙蒙。 来自英汉 - 翻译样例 - 文学

6 eerie   

adj.怪诞的；奇异的；可怕的；胆怯的

参考例句：

• It's eerie to walk through a dark wood at night.夜晚在漆黑的森林中行走很是恐怖。
• I walked down the eerie dark path.我走在那条漆黑恐怖的小路上。

7 teller   

n.银行出纳员；(选举)计票员

参考例句：

• The bank started her as a teller.银行起用她当出纳员。
• The teller tried to remain aloof and calm.出纳员力图保持冷漠和镇静。

8 essentially   

adv.本质上，实质上，基本上

参考例句：

• Really great men are essentially modest.真正的伟人大都很谦虚。
• She is an essentially selfish person.她本质上是个自私自利的人。

9 coalesce   

v.联合，结合，合并

参考例句：

• And these rings of gas would then eventually coalesce and form the planets.这些气体环最后终于凝结形成行星。
• They will probably collide again and again until they coalesce.他们可能会一次又一次地发生碰撞，直到他们合并。

10 bestowed   

赠给，授予( bestow的过去式和过去分词 )

参考例句：

• It was a title bestowed upon him by the king. 那是国王赐给他的头衔。
• He considered himself unworthy of the honour they had bestowed on him. 他认为自己不配得到大家赋予他的荣誉。

11 folklore   

n.民间信仰，民间传说，民俗

参考例句：

• Zhuge Liang is a synonym for wisdom in folklore.诸葛亮在民间传说中成了智慧的代名词。
• In Chinese folklore the bat is an emblem of good fortune.在中国的民间传说中蝙蝠是好运的象征。

12 untold   

adj.数不清的，无数的

参考例句：

• She has done untold damage to our chances.她给我们的机遇造成了不可估量的损害。
• They suffered untold terrors in the dark and huddled together for comfort.他们遭受着黑暗中的难以言传的种种恐怖，因而只好挤在一堆互相壮胆。

13 labyrinth   

n.迷宫；难解的事物；迷路

参考例句：

• He wandered through the labyrinth of the alleyways.他在迷宫似的小巷中闲逛。
• The human mind is a labyrinth.人的心灵是一座迷宫。

14 mansion   

n.大厦，大楼；宅第

参考例句：

• The old mansion was built in 1850.这座古宅建于1850年。
• The mansion has extensive grounds.这大厦四周的庭园广阔。

15 ward   

n.守卫，监护，病房，行政区，由监护人或法院保护的人（尤指儿童）；vt.守护，躲开

参考例句：

• The hospital has a medical ward and a surgical ward.这家医院有内科病房和外科病房。
• During the evening picnic,I'll carry a torch to ward off the bugs.傍晚野餐时，我要点根火把，抵挡蚊虫。

16 entirely   

ad.全部地，完整地；完全地，彻底地

参考例句：

• The fire was entirely caused by their neglect of duty. 那场火灾完全是由于他们失职而引起的。
• His life was entirely given up to the educational work. 他的一生统统献给了教育工作。

17 decided   

adj.决定了的，坚决的；明显的，明确的

参考例句：

• This gave them a decided advantage over their opponents.这使他们比对手具有明显的优势。
• There is a decided difference between British and Chinese way of greeting.英国人和中国人打招呼的方式有很明显的区别。

18 apprehension   

n.理解，领悟；逮捕，拘捕；忧虑

参考例句：

• There were still areas of doubt and her apprehension grew.有些地方仍然存疑，于是她越来越担心。
• She is a girl of weak apprehension.她是一个理解力很差的女孩。

19 poke   

n.刺，戳，袋；vt.拨开，刺，戳；vi.戳，刺，捅，搜索，伸出，行动散慢

参考例句：

• We never thought she would poke her nose into this.想不到她会插上一手。
• Don't poke fun at me.别拿我凑趣儿。

20 straightforward   

adj.正直的，坦率的；易懂的，简单的

参考例句：

• A straightforward talk is better than a flowery speech.巧言不如直说。
• I must insist on your giving me a straightforward answer.我一定要你给我一个直截了当的回答。

21 backwards   

adv.往回地，向原处，倒，相反，前后倒置地

参考例句：

• He turned on the light and began to pace backwards and forwards.他打开电灯并开始走来走去。
• All the girls fell over backwards to get the party ready.姑娘们迫不及待地为聚会做准备。