Ghostlore
In Virginia, not everyone gets to become a ghost
Virginians have been claiming to out-haunt the rest of the country for over a century. Newspapers and books put the boast in print, and local ghost tours have been repeating it ever since. In Ghostlore, Lynn Rainville takes the claim seriously, though not in the way it was intended. Rainville treats Virginia’s hauntings not as claims to be verified, but as evidence to be read.
Who gets to become a ghost, and whose stories make it into print, says more about the politics of memory than about the dead. For example, if ghost stories followed suffering, enslaved Virginians would haunt every plantation in the state. Instead, the lady in white waits at the upper window of plantation after plantation, while the men and women who built those houses and labored inside them rarely turn up in the published lore.
Ghostlore traces haunting tales from the Jamestown churchyard to Washington’s restless shade at Mount Vernon, from Civil War battlefields to the corridors of women’s colleges, from a Lynchburg cradle that rocks unattended to the cemeteries, prisons, and vanished houses of historic neighborhoods. Maps of four haunted cities let readers walk the routes themselves. What emerges from these supernatural tales is a record of who a community mourned, who it feared, and who it forgot altogether.
- Clay McLeod Chapman, author of Mr. LonelyheartsLynn Rainville has crafted an inviting campfire for us all to sit around. Ghostlore captures the essence of the oral tradition, distilling the voices of Virginia onto the page while shining a light on not only our own ghosts, but those who are left to tell their stories.
- Michelle D. Brock, Washington and Lee University, coeditor of The Routledge History of the Devil in the Western TraditionHaunted tales often speak to our deepest anxieties, fears, and regrets. Ghost beliefs and ensuing legends serve as vehicles for exploring and expressing historical memory, and our continued fascination with ghosts shapes history in the public imagination in profound ways. The relationship between history, identity, and ghost lore is especially salient in the American South. Ghostlore examines these issues and more, offering a history of the state—both its dark sides and its bright spots—told through the lens of the uncanny and the undead.
- Scott O. Moore, Eastern Connecticut State University, author of The Witch of Pungo: Grace Sherwood in Virginia History and LegendVirginians love their ghost stories. In every corner of the commonwealth, you can find haunted house tours, legend walks, and locals happy to share their favorite piece of local lore. Lynn Rainville shows these ghost stories are more than a way to add some excitement to an October night, a historic tour, or vacation. They are how we make sense of our (often painful) history and grapple with existential questions about life, death, and what comes after. By meticulously curating and analyzing some of Virginia’s most compelling ghost stories, she proves the importance of its haunted history.
- Thomas Barden, Toledo University, editor of Virginia Folk LegendsRainville focuses on Virginia history by examining traditional folk narratives about apparitions and supernatural occurrences around the state from the earliest Jamestown encounters with indigenous people to modern times. She deftly applies cultural anthropology, folkloristic analyses, and deep archival and field research to showcase a wide range of texts. She looks at newspapers, Civil War journals, the 1930s Federal Writers’ Project files, university-based folklorists’ work, and popular and scholarly books. But more than just presenting texts, she delves into texture and context to disclose the stories’ local and regional flavors. Tales of headless horsemen or visiting night spirits can come from anywhere—from Washington Irving’s Sleepy Hollow to Dickens’ Victorian London, but Rainville shows how her “Haints” have a distinctly Old Dominion flavor. And she does so in a writing style that is lively and fun. I was spellbound!
Lynn Rainville is founder of the Hidden History Group and author of Hidden History: African American Cemeteries in Central Virginia.
