John G. Sabol Jr.
A major focus of ghost excavation, as opposed to ghost "hunting", is an archaeology of experience. The emergence of this experience is unearthed through the investigative engagement of haunted space. One aspect of this engagement is performance, which requires a specific sociocultural and historical context of understanding. This context of understanding must be understood in terms of layers of meaning.
Gettysburg is used as a specific example of the use of performative and dramatical activity. Each of these activities performed at Gettysburg predisposes a genre, a set of beliefs, practices, social relations, manifestations, and locations which together define categorically what it is that is manifesting on the battlefield, and what interpretations are being used to understand these performative cultural practices.
The genres of performative action at Gettysburg are important because they are located at places on the battlefield where belief systems become mobilized into actual practice.
This book will explore various haunting uncertainties and cultural situations associated with ghostly activity, and the implications of these performances as they are enacted by ghost hunters, Civil War re-enactors, the tourism industry, and the "ghosts" themselves.
John Sabol is a cultural anthropologist, historical archaeologist, actor, and "ghost excavator". He has been participating in (and directing) scientific field investigations since high school. He has worked in England, Germany, Mexico, and throughout the United States. He has extensive field experience at Gettysburg, both as an anthropologist and ghost excavator. He has published a book on the history of the Gettysburg hauntings (
Gettysburg Unearthed), and the means of investigating their haunting uncertainties
(Battlefield Hauntscape). He has also been a consultant on Civil War hauntings for the A&E series, "Paranormal State". He has written three other books
, Ghost Excavator, Ghost Culture,
and The Anthracite Coal Region: The Archaeology of its Haunting Presence. For more information on his investigations and books, please see his web sites:
www.ghostexcavator.com and
http://mysite.verizon.net/vzeoqapc/ghostexcavator.
Staged cultural performances, and their effect on the manifestations of ghostly appearances on the battlefield, form the central liminal frame for a series of essays about the perceived haunting certainties of Gettysburg. Through the continual re-application of theatrical "ghosting" performances, the Gettysburg haunted package is a resonating contemporary performance, with antecedents from past cultural manifestations that have occurred there.....
This book will examine these cultural performative packages. More importantly, it will itself also promote a new theory of encountering ghostly presence. This is accomplished, I propose, through the use of particular investigative performances which may increase the "normal" uncertainties of this presence, its frequency, and timing.
I call this change in investigative focus and practice the "politics of presence". I believe this "politics" can lead to a more certain expectation of presence (if it actually exists on the battlefield), which is usually hidden behind (and underneath) the facade of staged cultural tourist performance.....
These investigative cultural performances are a real "ethnography" of particular contextual resonating elements. In this sense, they are "ghosting" techniques of the present, and not the "phantom" practices of a re-enacted past.....
