Book News in the Halloween Spirit: Haunted by Memory

When scholars discuss the haunting legacy of the Civil War they very rarely, if ever, are referring to anything supernatural in nature. That will change with editors Amy Laurel Fluker and John Neff's Haunted by Memory: Ghost Stories of the American Civil War (Univ of Tenn Press), which bills itself as "the first scholarly analysis of the significance of ghosts to the history and memory of the Civil War." We won't get it in time for this upcoming Halloween, but having it in our hands for next year's spooky season seems possible.

Haunted by Memory is an "annotated anthology of Civil War ghost stories" that "includes hundreds of examples of ghostly tales that appeared in newspapers, periodicals, and books between 1861 and 1932." "These tales both satisfied and fed popular demand for news, entertainment, and ghostlore, and became powerful tools of cultural memory."

Fluker and Neff's efforts blend disciplines under the larger umbrella of cultural history. "By bridging the study of the Civil War, folklore, and memory, this collection expands the parameters of cultural history and reveals how the supernatural became a lasting part of the commemorative landscape of the American Civil War."