“Death is a universal experience,” writes Betsy Gaines Quammen.
We all die, and we all lose loved ones. Yet, despite those inescapable realities and our shared human truths, the mainstream, default American approach to death often seems inadequate. Of course, there is no monolithic American culture; we are a nation of diverse peoples and traditions. But too many of us don’t seem to navigate death well. There is little talk of its inevitability, and many don’t prepare for its imminent arrival…
Some folks adopt the attitude that what’s dead is gone. But this simply is not true; the past persists. (198)
Throughout my life, I have felt close to death in a multitude of ways.
My twin sister died in utero, and I lived. Thus, my birth story was defined by death.
As a baby and a child, I spent significant time at the hospital and in doctor’s offices, sick with croup and other respiratory ailments. Often, I couldn’t breathe and developed a habit of leaving my body, detached, watching my physical form with curiosity as it struggled for air.
One of my earliest memories is longing for death and wondering how I, at five, could bring death to my door.
I’ve been haunted, in multiple senses of the word.
I’m no stranger to hauntings, and perhaps this personal experience is why I’ve always been drawn to ghost stories, and why I’ve always felt a bit more at home with death than some. Not to say that I’m not troubled by death, but I seem to be able to sit with and in the grief and immensity of loss in a way some avoid.
I tend to linger, to swim, in the darkness when others make their way as quickly as possible to the light, trying to outrun the shadow.
I stay too long in the dark, sometimes, and I am probably too familiar with my wounds, and with the wounds of those who came before me.
When I received an advanced reader copy of Betsy Gaines Quammen’s latest book, This Haunted Land: Reckoning with Ghosts and the Stories That Shape America, and later was contacted about hosting her for an event at the bookstore where I work, I was excited to read it — hauntings? ghosts? the shaping of our nation? My kind of read.
I did not expect to receive a treatise on healing ancestral wounds, and yet, that is what I found. As Quammen realized herself, ghost stories are much more than slamming doors and hostile entities. She writes,
As I first dove into writing this book, I rushed to read every story of hauntings I could get my hands on. But I soon learned that creaks and cold spots are only the beginning of a ghost story… A flickering light or the yank of trees will grab our attention, but the heart of a ghost story isn’t just things that go bump in the night, but the backstories, the compelling accounts of folks who simply refuse to stay in their graves.
The folks who refuse to stay in their graves. The truths that refuse to be forgotten. The history that refuses to be erased. The history that demands to be reckoned with. That is the content of this book, and each chapter approaches this theme of haunting in wonderfully different ways.
She writes of exploitation of humans and non-humans, of the land, of the water, and writes of the ways that we have masked atrocity to make it something more palatable. She writes of ghost stories that have no basis in reality, and those that do. And, she writes of truths that haunt us. The stories that inhabit a place tell us so much about the culture, there, and the culture of our nation — ghost stories reveal what has been hidden, if you care to look.
One chapter visits a home that used to be a stop on the Underground Railroad. Another explores Indian Boarding Schools, and delves into the history of genocide. Another searches for the ivory-billed woodpecker, hunted to extinction (or perhaps not).
A chapter on dams and the ghost stories that surround them becomes a look at the environmental and cultural destruction that greed and misguided attempts to control and harness water brought. Another chapter writes of a mining town that was buried due to the dangers of radioactive waste, and the community that still wants to live there, that gathers to remember what was buried.
Whether she writes about angels saving school children, or searches for the truth of the people behind sensationalized hauntings, Quammen treats each story, each tradition, each haunting with respect, pulling back the layers of camp and half-truths to reveal real people — or at least the memory of them.
Quammen ends the book by shifting from locations around the Unites States to the personal: the final chapter is about the death of her father. In 2025, while she was in the midst of writing the book, her father was in a car crash and died after 3 days in the hospital.
Her father loved ghost stories, and she shared her progress and her findings with him. This final chapter, deeply personal, explores the ways that humans deal with death and grief as she shares how she grieved her father. She and her sister performed offerings at Buddhist centers and delivered ashes to places where their father was happiest.
She reflects on the words of folklorist Jeannie Banks Thomas, who says that we carry the DNA of our ancestors, essentially making us ghosts, as “we embody scraps, fragments, and glimmers of our forebearers. We are shadows of who they were” (194). Quammen found this comforting, writing, “I’m walking around with him in the fibers of my being. Dad is a ghost in me, and, as such, I embody his memory, his biography, his essence” (194).
Weaving her personal grief back into the fabric of the book, Quammen writes,
If ghosts are in our DNA, we are the vessels for phantoms and the keepers of their stories. We bear the responsibility of hearing their voices and remembering their actions, their bravery, and their transgressions. Ghost stories transcend mere anecdotes of the supernatural. They can become acknowledgements of history and even expressions of love. Facing ghosts shouldn’t be rooted in fear, guilt, or shame, but rather in a straightforward acceptance of our history. We owe it to the ghosts in our own DNA, and in the bodies of others, to own and accept the past with all of its beauty and all of its outrage. (199)
This is the very essence of the mission: to face the truth. At a time when determined forces are trying to erase history, a commitment to heeding the dead must remain steadfast. In acknowledging a haunted past, it becomes possible to both accept and appreciate ghosts. (200).
What began as a book about ghost stories turns into a treatise on the importance or stories, the importance of truth, and the importance of continuing to share our stories: the savory and unsavory alike:
Stories provide fibers of connection. If this country is haunted by its history, then the living bear responsibility to listen to bygone voices and redress the past. This will require a deeper introspection for those whose ancestors brought pain to the descendants of others. Though we don’t all share the same experiences, we do share roles in understanding and owning an overall legacy. By hearing ghost stories and acknowledging ongoing impacts, a path opens towards an American reckoning. (204)
This Haunted Land is national in scope, but also deeply personal. We all carry ghosts. We all are haunted. In that haunting and the acknowledgement of those ghosts lies the power to rest and to heal.
