In this episode we take a spooky turn as host Dr Rod Lamberts discusses ghosts, ghouls and the Australian gothic with PhD candidate Clare Burnett.

Burnett tells us that there was a time people claimed Australia didn’t have enough ‘cultural infrastructure’ to write gothic stories- but they were very wrong!

Our featured stories feature the biggest tropes of this genre: murders, ghosts, bushrangers and twist endings. What do these fears tell us of the mindset of the time?

Mentioned in the episode

The story that A Bush Story took cues from: The Ghost Upon the Rail by John Lang

Information on Horace Walpole’s The Castle of Otranto

Early Australian writers mentioned: Barbara Baynton and Marcus Andrew

A A Phillips, author of ‘The Cultural Cringe’ (1950)

Early American Gothic writers: Nathaniel Hawthorne and Edgar Allan Poe

Women and the Bush by Kay Schafer

The Ghost of Bamboo Gully or The Headless Woman by Mark Antony

A Tasmainan Girl

To Be Continued in Trove

Main Stories

A Bush Ghost Story

The Storyteller: An Australian Ghost Story

An Australian Ghost Story

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