In this, the first of our series on Disneyland's Haunted Mansion, Annabelle and Quest climb into the attic to uncover its ghostly brides, gothic backstory, and Disney’s spooky-funny balance. From the Beating Heart Bride to Constance Hatchaway, we ask what this haunted attic reveals about our fears, our histories, and our love of ghosts.

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Bibliography:

Davison, Carol Margaret. “Southern Gothic: Haunted Houses.” The Palgrave Handbook of the Southern Gothic, edited by Susan Castillo Street and Charles L. Crow, Palgrave Macmillan, 2016, pp. 57–74

Donovan-Condron, Kellie. “Twisted Sisters: The Monstrous Women of Southern Gothic.” The Palgrave Handbook of the Southern Gothic, edited by Susan Castillo Street and Charles L. Crow, Palgrave Macmillan, 2016, pp. 369–83.

Giles, David. “The Thousandth Happy Haunt: Legends of Burial and Haunting at Disneyland’s Haunted Mansion.” Western Folklore, vol. 74, no. 3/4, 2015, pp. 297–316.

Martens, Todd. “First Look: Disneyland’s Original Haunted Mansion Returns with a Heartbreaking New Scene.” Los Angeles Times, 17 Jan. 2025.

Steiner, Michael. “Frontierland as Tomorrowland: Walt Disney and the Architectural Packaging of the Mythic West.” Montana: The Magazine of Western History, vol. 48, no. 1, 1998, pp. 2–17.

Surrell, Jason. The Haunted Mansion: Imagineering a Disney Classic. Disney Editions, 2009.

Tromp, Marlene. “‘Throwing the Wedding-Shoe’: Foundational Violence, Unhappy Couples, and Murderous Women.” Victorian Review, vol. 20, no. 2, 1994, pp. 36–54.

Truffin, Sherry R. “New Orleans as Gothic Capital.” The Palgrave Handbook of the Southern Gothic, edited by Susan Castillo Street and Charles L. Crow, Palgrave Macmillan, 2016, pp. 151–65.

Weinstock, Jeffrey Andrew. “Hidden Histories: The Many Ghosts of Disneyland’s Haunted Mansion.” Disney Gothic: Dark Shadows in the House of Mouse. Edinburgh University Press, 2019, pp. 29–46.

Dreams, collective trauma, stranger danger, groomer panic, queer death drive/queer evil, and media horror - it's all lurking below the surface in A Nightmare on Elm Street (1984).

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Bibliography

Edelman, Lee. No Future: Queer Theory and the Death Drive. Duke University Press, 2004.

Kendrick, James. “Razors in the Dreamscape: Revisiting A Nightmare on Elm Street and the Slasher Film.” Cinema Journal, vol. 50, no. 1, Fall 2010, pp. 60-78.

Lieberman, Tucker. “The Trail of His Flames.” The American Reader, vol. 5, no. 1, Fall 2019.

Schildcrout, Jordan. Murder Most Queer: The Homicidal Homosexual in the American Theater. University of Michigan Press, 2014.

Thomsen, Morten Feldtfos. “‘Evil Never Dies, Right?’ Monstrous Mediation in the A Nightmare on Elm Street Film Series.” Journal of Aesthetics & Culture, vol. 16, no. 1, 2024.

Part two of our Haunting of Hill House special!

In this episode we discuss Hill House as a character, the origins of the Victorian haunted house trope, and how... every room becomes a mouth!

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For our very special 13th episode, we present part one of a two-part series on the novel The Haunting of Hill House by Shirley Jackson and its film adaptation The Haunting (1963). In part 1, we talk about the movie vs. the book, approaches to paranormal research, the Cult of True Womanhood, monstrous family systems, and Lesbians!

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Bibliography

“Walking Alone Together: Family Monsters in The Haunting of Hill House” by Richard Pascal

Interview: Laurence Jackson Hyman on his mother Shirley: ‘Her work is so relevant now…’ by Rachel Cooke. The Guardian.

“Opening Up” in Men, Women, and Chain Saws by Carol Clover

The Haunting of Hill House, Introduction by Laura Miller

“Walking Alone Together: Family Monsters in The Haunting of Hill House” by Richard Pascal in Studies in the Novel

Queer for Fear, Episode 4

Welter, Barbara. “The Cult of True Womanhood: 1820-1860.” American Quarterly, vol. 18, no. 2, 1966, pp. 151–74. JSTOR, https://doi.org/10.2307/2711179. Accessed 31 Aug. 2024.

Ballads and broadsides, sailors and skeletons, sisters and sampling, and... have you seen the ghost of John? Join us to talk about ghosts in folk music. We touch on some common themes and formats as well as academic approaches to analyzing and archiving folk tunes/lyrics. Come for the intertextuality, sociofunctionalism, politics, and anthropology-- stay for the boos.

Want to sing along? Make contact:

Make contact:

@ghostswerepeopletoo

[email protected]

Bibliography

• "Shall I Sing You a Ghost Story: The Nature and Purpose of Ghost Songs in Maritime Communities of Northern New England and Atlantic Canada" by Richard A. Blake (2019). All Graduate Plan B and other Reports.
• “Ghosts of Voices: Hauntology and Folk Music” by Eamon Byers. Folk Horror Revival: Harvest Hymns. Volume I- Twisted Roots, Volume 1
• "Folk Songs as Socio-Historical Documents" by John Greenway. Western Folklore, vol. 19, no. 1, 1960, pp. 1–9. JSTOR.
• “The English, Scottish, and American Versions of the ‘Twa Sisters’” by Archer Taylor, in The Journal of American Folklore
• “‘The Twa Sisters’—Going Which Way?” by Harbison Parker, in The Journal of American Folklore
• “Magical Corpses: Ballads, Intertextuality, and the Discovery of Murder” by David Atkinson, in Journal of Folklore Research
• “Comparativism and the Functional Contexts of Myths and Rituals”, from Mythography by William Doty
• “Maieutic, Creative Myth: Conveying Values and Systems of Interpreting Reality (Definition, part 2)”, from Mythography by William Doty
• "'Have You Seen The Ghost Of John” is a kids’ song that actually chills'" by Mariah Eakin. AV Club.
• "“Ghost of John”: Appalachia’s Most Ghoulish Lullaby" by Musette. Medium.

Songs

• Alan Mills (The Ghostly Sailors)-Accordion https://youtu.be/CpysXQtf1Y0?si=tbeb8EzPfeSZUpeJ
• Houlihan (The Ghostly Sailors)-Acapella https://youtu.be/k7wbShaiZGg?si=83P6fIghjOiH-_qh
• Have You Seen the Ghost of John (Children Singing) https://youtu.be/6F9mcvX9pXE?si=zoSRCe_c2IM9kCs7
• “Binnorie (The Twa Sisters)” as sung by Custer LaRue ://youtu.be/rLBBg4MjO6o
• The Geography by Belbury Poly
• https://youtu.be/vv4tsUg7MLQ

Baltimore-based artist Angela Deane paints sheet ghosts onto found photos. You might know Deane's work from the cover of Phoebe Bridgers' Stranger in the Alps (2017) or perhaps you've seen her ghosties elsewhere in the great digital regions beyond.

This is part 2! Go check out part 1 (episode 10) We dare you. Here, we talk about nostalgia theory, leisure photography, and kitsch. Enjoy!

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Bibliography

https://angeladeane.com/home.html

The Hours Have Lost Their Clock by Grafton Tanner

The Way We Never Were: American Families and the Nostalgia Trap by Stephanie Coontz

Scarbrough, Elizabeth. “Unimagined Beauty.” The Journal of Aesthetics and Art Criticism, vol. 72, no. 4, 2014, pp. 445–49. JSTOR, http://www.jstor.org/stable/43282368. 

Kitson, Jennifer, and Kevin McHugh. “Historic Enchantments – Materializing Nostalgia.” Cultural Geographies, vol. 22, no. 3, 2015, pp. 487–508. JSTOR, https://www.jstor.org/stable/26168663.

Goodwin, Sarah Webster. “Domesticity and Uncanny Kitsch in ‘The Rime of the Ancient Mariner’ and Frankenstein.” Tulsa Studies in Women’s Literature, vol. 10, no. 1, 1991, pp. 93–108. JSTOR, https://doi.org/10.2307/463954. 

“Chapter 5: Chansonetta Stanley Emmons’s Nostalgic Views” from At the Edge of Sight: Photography and the Unseen by Shawn Michelle Smith

Baltimore-based artist Angela Deane paints sheet ghosts onto found photos. You might know Deane's work from the cover of Phoebe Bridgers' Stranger in the Alps (2017) or perhaps you've seen her ghosties elsewhere in the great digital regions beyond.

In this, part one of a two-part episode, we talk briefly about nostalgia (more on that in part 2), and then dig into Deane's artist statement. What does it mean to capture a moment in time? Photography as an art form plays with notions of presence and absence. How does spirit photography manage equations of presence and absence? How does Angela Deane play with these concepts in her Ghost Paintings?

Then, we revisit theories and histories regarding spirit photography (see Episodes 1 & 2 for more) to contextualize the impact of Deane's contemporary take on image doctoring.

Note: Annabelle now knows how to pronounce "Prarie Schooner" thanks to a two-second Google search. Whoops. Peace and Love.

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@ghostswerepeopletoo

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Bibliography

https://angeladeane.com/home.html

Photography and Spirit by John Harvey, “Chapter 3: Art”

At the Edge of Sight: Photography and the Unseen by Shawn Michelle Smith, “Chapter 5: Chansonetta Stanley Emmons’s Nostalgic Views”

MORGAN, JAMES. “NOSTALGIA.” Prairie Schooner, vol. 8, no. 3, 1934, pp. 153–153. JSTOR, http://www.jstor.org/stable/40622498.

Happy Halloween! It's Spooky (Mulder) Season, so we're talking about ghosts in the X-Files S4E22 "Elegy". It's not the only X-Files episode with ghosts, but it's a particularly creepy one. We hope you enjoy our discussion of haunted bowling alleys, inconvenient nosebleeds, white woman Wednesday, and pills that make you a serial killer. What are ghosts? What are frogs? Listen even though you probably won't find out.

Mild content warning for discussion of femicide and ableism, specifically pertaining to people with autism.

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Bibliography

• The Official Guide to The X-Files: I Want to Believe by Andy Meisler
• “Current Superstitions. I. Omens of Death” by Fanny D. Bergen, W. M. Beauchamp, and W. W. Newell, in The Journal of American Folklore
• “Current Superstitions. II. Omens of Death (continued)” by Fanny D. Bergen, W. M. Beauchamp, and W. W. Newell, in The Journal of American Folklore
• “American Attitudes to Death” by Charles O. Jackson, in Journal of American Studies
• “Bowling Alone: In which she is me” by Emily St. James, in Monsters of the Week: The Complete Critical Companion to The X-Files by Zack Handlen & Emily St. James

Is Ghostbusters the most American movie ever made? Your Ghost Hosts answer this and other questions you never asked in Part II of II on Ghostbusters (1984). We discuss the iconic film through multiple critical lenses including immigration, invaders, Orientalism, Spiritualism, the Occult, and Ghosthunting Capitalism.

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Bibliography

“Opening Up” in Men, Women, and Chain Saws by Carol Clover

“Immigrants as aliens in the Ghostbusters films” by Zoila Clark

Orientalism by Edward Said

Anderson, Matthew N., and Collin L. Brown. ""We're Ready to Believe You!": Spiritualism and the Interpretation of Paranormal Experience in Ghostbusters (1984)." The Paranormal and Popular Culture, 2019, pp. 133-146.

Podcast Episode: “How the Evangelical Machine Got Made” by The Experiment 

Podcast Series: The Orange Wave: A History of the Religious Right Since 1960

https://www.apollo-magazine.com/rudolf-steiner-occult-modernism/

https://superweirdsubstance.com/nikola-tesla/

Bustin' makes me feel... bad? What was meant to be an "easy, breezy, beautiful" 80s night became a two-part "cold hard research" episode. In part one, Quest and Annabelle give their first impressions of Ghostbusters (1984). They also unpack the "totemic nostalgia" of the original franchise and explore the film through the lens of the monstrous-feminine and possession.

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Bibliography

“Opening Up” in Men, Women, and Chain Saws by Carol Clover

“Immigrants as aliens in the Ghostbusters films” by Zoila Clark, in Australasian Journal of Popular Culture

“The Monstrous-Feminine: An Imaginary Abjection” by Barbara Creed

“Busters Behind the Ghosts” by Joanna Lipari, in Film Comment

“‘Now That I Have It, I Don’t Want It’: Vocation and Obligation in Contemporary Hollywood Ghost Films” by James A. Miller, in Folklore/Cinema: Popular Film as Vernacular Culture

THE HORROR OF NOSTALGIA: CHASING GHOSTS IN THE HOLLOW KIND by Andy Davidson

“Bitches Ain’t Gonna Hunt No Ghosts”: Totemic Nostalgia, Toxic Fandom and the Ghostbusters Platonic by William Proctor in Palabra Clave.