America’s Horror Stories

<p><i>America’s Horror Stories: U.S. History through Dark Tourism</i> conducts a ghost tour(ist) methodology to explore how slavery and racism are represented in dark tourism via ghost tours.</p><p>The authors travel to key sites of racist U.S. history including Salem Massachusetts where a witch panic was sparked by accusations of witchcraft by Tituba an enslaved woman practicing Voodoo; New Orleans Louisiana which hosts the largest slave trade market; the Myrtles Plantation in Francisville Louisiana; and to Gettysburg Pennsylvania where the bloodiest battle of the Civil War took place marking a pivotal moment to end slavery in the nation—but where Confederate ghosts are said to continue roaming the town and battlefield. Acting as research ghost hunters/tourists the authors go on walking and bus tours visit historical monuments stay at haunted hotels ponder objects in haunted museums and do some ghost hunting of their own. They find that the ghosts conjured by tour guides—ghosts of confederate soldiers American citizens and enslaved people—tend to whitewash sensationalize and commercialize the horrors of U.S. history including slavery racism and colonialism. They do not discount dark tourism entirely; but recommend a ghost tour(ist) pedagogy that critically considers social issues—and structural forms of inequality—that haunt us today.</p><p><i>America’s Horror Stories</i> will be of great interest to students and scholars researching and taking part in critical criminology and cultural criminology courses specifically on crime media and culture.</p>