Haunted States

A fusion of travel literature and cultural criticism investigating the dark history of the US and exploring how past horrors – from witch trials to slavery and genocide – continue to haunt the national consciousness.

“Ghosts frequently speak of a lost past, but just as often they gesture forwards to an unrealised future, a dream that failed to come true.”

The witches and ghouls of New England; vampires and zombies in the bible belt; atomic monsters of the desert west; and satanic cults in California: this is a book about the American Gothic, the horrors haunting the vast landscapes of the United States and populating its movies and literature. Why do we continue to summon such creatures? Why do we give them such grotesque shapes and imbue them with taboo desires? Moreover, why do we sometimes desire them?

Part cultural history and part travelogue, Haunted States traces the American Gothic’s roots in its natural and manmade environments and the nation’s dark history of colonialism, slavery, violence and oppression — past sins that continue to haunt the national consciousness to this day.

"Miranda Corcoran makes the best of guides to the rich ghost lore of the United States, bringing a rare wisdom to the subject in this eloquent, insightful and compulsively readable book."
– Susan Owens, author of The Ghost: A Cultural History