Please use this identifier to cite or link to this item: https://hdl.handle.net/1959.11/7560
Title: Review of Elizabeth Taylor, 'Haunted Halls: Ghostlore of American Campuses': (Jackson, Mississippi: University Press of Mississippi, 2007.) Paper and cloth. P. ix + 241. ISBN 978-1-57806-944-1. Unjacketed Cloth. $US 50-00. ISBN 978-1-57806-995-8. Paper. $US 20-00.
Contributor(s): Ryan, John S  (author)
Publication Date: 2010
Handle Link: https://hdl.handle.net/1959.11/7560
Abstract: This somewhat unexpected volume, one by an associate professor of English at Bingham University, may indeed be said to be 'the first in depth study of Ghost Stories from American universities'. The volume treats an important and highly topical issue, namely how young adults (17-21) react to spatial and social change/ loss of safety at a peculiarly significant time in their lives, especially when they are exposed to institutional places old buildings, ones with disturbing/ traumatic human histories, suicides there and stories of excitement, mystery and danger. As well, and, despite new friends at hand, they are without their hitherto comforting support systems, and so, perforce, the more easily respond to the vibrations that lingering in those locations. What gives the study such intriguing insights is that writer and her informants - and these come from a score of named Universities - are all in the 'system', the former with years of responsible 'residential assistant' experience, and as having already published several 'single-motif' special pieces in this field. These focused on: sensory evidence; ghostly warnings; troubling encounters; desperate lovers, spectral Indians, etc. This material, now thoroughly integrated, is nicely rounded out with a meticulous 'Index of Tale Types and Motifs', the bulk falling between the standard E 230 and E 765 categories... and, interestingly, several of these have not been found by me in the better known (Australian) ghost lore collections. The writer's study covers a period of more than forty years, from the mid-1960's to 2006, and so it moves into the realms of electronic messages, he treatment however combining the social, psychological and the cultural. As well it records very faithfully so many students' explanations as to the significance of these/ such spectral phenomena.
Publication Type: Review
Source of Publication: Australian Folklore, v.25, p. 232-235
Publisher: Australian Folklore Association, Inc
Place of Publication: Australia
ISSN: 0819-0852
Fields of Research (FoR) 2008: 160805 Social Change
170109 Personality, Abilities and Assessment
160809 Sociology of Education
Socio-Economic Objective (SEO) 2008: 950399 Heritage not elsewhere classified
930402 School/Institution Community and Environment
950304 Conserving Intangible Cultural Heritage
HERDC Category Description: D3 Review of Single Work
Publisher/associated links: http://www.une.edu.au/folklorejournal/
Appears in Collections:Review

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