Co-habiting with Ghosts: Knowledge, Experience, Belief and the Domestic Uncanny 1409467724, 9781409467724

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CO-HABITING WITH GHOSTS

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Co-habiting with Ghosts Knowledge, Experience, Belief and the Domestic Uncanny

CARON LIPMAN Queen Mary, University of London, UK

First published 2014 by Ashgate Publishing Published 2016 by Routledge 2 Park Square, Milton Park, Abingdon, Oxon OX14 4RN 711 Third Avenue, New York, NY 10017, USA Routledge is an imprint of the Taylor & Francis Group, an informa business Copyright © Caron Lipman Caron Lipman has asserted her right under the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act, 1988, to be identified as the author of this work. All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reprinted or reproduced or utilised in any form or by any electronic, mechanical, or other means, now known or hereafter invented, including photocopying and recording, or in any information storage or retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publishers. Notice: Product or corporate names may be trademarks or registered trademarks, and are used only for identification and explanation without intent to infringe. British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library The Library of Congress has cataloged the printed edition as follows: Lipman, Caron. Co-habiting with ghosts: knowledge, experience, belief and the domestic uncanny / by Caron Lipman. pages cm Includes bibliographical references and index. ISBN 978-1-4094-6772-4 (hardback: alk. paper) 1. Haunted houses – England. 2. Haunted houses – Wales. 3. Ghosts – England. 4. Ghosts – Wales. I. Title.

BF1472.E53L58 2014 133.10942--dc23

ISBN: 9781409467724 (hbk) ISBN: 9781315572550 (ebk)

2013033734

Contents Acknowledgements   1

Approaching the Ghost  

vii 1

Part I: Spaces and Times of the Haunted Home 2

The Material Uncanny  

31

3

The Temporalities of the Haunted Home  

65

Part II: Strategies of Cohabitation 4

Embodying, Domesticating, Gendering the Ghost  

5

Strategies of Distance and Communication  

89 107

Part III: Belief, Knowledge and Experience 6

Knowledge and Uncertainty  

139

7

Belief, Evidence and Experience  

161

Conclusion: The Liminal Home/Self  

193

Appendix: The Households  

207

References   Index  

211 231

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Acknowledgements First and foremost, this book would never have been written without the generous support, patient encouragement and subtle insights of Catherine Nash, a true mentor and friend. I also want to thank Alison Blunt for her continuous constructive advice; I have benefitted greatly from the depth of her knowledge of geographies of home. Numerous other colleagues, friends and family have helped me during the process of researching this book; rather than name them individually, I will shout out a general ‘thank you’ to all. I am particularly grateful for the generosity of my participants, who allowed me into their homes, offering their time and such thoughtful descriptions of their experiences. I have also gained much from the creative and hospitable atmosphere of the School of Geography, Queen Mary, University of London. I am, as ever, grateful for the invaluable support of my mother, Frances, and my partner, Sigrid, and to our little Siri, for unexpected delights. This book is dedicated to the memory of my father, Maurice Lipman, 1931–1993.

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Chapter 1

Approaching the Ghost How does it feel to live in a ‘haunted home’? How do people negotiate their everyday lives with the experience of uncanny, anomalous or strange events within the domestic interior? What do such experiences reveal of the intersection between the material and immaterial within the home, and the relationship between the home’s materialities and temporalities? How do people interpret experiences which are uncertain and unpredictable? How are these, explained, shared, narrated? What does this reveal about contested beliefs and different forms of knowledge? About how people manage to ‘cohabit’ with ghosts, this self–other relationship within such close quarters? This book sets out to explore these questions, to gain insight into a quite common but neglected experience of home. It extends work on the geographies of home, and attends to the ways people understand their experience of haunting in relation to ideas of subjectivity, gender, materiality, memory, knowledge and belief. The home as a site of haunting is a realm of complex and shifting emotional, sensual and social relationships, of the co-existence of different types of bodies and encounters. This book explores the domestic arena as both dynamic and differentiated, illuminating the complexity of ‘everyday’ experience – the familiarity of the strange as well as the strangeness of the familiar – and the ways in which home continues to be configured as a distinctive space. In this introductory chapter, I set out how I approach this material, consider what questions might be posed in exploring the experience of living in haunted homes, and how we might frame a key set of relationships: between experience, narrative and belief, between the uncanny and the home and the different self–other relationships which create it and are affected within it. Approaching the Ghost The ‘haunted home’ has enjoyed a long-standing position as a popular motif. People continue to believe in and to experience ghosts, despite the fact that belief in the supernatural has often been positioned in opposition to ‘modernity’, ‘perceived as two incompatible phenomena’ (Selberg, 2003).1 The apparent secularisation of modern Western society includes the current influence of a 1 According to a recent survey of April 2009 by think tank Theos, four in ten Britons (and 50 per cent of Londoners) claim to believe in ghosts and the supernatural (Theos, 2009: website); a similar number to a 1998 MORI poll which suggested 40 per cent of people believed in ghosts and 15 per cent had had a personal experience (MORI, 1998: website).

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particular form of radical atheism (Dawkins, 2007); and yet ‘positivism persists in confident assertion of the decline of experiences and beliefs that stubbornly are not declining’ (Cowdell, 2011: 4). Recent academic work has focused on a consideration of modernity itself as ‘uncanny’ (see Collins and Jervis, 2008), and modern cities to be haunted places. In a study of Singapore rituals to appease ghosts, geographer Steve Pile rightly cautions that the beliefs underpinning them ‘do not simply co-exist with modernity, nor are they some kind of vestigial pre-modern superstition that will somehow disappear in the modern city; they are part of what it means for Singapore to be modern.’ (Pile, 2005: 134–6). Throughout this book, I refer to the ‘supernatural’ as phenomena unexplained by natural processes (modern discourses often favour the word ‘paranormal’). I used the phrase ‘haunted home’ with participants as a shorthand term which they understood in general but related to in specific, different ways. I refer at various points in this book to the ‘uncanny’, ‘haunting/haunted’ and ‘ghost’. The phrases ‘uncanny event’ or ‘uncanny experience’ are used as key descriptors of all witnessed anomalies reported by participants. The word ‘event’ is neutral but dynamic, whilst ‘experience’ suggests something having human impact or involvement; they are non-specific enough to incorporate a wide range of phenomena and responses. Uncanny events or experiences sometimes include (or are interpreted as caused by) the more specific figure of a ‘ghost’. Haunting is often used in the literature to express a rather internal or psychological process, but has general application here; ‘the uncanny’, likewise, is used rather broadly, in keeping with its varied definitions (the term is discussed later in this chapter). Co-habiting with Ghosts, then, gives voice to the people who, in contemporary England and Wales, continue to witness anomalous phenomena, uncanny events within their homes. It offers a pause at the event itself and its aftermath, allowing space for the witnesses, asking how they themselves might describe, explain, and negotiate such experience. We might even allow the ghosts and the haunted homes their own oblique but central presence, allow the more imponderable forces space to be, even if they can’t speak and won’t be interviewed. This is not to ignore wider social and cultural influences, as if the uncanny event was somehow distinct and apart from them, not to romanticise such events, reify the homes in which they occur, or attempt only to reproduce naïve descriptions, but to work creatively with our cultural assumptions without blindly reiterating them, exploring the ways in which cultural processes and social relationships are imbricated, exposed, enhanced, through such experiences, at specific places. It is to attempt an approach which steers a course somewhere between, on the one hand, an uncritical exploration of supernatural experiences, and on the other, explaining them away by recourse to wider social and cultural contexts, what geographer Julian Holloway has called a non-reductionist approach to ‘spaces of the religious, spiritual, or the sacred’, a ‘middle ground’ which doesn’t reduce causes to ideology or social relations (Holloway, 2006: 186). Extending this approach to the supernatural, I consider how far it has been utilised and what insights I might gain elsewhere in testing it out.

Approaching the Ghost

3

If we look to close approximate areas of focus we see similar questions being posed. One issue for some anthropologists, for example, is how to avoid imposing a western theoretical framework (such as psychological models) to explain ritual experiences, without foregoing analysis completely.2 Debates within geographies of religion have, in turn, included responses to a concern that social constructionist ideas are over-used in the analysis of beliefs in the sacred, of fears that ‘through reductionism the sacred will be eliminated completely and replaced by political, economic, and social explanation’ (Ferber, 2006: 178). Much of this work, it is argued, explains away religious belief in relation to wider social and economic processes.3 Geographer Paul Harrison, contributing to an online discussion, eloquently states the problem thus: ‘Most of what passes for the “geographies of religion” seems to be identity politics by another name, where the fact that these are putatively religious or spiritual phenomena makes little or no difference to their study.’ He asks: ‘Is it possible within the epistemological and methodological terms of social science to actually study such phenomena as religious experience without explaining it away as ideology or identity?’ (Harrison, 2004). In a similar vein, geographer Anne Buttimer complains that to ‘deny reality to phenomena that appear to be beyond the reach of currently available analytical methods smacks of naïve empiricism’ (Buttimer, 2006: 198). She argues that it is ‘surely credible and analytically defensible’ to claim that ‘religion and belief systems have been socially constructed; it is quite another matter to claim that there is “nothing but” socially constructed discourses to religion’. There is an added question of where to demarcate the line between ‘mainstream’ and ‘alternative’ beliefs, and what’s at stake in reinforcing such a divide – historically the role of religion, to keep ‘appropriating new arguments for designating correct and true beliefs’ (Selberg, 2003). Ghosts ‘do not stand outside orthodox religious institutional practice, but in discursive and disputational interaction with it’ (Cowdell, 2011: 137), and in order to understand religion, it is ‘necessary to understand the relationship between official, folk and individual beliefs and practices’ (Bowman, 2004: 5). We might add that in order to understand belief in the supernatural, it is important to explore the intersection of different kinds of belief, both formal and informal – religious, supernatural, folkloric, cultural, and to see how beliefs might even be challenged or changed in the light of uncanny experience. If we turn more centrally to academic work on ghosts, hauntings and the uncanny, we find a current apex of interest within cultural, literary, and social theory. From one direction, there has been a flurry of cultural histories of ghosts and hauntings, work which tracks ghost stories over centuries, listing the recurring tropes associated with particular phenomena, and framing these descriptions as a means of reflecting social and religious mores. These accounts offer a sweeping overview of continuities and changes associated with ghostly behaviour, the form of their immateriality and rationale for haunting, with some interventions sounding 2 3

See for example, Nabokov, 2000. See Ong, 1987; Scott and Simpson-Housley, 2001.

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familiar, others specific to particular times. While this work is useful in offering a wide historical and cultural context – and we might note how people living in contemporary haunted homes utilise particular tropes in interpreting uncanny events – it is underpinned by a dismissal of uncanny experience as only ever a product of historical and cultural influences, an assumption that the ‘wealth of oral and written lore about paranormal experiences – especially ghosts – deeply colours any experiences’ (Trubshaw, 2012: 75).4 A tension between mainstream and alternative knowledge has been read politically, including the gendering of the emotion-reason binary. Film theorist Annette Kuhn points to an ‘opposition between dominant (middle-class, male, white) ways of knowing’ and ‘knowledge from below’, or ‘common knowledge’ which is ‘often dismissed as superstition, ‘female intuition’, ‘old wives’ tales’; or at best patronised as ‘folklore’, the ‘quaintly earthly wisdom of the unlettered’ (Kuhn, 2002:120). Whilst there is a danger that Kuhn’s holders of ‘common knowledge’ may be romanticised, it is true that ghost stories were often disparaged as irrational and female – particularly after the Enlightenment. During the early twentieth century, women were perceived as more suggestible than men, and those considered inferior and weaker were assumed more likely to succumb to social influence (see Blackman and Walkerdine, 2001). Emotion has also been ‘viewed as ‘beneath’ the faculties of thought and reason’ (Ahmed, 2004:3); ‘emotions are associated with women, who are represented as “closer” to nature … less able to transcend the body through thought, will and judgement’ (Bondi, 2005: 1).5 Written folkloric accounts are untrustworthy because folk collectors felt no onus to take them seriously or repeat them accurately. The wayward ghost narrative was tidied up through what Sociologist Gillian Bennett calls a ‘literaryfying’ process, ‘rounded off’ into narrative style, thus perpetuating clichés: the ‘printed stories which tend to survive may parody the informal, oral tales they were based on’ (Bennett, 1999: 193). More recently, ‘contemporary legend’ research focuses on genre analysis, underlying which is an assumption that folkloric beliefs remain latent, ‘even while they are often shared as experiences’ (Cowdell, 2006: 70). Folklorist Paul Cowdell cautions that ‘too-narrow concentration on genre can lead us to ignore the broader significance of a story’s content for the narrator’ and ‘raises the possibility of misrepresenting ghost narratives’ (80–81).

4 See also Cowdell, 2011; Davies, 2007; Maxwell-Stuart, 2006; Finucane, 1996 5 I was surprised to read some of these ideas persisting into the 1970s: ‘Remember that more women see ghosts than men. This may be due to the fact that … women have more vivid imaginations; or (perhaps an old-fashioned suggestion) that they are more emotional than men and are therefore endowed with a lesser degree of logic’ (Green, 1973: 106). And, elsewhere (also expressing racial and other stereotypes): ‘It is helpful to know that blacks, widows, women and people with a conviction are more likely to have contact with the dead, but it is astonishing, perhaps a little unnerving, to know that more than one-quarter of the American population has had such experiences’ (Greeley, 1975: 43).

Approaching the Ghost

5

The ghosts have also been enlisted as signposts to critiques of modern life, with Avery Gordon’s Ghostly Matters (1997) being particularly influential. Gordon uses the figure of the ghost to point at the ‘presence of absence’ in social life and social theory – a compelling account of what gets left out. The book has been at the heart of attempts to mine thinkers including Karl Marx and Jacques Derrida for their concern with material conditions. The act of summoning the spectre ‘serves to unsettle notions of presence, thereby forcing the witness to acknowledge that which has been excluded or repressed from the here-and-now in the process of rendering the present both comprehensible and habitable’ (Spearey, 2000: 171). Gordon, as others, draws in particular on Derrida’s deconstruction methodology, he called a ‘hauntology’, a theory of ghosts. The self is a ‘ghost in the sense that it is never fully present to itself. The ghost also haunts texts, standing for meanings that have been repressed or denied; but because the attempt to fix meaning is doomed to fail, the ghost is always present. The presence of ghosts, then, reminds us that such a project fails to see everything; and what it does not see – as well as the act of not-seeing itself – constitute social injustice’ (Gordon, 1997: 12). Gordon’s ghost is perhaps not so much a metaphor, but certainly not quite real. Her approach has triggered a flurry of elaborations, where the ghost has become a metaphor for all manner of social lacks, silences, absences and inequalities, or is enlisted as a ‘resistor’ or exposer of modernity, of particular power dynamics, or an exemplar of the ‘abject unlivable zones’ of social life populated by those who ‘do not enjoy the status of the subject’ (Gunew, 2004: 95).6 One idea circulating amongst some theorists, for example, is to posit contemporary haunted homes as those we don’t own. In 1987, the writer Peter Rogerson put the haunted council house down to a ‘lack of bonding between occupier and the property simply because it belongs to someone else’ (in Taylor, 1998). Later, architectural theorist Anthony Vidler took up the same theme, connecting the idea of the ‘unhomely’ to the ‘alienation of modern life’, a Marxist theory focusing on the ‘estrangement of the individual from his or her home’, the effect of renting property: ‘he finds himself in someone else’s house, in the house of a stranger who always watches him’ (Stewart, 2003: 95). Anthropologist Daniel Miller makes the same claim: the council estate is the prime site of feelings of ‘alienation’. People feel ‘haunted by the sense that their apartments belonged to the council – the state – and not to themselves’ (Miller, 2001: 113).7 This theory seems to gain support from an unexpected direction. A recent online forum for public housing professionals contained a thread asking what to do when tenants make 6 For numerous examples of this approach, see: Kellner, 1995, Hetherington, 2001, Jones, 2001, Kempadoo, 2004, Park, 2000, McEwan, 2008, and Warner, 2006. 7 It is telling that this theory should draw on Marx, who famously asserted that people ‘create religious illusions by projecting all that is positive and lacking in this alienated world onto some imaginary, unreal, supernatural world … rational, unalienated human beings will free themselves from religious illusion and address the real causes of the exploitation and injustice that afflict humankind’ (Allen, 1998: 37).

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a homelessness application because their home is haunted (Shelter, 2002). Some contributors suggested this is a cynical move to get re-housed. But others provided stories: ‘[I] did a few checks on [a] property and found that two previous tenants reported mysterious occurrences. Since then the property has been demolished’; ‘We get at least one of these a year in Walsall. Our approach is to arrange to carry out an exorcism. It usually does the trick.’ Despite these accounts, there is no evidence that public housing is more likely to be haunted. The theory becomes a groundless generalisation utilised in the service of a particular social critique, and downplays people’s capacity to experience home in different ways. The theory is dismissed out of hand by ghost researcher David Taylor: ‘I come into contact with many cases of haunted houses. The archetypal haunted house may very well be a council house, and indeed many are, but by the same token many are not. These cases are not confined to any one social class or structure and there are common motifs in all’ (Taylor, 1998). These recent interventions, contemporary or historical, involving the ghost as social figure, metaphor or mirror – ‘reduced to a superficial rhetorical figure’ (Blanco and Peeren, 2010: xvi) – have thoroughly mined the creative possibilities of employing it as a means of illustrating wider arguments. It is an approach which provides the means of maintaining credence within the ‘rational’ academy whilst gaining currency by dabbling in its fringes, a focus which has basked in its potency as political resistance (perhaps enjoying the frisson of the unknown within safe bounds), exposing relationships of power whilst reworking others. However, the people who grapple with uncanny experience have been silenced, and the opportunity to gain insight into their lives has been missed – a state of affairs beginning to draw attention. Introducing a book on the gothic, literary theorist David Punter states: ‘By referring in the book’s subtitle to a ‘Gothic geography’, we are, of course, speaking as always in a metaphor’ (Punter, 1999: 4). Unimpressed, geographer David Matless rightly responds: ‘The metaphor allows productive exploration of Gothic’s limits of mappability, but the phrase “of course” jars. Speaking “as always” in a metaphor becomes speaking only in a metaphor, bypassing more complex possibilities of cultural geography’ (Matless, 2008: 338. Italics added). Even the Derridean bent of the editors of a special journal issue on the spectral concede the ‘need to move beyond the use of spectres as just narrative, metaphorical or allegorical devices’ (Maddern and Adey, 2008: 292). One cause for the sidelining of ghosts is a lack of theoretical room allowing them to haunt specific spaces – and in particular, the ordinary places where we spend much of our time. For Vidler, the uncanny remains a mental state, ‘not a property of the space itself nor can it be provoked by any particular spatial conformation’ (Vidler, 1999: 11). Derrida was not interested in literal ghosts – despite his call for us to ‘learn to live with ghosts’ (Derrida, 1994: xviii). Michel de Certeau, an influential thinker on everyday space, declared that ‘haunted places are the only ones people can live in’ (de Certeau, 1988: 108), arguing that ghosts ‘stand for the communal memories and histories that create a place’s habitability in the face of its definition and disciplining by the dominant spatial order’ (Peeren, 2010: 105),

Approaching the Ghost

7

and that superstitions are ‘desirable cracks in the system, nascent political tools capable of countering the panoptical gaze’ (ibid: 106). Nonetheless, de Certeau’s ghosts remain vaguely ‘unspecified’ (106). Freud’s influential essay, The Uncanny (1919) is generally seen as a counter to animism, the residue of primitive belief in superstition – a further way of decentring the ghost. In his attempt to define the uncanny, Freud included a discussion of his own experience, where he kept returning to the same street (full of prostitutes) on a walk around an unfamiliar city. This ‘unintended repetition’ (Pile, 2011: 297), which at the time disturbed him, has become a central motif for the ghost, perceived to be caught up in time rather than in space, trapped in a ‘reality which eludes grasping and assimilation’, which is ‘relived as haunting memory’ in ‘ceaseless repetitions and re-enactments’ (Dawson, 2005: 168). Perhaps this is why some geographers have intervened to emphasise the possibility of a ‘spectrality of space’ understood through the ‘ghostly rendering of space, objects and embodiment’ (Holloway and Kneale, 2008: 303), where, for example, the ‘spirits of the dead become a part of the very fabric of the city, woven into its physicality’ (Pile, 2005: 150). Literary theorist Roger Luckhurst raises a key point in his discussion of a recent gothic turn in London fictions, arguing that this work does not allow for the specificity of place. The ‘critical language of spectral or haunted modernity’ that has become a ‘cultural-critical shorthand in the wake of [Derrida’s] Specters of Marx’, he argues, can go ‘only so far in elaborating the contexts for that specific topography’, that the ‘generalized structure of haunting is symptomatically blind to its generative loci’ (Luckhurst, 2002a: 528).8 The ‘hauntological frameworks’ encouraged by Derrida’s work ‘routinize specificity beneath a general discourse regarding the spooky “secret sharer” of Enlightenment modernity’ (541). ‘It is worth recalling that ghosts are held to haunt specific locales … The spectral turn reaches a limit if all it can describe is a repeated structure or generalized “spectral process” – perhaps most particularly when critics suggest the breaching of limits is itself somehow inherently political’ (541–2). Building on Luckhurst’s insight, literary theorists Maria del Pilar Blanco and Esther Peeren arrive at one of this book’s points of departure, calling for a focus on haunted spaces which are ‘not simply describable as Gothic spaces, or informed by the languages of necromancy and melancholia, but as actual living spaces that need to be explored in their present singularity’ (Blanco and Peeren, 2010: xviii), because ghosts ‘appear in specific moments, and specific locations’ (x). Indeed, by avoiding the challenge of exploring the material, visceral and sensory impact of encountering the uncanny in 8 This avoidance of exploration of material, locatable hauntings has led some theorists to reject the usefulness of the spectral turn for exploring more embodied relationships. Geographer Deborah Dixon’s reading of television series ‘Most Haunted’ (which follows a team filming on-location ghost hunts) prefers to sidestep ghosts altogether – despite her choice of case study – in favour of a discussion of monsters: a focus on the monstrous provides, she argues, a ‘plethora of detailed, place-sensitive awareness of how “othering” proceeds and with what effect’ (Dixon, 2011: 436).

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actual, material, places – by always pointing away from the ghost to something or somewhere else – we find out nothing about the experience of being haunted. This requires a different definition of the uncanny: to view it as an effect. Freud failed to subdue or control the uncanny, it is argued, because it ‘eludes coherence’, being ‘bound up with an experience’ which ‘disturbs any attempts to remain analytically detached and objective’. It is ‘not something simply present like an object in a painting. It is, rather, an effect’ (Bennett and Royle, 1995: 39).9 As an effect, then, we need to focus on the uncanny as something which triggers intersections of memories, sensations and feelings. This, in turn, is already an important part of the definition of home. The Uncanny Home At the heart of this book is the uncanny home, described within a particular Western, contemporary, and mainly urban, context. The phrase ‘uncanny home’ expresses a contradiction. The ‘uncanny’ is intimately entwined with but in opposition to, home, derived from the German ‘unheimlich’ (‘un’ is ‘not’; ‘heim’ is ‘home’; ‘heimlich’ is ‘secretly’ or ‘secretive’). The origins of unheimlich, indeed, developed semantically from ‘home’ as defined as a safe place, of privacy, or a place to keep secrets; it evolved to mean something unfamiliar, indeterminate: where there are secret, hidden things. Although Freud, in his essay, defined the uncanny as ‘that class of frightening which leads back to what is known of old and long familiar’ (Freud, 2001 [1919]: 220), it is commonly denoted as the strange within the familiar, an intermingling of opposites which should not share the same space, or a confusing but familiar memory or sensation which one cannot quite grasp, just out of reach. As something both immaterial and ungraspable but having an effect within a particular material place, it is apt to find the ghost at home, for this combination of material and immaterial is also a definition of home which encompasses home’s physical aspects (that constitute a ‘house’) and its non-physical aspects. For geographers Alison Blunt and Robyn Dowling, home ‘is a place, a site in which we live. But, more than this, home is also an idea and an imaginary that is imbued with feelings. These may be feelings of belonging, desire and intimacy (as, for instance, in the phrase, “feeling at home”), but can also be feelings of fear, violence and alienation’ (Blunt and Dowling, 2006: 2).10 I want to argue that the presence of the haunted home suggests that ‘home’ is two things simultaneously: porous and fluid, and also distinctive, somewhere in particular, with its own 9 See also, Ellison, 2001. For a range of different takes on the uncanny, see Fletcher, 2000; Stewart 2003; Kelley, 2004; Buchli and Lucas, 2001; Gunew, 2004; Gelder and Jacobs, 1998. 10 For further discussion of definitions of home, Wiley and Barnes, 1996; Rybczynski, 1988; Benjamin, 1995; and Bammer, 1992.

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presence. The home is also considered a familiar (or ‘commonplace’, ‘normal’, ‘ordinary’, even ‘mundane’) place, and, in this book, I will explore the effects of the uncanny on this assumption – indeed, what the ‘strange within the familiar’ means for inhabitants. The philosopher Edward Casey argues that home becomes known over time through the repetition of domestic routines, and this might be considered the basis for one definition of the familiar, creating ‘habit memories’, of ‘sedimentation through which physical surroundings become home as an extension and reflection of routines’ (Young, 2005: 139–40). Thus the meaning of home is ‘continually created and re-created through everyday home-making practices’ (Blunt and Dowling, 2006: 254). Sociologist Elizabeth Shove bemoans contemporary preoccupations with the ‘explicit and visible and the dramatic’, asking instead: what about ‘inconspicuous consumption’? The ‘unspectacular dimensions’ and ‘barely detectable gridlines’ that make up the everyday routines of life (Shove, 2003: 2–3)?11 Elsewhere, we hear that it is the ‘fleeting ephemeral activities of little consequence’ making up daily life which reveal the ‘existence of the voiceless, inarticulate and abject’ (Buchli et al., 2004: 3), but that ‘apparently unhomely places may be experienced in homely ways, and … unhomely experiences of places normatively defined as home … are also possible’ (Blunt and Dowling, 2006: 121). It is important to note how these routinised home practices continue to be gendered, a point raised by some commentaries on fictional haunted home narratives. For example, Christine Wilson, in her essay on the haunted house fictions of the American wilderness, argues that the ‘deployment of domestication in an attempt to settle unruly houses exposes the gender implications of haunted house texts’ (Wilson, 2010: 204). Women’s impulse is to handle such spaces with ‘contact paper and interior decorating’. But haunted houses ‘enact a tyranny of domesticity’: they ‘require never-ending caretaking, from women, just to maintain the barest amount of livability’, efforts which will always fail because haunted houses ‘will never acquiesce to becoming passive spaces’. But elsewhere it is telling that the ghosts themselves created by women ghost story writers, during the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries rather more sympathetically reflect women’s domestic role under patriarchy: ‘Horror and terror are rarely the most appropriate responses to such visitations. Instead, women characters realise their commonality with the ghostly women and children they encounter and are often called upon to understand and act upon the messages brought by those who haunt their houses. Often, these messages warn of the dangers of domesticity’ (Carpenter and Kolmar, 1991: 14). This book explores how people experience homes which could be already considered ‘unhomely’. But this work also suggests unease with the ‘everyday’ and the ‘familiar’, a lack of confidence that such a category does not ordinarily 11 Blanco and Peeren offer a rather wide definition of the ‘everyday’, covering the domestic and the public spheres, ‘the house and the street’, as well as ‘more phantasmatic transnational structures like globalised capitalism and terrorism’ (Blanco and Peeren, 2010: xvii).

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and already contain its nemesis. Assumptions about the ‘everyday’ have, in turn, come under the spotlight. Esther Peeren usefully critiques recent commentary which links the everyday with the ‘mundane’ and ‘boring’ – a simplistic definition, she says, that ‘presupposes a particular way of life where people designate their daily activities as repetitive and validate them as dull’ (Peeren, 2010: 106). ‘What occurs regularly and is thought ordinary differs from place to place and is not inevitably dull.’ Shove makes a similar point: what might constitute domestic ‘normality’ might differ: ‘Arrangements that are normal for some strike others as being extremely strange’ (Shove, 2003: 2). Is what constitutes ‘normality’ in a haunted home different to that of other homes? Do people living in haunted homes develop a different relationship to the prosaic round of ‘everyday’ life? The assumption might be that the everyday cannot be ‘normal’ under such circumstances. But Peeren goes on to argue against theorisations that rely on a ‘dichotomous separation between an everyday seen as orderly and devoid of wonder, and a ghostly interruption … that is invariably unsettling’ – of the everyday and the ghostly ‘presented as irreconcilable realms that ought not to encroach on each other’ (Peeren, 2010: 106). She points out that in non-Western traditions, the ghost’s ‘status as part of the everyday is not seen as something extraordinary or problematic and where the ghost is not reduced to a metaphor’; such a relationship between the ghostly and the everyday now applies in the West too. Freud’s uncanny and Derrida’s spectre have become ‘insufficient models with which to think through the ghostliness of the everyday’, Peeren claims, since their ghost is always ‘an unexpected, surprising figure of disturbance, the return of the repressed, and absolute alterity’ (113). Contemporary Western ghosts have, rather, become ‘part of the mainstream, invading the everyday realm’ – not something which unsettles or disturbs space, ‘confined to cultural margins and fringe genres’ and needing to be ‘put to rest elsewhere to restore order’ (Blanco and Peeren, 2010: xiii). These ghosts are, rather, associated with ‘the popular, the everyday, and the commodity’, with magazines on haunting, ghost-hunting as a pastime, and television series and films which appear to normalise the ghost (xv). How far do these popular cultural interventions add up to a new breed of ‘everyday’ ghost?12 Although this argument is an important counter to the 12 The book’s exploration of uncanny experiences includes an interest in ‘cultural beliefs’, but, as will be shown, it cannot be assumed what the effect of wider cultural mores might be on the experience of, or interpretation of, uncanny events within the home. Certainly, popular ghost stories have been repackaged by modern-day place marketers. In 2002, York officials claimed to have more ghosts than rival Edinburgh (504 to 60). A study of Scottish tourism suggests that a ‘ghostly past clearly is felt to sell’ (Inglis and Holmes, 2003: 51), places are ‘constructed as being authentic through the very presence of the ghost, which operates as a hallmark of the archaic nature of the locale in question’. Television’s slavish adherence to formula also reinforces popular narratives. I was contacted by a producer working on a series on haunted homes who suggested a swap of ‘rejects’. The programme format required people to have a dramatic reaction to ghosts. A medium would expel them, re-establishing happy family life – what the producer called ‘resolution’:

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assumption that the presence of a ghost necessarily disrupts everyday life, it does not acknowledge that these cultural realms the ghosts inhabit are made up of places which are not ours: that is what is important about them. They are still fictionalised ghosts, or ghosts to read about in magazines or to hunt down as a hobby, somewhere elsewhere. Haunted homes continue to be located as a separate category from everyday life, and uncanny places are often unfamiliar or out of bounds. In my previous study of urban exploration at a ‘haunted’ former hospital ruin, the strange affectivity of the place – hidden within woodland and surrounded by tall fencing – created extreme emotional responses (Lipman, 2004). Visits to the hospital were short-lived furtive trespasses. Experiences were sought because they took place in a particular, contained space, away from home. It was the contrast with home that people enjoyed on these forays: a spatial ‘othering’ which reinforced some boundaries as it circumvented others.13 Haunted homes – those we don’t have to live in – provide release of emotional tension, according to sociologist Jenny Hockey. The ‘House of Doom’ (fictional haunted house) allows us to ‘safely rehearse our terror of demons … [and] the ghosts of unknown previous occupants … Located in fairground or carnival we confront our terrors in their proper context, as a source of fun, farce and hysteria’ (Hockey, 1999: 148). When the fictional ghost is tolerated rather than banished from the home, it is generally in the context of comedy drama (such as the film Beetlejuice, 1988) or written for children (such as the cartoon series, Casper the Friendly Ghost, 1930s onwards), rendering what frightens us unthreatening. David Taylor believes haunted houses ‘scapegoat’ a community’s fears (Taylor, 1998): every local community has its haunted house, he claims, a ‘building that has become a strong cultural icon both within our conscious and subconscious minds … Its metonymy transforms the house, in the eyes of that community, into a modern representation, all be it in bricks and mortar, of a sin eater. It begins to take on and absorb the fears and concerns of that community’. Popular accounts of the haunted house, then, externalise that which is in constant fear of being denied the home – its homeliness. Vidler’s rendering of order and normality restored. People who were more ambivalent about their ghosts were of no interest. Whereas many popular books on ghosts and hauntings and touristic ghost tours replicate old folklore, there are also examples of more thorough contemporary research. Tom Slemen publishes an annual book series, ‘Haunted Liverpool’ using local media (newspaper columns and radio guest appearances) to elicit stories from the public, as well as offering an address to send encounters: ‘All correspondence will be answered’ (Slemen, 1998 onwards). In the US, Jason Offutt has researched paranormal happenings within a hundred miles of his home in Missouri, to prove that: ‘No matter where you live on this planet, within a hundred miles of where you’re sitting in your quiet, warm, comfortable chair, exist things that will make you scream for your mother’ (Offutt, 2010: x). 13 Gothic tales, which predated psychoanalysis by nearly 200 years, also often focused around bleak and secluded natural landscapes, ruins and graveyards, to emphasise something ‘out of bounds’, beyond normality and familiarity, disturbing (but also reinforcing) social, aesthetic and moral boundaries (see Grunenberg, 1997).

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Freud’s definition of the uncanny suggests just such an anxiety: ‘For Freud, “unhomeliness” was more than a simple sense of not belonging; it was the fundamental propensity of the familiar to turn on its owners, suddenly to become defamiliarised, derealised, as if in a dream’ (Vidler, 1999: 7). There is plenty of reason for such anxiety. A set of ideal tropes attached to home – as somewhere private, a sanctuary or refuge from the outside world, a place where we belong and can be authentically ourselves – persist, perhaps in part because of home’s association with the development of the modern bourgeois family and self, as the ‘setting for an emerging interior life’ (Rybczynski, 1988: 35–6).14 Even rapid social and economic changes in the West since the end of the nineteenth century have, we are told, ‘done little to change the Victorian belief in the home as a private retreat within which a personal life can be enjoyed in peace and security’ (Hepworth, 1999: 17). But these ideals are constantly being undermined and contested. Commentators point out that privacy is not always open to all householders (Chapman and Hockey, 1999: 10), for some women home has been deemed ‘not a sanctuary but a prison’ (Rubenstein, 2001: 2); and the model home ‘contains and obscures innumerable conflicts’ (Wright, 1990: 213).15 In any case, ‘however determinedly we police the boundaries of our ‘private’ space, it is difficult to ignore or exclude the possibility of incursions into that space’ (Douglas, 1993: 262). This failure of home to live up to its ideals is central to the way home has been positioned as already uncanny. Sociologist Anne-Marie Fortier points out that ‘the historical link between ‘home’ and ‘sickness’, nostalgia and loss, suggests that home, in a sense, has always been ‘unheimlich’, a place of ‘dark secrets, of fear and danger, that we can sometimes only inhabit furtively’ (Fortier, 2000: xi). This failure is not new, as literary theorist Sharon Marcus points out in her examination of a craze for fictional haunted house stories in mid-nineteenth-century London. These, she explains, coincided with the suburbs ‘replicat[ing] the urban conditions they had been designed to circumvent’ – crowding, transience, and subdivision into lodgings (Marcus, 1999: 116). The ghost stories told of ‘the terror and damage inflicted by malevolent, disruptive ghosts’ (119); the ghosts were ‘noisy, intrusive 14 Sociologist Lyn Richards offers three notions: privacy for haven, community, emotional security, historically located in the bourgeois family; privacy to build stable family units, related to autonomy and independence; and privacy from others, the antithesis of community. Family life, she argues, is about all three definitions (Richards, 1990: 100). See also Hareven, 1993; Sidlauskas, 1996. The home as a secure and stable place has been questioned by work on mobile and displaced peoples. See Lavie and Swedenburg, 1996 and Gunew, 2004. But research also suggests homeless people create a ‘sense of home’ in different ways (Valentine, 2001). 15 Some feminists have re-evaluated the site of home, exploring its potential as a site of resistance. bell hooks claims political expedience in maintaining a divide between public and private realms (hooks, 1990: 41). Political philosopher Iris Marion Young also argues that the ‘value should be democratised rather than rejected’ because of its ‘critical liberating potential’ as a ‘site of dignity and resistance’ (Young, 2005: 146).

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strangers’ (124). These stories emphasised the ‘contradictions between the middle class’s domestic ideals and its dwelling practices in sensationally heightened ways … Haunted-house stories broadcast the urban deformation of the domestic ideal’. In line with a move to unfix public and private boundaries, the focus has turned to the porosity of home, where the outside can never be kept out. Geographer Maria Kaika describes a ‘simultaneous need and denial of socio-natural processes within the home’ as having an ambiguous, uncanny effect (Kaika, 2004: 266). During moments of crisis, she argues, the ‘networks, pipes and other material manifestations of the connections between “natural” and “domestic” spaces surface as “the domestic uncanny’”. Exploring this ‘uncanny materiality of “the other” in the form of the invisible metabolised nature or technology networks’ points at the ‘social construction of the separation between the natural and the social, the private and the public’ (283). Thus the ‘dwelling places of modernity are hosts of the uncanny in their very structure subverting the image of the dwelling as the epitome of the familiar’ (Kaika, 2005: 75). Architect Karen Bermann takes up a similar theme, describing in vivid terms the home as a: ‘collection of opacities and transparencies, a theatre of appearance and disappearance in which we mask our presence or make it known. Every existing wall contradicts itself with openings, places where the obduracy of matter yields to the necessity of passage: joints and seals, points of rupture, of flow and failure, where water seeps in and air pours through, where materials meet and pull away. These gaps present us with opportunities to be seen and heard. Yet the exchange across the building’s porous envelope makes us vulnerable’ (Bermann, 1998: 169). This focus on the home’s porosity makes it already uncanny, then, before the intervention of any ghosts. But the ghosts also point to the home’s porosity, not just because of their walking-through-walls capacity, and their association in the historical literature with a liminal state between one world and another, but because traditionally homes were always considered in need of psychic protection – their physical openings also potentially entry points for untoward spirits. Ghosts, as Luckhurst reminds us, are associated with actual physical places, and their liminal nature is mirrored by the liminality of their traditional earthly spaces and times: graveyards, moorland, twilight, cross roads, the midnight hour. Within the home, these places are staircases, corridors, doorways, windows and chimneys: openings and exits in need of protecting as geomantic weak spots. David Taylor describes the persistence of superstitions about doorways and death, and the objects used to protect these spaces and ‘keep away unwanted ghosts’, which ‘occupy a specific space in the house’, usually around windows, above doors and in chimneys (Taylor, 1998).16 16 Ghost hunting guides continue to reinforce cultural ideas about which places are most likely to be haunted. One guide describes ‘favourable’ locations, explaining that they congregate around ‘hot spots’ such as battlefields, cemeteries, hospitals, and sites of violent crime: ‘They may turn up at the scene of some long-ago act of violence, attracted, experts believe, by the dense psychic imprints etched on the surroundings … Ghosts also like hotels

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Co-habiting with Ghosts

Despite this porosity, associating the ghost with particular homes requires that we accept their distinctiveness. Haunted homes are often described as having a particular material presence and an atmosphere which sets them apart from their surroundings. We might see the haunted home as providing a minor adjustment to geographer Doreen Massey’s contribution to defining place as ‘not so much bounded areas as open and porous networks of social relations’ (Massey, 1994: 121). The distinctiveness of place for Massey is seen to rest in the ‘combination of social relations juxtaposed together in place and the connections they make to elsewhere’ (Laurie et al., 1997: 8). Recent definitions of home have, in turn, emphasised its multi-local nature, bound up with a set of ideas and feelings which ‘extend across spaces and scales’ (Blunt and Dowling, 2006: 2). Whilst maintaining a hold on these important definitions, we need to allow for a greater focus on specific homes, but to do so without replicating humanistic ideas which uncritically define home as a place of only fixed and undifferentiated identities, as the ‘place where we hide our secrets and express our private selves’ (Pallasmaa, 1995: 138). Certainly, the domestic interior tends to be positioned as a rather static space, less dynamic or complex, and a site of less mobility, than public spaces.17 Literary theorist Morag Shiach rightly reminds those fixated on public urban spaces they should consider the city as a ‘network of rooms’ (Shiach, 2005: 255). But her call for an engagement with the ‘more confined, and the more static terrain of the room as a way of reading the modern city’ (italics added) might not do the interior justice. We might consider the domestic interior as a set of differentiated spaces people move through – some more private, others more public – and then ask: do people navigate the haunting experience through such spaces, negotiate these space in particular ways? Does a successful co-habitation with ghosts depend on where ghosts are deemed to ‘place’ themselves? Do these particular places share any qualities – amount of use, levels of light, atmosphere? The idea of atmosphere – so often associated with haunted homes – is a useful way in which to think about home as both porous and distinct. Geographer Ben Anderson suggests that atmospheres are related both to ‘forms of enclosure – the couple, the room, the garden’ or ‘sealed off through and schools because of their thick strata of psychic residues. And spirits, attracted by the intense emotions expressed on the stage, seem to like theatres. [But] sometimes ghosts don’t flock to a place but simply live there because they always have. Haunted houses are usually inhabited by former residents, although now and then a spectral newcomer may do the haunting’ (Foreman, 1999: 65–6). 17 Influenced by writers on urban modernity such as Baudelaire, Benjamin, and de Certeau, this literature focuses in particular on the mundane act of urban walking, and its potential to ‘remap space in ways which render space visible, create new paths through space and are enduringly reversible and flexible’ (Pile, 1996: 249). The challenge is, we are told, to ‘produce geographies that are lived, embodied, practiced; landscapes that are never finished or complete, not easily framed or read’ (Cresswell, 2003: 280).The potential for such acts to resist prevailing hierarchies, boundaries, and experiences of place has received much attention.

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protective measures such as gated communities or certain types of building design’, but also to forms of ‘circulation – enveloping, surrounding and radiating’ (Anderson, 2009: 80). Atmospheres are a ‘kind of indeterminate affective ‘excess’ through which intensive space-times can be created’.18 Geographer Tim Edensor adds to this discussion Edward Casey’s idea of home, described earlier, which allows us to distinguish between ‘thick’ and ‘thin’ places, where the ‘former are suffused with a sense of sensual, emotional, and affective belonging that is embedded over time through repetitive practical, embodied engagement’ (Edensor, 2012: 1106). These ideas are useful in thinking about what might make haunted homes distinctive as an experience – how they are produced as ‘thick’ places or ‘intensive space-times’, which are also akin to humanist geographer Yi-Fu Tuan’s belief that an ‘emotional temperature’ distinguishes between inside and outside: ‘Consider the sense of an “outside” and an “inside”, of intimacy and exposure, of private life and public space. People everywhere recognise these distinctions … Constructed form has the power to accentuate … the difference in emotional temperature between “inside” and “outside”’ (Tuan, 1977: 107). These ideas, in turn, suggest the distinctiveness of the haunted home might center on particular shifts in or arrangements of affects and emotions, indicating a fluidity of relationships within the domestic interior, emotions as ‘relational flows, fluxes and currents, in-between people and places rather than ‘things’ or ‘objects’ to be studied or measured’ (Davidson et al., 2005: 3). Thinking about the spaces within the home’s interior as resonating differently, and of the different atmospheres making up the haunted home, also places the focus upon the different uses of home space and the emotions involved in living there. Are people on heightened alert, the hairs constantly standing up on the back of their necks? If not, do feelings change over the course of time, at different moments, or at different spaces? The temporalities of the haunted home provide a further means by which to examine its double definition as shifting and distinctive. This book explores how respondents might characterise their ghosts in relation to their home’s past, and in terms of uncanny events’ aftermath, the way meanings might become attached to home through the circulation and sharing of stories over time. Memory, like ghosts, is associated with the presence of the past, something non-linear or 18 Defining ‘atmosphere’ has taxed many theorists. Theresa Brennan, for example, believed that atmospheres affect us at a biological level as a result of feeling other’s affects (Brennan, 2004: 1–2). Elsewhere, Paul Pennartz attempts to prove that atmospheres are ‘neither irrational nor indeterminate’, as the ‘atmosphere of a room works on an individual, and conversely an individual projects his or her specific mood on the room’ , although he can’t explain the mechanisms (Pennartz, 1999: 95). Atmospheres are also believed to cling to places over time. Writer Peter Ackroyd claims to see ‘lines of continuity’ on the streets of London, some of which are to do with feelings attached to these places: ‘It is possible … that an unpleasant or unhappy atmosphere may persist like some noisome scent in the air’ (Ackroyd, 2000: 271). See also Pratt and Hanson on the ‘geography of placement’, where everyday local experiences and relationships create ‘a stickiness to identity that is grounded in the fact that many [women’s] lives are lived locally’ (Pratt and Hanson, 1994: 25).

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non-chronological. If the uncanny is, in one definition, the inability to quite remember something which nonetheless has a visceral effect – an unnerving intersection of memories, sensations and feelings – it is unsurprising that the ghost has also figured prominently in contemporary memory studies, with their focus on explorations of trauma – where negative experiences are repressed but not fully forgotten (Hoskins, 2003: 15).19 The assumption is that ghosts have no other reason to return. But is this how participants characterise them? Memory is also seen as central in shaping imaginative and material geographies of home (Blunt and Dowling, 2006: 198).20 Geographer Divya Tolia-Kelly introduces a useful concept, that of ‘re-memory’ (in a project on British Asian home experiences), where multiple material and sensory surfaces are deemed to be ‘imbued’ with memory. Re-memory ‘is not an individual linear, biographical narrative,’ but a ‘conceptualization of encounters with memories, stimulated through scents, sounds and textures in the everyday … souvenirs from the traversed landscapes of the journey, signifiers of “other” narrations of the past not directly experienced but which incorporate narrations of other’s oral histories or social histories that are part of the diasporic community’s re-memories’ (Tolia-Kelly, 2004: 1). We might ask whether or not the ‘traces’ (material and otherwise) left of a house’s own past might not constitute a form of memory, suggesting the haunted home is in part also a space of memories not necessarily one’s own. The home’s past – the fact of previous inhabitants – in itself might become unnerving, uncanny, for if we find it difficult to capture our own memories, what are we to do with others’ memories, even though they appear to impact on us? Anthropologist Daniel Miller’s response to this ‘discrepancy’ between the ‘longevity of homes and the relative transience of their occupants’ is to suggest that the haunted home is a ‘mythic form’ that ‘constructs a resolution’ to this ‘problem of social and material relations’ (Miller, 2001: 107). This is a problem for him personally; he bemoans his own sense of being ‘haunted’, ‘intimidated’, inhibited and ‘somehow let down’ by the home’s original aesthetic and what he has inherited from previous inhabitants (110–11). But is this an adequate response to the question of how the past of

19 In his essay ‘Totem and Taboo’ (Freud, 2001b) Freud suggests that the development of ghost belief describes conflicting relationships with dead family members. If participants believe they are haunted by relatives, does this change their response? Cultural theorist Marianne Hirsch’s idea of ‘postmemory’ also describes the transmission of trauma, a process involving the ‘embodiment of pathology in individuals through the unconscious absorption of family narratives, and the unspoken transmission of the parents’ unconscious to the child’ (Brogan, 1998: 19). Perhaps memory transmission works in a similar way in the haunted home, but passed through strangers sharing the same home over time? Do these ‘memories’ need to be traumatic? 20 See also DeSilvey, 2007; Radstone and Hodgkin, 2003b; Hyssen, 1994; Burton, 2003; Edensor, 2001; Langer, 2002; Young, 2000.

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the home might be drawn into interpretations of its uncanny aspect? 21 And do haunted homes always have to have a ‘history’? We might also look to a debate about the relationships between witnessing, remembering and forgetting to help understand uncanny events’ ‘afterlife’. This centres on ideas of ‘postmemory’, something vicarious, unfinished and ephemeral, with complete recall of the original event impossible, and the fact that memory is ‘always already secondary revision’ (Kuhn, 2002: 157–8). This focus is useful for examining the potentially vicarious nature of the uncanny, experiences which are likely to be hard to represent and ‘capture’ in the first place, being of uncertain cause and effect, an uncertainty which is temporal – who knows what will happen next, what will happen when – and also spatial: who knows where it will happen, or how unruly it might be. Is it possible to track the ways participants anticipate, remember or (perhaps) forget such events? We know that belief in the supernatural went underground, people choosing unofficial channels, ‘informal opinion expressed through the medium of a network of face-to-face conversations’ between friends and family (Bennett, 1999: 176–7).22 21 The Victorians also made a connection between home and death. A recurring image of heaven as a ‘happy home’ reinforced the idea of home as a ‘stable and harmonious social environment in this world and the next’ (Hepworth, 1999: 18). Home was also ‘the place where many people hoped to die’, the ‘appropriate place to confront and come to terms with the harsh realities of painful terminal illness and death; an essential link between the secular and the sacred’. Recent work has also described the tradition of ‘laying out’ a dead body at home (see Weber et al.: 1998). Given so many people died at home, it was the ‘natural place for the ghosts to return. It was where people mourned the dead and were surrounded by memories of their presence’, with the bedroom ‘most frequently the focus of ghostly visitations’ (Davies, 2007: 46–7). In a Society for Psychical Research survey of 1886, apparitions within the home were generally of complete strangers, in contrast to earlier times when ghosts ‘were almost always known to the viewer’ (Maxwell-Stuart, 2006: 201). 22 Whereas Christian Platonists collected ghost stories as evidence of divinity, by the reign of Elizabeth I England was passing through a Reformation which led to the banishment of ghosts. Purgatory was denied: only heaven and hell were allowed as postdeath states (Finucane, 1996: 92). The supernatural became secular and polarised, and as ghosts’ previous moral mission was lost, this increased the number of purposeless or evil ones; eighteenth-century rationalism further led to belief in ghosts going underground. There ‘simply became less and less for ghosts to do – except hang round aimlessly and cause mischief. They could only be illusory, private experiences or meaningless, inharmonious intrusions’ (Bennett, 1987: 176–7). Thus there were ‘malicious poltergeists’ who could ‘create domestic disturbances, injure the living, pull bedclothes off sleepers or even get into bed with them’ (ibid: 168). Alternatively, there were ghosts who merely ‘flittered about, closed doors mysteriously or were heard softly sighing, spitting and coughing on the stairs and in the corridors’. The fashion for ghost stories, however, continued into the nineteenth century. Interest in ghosts was, for example, revived through the influence of the Romantic Movement. But it was the evolution of scientific technologies which in particular created new manifestations and forums for connecting the immaterial world of the supernatural with the material world of matter (Luckhurst, 2002, Davies, 2007, Warner, 2006).

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Co-habiting with Ghosts

One of the aims of this book is to explore how this process continues. Historian Graham Dawson offers insights into how collective memories develop from just such informal local networks (in his case in relation to the Troubles in Northern Ireland). People who have undergone similar experiences exchange personal stories and shared memories which ‘circulate’ within relatively ‘private social arenas’ (Dawson, 2005: 169), and they ‘pool their stories, help each other to fill out the gaps and silences in their own recollections, and endeavour to piece together a more complete and adequate narrative of the truths behind the traumatic events’ (151). Imaginative ‘meanings and associations’ are ‘attached to a place through storytelling or practices of remembrance’ which enable a community to ‘orient themselves within and inhabit that place’. Dawson’s work suggests how memory and narrative inform experience and ideas about place. How far do ghost stories circulate to reinforce the idea of a home as haunted? How does the way events are shared, interpreted, and narrated inform the meanings ascribed to them? Experiencing Otherwise, Being Different? Living in a haunted home requires that inhabitants allow space for a form of ‘other’; uncanny events can be viewed as encounters between humans and non(or previously-) human. This book explores how people co-habit with ghosts, perhaps the strangest kind of stranger. Drawing upon a body of work describing the binary between self and other in ways which acknowledge its complexity, I consider: how do people living in haunted homes respond to the unknowability of the uncanny other? Do participants try to exclude or assimilate the ghosts, or does the very ambiguity of uncanny events lend itself to different responses? Much work on the self–other relationship reflects a definition of identity as a ‘contrast to what one is not’ (Laurie et al., 1997: 8–10). We create ‘others’ as a defensive mechanism – usually a response to modern conditions, which elicit fear or anxiety. Theorist Teresa Brennan argues that the self-contained Western identity is a false construct which ‘depends on projecting outside of ourselves unwanted affects … in a process commonly known as “othering”’ (Brennan, 2004: 24). Boundaries between self and other, formed by projection, are reinforced because there is ‘just too much affective stuff to dispose of, too much that is directed away from the self with no place to go’, leading to the ‘securing [of] a private fortress, personal boundaries, against the unsolicited emotional intrusions of the other’. Identity formation, then, is negatively associated with the need for privacy, which in turn is construed as an ‘attempt to expel alterity’ and ‘all forms of otherness, as inherently threatening to its own internally coherent self-identity’ (Morley, 2000: 6). This is the basis of Esther Peeren’s critique, outlined above, in which the ghost is subjected to just such banishment and exorcising.23 23 Here, then, the desire for ‘privacy’ is negatively deemed as leading to the formation of a ‘private fortress’. It is curious that, earlier, ‘privacy’ was seen as a key ideal

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Others have drawn on psychological theories to suggest that the ‘other’ is already a shifting aspect of self; as householders, we ‘try on and play out roles and relationships of both belonging and foreignness’ (Bammer, 1992: vii). For Sara Ahmed, the ‘other’ is recreated in the image of the self: ‘In the gesture of recognising the one that we do not know, the one that is different from ‘us’, we flesh out the beyond, and give it a face and form’ (Ahmed, 2000b: 3). In contrast, Geographer Ann Varley draws on work suggesting our recognition of others is only partial, and ‘requires acceptance of their ‘independence and unknowability’. The self can ‘relate to an other without assimilating or excluding it’ (Varley, 2008: 56). In the same way, she adds, we can think about home in ways that ‘do not become trapped in the binary of exclusionary or idealised space’: housing the self ‘need not always mean evicting the other’ (58). With this in mind, the book asks how people’s sense of self is reinforced or challenged in dealing with the ghostly ‘other’ within the home. It also requires us to ask, in turn, how the ‘self’ might be moulded or changed by its presence. Sara Ahmed usefully explores how the self takes shape through bodily interaction with others, through ‘strange encounters’ through which bodies are ‘both deformed and reformed; they take form through and against other bodily forms’ (Ahmed, 2000a: 86). She asks: ‘How do strange encounters, encounters in which something that cannot be named, be passed between subjects, serve to embody the subject? … To what extent do such encounters involve, not just reading the stranger’s body, but defining the contours or boundaries of the bodyat-home, through the very gestures which enable a withdrawal from the stranger’s co-presence in a given social space?’ (85). Perhaps we could also ask how people’s ‘strange encounters’ with ghosts create or challenge a sense of the ‘body-at-home’. But much recent cultural work has sought to make such an encounter stranger still, radically unfixing the self, other, and the material spaces in which they collide or co-exist. Particular definitions of affect and materiality have shifted awareness from stable objects and subjects to focus on the world as something emergent and in a constant state of becoming.24 Materiality for these theorists becomes an expanded of being ‘at home’, in turn undermined by the home’s uncanny porosity, leading to feelings of ‘vulnerability’. Perhaps both ideas underestimate the different kinds of sociability that takes place within the home, and how for those living alone (particularly but not exclusively older people), the home as ‘private’ can be lonely and stifling. 24 The materiality debate has become a staging post for a raft of arguments, exposing tensions, for example, between objective and subjective, the empirical and theoretical. It was initially a response to a call to ‘re-materialise’ social and cultural geography (Jackson, 2000; Philo, 2000, Lees, 2002), for the discipline to become more grounded in material realities, a focus on both the material world (of solid matter) and on the social and political relationships which form it. The ‘new materialists’ argue that the immaterial is not in opposition to the material but gives the latter an ‘expressive life’ beyond the social. Concrete material is merely a ‘particular aggregate organisation of process and energy’; matter is no more or less real than ‘apparently ‘immaterial’ phenomena like emotion, mood, and affect held together and animated by processes that are excessive of form and position’ (Latham and McCormack, 2004: 709).

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concept able to contain the figurative, affective, discursive, physical and immaterial as part of a process of constantly-emerging relationships – excessive, expressive, unruly, ‘perpetually beyond itself’ and ‘never apprehensible in just one state, nor … static or inert’ (Anderson and Wylie, 2009: 332). Here the boundary between the material and immaterial is broken down, as the ‘wayward expressiveness of matter’ (Kearnes, 2003:139) meets the ‘excessive potential of the immaterial’ (Latham and McCormack, 2004: 710). The move is prompted in part by a desire to go beyond the representational ‘gaze’ of human witnesses/constructors of the world and to flatten the anthropocentric hierarchy via an expanded vision of flows, interconnections and interdependencies, a series of pre-personal fields, forces or intensities – affects which ‘cannot be fully realised in language’ (Shouse, 2005: 1). Focusing on coexistence or co-habitation decentres both selves and others; this, it is claimed, ‘renews terms like perception and sensibility, rescuing them from their baneful association with humanism and subjectivism’ (Anderson and Wylie, 2009: 332). This work prompts us to consider how ‘different configurations of objects, technologies, and (human and nonhuman) bodies come together to form different capacities and experiences of relationality’, and offers ‘opportunities to explore how such actors and energies emerge, relate, and are distributed differently across space’ (Edensor, 2012: 1105). Particularly useful is the acknowledgement that non-human ‘others’ might also possess agency, alongside the ‘natural agency’ of biological and technological processes within the home – the ‘many different jostling actors in the home space’ (Hitchings, 2004: 169).25 The uncanny event, something imponderable and unexpected, already excessive for defying laws of material causation and spatial scale, the non-representationable ghost, and the haunted home – a lively space where multiple agents co-exist and interfere – these might collectively become a focal point in which to reframe both subjectivity and materiality, reconfiguring encounters as ‘intertwinings of matter and sense’ (Anderson and Wylie, 2009: 332). But there are limits to such a vision. Firstly, despite the definition of materiality as ‘excessive’, this is a thoroughly materialist cosmology. Rather than critiquing materialism, proponents are at pains to reinforce it, pointing to geographer Marcus Doel’s assertion that: ‘Nothing will be set aside from the play of force, nothing will be spirited away onto a higher plane or exorcised into a nether-world’ (Doel, 2004: 151). There is no place for a definition of immateriality as something that cannot be explained by the world’s physical processes (I’m not arguing that 25 The idea that humans have ‘agency’ to act, as in to make conscious, moral decisions, has come under scrutiny at the same time as the idea that non-human ‘others’ might also possess a form of ‘agency’. The latter is at the core of Actor Network Theory, which reconfigures the ‘notion of social agency by reconceptualising how power and organisation must be produced through relations between collectives of people and things’ (Routledge, 2008: 200), and seeks to ‘decouple the ‘human/agency’ binary (Whatmore, 1999: 23). See also Haraway, 1997, Massumi, 2002, Bennett, 2010, Seremetakis, 1994, Dewsbury et al., 2002, Thrift, 2004.

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uncanny events are always necessarily ‘beyond’ a material cause, or expect all participants to believe this). Thus the ‘excess’ has limits; it is bounded because it doesn’t allow potential for a different kind of boundary, a different form of co-existence. In contrast, it is supernatural experience which has historically posed a threat to materialism’s assertion that ‘everything is or can be explained in relation to matter’ (Philips, 2003: 18). As the philosopher Michael Philips states: ‘This would be straightforward enough if we had a clear and stable idea of matter. But do we? Unfortunately, we don’t … The laws of physics get stranger every day.’ It would be better, he argues, to think about ‘all those spooky, ephemeral and esoteric things that materialism denies’. This idea certainly changes the terms of the materiality debate, suggesting an excessiveness to im/materiality which none of our current concepts can explain. A second issue with the affective turn is that it ignores the fact that sensations are ‘mediated … immediately they seem to impress upon us’ (Ahmed, 2004: 6). ‘Not only do we read such feelings, but how the feelings feel in the first place may be tied to a past history of readings, in the sense that the process of recognition … is bound up with what we already know.’ As described, the moment of encounter, of becoming, is already informed by memories, and to deny this could reinforce a false split between affects and representations, as eloquently described: ‘The wager is that if we attend to affect and to how it courses through the body, we might edge closer to illuminating the elusiveness and vitality of the embodied present. Affect is thus seductive to cultural theorists insofar as it is not entirely bound by any social or psychic structuration. It promises an engagement with the living present and a break with the tyranny of representational memory – that is, with an apprehension of the present through particular understandings of representation and signification, as a second-order reality’ (Callard and Papoulias, 2010: 247–8). The result is the construction of a ‘rather virginal subject who is forever entering new and unknown terrain for which all previous experience has left him/her unprepared’ (Edensor, 2012: 1114). Instead, we should view affective experience of space as being ‘conditioned by previous experience, by habit, by familiar emotions and sensations that produce feelings of belongingness or otherwise’. The aftermath of uncanny events is likewise likely to be interpreted in relation to the memory of previous experiences, past beliefs and social processes, but that doesn’t preclude a belief that the experience also has a ‘reality’ of its own. Thirdly, and related, it is hard to know what to do with a vision which decentres the subject so radically. I find it hard to think about definitions of ‘home’ which contain no inhabitants, or at least none we can engage with at the ‘everyday’ level of language (even haunted homes are ‘everyday’ places after all). The textual, discursive, material, figurative, and social might be part of the same relational plane, but it is only through our engagement with the social that we can speak of the others. Indeed, if the uncanny is an effect, we need to deal with the experience of such events as they are witnessed by householders. So I agree with a growing body of work which critiques the turn to affect as ‘masculinist, technocratic and distancing’, which ‘discourages an engagement with everyday

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emotional subjectivities’ (Thien, 2005: 452), setting up ‘rigid conceptual divisions between affect and emotion’ (Edensor, 2012: 1103), and ‘miss[ing] the social and cultural contexts of affective formations’ (1105).26 Instead I turn to alternative ways of situating subjectivity which allow the self a level of openness: reframing humanism without abandoning it altogether. This would be to allow for the ways in which ‘human action, consciousness and individuality are produced and shaped by non-conscious, non-individual and non-human processes’ (Bondi, 2005: 3–4), a focus on the ‘intersubjective, performative, and contingent aspects of the formation of a subject’ (Korf, 2008: 715), on identity as a form of transition ‘always producing itself through the combined processes of being and becoming’ (Fortier, 2000: 2), and on bodies which are ‘not singular, bounded, closed and fixed’ (Blackman et al., 2008: 12–13).27 By opening up ‘normative spaces’ for the ‘more-than-human’, we can ‘avoid a metaphysical slide into ‘only-humanness’ (Korf, 2008: 729) without displacing the subject. But the subject, as a ‘self’, also needs to be defined in a way which limits any simplistic sense of its constant mutability and openness to influence. This is to accept both that the self is a ‘malleable and somewhat porous entity, able to be affected by others’ but also that it possesses ‘a degree of centring and consistency within the relations that shape it’ (Conradson, 2005: 104–5). It is to maintain the possibility of ‘psychological frameworks and vernaculars’ that may ‘enable even a temporary hold on the unique density and complexity of subjectivity which is always more than a derivative formation’ (Blackman et al., 2008: 6–7).28 Geographer Ann Varley echoes these views, arguing that an individual’s ‘capacity to act requires some degree of coherence in the conception of self’ (Varley, 2008: 55). Varley calls for a more ‘generative’ approach than that afforded by the ‘celebration of indeterminacy and instability in poststructural accounts of the self’ – an approach which allows for a definition of the self which ‘does not become mired in the opposition between identity and nonidentity but mediates between them’. This returns us to a more complex and nuanced sense of push-pull between selves and (human/non-human) others, between containment and openness, producing an affective and emotional 26 See also: Rose et al., 2010; Pile, 2010, Tolia-Kelly, 2006; Bondi and Davidson, 2011; Jones, 2005. 27 Theories of subjectivity have been central to academic research such the 1960s, from a belief that the subject is created through signs (Althusser and Lacan), that the subject could resist the dominant culture (Gramsci, Hall), to Foucault’s belief that subjectivity is ‘produced through the play of power/knowledge’ (Blackman et al., 2008:2). 28 Psychosocial theorists have also grappled with this ‘dilemma’, which they describe as finding ways to stay ‘committed to an agenda that gives value to personal experience, interconnectedness, intersubjectivity embodiment, agency and most importantly the impulse to articulate a kind of ethical subject; while at the same time acknowledging and drawing on the complete disruption of this agenda through the force of the revelation that there is no such human subject, that what we take to be the realm of the personal, including the famous “inner world” of psychoanalysis, is either wavering, fragmentary and lost, or a thoroughly fictional entity’ (Frosh and Baraitser, 2008: 349).

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interchange between the body of the home and its agencies and the bodies of inhabitants so that, perhaps, something gets shifted or fixed in the process, even though this can never be ‘known’ in any rational sense.29 Experiencing Differently, Knowing Otherwise? If homes and the people inhabiting them are both porous and open and also distinctive and coherent – and that these things are not completely knowable through social and cultural processes alone – this implies one thing and another which is akin, perhaps, to the ‘Dreamtime’ of the Australian aborigines which is ‘always and never’, of liminal places as ‘everywhere and nowhere’ and of the Arabic mythic time of ‘it was and was not so’ (the equivalent to ‘once upon a time’) (Trubshaw, 1995a). The non-reductionist ‘middle ground’ approach explored in this book might have to forego any arrival at settled theories, even though the gap such an approach might fill is so compelling, in terms of the experiences it opens up. It requires the imposition of its own limits, foregoing the right to make too many claims. If spectrality and haunting remain uncertain, they must be ‘incarnations which hover between secure accounting mechanisms’, meaning that the interpretative criteria to understand spectral geographies must also be ‘hesitant, as ghosts can never be fully understood, represented or brought into representation’ (Holloway and Kneale, 2008: 308). It leads to the kind of stopping short described by the writer Paul Devereux, troubled by an experience of seeing a ghostly van (with no driver) early one morning on the M6. The sighting exemplified, for him, ‘reports that purported to be actual experiences: it was still folklore, but it was our folklore and it was being presented as real encounters by people from the beginning of the early modern era to the present time. My M6 experience had taught me that we still inhabited a haunted land’ (Devereux, 2001: 141). Seeking an explanation, he ruminated on the conflicting conclusions of an earlier study – on the urban myth of the phantom hitchhiker. This, he said, is ‘undoubtedly [contemporary] folklore’, yet it is ‘sprinkled with some incidents that adhere to the theme of the legend yet which appear to be authentic happenings’. He concluded: ‘This half-folklore, half-incident ambiguity I was to gradually learn was a characteristic of a good many types of haunting’ (149). There is something unsatisfactory in this half one thing and half its opposite – half personal experience, half manifestation of collective culture – a binary failing to find resolution, but the more honest for not attempting to do so.30 29 For some, the body is a holder of ‘precious knowledge’ (Marks, 2004) and ‘extra-linguistic’ meanings emerge through ‘expression, performance, material culture and conditions of embodiment’ (Seremetakis, 1994: 6; Bull et al. 2006; Hodgkin and Radstone, 2003b). 30 Early twentieth-century European folklorists differentiated between Märchen (fiction) and Sagen (legends purportedly based on fact) (Finucane, 1996: 13. See also Dégh, 2001; Bennett and Smith, 1996).

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In their psychoanalytical account of ghosts, literary theorists Peter Buse and Andrew Stott state that they are not so interested in providing histories of an ‘outside of reason’, rather ‘to inspect the inside of reason and see how it too is haunted by what it excludes’ (Matless, 2008: 337). But others see uncanny events as extending rationality, standing as ‘limit-cases’ or ‘challenges’ to materialist explanation, or ‘points of pressure’ which compel a ‘rethinking or extension of knowledge formations’ (Luckhurst, 2004).31 However, those who experience the supernatural, we are told, tend to choose between two interpretations: the ‘materialist’ and the ‘supernaturlist’, with the social context dictating which is adopted: ‘Their choice may vary between one occasion and another, or sometimes between one sentence and another’ (Bennett and Bennett, 2000: 154–5). But what counts as ‘knowledge’ for people? Do they really slip between opposing interpretations from one sentence to the next? Might people’s ideas oscillate, not just in response to audience but because of difficulty in arriving at a firm position? Is rationalism challenged in the face of uncanny experience or upheld despite of it? Can they accommodate competing explanations, or do the imperatives of feeling ‘at home’ require a more robust stance? The middle ground approach requires us to listen to people’s experiences – not a radical proposition; most social research methods require just that. However, in the loaded cultural context of the non-rational, a project on people’s experiences of ‘haunted homes’ requires being open to the possibility of taking supernatural experience seriously – as experience – at the very least in order to swerve fractionally away from the repetitive and unresolved question of whether ghosts actually exist.32 This is an issue which writers employing figurative ghosts can sidestep, given that ‘for a consideration of their cultural function, it is largely immaterial whether ghosts do or do not exist’ (Blanco and Peeren, 2010: x). But it matters to those who experience ghosts, and that is what is important. This leads to a further question: how do we define ‘experience’? Home, as suggested, is already an imaginary space; for some, imagination is situated: ‘our imaginary horizons are affected by 31 Some scientists question ‘reason’. Chris Frith argues that ‘conscious reasoning is an attempt to justify a decision after it’s made’ (Frith, 2008: 45), and Roger Penrose describes how quantum mechanics is used ‘to pick holes in reason’ (Penrose, 2008: 49). 32 This is also to make the point that certain types of experience are subject to more scrutiny than others. Many people assume that I must believe in ghosts because of the approach I am taking; and this comment after a talk was not uncommon (although perhaps not always so blunt): ‘I can’t believe you got funding to talk to mad people’. In an interview on his work on consciousness (which focuses on psychic phenomena), scientist and psychologist Dean Radin reflects on responses to his line of work: ‘The taboo persists because science like any other human enterprise is built on uncertain beliefs. I hear again and again from many colleagues that they are fascinated by this stuff and they knew they can’t talk about it because if they do their colleagues will roll their eyes and they won’t get promoted, or graduate, or something. So you learn very quickly in the academic world that it’s simply dangerous to talk about these things. So people don’t’ (Radin, from video interview at http://haunted-scotland.co.uk/dean-radin/).

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the positioning of our gaze’ (Stoetzler and Yuval-Davies, in Gunew, 2004: 3). It is also our ‘imagination that gives our experiences their particular meanings, their categories of reference, [concepts which] are embedded in our situated imaginations’ (ibid). Sociologist Nicolas Rose claims that ‘ways in which humans ‘give meaning to experience’ have their own history. Devices of ‘meaning production’ – grids of visualisation, vocabularies, norms, and systems of judgement – produce experience; they are not themselves produced by experience’ (Rose, 1999: 25). This view appears to devalue people’s ‘experience’ as something only already constructed and knowable through language and culture. Certainly, as described, we can allow that they are mediated; nothing is experienced in a vacuum. But is there room to assume an attitude which does not invalidate personal experience as containing its own truths?33 Art theorist Annette Kuhn expresses this tension as part of a complaint that cultural theory is ‘ill equipped’ to deal with experience, calling for this issue to be cautiously ‘taken on board … rather than simply evaded’, because it is a ‘category which comes into play when encountering emotion and memory’ (Kuhn, 2002, 33–4). Certainly, she adds, experience is frequently played as the ‘trump card of authenticity, the last word of personal truth, forestalling all further discussion, let alone analysis’. However, experience is also ‘undeniably a key category of everyday knowledge, structuring people’s lives in important ways. So, just as I know perfectly well that the whole idea is a fiction and a lure, part of me also “knows” that my experience – my memories, my feelings – are important because these things make me what I am, make me different from everyone else’. To explore this issue, it is necessary to focus on the way people deal with the unknown by ‘making sense’ of their experience in different ways. We know that personal narrative has been framed as a way of using language to ‘imbue life events with a temporal and logical order, to demystify them and establish coherence’ (Ochs and Capps, 2001: 2). Re-telling a story is a way of claiming an experience as one’s own, even a way of containing it. The fact that ghost stories are repeatedly retold might be explained by the fact that they defy completion and resolution, are ‘tacit, multiple, conflicting, or unfinished’ (Brogan, 1998: 18); for ‘even when they draw to a close’, ghost stories ‘never do completely lay themselves to rest. They always spill over their own boundaries’ (Gelder, 1994: ix). Uncanny events don’t abolish meaning for this reason: discourse always tries to turn the ‘inconceivable into meaningful narrative form’ (Luckhurst, 2004). This may explain the desire to ‘tidy up’ ghost narratives, as Bennett argued. But through narrative, the coherence of the witness is also re-established, or attempted to be, since, as Kuhn says, experience makes us what we are. Writing through people’s narratives creates the danger of reinforcing the stability of the subject, as psychologist Stephen Frosh warns: ‘A person tells a story, but on the whole it is not very well told: it has too many twists and turns, too many characters that contradict each other, too many 33 The idea of ‘experience’ has been of key importance for the ‘giving voice to marginalised subjects’, with, for example, the ‘appeal to the authority of women’s experience’ one of the ‘hallmarks of feminist work’ (Bondi, 2005: 8).

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gaps … The research task is to … tell a better story’ (Frosh, 2007: 636). In the course of this, the ‘agency of the participating subject is [falsely] restored’. Frosh surely presents a caricature of the process of research. For the focus should not be on the failure of any form of representation, but to attend to the gaps themselves, the contradictions, the asides that don’t quite fit the dominant narrative. This points to how the process of co-habitation, as indeed the attempt to secure subjectivity, is, perhaps, an ongoing struggle for coherence, not easily – perhaps never fully – conferred. It is to attend to what the writer Iris Murdoch called the everyday ‘edge where language continually struggles with an encountered world’ (Murdoch, 1993: 195). Scholarship, as well as ‘everyday’ life, ‘involves searching for coherence (‘making sense of things’) and dealing suitably with the innumerable contingent elements which impede, divert, or inspire the search. Because of the endlessly contingent nature of our existence this quest can never reach a ‘totalised’ conclusion … Ordinary-life truth-seeking is a swift instinctive testing of innumerable kinds of coherence against innumerable kinds of extra-linguistic data … We are constantly conceptualising what confronts us, ‘making’ it into meaning, into language. But what we encounter remains free, ambiguous, endlessly contingent and there’. My interest is to gain insights about how people describe their own struggles to maintain a self-at-home. The point, then, is to attend to the quest for coherence, the attempt to find meaning, and see how this process works within particular contexts. That’s not an idea for me to impose, but for people to show me, not an abstract position but something with a lot at stake for people in their domestic lives. * * * Those who did show me how they interpreted their experiences formed a group of thirteen households in England and Wales, living in homes ranging from inner-city apartments, suburban semis, to rural cottages. The main criterion for participation in this investigation, which utilised qualitative research methods, was for participants to have previously experienced, or continue to experience, uncanny events in their home. Households were enlisted through public notices and word of mouth.34 Households were diverse. Five were couples without children, or whose children no longer lived at home; four households where children lived at home; in a further two, visiting children took part in the interviews. There were five single, divorced or widowed females, and one single male, and a household of three friends, two of whom rented rooms off the third. Nine homes were owned; two participants were employed to live in their homes (one as a live-in caretaker); two rented their homes, one from a private landlord and the other from a local council; and one household was a mixture of owner and tenants. Eight case studies were situated in towns or cities (four of these in London), and five in rural hamlets or villages. Two homes were situated in inner city areas, six in suburbs. Two homes were in coastal locations, and 34

Full details of households are listed in the Appendix, p. 207.

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five were situated in the North West of England and North Wales. Where possible, each member of the household was interviewed as a group, individually, and was asked to give a ‘guided tour’ of the home, which was videotaped. The latter method engaged participants in the more embodied and immediate responses to home, helped to clarify where uncanny events took place, offering a chance to develop or check stories and responses, and was a useful adjunct for later analysis. It is impossible to know whether or not the research design was skewed against the most challenging experiences. A chance conversation at a party suggested that some people avoid describing their homes as ‘haunted’. A woman had witnessed the ghost of a young man in her Brighton home only a few nights before, hinting at previous but less specific experiences. It unnerved her; she didn’t consider it a benign presence and already felt vulnerable, alone in the house for the first time after a relationship breakup. She did not wish to be interviewed, explaining that the house itself was benign; the ghost had just been ‘passing through’. To be interviewed would be to admit living in a ‘haunted home’, which suggested to her a continuous malevolent presence. I was aware that my role as a researcher in people’s homes was perhaps similar to many of the ghosts – we were strangers potentially ‘intruding’ into private spaces. Sociologists Fiona Polard and Liz Stanley discuss a debate about such a research position, drawing on Simmel’s definition of a stranger as ‘someone existentially uncommitted, who inhabits “the public” domain, who is on the outside of close relationships, of insider’s knowledge, of “the private”’ (Polard and Stanley, 1988: 53). But they argue that the stranger is ‘a role to be explored, used and maintained, not merely traversed’ (56); strangers can, after all, become intimates – at least in a limited sense: ‘As researchers, we know people not as actual friends but as people who feel they are licensed by our ‘stranger’ status to make us privy to very confidential information’ (80). One can also feel a ‘stranger’ as an insider too, as phenomenologist Ilja Maso suggests: ‘Everybody can … have some of the experiences of the stranger within his or her own culture. After all, when somebody is confronted with some unknown fact, she or he has to change their frame of interpretation, at least in such a way that the meaning of the unknown fact acquires a proper place within this frame’ (Maso, 2001: 137). People who believe they live with ghosts, then, might also feel like strangers in their own world. Some commentators suggest different levels of public and private engagement, coining terms such as ‘quasi-public’ and ‘quasiprivate’, a way perhaps of delineating relationships between me as researcher, the participants, and the ghosts – where the line between strangers and strangeness, intimacy and privacy, are drawn and redrawn in different ways.35 35 Geographer Jane Jacobs uses ‘quasi-public’ in a description of city street life, to denote a ‘form of social dynamic that remains fleeting, is (semi) anonymous but often repeated by the same participants’ (in Maso, 2001: 71). ‘Quasi-private’ is used by sociologist Herbert Gans to describe a ‘social dynamic in which the same participants meet often, know who each other are, but their interaction remains only along one kind of plane – for example, classmates in an evening class’.

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* * * Co-habiting with Ghosts is divided into three parts, each with two chapters. Part I examines the materialities and temporalities of the haunted home, beginning with a survey of uncanny events described by participants and considering these in relation to the home’s spaces. The first chapter explores the ways inhabitants describe their homes as both porous and fixed, in particular in terms of the home’s atmosphere and agency, and then moves on to question the ways uncanny events impact on the ‘familiar’, embodied routines of domesticity. The second chapter in this first part examines the complexity of ideas about temporality in the haunted home, including people’s relationship to their home’s past and to the ghosts as previous inhabitants who are still ‘present’ – how, indeed, the home’s materialities, domestic routines, and structural changes inform the perception of these different temporalities. Part II examines social relationships within the haunted home and the strategies employed by inhabitants to maintain a sense of self-at-home, the different ways in which participants negotiate space for themselves in the face of the ghostly ‘other’. The first chapter explores the ways in which participants describe and define their ghosts, most notably in terms of gender, whilst the following chapter deals with the ‘strategies’ employed – of both distance and communication – to co-habit with ghosts. Part III explores the relationship between knowledge, belief and evidence in the way uncanny events are interpreted. It begins with an examination of the relationship between knowledge, belief and uncertainty, including an exploration of different forms of knowing and not knowing and later, in the last chapter, addresses different systems of belief informing participants’ attitudes and interpretations, as well as the role of experiential ‘evidence’ in reinforcing or challenging these beliefs. The detailed exploration of these key comparative themes afforded by the qualitative focus of this book offers a number of insights into the experience of living in haunted homes. In turn, these insights contribute to our wider understandings of home and place, the material and immaterial, and the complex situating of selves and others.

PART I Spaces and Times of the Haunted Home

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Chapter 2

The Material Uncanny If ‘home’ is defined as both material and immaterial, what impact do uncanny events have on the domestic interior and on its inhabitants? All participants speak of the uncanny materiality of unfathomable, ‘immaterial’ experiences. These interact with the physical spaces of the home, and the bodies of inhabitants, in compelling – sometimes intimate – ways; often, as will be seen, mirroring domestic noises, smells and processes. Across the households interviewed for this book, these events are extremely varied and impacts range across the material, auditory, haptic, visual, and sensory; they are experienced close by and from a distance, during daylight hours and at night. Uncanny events are encountered in a variety of households, building types and locations. Rachel and Daniel live in an old detached house in rural Wales where words appear in archaic Welsh on the walls of their living room and kitchen and a monk has been seen flitting around the garden. In an upper maisonette of a large Victorian terrace in inner city North London, three friends – Pam, Karen and Christine – discuss the previous lives of a ‘family’ of ghosts on a landing midway up the open, galleried staircase which winds around the full-height hallway; one of these ghosts is frequently heard singing at night. In suburban Ipswich, Susan talks about the various appearances of two ghosts, an elderly couple – believed to be the recently deceased previous occupants of the 1930s semi-detached house she shares with her husband, Gary. In a rural Wiltshire hamlet, Rosa talks about the ghost of another previous owner, a diminutive woman who brushes pictures on the walls aslant and has been seen by friends and workmen. In a large detached house in the middle of a village on the Wirral, Merseyside, Finnish couple Mia and Luke disagree about the presence of their female ghost, a male presence, and smells emanating from the corner of the living room. In an expensive district of North West London, Tara, a Romanian cleaner, is paid to stay every night in a detached mansion, where she has become the focus of an intrusive male presence. Magnus, a music teacher living with his wife in a Victorian end-of-terrace house in Bristol, has experienced different uncanny events in the house over many years, including cries and crashes. Dora lives with her son Freddy in a 1980s council house in inner city Liverpool, experiencing a number of events over many years; Freddy also believes he is haunted by his dead grandmother. Victoria lives with her husband and two small daughters in a mock-Tudor style house built in the early 1990s in suburban Blackpool. The family have experienced many uncanny events, which they interpret as caused by Victoria’s dead parents. Ben lives alone in a caretaker’s flat carved out of a very old house, now a community arts centre situated in a North London park, where a number of ghosts have been witnessed. Hilma and

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Adam, an elderly couple living in an old weaver’s cottage in a rural hamlet near Oldham, describe previous uncanny events which are assumed to involve a male and female ghost. In a rented flat in North London, Alex believes she is haunted by her dead cat; and in a seaside village in Cornwall, Abby lives in a medieval tower which is believed to be haunted by multiple ghosts. In two case studies (North Wales and Blackpool), events occur almost daily, and the sheer volume and variety meant it was hard for householders to offer a thorough account of everything they had witnessed; an excess, surfeit of experience. In Wales, for example, Rachel prides herself in remembering the dates of events going back many years, but at times struggled to maintain an ordered chronology: Rachel: There are too many incidents. And they are quite a variety of types. We’re only scratching the surface here. There’s stuff all the time … There’s just far too much

For others, the uncanny is described as part of the background texture of domestic life, or as an atmosphere, surfacing from time to time into something more eventful. For a few, such as Magnus in Bristol, experiences are many years apart – sudden, jarring, staccato moments – in his case, eight events over the course of twenty-five years. These are unconnected to each other and to anything happening in the house; coming out of nothing, returning to nothing, they retain a pure self-referentiality describing nothing but themselves. Magnus also has noticed that these events have subtly increased in complexity and intensity over time, whilst, elsewhere, early uncanny activity is described as having slowly wound itself down. By far the majority of experiences are auditory, contributing to and troubling the existing soundscapes of the domestic interior. A few ghosts are distinct in terms of being clearly seen, whilst many others are fleeting and unbounded, appear as shadows or outlines, or something in the ‘corner of the eye’. The relationship between seeing and sensing is interesting because at times it signals a feeling of presence; yet, at others, it leads to a very detailed description, as if the ghost is seen in the ordinary sense – a kind of ‘feeling sight’, such as described by two of the friends living in the maisonette in North London: Christine: It’s almost like, it’s not like seeing you, sitting opposite me. It’s like seeing but sensing at the same time. It’s very hard to describe … C: You’ve said you’ve actually seen them there Pam: I don’t know about seeing. It’s the shape of them. And then, I don’t know where the rest of the picture comes from

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There are also descriptions of intimate experiences of the uncanny, where something acts directly upon inhabitants’ bodies, a marking or a push or felt weight – a real physical force exerted by something immaterial. In three cases, participants describe ghosts being in bed with them. In the mansion in North London there is an intruding male presence: the witness, Romanian employee, Tara, hears snoring and wakes to find ‘a hand mark when I took my pyjama off’. Ben, the live-in caretaker, recounts his most dramatic experience in the house, where he felt ‘rescued’ from an angry ‘force’ as he lay in bed. Calling out for help, he immediately felt the weight of a body roll on top of him to protect him. The haptic viscerality of his description mixes physical sensation with a feeling of acceptance: Ben: I felt the weight – of a body – on top of me. Very comforting warmth. It lasted, five minutes approximately … this comfort, which remained, this weight. And I didn’t move. I felt happy, I felt accepted. It wasn’t just a feeling of body. It was a comforting feeling. It was like a love. I took it as being accepted, I had been accepted … there was a care to it. There wasn’t a cold physical protecting … It was like someone – who liked you

In Liverpool, Dora’s son Freddy is haunted by his grandmother in an intimate way: she ‘slaps’ him when he forgets to turn off a television or close a window: Freddy: I’ll be asleep in bed and I’ll get a [slaps his cheek] little slap like that. And I’ll wake up and my telly’s on or something like that C: You were slapped? Freddy: Not like a slap, just like a little [he taps his cheek more gently] … Or like she’d move an arm or something for me … And like, I’d jump up and my telly’s on Dora: It’s like a warning, to tell you to turn your telly off before you go to sleep Freddy: Yeah. There’s always a reason. It’s always like the telly’s on, or the radio’s on, or I’ve left a window open

The slapping and tapping is not an intrusion here, it is a reinforcement of an affectionate relationship – the grandmother is looking out for her favourite grandchild. For Alex in North London, the previous physical relationship with her cat continues after death; and although the sensations have changed – in place of ‘fur’ there is a ‘heaviness’ – she then suggests the feeling is ‘like fur’: not-quitecat, nearly-cat:

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Co-habiting with Ghosts Alex: It very much was a physical relationship. She slept on my feet at night. Sit down and she’d leap on my lap … [Now dead] I can feel her on my feet. I don’t feel fur, it’s like a kind of heaviness on the feet. It’s really rather nice. You can hear her scuffling around, lap water. If in the bathroom – Billy [the cat] was not allowed there – you feel something brush past you at the back of your legs. I’ve felt that a lot. Yes, in a way that feels like fur, tickly

But with a few experiences, most uncanny events leave few material residues, little trace; all sound and fury, signifying nothing. Domestic and ‘Anti-Domestic’ I described in the introduction how home is often described as already uncanny because of its porosity, its failure to keep the outside out (Kaika, 2004, Bermann, 1998). Few uncanny events themselves reinforce this directly, although some ghosts do appear to be ‘at home’ beyond the walls of the interior. In Wales, a monk has been seen on a number of occasions both inside the house and in the garden. Crosses and monk-shapes have been found carved into tree barks and ‘painted’ onto the outside of a chimney on the roof, whilst words have been cut into grass and snow. In Wiltshire, the petite female ghost has been seen on two occasions, and although both times she is inside the house, she is engaging with the outside – looking through a back window as if surveying the garden. In Bristol, footsteps have been heard on a gravelled path in the back garden; and in the weaver’s cottage near Oldham, boots have been heard, as if someone is wiping their feet on the front door mat, coming in from the outside. In North London, the ghost cat visits people: Alex: I had two to three weeks when she was at Auntie S’s, causing havoc. She saw her on her bed, she was chasing her own cat

What constitutes ‘home’ in these examples extends beyond the domestic interior, but never too far: events focused on doors, windows and pathways, suggesting comings and goings in and out of the interior, or looking out from the inside. Some ghosts might roam but seem limited to the perimeter of the home’s grounds, the land ‘belonging’ to the home space remaining the boundary marker. Even the one exceptional case, that of the cat – which wanders further than the others, entering homes quite a distance away – is confined (as far as Alex is aware) to homes of people she is related to. Alex’s theory is that her ghost cat follows ‘energy trails’ laid down beforehand, can only go where she has gone before. Thus the connection is to her, not to place or space. There are also a few examples where uncanny events suggest the invasion of an unruly form of external ‘nature’ into the interior. These events are akin to the poltergeist-like phenomena of many ghost stories (Marcus, 1999), a particularly

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marked example of this being the Welsh house, where the outside invades the inside by creating a messy, viscous form of material uncanny: Rachel: You get snail trails. Goodness knows where they come from. And it’s horrible. But you’ll get a word in the trail … [It] formed a sort of an acidy stain, it’s made a cross [on a beam above the fireplace]. Very annoying that, because it’s [ruined] a beautiful piece of wood. It’s horrible

Water appears in puddles where it shouldn’t – under a chair, on a bed, coming through a wall: unbounded liquid, defying the normal routes and channels and controls which keep it in its place. The central event is the constant appearance of many words on the walls of the living room and kitchen: Rachel: We found a brown stain on the wall of the lounge, and it made a Welsh word C: What was the stain made of? Daniel: Well we don’t know – whether it’s made of – I don’t know, goat’s urine and oak gorse or something [laughter]

The substance is both material and immaterial: it has a real physicality, and yet they don’t know what it is made of. The words are also given an unruly kind of agency, reinforcing the idea of nature out of place: Rachel: By the end of January – the whole wall had erupted in words Daniel: I was sitting in there and words popped out on the wall

Words erupted and popped like spots or boils, the walls like skin, undergoing a biological, reactive process, suggesting a human-like surface. They turn up quickly, one by one, but fade slowly; continually emerging and re-emerging. But there is a difference of opinion about the level of ‘disruption’ they cause. For husband, Daniel, they should be left alone: home is a place of interest, curiosities. For Rachel, the words are like graffiti, they are blemishes, stubbornly refusing to be cleaned, only leaving in their own time: C: You’ve used the word ‘graffiti’. Is this how you see it? Rachel: The lounge is a mess Daniel: Yes, I know, but it’s been a source of interest

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Co-habiting with Ghosts Rachel: [Fed-up voice] He won’t let me paint again at the moment. But I paint every three or four months, and then the blessed spooks say, ‘Weehee, we’ve got a blank canvas, let’s start again’. And they do, within minutes, hours C: Why won’t you allow her to paint again? Daniel: Well, at the moment they’re rather special. You’ve got some big pictures of monks all over the walls. They’re just interesting Daniel: The brown stain does fade over time Rachel: But you can’t wash it off. Because I’ve tried

Elsewhere, it is a one-off event which causes chaos: a night at Victoria’s house in Blackpool included pictures flying off walls, washing tipped from a basket, cigarettes and CDs thrown onto the floor. Victoria, and her friend Jane who was visiting, decided to ring a local psychic medium they knew. She told them not to touch anything until she arrived. However Jane decided at one point to intervene: Victoria: By this time the ketchup on the table had moved to the edge of the table and was dripping onto the carpet C: So the ketchup was on its side? Victoria: Yep. Yep. And the lid open. They’d opened the lid and it was dripping onto the carpet Jane: I picked it up. I stood it up to stop it dripping. But [the medium] had actually said to leave everything as it was

Victoria’s friend becomes a defender of order, stepping in at the point when an event was starting to cause too much damage. Dripping ketchup, the ‘eruption’ of words and snail trails: disorder which is framed as ‘anti-domesticity’, perhaps explaining the difference of opinion between Rachel and Daniel – it is Rachel, it seems, who has to clean up the mess, or at least is concerned by it. Thus these events disrupt the orderliness of domesticity reflected in the material order of home, and the processes and routines working to maintain it. Part of this process is indeed to keep out anything too unruly, unbounded, or out of place. A tidy home is certainly a place where uncanny events gain more attention, making what is out of place more obvious, highlighting the unruly within the orderly, bringing uncanny events into stark relief and reinforcing a mischievous agency as events seem to parody as well as defy attempts at order, moving objects from their ‘proper’ places. For Dora in Liverpool, successful domesticity

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means just this: maintaining all household objects in their place. Knowing where everything is has a ‘calming effect’ on her: Dora: If somebody moved that from there to there – I don’t like it. They’ve got to be back in that exact position. I just can’t – you know! You probably think I’m weird, but – it’s just – the way I like things. It’s a calming effect on me

So when important objects go missing, this causes her much frustration: Freddy: Things just go missing, don’t they? … You go to look for something and you know where it is, and it’s just not there Dora: I needed my passport. We were going away. I am meticulous with everything. Everything in this house is in a place where I know where it is. The passport was gone from where it was. Combed everywhere. Then the next day we had another go in case we’d missed it. This went on. In the end I … went and bought the new passport. And then a couple of weeks later, Freddy opens the drawer where things are, and there’s the passport, just lying on top of the drawer C: Where you’d already looked? Dora: Yeah. We’d had the drawer out. Everything out. Just been placed on the top of the drawer like that, the passport. ‘Mum, here’s your passport’

In a less orderly home, perhaps the passport’s disappearance and reappearance would not have been noticed; but the implication is that the passport only went missing when she needed it – and, perhaps, because she knew where to find out. If some uncanny events challenge an orderly domestic environment, elsewhere ‘successful’ domesticity – by Dora’s definition, keeping order – is seen as a foil to the uncanny, a weapon to ward off the unruly, unnatural or unexpected. Rosa in Wiltshire, at least, assumes that a ‘haunted home’ might be an unruly place. She complains that she battles with too many personal belongings – in particular, too many books – in her tiny cottage, leading to disorder. She contrasts her cottage with the adjacent, attached cottage which her mother owns and stays in at weekends. Rosa talks of her mother as a proper home-keeper, restoring order in her cottage, in contrast to her own. She showed me photographs of her cottage when it had just been renovated: Rosa: And then this is all lovely when it’s all completely pristine and tip top … This is when it’s at its minimalist state, you know. It’ll never be like – look at the clutter, it’s now thick with clutter

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We met in the lounge of London University’s Institute of Historical Research. This is a large, quite stately old room with a number of old portraits of dignitaries on the walls: Rosa: The house is so ordered and domestic and nice when mummy’s there. It just looks like a rational place. This place, with its old portraits, I could imagine was haunted. But my house, with its paperbacks, the new fireplace, doesn’t seem like a haunted place

Something about the old paintings creates an uncanny affect, compared with the new objects in her cottage, which are rather ordinary and familiar, perhaps not worthy of the attention of a ghost. A room with old paintings might be haunted, not one with paperback books. But there is also a belief that her mother makes the house too ‘ordered and domestic and nice’ to allow anything irrational to take hold; it is not just the kinds of objects in a home which make it more or less likely to be haunted, but how these objects are organised. And because her mother’s cottage is orderly, whereas hers ordinarily isn’t, her theory is that her mother restores order, keeping the haunting at bay: the haunting only happens in her cottage, not her mother’s. Tara, the employee at the North London mansion, offers another example of how domestic order – a tidy home – can be a focus of attempts to keep the uncanny in check. She talks about the fastidiousness of her landlady, the owner of the house: C: She has a social life? Tara: A lot. A lot. And the fridge, it’s full with food – she has very clean house. Like museum. Very tidy. Maniac clean. The cooker is clean like it’s new. Everything is nice and tidy

The house is like a ‘museum’, the cooker like ‘new’. There is an impersonal aspect to this description, as if the house is a public display for guests, rather than a home which is lived in. But the emotion underlying this woman’s relationship with her home is fear, so much fear that she employs Tara to sleep over night so she is never alone. She keeps the ghost at bay, and contains her own fear, but in doing so, in Tara’s view, loses a sense of the house as a home. Maintaining order for this owner suggests an anxious need to retain a sense of ownership through control; and yet it seems to lead to further disconnection, as the sense of the uncanny mirrors a feeling of being ‘unlived’ in. These examples suggest that although it might be difficult to say what the uncanny is, people assume what it is not: it defies the domestic. And as something anti-domestic (and certainly unhomely), it can at times disrupt or highlight a home’s orderliness, whereas at other times, order itself is seen to keep the uncanny at bay. Either way, the fight is between order and disorder; the uncanny is deeply imbricated in domestic material practices. And, in turn, these practices seem, in some of the above examples, to be gendered. This is in line with Christine Wilson’s

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insights focused on the portrayal of women in American ghost stories, women who confront the ghosts with ‘contact paper and interior decorating’; such unruly places ‘require never-ending caretaking’ (Wilson, 2010: 204). The assumption is that domestic practices will never be enough to ward off the ghosts, that, in such a scenario, ordinary domestic practices such as interior decorating become a pathetic attempt – destined always to fail – to main domestic order and homeliness against something which could never be so ordered/ordinary. This is not quite the view of some of my participants, for whom domestic practices are potentially powerful weapons. The suggestion is that the correct placement and cleanliness of objects does something rather important in people’s lives to (at least potentially) ward off the irrational. And if such practices are indeed gendered, this is reinforced by the fact that, rather than challenging domesticity, there are examples of some ghosts themselves who desire to maintain order, and these ghosts are always believed to be women. Participants assume that they are house-proud, still attached to their homes and the domestic rituals which maintain them, and that sometimes they even try to influence inhabitants to ‘improve’ their own domestic habits. If household routines, as described, concern maintaining order, domesticity is about holding the house in check; if participants don’t do this, some of the ghosts clearly will. For example, as described, Freddy’s grandmother in the Liverpool council house keeps an eye out by slapping him when he forgets to close a window or turn off the television. Her concern is very mundane; it is about keeping everything in its place, and Freddy interprets this as an expression of love. In a further example, another female ghost can’t stop a habit of a lifetime. Christine in the North London maisonette describes the ghost in her previous rented flat: Christine: And there was an elderly lady [the ghost of a previous inhabitant], she was very clean and tidy, we know that much. I used to feel very uncomfortable, even though I was there on my own with no one telling me to tidy the flat. I was very uncomfortable, almost guilty because the flat wasn’t tidy. I used to have to tidy it. A [living] friend of my nana’s – she was compulsively cleaning. And you don’t go around cleaning other people’s flats

These examples reinforce women’s traditional role, the gendered nature of domesticity, and continuing attachments to home. They reflect the fact that, as described in the introduction, not all fictional ghosts in the home are frightening like Sharon Marcus’ (1999) intrusive strangers, and, in fact, female ghosts rarely are (Carpenter and Kolmar, 1991: 14). The gendered nature of some events and participants’ responses to them is explored in more detail later in this book, but it is worth noting that these are ghosts rather than events – for even where there is an implication of a level of intelligence behind some experiences – for example, a passport going missing only when it is needed – many of the more unruly events described above are not ascribable to a particular agent; they are rather, something which invades, something uncontained, like the strange substance used to mark walls or left behind by snails, creatures which in their proper place – the garden,

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outside the home – might be more tolerated. The contrast between what is deemed to keep order or to defy it suggests that events might be differentiated in ways which expose particular social relationships and roles – a theme which will be further explored in Part II. The Familiar Uncanny Alex’s description of how her dead cat felt against her legs suggested the sensation was almost how she had experienced it when alive. This ‘not-quite’ experience is one way in which the uncanny is defined in the literature: as something which unnerves us for not quite making it to full human or familiar likeness, but is a close resemblance. In 1970, a Japanese roboticist, Masahiro Mori, building on this idea, wrote an essay entitled Uncanny Valley, about how he believed people reacted to robots which looked and acted almost human. He argued that a ‘person’s response to a humanlike robot would abruptly shift from empathy to revulsion as it approached, but failed to attain, a lifelike appearance. This descent into eeriness is known as the uncanny valley’ (MacDorman and Kageki, 2012). Mori’s valley includes likenesses we can tolerate more, and those we can tolerate less, from puppets and stuffed animals, dipping down to more unnerving corpses, prosthetic hands and zombies; finally, he distinguishes between humanoid and industrial robots. An earlier version of this sense of the uncanny was epitomised by the Victorian doll, explaining why dolls figure in ghost stories such as Vernon Lee’s The Doll (1899), and M. R. James’s The Haunted Doll’s House (1931). Dora in Liverpool appears to substantiate this idea. She describes a ‘gorgeous, very expensive’ Victorian doll which became the focus as a causative agent of a number of uncanny events at her home: Dora: It was one of my friends, she said: ‘It’s that doll – do you think it’s anything to do with that doll you’ve bought?’ Yeah. And everyone I spoke to … said to me, ‘Oh, bin the doll’. And then [another] friend said to me, ‘Oh, I’ll buy the doll for what you paid for it’. So she bought the doll, because she collects them. And then, she was ill in bed, and she said she was hallucinating and the dolls were dancing in front of her! She said, ‘I got up and I just binned the lot’. She said she got all the dolls together, put them in a plastic bag, and they’re going. I said: ‘I told you about the doll’

It may only be a doll, but it is an object with a human-like face and form – it apes the animate and thus becomes a focus of cultural unease, taking the blame for other uncanny events. Its assumed supernatural powers seemed to increase as its myth spread through Dora’s social group, eventually reaching a point of crisis. The doll could not be tolerated any longer, and had to be thrown away. But this was an exceptional case; most uncanny experiences described to me were sounds or sights, with objects involved only passively as part of events rather than imbued

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with animate powers. Dora recalled another event at her home: the cry of a baby. What made this uncanny was the fact that there was an actual baby in the house, which the cry imitated: Dora: We’d be sitting here like this, and you’d hear the baby’s cry. And then, we’d go up, but he’d [the real baby] be asleep … Then my daughter heard it, she heard the baby. She said: ‘Mum, it came through my stereo over night.’ And it happened quite often when she’d be in the bath. And the box room is [next door to the bathroom], and she’d come running down with her towel around her. She’d say: ‘That baby’s crying again in the box room’

This uncanny likeness is not of an object but of a sound standing in for an object; and the object being an actual baby in the house, this becomes particularly unnerving. Perhaps, as a sound, the cry is less contained and therefore less controllable; unlike a creepy doll, it is not something that can be thrown away. But many of the events described – in particular, those involving sounds and smells – create a response which one might expect to be associated with everyday experience more than with the uncanny. And many uncanny events are similar to what is deemed ‘normal’ within homes – the sounds and smells made by domestic routines of the home, its appliances and the social routines of inhabitants; and it is this replicating of reality which almost makes the uncanny more banal than unnerving. If the uncanny is often described as the strange within the familiar, in many of these accounts the strange becomes the familiar. Even the ghosts are accepted by some as a rather ‘ordinary’ aspect of the home: Pam [North London Maisonette]: I’d dodge around the word ‘ghost’ because I find it a bit, a bit silly C: Why’s that? Pam: Well, it sounds all mysterious – when I don’t think they’re very mysterious. I actually do feel a very ordinary presence of those ghosts. And it is extremely ordinary

In this way, as Esther Peeren (2010) has argued, there may be a closer association between the ‘everyday’ and the ‘ghost’ than is often assumed, the everyday defined here as routines and social relationships within the domestic interior. To explore this in more detail, in many events, it is their very ordinariness which allows emotional responses to them to become subtle. Here Mia on the Wirral explains: Mia: If something is flying in the house, then it’s a rather unpleasant place. And you have to be careful that the chair doesn’t hit you on the head. That would have been the end of the whole story. [But] it hasn’t made such a strong impression. Nothing to worry about

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Some events repeat mundane actions which service living bodies (for comfort, food, warmth), where no body with such needs exists. In the North London mansion, employee Tara recalls a kitchen which appeared to have been cooked in: Tara: You hear a ‘ping’ and when you go out the lights are on. And the kitchen, it’s hot like someone has cooked before you, and no one has cooked before … I hear the noise, ‘du’, the door’s moving, and I go out and nobody was there

People are often immersed in a domestic task or pastime at the moment of experience, mentally ‘submerged’ in their activity; the events emerge out of everyday routines. A typical example is described by Hilma in the weaver’s cottage: Hilma: She [her neighbour] was on all fours in the kitchen flag floor – scrubbing the floor. And realised there was somebody watching her from the doorway

In Ipswich, Susan recalls one event: Susan: And I don’t know what I was doing, but I was doing something in the bedroom and I just happened to look in the mirror [and saw a ghost]

Susan’s friend’s son also just happens to look up at a particular moment and sees a ghost; but as soon as he does a double take, the ghost disappears: Susan: He said he was kickboxing, and he happened to look, and this man was sitting there like this, with his finger on his chin, and he looked at [the boy] and smiled. And [the boy] looked away, looked back, and he had gone

Not being particularly dramatic or different to ordinary noisy processes of domesticity, uncanny events can even at times be overlooked; small, insignificant events need to be collected together before they add up to a robust suspicion of something not-normal. Tara describes how she had a ‘little strange feeling’ when she first encountered the house she is paid to sleep at every night. She suggests her feelings were roused by the darkness of the hall, but added: ‘Tara: [It was] just little things. I thought, “There must be something strange in this house.’” A similar description is given about events at the Welsh house. Rachel recalls first noticing that strange things might be happening there: Rachel: Then fairly silly little things started happening in the house, which you would normally just say: ‘Oh, isn’t that odd?’ But when you add them all together. You know, it was just daft, and normally you wouldn’t take any notice. But it was – these things started building up C: So, just small domestic –

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Rachel: Those were, to start with

There is a sense of buildup over time, either a real escalation or, often, a growing awareness – the development of a haunting narrative as much as the ricocheting momentum of events: awareness then leads to the naming, and through naming, the uncanny becomes acknowledged, takes up its space, is described into distinctiveness. Such uncanny events emerge through and become intertwined within the experience of the domestic interior. If home-making, in one definition, is a set of routines and practices which become sedimented over time (Young and Casey, 2005, Blunt and Dowling, 2006) then the uncanny events take their place within such a process. Uncanny ‘experience’ becomes both excessive of ordinary experience and also indivisible from it. In the old detached house on the Wirral, for example, Mia and her daughter Gaby discuss the smell of coffee, bread or pipe smoke in the same corner of the living room at the same time most evenings: C: Do you remember how you reacted when you first experienced these smells? Gaby: I think that, maybe when it was the first time, you didn’t much think about it Mia: I didn’t much think about it. It was only when it started to repeat itself Gaby: Yes. You thought, ‘Well’ – Mia: Something is going on Gaby: Yes. They are making coffee for the night [laughter]

These uncanny smells have, over time, become a part of everyday life: Mia: I sit here very often in the evenings. So I have the same experience very often … So it repeats. It comes again and again Gaby: I think it’s either tobacco or coffee for example. It’s not a mixture. But last night, you said it was baked [bread] Mia: Last night it was baked C: Does it go in cycles, what the smell is? Mia: I don’t know any particularities about this, because now I know it’s there, I don’t pay any attention. I think [she sniffs]: ‘Oh, it’s coffee today!’ Or, after a while [sniffs]: ‘Obviously, he has his pipe now.’ The point is we have learned

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to take it more or less everyday life, and natural. And so, it’s rather difficult to remember this

This sense of familiarity over time becomes a process of familiarisation; people get used to uncanny events, particularly those which don’t impinge upon their lives too directly, and thus they become almost normal. This sense of familiarisation is captured by Rachel and Daniel in Wales, where events have come thick and fast for years. Daniel recalls the first time he noticed a word had appeared on a wall, his language full of bafflement and excitement. He seems nostalgic for such a feeling of wonder: Daniel: ‘Let’s see, there’s a dirty mark on the wall over there’ [pause]. ‘Funny’ [pause]. ‘It’s a word! It must be Welsh! It ends in double d’. And that was quite incredible. And then, a few days later, I remember – in the evening. Going over that wall. Hand by hand by hand looking – to see if the plaster is corrupted, is there anything here which is of interest, and so on. And then sitting down and looking up a bit later, and, underneath the wall light was another word. I said [whispers] ‘My god, it’s another word’. Oh, it was quite an impact! ‘This is incredible!’

The excitement involved in this initial response to an event is in sharp contrast to the current attitude after many years: Rachel: It’s not everyday conversation to us. Ok, Daniel’s noticed something else on the wall. But that’s not – unless something happens. But we don’t even get – I mean, for instance, if Daniel had said: ‘Oh, there’s such and such on the wall’, and I was doing something on my computer which is much more important to me, I would say, ‘Oh, I’ll come down and have a look later’. When it first happened, obviously we’d be there. Oh. You know. ‘Something else!’ We’re so blasé about it now that I wouldn’t even bother to get out my chair, if I was watching television, to come and have a look at the latest phenomenon. I’ll see it in my own time … Weird is the norm here. That is the norm. That’s what we live with

Uncanny events also become a part of domestic life by replicating domestic routines. Footsteps, for example, are ubiquitous, occurring in every household. In Liverpool, Dora describes how she heard someone walking as she lay in bed: Dora: Something was walking up and down the stairs C: What kind of tread? Dora: Oh, heavy. Heavier than we’d walk up the stairs, really. I mean, it is a wooden staircase, and you do hear the creaks, but this was like [she makes a

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repetitive sound], and right up to the top. At the top of the stairs, I’ve got a loose floorboard, and once you step on this it goes ‘ruoop’ C: So you could hear that? Dora: Yeah. The thud on this loose floorboard

The aping of processes can be personal, about intimate, caring, activities. On the Wirral, for example, the ghost is heard and felt to replace a blanket on a bed: ‘like when mum’s coming and checking if you are in bed, and if the blanket is off, to put it on you’ (Gaby). Doors moving are another common experience, but normal and uncanny interpretations need to be separated: Christine [North London maisonette]: I’d often be sitting and the door opened. You could say that the latch isn’t on properly, but even with a stone put up against the door, it opens … Karen: When I walk in a room and a door bangs behind me, it’s very, very – and it was very noticeable. And I thought, ‘Yes, that is strange’, because it wasn’t windy

Name calling is another common example of the uncanny aping the familiar. In Liverpool, this is a repeated event involving Freddy’s grandmother: Freddy: I went to pick my drink up, and I heard it. Then I woke up my mum and said, ‘Did you shout at me?’ And she said, ‘No’. But I definitely heard it

After five years of hearing his name being called, Freddy’s emotional response to it has become muted: events become familiar over time. Magnus in Bristol explains: Magnus: I think when you have these experiences the first time, it’s very alarming. But if they’re repeated, they’re much less alarming

The events Magnus experiences are very different in type, but he discerns a familiar pattern in terms of the places they occur. But there is a difference in his language when he describes his immediate reaction, and when he describes the after-effect of an event. His original responses are quite extreme: ‘My sort of – hair stood up’; ‘I was petrified. I found it very, very unsettling’. But the shock and fear of an unexpected and unaccountable event close at hand does not seem to impact much on everyday life thereafter: ‘Amazingly, I just accepted that it had happened. I mean, one just gets to sort of – accept these things [laughs].’

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So events can unnerve people when they are novel, but over time people learn to accept them. In Blackpool, for example, Victoria describes a strong response to one event which frightened her only because it was new. This is a house where experiences happen, she says, ‘practically every day’: Victoria: I ran out the house. Because that scared me C: And how did you feel having to come back to the house? Victoria: Nervous. But I mean I knew nothing would happen, that it had just basically scared me because it was unusual and not something you – you know, balloons don’t do things like that [move across the ceiling as if being pulled]. A lot I’ve got used to. So the lights going on and off won’t bother me at all because I’m used to it. But if something new starts, then that scares me. But if it carried on and carried on and carried on, then after a while it wouldn’t bother me

The events of one night in this house, as described in the previous section, were frightening – perhaps the most poltergeist-like of all accounts. But, in telling the story as a family, the emotions felt at the time are diluted (or perhaps downplayed) by the distance of recall, and they find the chaos that ensued that night amusing: Victoria: It was scary [Young daughter] Gill: Mum was crying [Friend] Jane: You were all running from one room to another, weren’t you? All: Yeah! [Much laughter]

Rosa in the Wiltshire cottage also downplays any lasting impact of an event: Rosa: I mean, I’m interested and intrigued. I find it strange, funny. And when it really happens, I think, ‘Oh my god, that is so spooky’. But not frightened. Spooked. For a minute

To be ‘spooked’ suggests a momentary response; to be frightened, in contrast, goes deeper into the psyche and is likely to hang around. The moment of experiencing an event is captured by Susan in Ipswich, who describes the process of seeing a ‘reflection’ of a man in the kitchen window: Susan: I just sort of thought: ‘Oh!’ You know. And then I thought: ‘Yeah’ … It doesn’t bother me. It makes you jump a little bit when you’re not expecting it, but other than that, fine. And I always have a look around to see if they’re anywhere else, but they’re not

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The initial surprise makes her jump – ‘Oh!’ She quickly registers the experience, placing it into the ‘supernatural’ category, settles into a confirmation, having understood what she has just seen – ‘Yeah’. Then she checks the place to see if there’s anything else happening – if the ghost has nipped around a corner. Later, she suggests the way she anticipates the possibility of a recurrence, hoping that this won’t happen because it will disrupt her night’s sleep: Susan: Sometimes I think, ‘Oh, I’m so tired, I don’t want to see anything tonight’. But other times C: Why’s that? Would it wake you up? Susan: Yes, I just think I’d be like, ‘Oh, my god!’ And I wouldn’t be able to get back to sleep again C: Jumpy? Susan: No, just like, curious really, and like I’d wake up and think, ‘Ooh!’ And sit here thinking about it and – I’d be thinking about it so much that I wouldn’t be able to go back to sleep

The event, and its anticipation, causes some emotional disturbance, but excitement rather than fear. There is an after-event reverberation, and then a general looking out for further events, but the process is short-lived and it is only at certain times that she remembers the house is haunted. If the sudden awareness caused by something new and strange produces only a short-lived reaction, even particularly unexpected or jolting events can eventually be incorporated into the ‘familiarity’ of home over time. In any case, the dynamic, noisy, busy environment of people’s lives at home sometimes mitigate against the uncanny having much impact. In North London, Alex’s ghost cat has to really act up to get any attention: Alex: I’ve got to the stage when I don’t think about it too often, unless she does something very naughty … I only really notice when she does something really naughty. I have a very busy life. I don’t really notice it

And people push uncanny events into the background because they have other things to worry about: Rosa [Wiltshire]: I’m too busy to get concerned about this [the ghost] … Rachel [Wales]: We talk to people like you about it. If anybody comes, a stranger, we’d say: ‘Oh, by the way, did you know our house is haunted?’ And we’d tell

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them a story, and they’re interested in it. But it doesn’t – on an everyday level – we have much more important things to consider. And – our grandchildren, and, you know, that sort of thing

Equally, there is a sense for some that the familiar materialities of home – like the orderliness of domesticity described earlier – might work as a foil to the uncanny: Daniel: I suppose the home – the house is full of objects we have collected over time, which have associations. It’s a unique house. There are all sorts of bits of us around. And bits of – grand children. And photographs of [pause] C: So, you fill it with your life, your memories, your personality – Daniel: Yeah! C: in different ways? Daniel: Yeah! C: Somehow the fact that you’ve filled it with your own lives counteracts or – the fact that there is strangeness in the house – Daniel: You sound as if you’re suggesting that – we’ve so filled it up with our lives that there isn’t room for the strangeness to have any impact. Hmmm. I need to ruminate on that one I think. As to how it works [pause]. Because it [the uncanny event] doesn’t cause – doesn’t cause much disruption

There is an expectation that events are more likely to be noticed during quieter times. Hilma and Adam in the weaver’s cottage express surprise that an event happened during a busy time, when they had just moved in and were ‘making’ home for the first time: Hilma: We were so busy – removing, stowing things away, painting walls, wallpapering [Husband] Adam: When you think an [uncanny] incident like that [a whisper] would still be there, would still be prominent with all that going on Hilma: Yes Adam: With the kids running around. This, that, and the other

They describe one repeated event which happens when they do expect it – being both in the evening and after the children had left home:

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Hilma: We did hear – movement downstairs. As if big boots were – we heard the occasional time, early evening, sort of ten o’clock-ish. Because we sit here. And when the children were around there was enough movement anyway, we didn’t take much notice. But they moved out – and there wasn’t anybody here. And we were sitting here, and I could hear movement downstairs, as if somebody was coming in. Ten o’clock-ish

The common convention of haunted house stories – that ghosts come out at night – relates here to the fact that uncanny events are more likely to be noticed at that time, as Christine in the maisonette explains: Christine: I think it’s [the supernatural’s] there and it’s blocked out. We’re too busy in our lives. I think a lot of times we’re very, very busy, things are going on around us all the time. And it’s when you’re quiet – I think that’s why people notice ghosts mostly at night time, because they are quiet, and their minds are more relaxed, and they can sense it more. Whereas during the day people are busy, they’re doing things. You know, I’m never in a room talking with friends and notice, ‘Oh, I can sense a ghost’. Whereas if I’m in the room on my own, I’m at peace, then I would be more atten – you know, feeling like I could sense someone more

Christine also suggests that fluctuations of emotional mood might also account for reciprocity to ghosts; but, in an interesting twist, she also wonders if this is also true for the ghosts; that there may be reasons why they are more active at some times rather than at others: Christine: She’s [the ghost’s] probably always around, but it’s probably at some times she’s more – it could be anything, it could be to do with the day she died, the time she died, you know, or something significant, or – just at different times I sense her more. And it could be about myself as well. That maybe I’m more relaxed, or I’m more uptight

As described, people become physically and mentally ‘submerged’ within their everyday routines, habits and rituals of domesticity; events sometimes become labelled as uncanny when they create a jolt, they demand a sudden awareness. In order to live with such events, this relationship between awareness and forgetting needs to be negotiated; to be fully incorporated within the ‘familiar’, the uncanny must be something people become hardly aware of. But this at times seems to take conscious effort. Rachel in Wales describes the way she deals with uncanny events by keeping them ‘separate’ in her head: Rachel: I try to – rise above – I don’t, I – keep them in a different – place in my head, If that makes any sense, to everyday living. And people don’t understand that. And it’s very hard for me to explain it. Because people, most people, if

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Co-habiting with Ghosts they’ve got a haunted house they, they are – actively interacting with the spooks. We’re not. Not in that way

She separates the ‘spooks’ from everyday living; they are in the home, and yet they are not part of domestic life. This way she claims an ability to ‘sort of forget about it’: Rachel: People think we must be obsessed, we must be, because it’s happening all the time. [Pause] But we’re not. And – you can sort of forget about it, even though it’s happening. If you see what I mean. No [laughs], I don’t suppose you do!

Rosa in Wiltshire also attempts a wilful unawareness, believing that if she expects an experience, she won’t have one: ‘I think it’s silly to go around looking for it. Then it’ll stop.’ But the desire for some participants to look out is sometimes difficult to contain. For Susan in Ipswich, such behaviour has to do with the anticipation of events based on where they last occurred: Susan: Often – if I come down at night to get a drink or whatever from the kitchen, or – I will sort of like look in here [the front room, where a ghost has been seen]. And if I’m on the loo in the middle of the night or whatever, and I look at the door. I don’t expect to see them, I just think, ‘Oh, are they there or aren’t they there?’ And sometimes if I’m lying in bed at night when I’m here on my own, I look in the mirror and I think, ‘Oh, I might see something go past the door’. But I don’t. I don’t see anything else

In contrast, in the London maisonette, Karen’s fervent desire is not to experience a ghost, for which she has developed an attitude of lack of interest; to think about the ghosts might be to ‘invite’ something to happen: C: How would you feel about the staircase if you hadn’t been fed all these stories? Karen: Well, it’s hard to know isn’t it? It’s sort of chicken and egg because that was from the very beginning, that was being said. So that affected my whole – it’s more that I start to kind of become really interested in it. I mean, I think if I started to do that, then that’s sort of inviting people to appear to me. And I just don’t want to do that. I really don’t

Having not had – and not wishing to have – an experience of the ghosts, Karen reacts to the idea of them. The same pattern occurs when people speak of the response of friends and family to their haunted home. Participants offer numerous examples of how family members have to be escorted to the bathroom, or refuse to be in the house alone. Work colleagues and friends also express strong emotions such as fear or excitement at the idea of living with ghosts.

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Dora [Liverpool]: People used to say to me: ‘I’m not coming in your house. I’m terrified to come in your house!’ C: But you weren’t afraid? Dora: No. No

Speaking of others’ responses is, arguably, a way in which inhabitants reinforce the difference between popular cultural notions of how it must feel to live in a haunted home, and the often rather more ordinary reality of the situation for them. There is often a level of mockery involved, reinforcing inhabitants’ own acceptance of and familiarity with the situation in contrast to outsiders’ fears: Mia [Wirral]: I was upstairs. And the husband of the next door was in the garden. And I was standing at the window. And quite suddenly he looked up. And I waved my hand. And then he looked and looked and then he waved back. And then I went away. And after five seconds – or maybe ten – the telephone went. And I answered. And he said, ‘Mia, was it you who was at the window?’ And – a really very worried voice! And I still regret that. I should have said, ‘What do you mean? Which window?’ I was so honest. I said, ‘Yes, it was me. What did you expect? Did you expect the ghost?’ [He was] very scared. I could hear it in his voice. He was really worried!

The different examples of responses to ghosts or uncanny events, outlined above, illustrate the way people incorporate their experiences into domestic life, and how their attitudes to the uncanny change over time. These, with the exception of the few one-off ‘anti-domestic’ unruly events, seem to impinge quite subtly on the material interior. A detailed focus on such events reveals the ways in which we register and relate to familiar surroundings. Many uncanny events are auditory ones, and this becomes an important consideration in the light of the fact that participants’ knowledge of their homes tends to centre in particular on the sounds it makes. Sounds travelling across the interiority of a home relate to its specific functions, the organisations and conglomerations of space, the relationships between different forms of materiality. In the haunted home, there is a need to contrast the noises normally associated with it, and those which are more difficult (or impossible) to ‘place’. An intimate and embodied micro-knowledge of the home is required to distinguish the different types and origins of sound, separating the ordinary from the uncanny. In Blackpool, one of Victoria’s young daughters discusses this with her: [Daughter] Anna: You can tell when it’s something not being done by the spirits really

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Victoria: Yeah, yeah, yeah. If it was wind or something, you know. Like the stair creaks. You know the difference between it just being a creak, as in like the central heating or the pipes underneath or whatever, or whether it’s actually creaking because there’s somebody walking, footsteps

In the weaver’s cottage, Hilma expresses her knowledge of the house: Hilma: I wander around without lights on. I know this house. I don’t put the lights on. Even if somebody needs something in the night. I don’t put the lights on. I wander around. I know exactly where the house is – where the steps are C: Even then [after the uncanny event she has just described]? [Pause] Hilma: It didn’t worry me in the least

Ben the North London caretaker expresses a similar detailed knowledge of a house he is paid to look after: C: Describe your relationship with the house Ben: It’s extremely intimate. I know every corner of the house

And he also performs his knowledge in a similar way to Hilma: Ben: I’ve had moments when I’ve walked through the house in the dark – C: Why would you want to do that? Ben: Well – I know this house. It’s like a blind man would walk in the street and find his way

As the house’s guardian charged with protecting it, Ben has to learn to account for all the house’s sounds at night, to distinguish material and immaterial causes: Ben: Two days ago I was in bed and I heard knocking. I think, ‘What is that knock?’ A loud knock. And I think, ‘Is that a door in the flat? Is there a breeze blowing through a vent in the scullery? Or – and I think – and I get out of bed, and I check the door. And I know the sounds of the house. If I hear anything I kind of – work things out. I do calculations of what it is, think what it is. And then this thing, there’s absolutely no reason. There’s no accountable reason. There’s no tree that managed to hit the house and make that knock. Which has happened in the past. I kind of know – what might cause sound in the house.

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And if there’s something unexplained, then I’m not saying it was – I’m saying there could be some actual, physical reason for this happening – something I can’t work out in the house, troubles me. Annoys me

Not pinpointing the cause is a great frustration, signalling a loss of control, a failure of role: Ben: I don’t like it, it keeps me awake. I get a bit annoyed with myself. Just thinking, ‘What’s going on?’ You know C: Because there’s no logical explanation? Ben: Nothing that I can work out. Nothing I can calculate. And it’s not happening enough times for me to say, ‘Ah!’ So I’m walking backwards and forwards in the flat and I’m thinking: ‘Where’s that coming from?’ And I can’t work it out … If there’s a ghost trying to make its presence felt, it troubles me a little bit. I think: ‘What the hell – what am I going to do now? What does this mean? Is there something – stirring in the house?’ Or – I like to know what is different about the house at this point which is making that sound. Whatever it is, I want to know what it is

The Liminal Interior The image of Ben, pacing up and down in his flat, trying without success to work out the reason for a noise, illustrates how close the relationship is between strange and familiar, the separation of the ‘ordinary’ and the ‘haunted’ home. It is the different spaces of the house, including his caretaker’s flat within it, which he knows so well that, like Hilma, he can walk through it in the dark. These suggest the porous fabric of home, as suggested in the literature – thresholds in need of protection (Taylor, 1998), noisy processes breaking down barriers between inside and out (Kaika, 2004), opacities where one can be seen or heard (Bermann, 1998). That sounds travel so easily suggest the fragility of concepts ‘inside and outside’, but such a radical vision of openness ignores the fact that most homes are designed to differentiate between more and less public and private spaces, including passing places allowing passage from one point to another as well as places in which to rest awhile. The haunted home highlights an existing dynamic between the domestic interior’s porosity and its fixed boundaries. The mapping of functional spaces might be juxtaposed with other maps, of social movement, or more immaterial maps which include feeling or emotional responses to different spaces within the home, alongside in the haunted home maps pinpointing where ghosts have been witnessed and uncanny events experienced. Participants’ descriptions of uncanny events highlight the way they negotiate and combine these different maps at

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different times, the way they ‘carve out’ spaces at a level of embodiment, emotion and memory. A repeated narrative is that uncanny events replicate their traditional association with particular spaces, occurring in those regarded as the most ‘liminal’: staircases, landings, windows and reflections, doorways, corners, crevices, and the minor or lesser used rooms or storage spaces: box rooms, spare rooms, ante-rooms. Indeed, many of these spaces are linked to uncanny events: footsteps are often heard ascending or descending staircases, ghosts frame doorways or linger at landings. The friends sharing the upper maisonette discussed this association of ghosts and the liminal: Pam: It is interesting and I do wonder why it’s a staircase [they have a family of ghosts living on a landing]. For me, the ghost I came across – she was on the bridge Karen: Did she commit suicide on that bridge? Pam: I don’t know. She lived on that bridge. She was in a transitory place. And in psychiatric hospitals, it’s corridors Christine: Yes, they’re always on corridors Pam: I think the staircase is a lost place in-between Christine: They’re very transitional places. You know, people are waiting to go to some place, or coming from some place. You know, the spirit hasn’t quite left the house, or whatever Pam: For me, the doorways in this house are quite important. I think a doorway is an area that you might watch or mark. Doors have kind of frightened me – letting myself into places I’m not sure of. I do feel like doorways are a waiting ground. It’s a place where people will be looking for me. Or that they will be hanging out

Other liminal spaces include mirrors and reflections. In the North London mansion, Romanian employee Tara believes that ghosts ‘live’ in mirrors, where they gain a vantage point for looking out on the world. She discusses this with her daughter, Olive, who participated in the interviews to help as a translator: Tara: I have the feeling that somebody is with me all the time. Especially in the mirror. I think they can see me in the mirror. My feeling is he can see me more better in the mirror

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Olive: She thinks the ghosts use the mirrors to check the room and what’s going on. It’s like their – headquarters [laughs]. That’s exaggerating. But they use mirrors

In a related move, people also suggest a belief that two worlds can exist in the same place – the ordinary world, and, within this but also separate, a world of the supernatural. Here caretaker Ben talks about the possibility of ‘entering’ the ghosts’ world through the paintings he creates: Ben: [I am] engaging in the spirit world in a way – creating life in a painting, making an invention … Some are not very happy – full of anger. Some are very gentle. Some appear to behave in different ways. I don’t know whether they could hurt me if I came into their world. I think I may be able to enter their world. But I’ve never crossed a threshold. I do think there is a threshold

If a focus on liminal spaces suggests home as a place of openings, passageways, and thresholds, the existence of peripheral spaces also reinforces distances between the more and the less private. People’s relationship to certain spaces in their home is reflected in their relationship to the uncanny. Ben describes the negative energies of the house lurking in those small, dark places not easily seen or controlled – hiding places – echoing one definition of the ‘uncanny’: C: Are there places you avoid? Ben: Yes, there are shadowy areas. Top of the office staircase, I don’t like that particularly. The ante-room [for storage] is a bit troubling because ghosts have been witnessed in there a few times by people C: The top of the staircase? Ben: Top of the office staircase. I go through there and it’s a dark area. And I almost – I don’t know if I always expect to see a physical confrontation there, or a strange – something odd about it. So it’s whether somebody could be in that space, hiding. Or whether I’m going to encounter some uncomfortable feeling. But every time I walk through it in the house by myself – and the workshop, I don’t particularly like. That’s an area I don’t like to be around in the night, locking up around there. I think it’s not a very nice area … I know [demons] wait, lurking in every cupboard and corner of the house

‘Liminal’ spaces within the home might be places where ghosts lurk, but they are also places to keep ghosts at bay, given these are often dark, hidden, inaccessible or under-used, places only to move through rather than linger at, or places where you might feel a little on show. On the Wirral, for example, Mia only ever senses the ghost on the landing by the staircase, never in more private areas

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such as her bedroom. It’s not that ghosts don’t ever make themselves felt in private spaces. When these are troubling, they spell problems with the co-habitation as a whole, although this is rare. And it’s not always possible to avoid such places: it is caretaker Ben’s job to lock up the workshop area at night, although he dislikes doing so. But in general it is rare to find inhabitants avoiding particular places associated with ghosts. An exception is Hilma in the weaver’s cottage, who describes her dislike for a ground floor living room, a particularly gloomy space with very small windows: Hilma: I don’t particularly like this room because I could hear the – somebody coming and wiping their feet on the doormat so many times

Although this event has since stopped, its memory still triggers an emotional response. There is another living room, directly above, from where the sound is witnessed; this well-used living space is markedly brighter and warmer. Uncanny events also reinforce existing negative feelings about certain spaces. In the upper maisonette, Karen had recently spent much time alone in the flat suffering from chronic fatigue. She disliked her bedroom and spent most of her time in the living room. This difference in her feelings for the two rooms is reinforced by her sense of the bedroom as an uncanny space – where the main door and a door to the attic keep opening and closing. But the geographical positioning of these rooms also contributes to feelings of loneliness or connection. The bedroom is tucked away in the eves, at the top of the house, with a very small window looking out over the back. The living room at the front has large bay windows onto the street: Karen: If I was here on my own, I wouldn’t go to my bedroom. I would stay here, and watch what was going on up and down, happening on the road. That was my access to the outside world. This window. Just spying on my neighbours, basically [laughs]. Which I did for a long time. I didn’t feel lonely. But if I come up to do things in my bedroom, I feel kind of lonely

Being able to pinpoint ghostly activity as associated with a very specific space in the home allows a level of control, a sense of being freer elsewhere. Confining ghosts to liminal spaces maintains a distinction between inhabitants’ private spaces and those where ghosts ‘reside’, a theme explored further in Part II. People feel particularly unnerved when uncanny events associated with a particular part of a house occur where they haven’t before. In Bristol, most of the events – which are very disparate – occur at the back of the house, on the ground floor around the music room where Magnus works as a self-employed music teacher. But the most recent event occurred at the front, in the living room, making it doubly ‘out of place’:

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Magnus: The sixth experience was in the front room. I mean, most experiences tend to be associated with the rear of the house, like the breakfast room, or across the back. This one was in the front room. Quite unnerving, because it was out in the front room. Early in the morning. I was down there. And I heard this, um – unearthly – the only way I can describe it was like a banshee. A cry … I was standing near the settee, which is by the back wall now. So I was on the opposite side to the window C: And it was definitely inside the room? Magnus: Yes

This event occurs whilst Magnus is in the same room, a sound emanating in front of him. All other events have occurred from beyond at least one wall. This is another common theme – the ghosts are somewhere else, not quite ‘here’, suggesting their peripherality rather than their central place within the domestic interior. So when ghosts reside at a well-used thoroughfare, there is a need to defy geographical normalcy. In the maisonette, a family of ghosts – mother, father, and daughter – linger together at a landing next to a bedroom door: Pam: This is their area. I often feel that they’re living behind the door C: On the other side? Pam: Well [indicates the landing] this is the space they occupy. This is where I’ve seen them. But I sense they have a life inside of this room that I don’t know about. But I’m just conscious of them at the doorway. I’m not familiar with beyond this door. And maybe ‘beyond this door’ isn’t particularly a place, you know … it’s the feeling I have from downstairs that the ghosts live beyond this door, not necessarily that in reality they live in this room

Life ‘beyond the door’ is perhaps symbolic for out of reach, beyond the threshold of the known. But there is also an inversion of measurable geographies of distance and nearness, because even when standing in the midst of ‘their’ space on the landing, Pam doesn’t believe the ghosts are close by: they are both ‘here’ and ‘not here’, and mostly she senses them from elsewhere: Pam: I never felt like they come near me. I’ve never felt a physical presence. So even when I’m – like now I’m standing – this has got to be their spot. I’m here. But I don’t think they’re close. They are always at some distance. I don’t know if it is them moving away. I don’t think it is them moving away, because when I’m downstairs I think of them as occupying this space

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The Home as Agent If certain spaces of the home (and, rarely, objects within it) are associated with the uncanny, the suggestion is that the home acts as a container, a holding vessel for a variety of agencies, encounters and responses – sometimes, as Pam’s example above, an experience which reinforces but also defies spatial scale, or suggests the possibility of thresholds into different worlds – through paintings or doorways. But as the primary container, the home is also granted a form of agency, as something animated: Ben: I don’t feel it’s just a house, a cold house of just bricks and mortar, wood and fabric. It’s got a history, a life, a force, an energy … I feel its presence … It’s a place where you can do things, create things, be allowed to do things. It’s something to do with the fabric or architecture. The space may have a part to play, the design maybe of the room space. The placement of things

Ben talks of the ‘life … force … energy’ of the house – it seems to live and breathe rather than exist as if it were animate. But it is also a practical, creative space; its energy can be utilised. And this, in turn, may relate to its physical features – the way things are ‘placed’, how the space is divided up. This description reflects a definition of home as both physical and something immaterial (Blunt and Dowling, 2006). But the ‘immaterial’ which is often described as including imagination, memory and emotion is here the home’s own rather than how it is experienced by inhabitants. Some participants add to this description a sense of home’s creative potentiality, suggesting it also has its own secret, inner, life. This sense of spatial waywardness is often celebrated. In the maisonette, Pam discusses a sense of danger she feels in the unused spaces of her flat and its attic, where no one can claim ownership: Pam: [Looking over the galleried hall, which reaches to the roof] It’s very open, so you can see everything … this big sense of space. And it’s quite dangerous. It’s a bit scary, because you could easily [tips her upper body over the side of the banister, smiling] – like, go over. So there’s a sense of danger C: Do you like that? Pam: Oh great! I like it. I really like that space C: And the sense of danger? Pam: Well, yeah. Because, it’s a sense of – it’s not all fixed. Things could happen … there’s potential. The space here obviously is not ever used. It’s air space. So I feel like – things can happen. [On the attic] down the other end, where the tank is, that’s a bit unknown

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C: You don’t go that far? Pam: No. Because that sort of goes into open space. So that’s the unused space of the house C: Does that bother you? Pam: Well, it’s strange, isn’t it? That there’s that big gap of space unused, strange. But I’m glad that there’s a space that’s not used in the house. The way they build flats now, it’s like every little bit of corner is used. You have – two children’s bedrooms in that space if it was being built now. It’s comforting that there’s this – non-used space. Wasted space. It is kind of mysterious. It doesn’t have to be exploited

A similar feeling is expressed by caretaker Ben about the large mansion set within a popular park. As a public place during the day, the house and its garden can only become ‘authentically’ its own after the public has gone: C: When everybody goes home, and you’re alone in the house, do you change at that point? Ben: I do relax very much into the house, and I can enjoy the house. It’s the same as the park. The gardens of the house. It loses its ‘park’, it loses its public facility. It becomes an energy, a force. It grows, it just becomes alive when people go away. It becomes – there’s a magic about it, when people go away, it’s wild. There’s a wildness about it. Anything could happen, in a way C: Is it like the public tames it? Ben: It seems, to me – the personality, the character of the park, character of the space, is lost when the public are here. An aspect of the person. It’s like, it’s exposed, when the public are here. And then, in its privacy, the park, to me … it can be – it can be what it wants. It seems like the house is like that as well

What both participants celebrate is the possibility of space, its potential to be something else, to be unpredictable, animated, on its own terms, the idea of insubordination, space that has its own natural ‘force’ when left to itself. It is, then, a form of (human-made) ‘nature’ which is not just something potentially unruly or uncontained, but also about being natural, being authentically itself. If the uncanny is about hidden, unknown or private things, the ‘real’ nature of such places can only be revealed when no one is looking. These descriptions utilise the language of colonialism and environmentalism – they are judgements about the way space is used, colonised, exploited, rather than left to be, untrammelled, pristine. But the potentiality is there, the capacity to be authentic, by dint of the fact that the public

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have to go home, allowing the park to revert back to a garden; that no one ventures too far into the deep attic or utilises the air space of the high hallway: these spaces need to be uninhabited or unused by people to be free. This characterisation of material agency appears to go beyond personification, and yet also draws on humanistic ideas about private, secret selves, connected to or defined by particular private places, echoing ideas of Tuan (1977), Pallasmaa (1995), and others. The complexity and noise of the social and public masks the real ‘self’, which hides away, revealing itself only in private. Pam is happy to let such places remain unused. Ben feels privileged to be allowed to enter into the house and garden’s private world: it is a mark that he has become an insider. The Home as Atmosphere Another way in which the haunted home is described as having agency is through descriptions of its atmosphere. People differentiate different spaces of the home as having a different ‘emotional temperature’ (Tuan, 1977). Because at times some spaces feel better than others, there is a choice of where one might want to linger the most; in Hilma’s example, the cottage – originally used by weavers, is tall and its windows get larger the further up you go. This means that Hilma has a choice of two living spaces, and can use the one she feels most at home in. But the ‘atmosphere’ or ‘vibe’ of a home, even when the focus is on a particular space, is often assumed to stand for the whole, as some kind of unifying energy of the house which suggests its character. And although in the literature haunted homes are assumed to be ‘spooky’, in my examples it is often quite the opposite. Some participants talk of a home being empty of presence as a negative feeling, stripping it of agency. There is a belief in the relationship between a home’s atmosphere and its history, what it has and continues to contain, a theme explored in more detail in the next chapter. What is important is that having such an atmosphere is far preferable to not having any at all: Christine [maisonette]: Sometimes new houses don’t have any [atmosphere], and then they can be very lonely and very Pam: Empty of spirit Christine: Empty, yes Karen: [This flat] doesn’t feel empty. Honestly, I’ve spent days and days by myself, and, you know, loads of time without any extra contact, and I never really felt completely alone here. I never felt lonely … It’s been a really wonderful place for me to be ill in

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The atmosphere or vibe is often described by participants as something which they become immediately aware of, the first time they enter a house, and this becomes an important criteria when choosing to live somewhere. The atmosphere is not always connected to whether a house is haunted, an issue which does not go unnoticed: C: How do you judge if you will be comfortable in a house you have bought? Rachel [Wales]: The vibes. I can walk into a house and say, ‘That’s it. I can’t stand it’. Or, ‘I like it’. I’m not threatened by [living in this haunted home]. And I don’t know why I’m not threatened by it. Because I have been into other houses, when we have, you know, been trying to – buy houses in the past. I would walk in and I’d walk out again. ‘I’m not having that, it spooked me’ … Rosa [Wiltshire]: It’s got fabulous vibes. You know, when I was looking for my house for a year, I looked at cottages all over England. And some of them had awful vibes. My best friend, she was a very wise old lady. And she patted the walls and she said: ‘Delicate, dear little cottage. Aren’t you lovely.’ And another friend, who’s a farmer, I was showing him. He said: ‘Good vibes. Good vibes’. We all love it

For Rosa, it is her cottage, not her mother’s adjacent one (however otherwise orderly), which is associated with the ghost, suggesting the ghost itself has some hand in creating the home’s character and vibe: Rosa: I call the rooms ‘hers’ [the ghost’s] which are in one cottage, the first one I bought and came into. It has wonderful good vibes. The other cottage doesn’t seem to be so influenced [by uncanny events], and it doesn’t have nearly such good vibes either … My half’s got the better vibes, yes, definitely

Thus a positive or benign atmosphere does not preclude a belief that a house is haunted; perhaps a good atmosphere becomes especially important in such a place, allowing inhabitants to more easily accept and incorporate the uncanny aspects of their home. Uncanny events might be a part of the house and emerge out of it, but they are subordinate to the underlying sense of the home as the dominant agent, and the vibe can dictate whether inhabitants feel accepted or rejected. Ben Anderson has suggested that atmospheres are a kind of ‘indeterminate affective ‘excess’ through which intensive space-times can be created’, and this idea of ‘intensive space-times’ is useful for thinking about what marks out haunted homes (Anderson, 2009: 78). But he also emphasises how atmosphere has ‘long been associated with the uncertain, disordered, shifting and contingent – that which never quite achieves the stability of form’ (80), and that atmospheres

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are ‘perpetually forming and deforming, appearing and disappearing, as bodies enter into relation with one another. They are never finished, static or at rest’ (79). But there is nothing unstable or indeterminate about these haunted homes’ atmospheres; being haunted appears to afford homes more agency, more presence, more distinctiveness, greater levels of permanence and continuity. The atmosphere is often reinforced through social engagements: when others report the same feelings it allows the home’s atmosphere to be given status as something beyond a mere subjective, instrumental or fleeting phenomenon. It seems an important factor in living in such places that the overall atmosphere rarely changes but remains a consistent background affective hum, quietly counteracting any short-lived disturbance caused by the witness of uncanny events. Susan in Ipswich also recalls her first impression of her home: a calm place, somewhere that would be a safe sanctuary. The sense of the interior as a ‘private’, bounded space is very marked. It is the feeling of calm in this description that is marked out as uncanny: Susan: We came up and looked at it … I fell in love with it and was determined that we were going to have the house. I just felt really sort of like calm, and safe, and didn’t think anything would ever bother me here. But it was – it wasn’t an eerie feeling, it was just like – I don’t know how to describe it, really, it just felt really, really calm. And all my friends who come round say the same. They feel really calm as soon as they’ve gone through the door. I don’t know how to describe it really – it’s – when you came through [the door] it was just as though everything else had been switched off, that nothing that [public] side of the door mattered anymore. That it was all, gone. And everything was going to be all right. And everything was like calm … Two of my friends – they will come around here and sit here for the afternoon. They will often turn up and say, ‘Oh, can we just come and sit here and chill out for the afternoon?’ And they both said they feel really calm in here

There was also, she adds, something ‘strange’ in the atmosphere too, a presence that she picked up on, focused on the old furniture owned by the previous (now deceased) inhabitants, still in situ when she first viewed the house. Because her overriding feeling in the house was positive, this strangeness is subordinated: Susan: There was nothing, there was no wind flapping about or anything like that. But it felt like there was something. I don’t know. I got a strange feeling that there was someone here. And – whether it was because all the furniture was here when we came. It was all the original oak furniture … solid oak that was really, really old

Susan suggests that the ‘calm’ atmosphere is somehow connected to – even created by – the ghosts, a couple who had lived in the house for many decades, ever since it was built in the 1930s. She suggests their longevity together in the house creates a

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feeling of contentment, passed on to new inhabitants. This is a rather more positive rendition of the idea of ‘post-memory’, which has been utilised to explain how trauma can be passed down from one generation to another (Hirsch, 1998). Here what is inherited is a positive affect which lingers from the previous inhabitants: C: The ghosts themselves are making you feel calm? Susan: I think so. Yes. Maybe because that was their home they lived in basically from the day it was finished … They’d lived in it from day one

This sense of long-term contentment for Susan might be an explanation for the atmosphere: the feeling has imprinted itself after so many decades of emanation between the old couple: an emotional inheritance which has now in some ways become intrinsic to the house itself. But the home’s ‘influence’ is not always positive. Pam in the maisonette recalls a bad first night, personifying her home as unkind: Pam: It’s such a lovely flat – but it hasn’t been very lucky for me. I had a really bad first night in this flat, really horrible. My [ex-partner] just got up and left in the middle of the night, and I felt very uncomfortable. I felt very abandoned … You know, I thought, ‘Well anyone would think this is a lovely flat’. But personally, at first it wasn’t very lovely to me. It wasn’t very kind

This is in striking contrast to her flatmate Karen’s relationship with the house – a reminder that, although there is usually consensus, people’s responses can differ: ‘It’s just my sense that this is somehow a healing, you know, accepting kind of house’. The atmosphere or vibe in these haunted homes, then, is a key feature of the home’s distinctive agency, its affect which participants believe can influence their mood, even their creativity. Atmospheres are another way of reinforcing boundaries, emphasising the distinctive presence of the home’s interior, what creates its different ‘temperature’ (Tuan, 1977), its ‘thickness’ (Edensor, 2012). It is the way the home is given presence, fixity, a discreet integrity, how it is maintained as a complete, bounded body. Such an atmosphere may influence sociality, compelling bodies to congregate in particular ways at specific spaces. It is, then, the home’s own influence, and also something which is imprinted over time by the inhabitants within it, lingering long after they are gone; something which new inhabitants are bequeathed, inherit, intuit and respond to, although sometimes in different ways. * * * The uncanny home, then, reinforces the domestic interior as both dynamic and distinctive, as both material and immaterial, a place of order and disorder. The interplay between containment and fluidity is a central theme in these accounts, and

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the liminal spaces ghosts occupy illustrate the ways in which boundaries are both reinforced and circumvented in different ways and by different agents. Uncanny events highlight a definition of domesticity as an attempt (not always successful) to maintain order and comfort through routines, processes and repetitive movements; it is through these processes that many uncanny events emerge – challenging, maintaining or imitating them (Young, 2005). The home is a felt and sensed place, as much about materiality in process than about inert physical objects and spaces – an excessive materiality (Dewsbury, 2002), a material uncanny, in most cases aping and utilising rituals, noises, smells and the differential and liminal spaces of home. Some events only emerge as uncanny over time. A few events are ‘anti-domestic’, challenging attempts at order, reinforcing a belief in the porosity of home, where unruly nature invades at moments of crisis (Kaika, 2004); but some ghosts themselves reinforce this desire for order, reiterating a traditional, gendered form of social domesticity. It is also a place of intimacies: bodies which aren’t quite there press on, weigh upon, mark, the bodies of participants, leaving a brief trace upon the surface of skin. But events tend to be short-lived, and in most cases they make no mark on the physical fabric at all, have no material effect. Events are present in that they are palpably experienced, and yet they are also constantly eluding physical grasp, just out of reach or out of sight. This domestic uncanny is something which – with a few exceptions – is incorporated into the familiar and can’t always easily be distinguished from it. Does this mean that such events should be stripped of their uncanny status, if, over time, they lose their frisson, their power to unnerve, or to do so only momentarily? The moments of witness, the sudden, sharp, spiky call for attention, or the slow, subtle dawn of heightened awareness emerging during domestic routines – these reflect the constant wave of submergence and awareness which makes up the everyday. The reverberating after-memory of events, the focus on specifics of where, what, how and why, do not generally threaten domestic normality but are incorporated into it, granted their own special type of ‘normal’. Participants’ experience is not just about witnessing the uncanny but about accumulating an understanding and familiarity about their home’s particular form of uncanny, in ways which will be explored in later chapters. The uncanny is never quite completely normal and never fully familiar; this nearly/not quite quality is indeed often associated with the uncanny (MacDorman and Kageki, 2012); but here the nearly-familiar suggests the uncanny as less rather than more strange in the domestic interior – an already complex space which, in turn, is granted a level of agency, a mystique, bounded depth and charismatic physical presence enhanced by its status as haunted – being also something excessive, more than the sum of its physical parts, dangerous, exhilarating, and never fully knowable. That part of this excess and depth is about pre-habitation rather than the pre-personal, points to a belief in the animation and agency of home as, in part, an outcome of its social histories, which we will explore next.

Chapter 3

The Temporalities of the Haunted Home The previous chapter explored the material uncanny as events which are intimately entangled in the materiality of home and its differential physical spaces, and often seem to ape or even parody the social routines making up domestic life. The chapter also suggested the ways the haunted home is granted agency, through its unused or unseen physical spaces as well as the atmospheres which mark it out as distinctive. The ways in which the material and immaterial encounter each other also have different temporal dimensions, as has been shown. People live with the memory of past uncanny events and expectations of future ones, and this at times affects their awareness of particular spaces as they go about their everyday routines. The agency of home is expressed as a potentiality, as the possibility that something might or could happen in the future, in contrast to its atmospheres which are often defined in relation to the continuing reverberation of previous emotions and affects. Lastly, there is a way in which the material past is assumed at times to be involved in hauntings. In one example, an object itself (the Victorian doll) is seen as the source of uncanny events; in another, old wooden furniture left over from previous inhabitants is considered a possible reason for a ‘strange’ atmosphere; whilst elsewhere there is an assumption that a room with old paintings is more likely to be haunted than one with ‘paperback books’. These examples point to a particular haunting aesthetic linked to ideas suggesting material objects having a form of agency (Gell, 1998), and about spaces absorbing past energies, related to one theory of ghosts as imprints or residues (made popular by Nigel Kneale’s 1972 television play, ‘Stone Tape’). In these different ways, participants’ engagements with the material uncanny hint at the importance of dimensions of time as well as space. This is in line with definitions of the immaterial aspects of home which include memory as an important component of the meanings people bring to home (Blunt and Dowling, 2006; Tolia-Kelly, 2004; Miller, 2001). But the temporal complexities run deeper, not least because ghost ‘are figures that disrupt the linear procession of time that leads from the past, through the present, to the future’ (Pile, 2005: 139). ‘They cut across history, jump times, exist in a history of their own’. Some participants are drawn to their own theories of time in relation to their ghosts, often assuming them to exist in a liminal in-between time indivisible from their occupancy of liminal spaces: Pam [maisonette]: I don’t know why [the ghosts] are there, what they’re waiting for, what they’re doing. There is a sense of waiting. I don’t know what else they’re doing. I don’t feel like they’re actively busy at something. So my mind

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Uncanny events are also construed by some participants as some kind of surreal memory of the home and/or its ghosts, unfathomable because its source and meaning is unclear. The events, in this sense, are a way the home expresses its identity through its own past, expresses the memories and histories it contains. The relationships – and as will be seen, at times tensions – between past and present, concepts of memory and history, continuity and change, offer inhabitants a wide context in which to interpret uncanny events, but also create a vast terrain of competing ‘agencies’ to negotiate. People’s interpretations of haunted homes are shot through with an assumption that they have to be old houses. Pam, for example, stated: ‘It doesn’t seem unusual at all that people [ghosts] should be living here, in this old house’. And during her first viewing of her (very old) home, Mia on the Wirral asked the previous owner if the house was haunted: C: What prompted you to ask the question? Mia: I think it was just an atmosphere. I think this kind of house could be a one [haunted]

This assumption is challenged in Liverpool, where Dora expresses confusion as to how her 30-year-old council house could be haunted, especially as she has been its sole tenant. She speculates about the previous usage of the land upon which the house is built; the house might not be old, but the ground it stands on must be. This is an exceptional case, for most also assume that the ghosts (where they are not family members or pets) must be previous inhabitants. They continue to haunt because their attachment to home is so strong it continues after death: Christine [maisonette]: It’s probably because that’s where [the ghosts] may have – they may have died there, they may have been very happy there. You know, they didn’t want to move on from that house, they can’t move on for whatever reason

Participants assume that previous inhabitants who lived in the house longest are more likely to be the ghosts. Magnus in Bristol reflects on the fact that the ghosts might be an elderly couple who had lived in his house for a ‘long time’ rather than others coming afterwards: Magnus: I don’t know if sometimes people have experiences soon after they’ve moved in somewhere, the previous occupant has made himself known

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C: Is that what you thought? Magnus: Possibly. I mean before we moved some students were there. Before that an old couple had lived there for a long time I think

Reinforcing Attachments Narratives of attachment felt by current inhabitants intermingle with those assumed of their ghosts to reinforce participants’ place within a wider temporal and emotional lineage, being part of a past that predates their own relationship to home but within which they can claim a place over time. The house’s history becomes, then, an important focus for deepening attachment, and a sense of connection to the ghosts helps, in turn, to connect better with the home; the ghosts’ attachment reinforces their own. Rosa in Wiltshire felt a certainty about her sense of belonging to her cottage from the moment she saw it: Rosa: I came down the lane and I just knew there would be a ‘for sale’ sign and that would be the one … I just said out loud, ‘I could be happy here’. And so, I bought it … And I’ll probably be carried out of this little cottage foot first

Her feeling of attachment also plays out ideals of ‘home’, to which both the ghost (‘Annie’) and the inhabitant after her (in a retirement home) contribute, offering a sense of continuing lineage. The way Rosa connects to both these previous inhabitants is through an assumed sharing of a love of traditional country domestic pursuits, aesthetics and sensibilities. Rosa, who is a historian by profession, has carried out much research into her cottage’s history and believes she knows a certain amount about Annie, the ghost. In particular, she recalls a visit by a family group who had been evacuated to the house during the Second World War: Rosa: The evacuees said – this little room upstairs, which is now my bathroom, it wasn’t then a bathroom. They called it the ‘gold dust room’ because it was full of fabrics and they’d disintegrated. But they’d had gold lace … [The ghost] just loved fabrics. The room was full of fabrics. They would have been her fabrics. I like fabrics and jams and I think Annie was like that too

The love of fabrics is also shared by the previous inhabitant, thus maintaining a link going back from Rosa to Annie the ghost – an unbroken line through a shared form of domesticity: Rosa: She [the previous inhabitant] had, in her way, very good taste. She was a sort of sensation type, like me. And she had lovely fabrics. On the landing she had an old Paisley fabric. And I’ve actually – you know, I kept the landing curtains up for a long time

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The overlapping of history and personal taste suggests ways in which Rosa connects with the house as a home, beyond the fact of the ghost but linked to past habitation: C: You’re describing historical connections – Rosa: Yes, there are some C: But also to do with your own likes and dislikes Rosa: They are. They are. It’s funny that

History is personalised, making it into an intimately shared form of extended memory, part of a private sense of self and home. Her memories and the house’s memories appear as a continuous narrative, and at the heart of it is an idealised notion of ‘home’ from her youth: Rosa: I need desperately to put down roots. I mean, a longing for roots, all my life … from my adolescence I longed for better roots than I had [she describes her background as nomadic, ‘gypsy-Jewish’] C: Roots – meaning? Rosa: Oh, roots would mean to me hollyhocks in an English country garden. I wanted that thing of patchwork quilts and three-legged stools and hollyhocks – it means a lot to me

The previous inhabitants – in particular, the ghost – reinforce this ideal through particular rural domestic pursuits and aesthetics, adding ‘depth’ and authenticity to this project: C: Would you prefer [the haunting] to stop? Rosa: [emphatic, shocked] No! Oh no, I think I prefer it to go on. Oh yes. Oh definitely C: What’s the investment? Rosa: Ah! I’d love it to go on [pause]. It adds depth. To my life. My place. To my attachment to my own home. It adds depth

The memory of uncanny events, repeatedly retold over time to form shared narratives, also reinforces social relationships between living inhabitants. In the upper maisonette, the three friends spent much of the group interview reminiscing

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about past houses and homes they had known – holiday houses, family homes, rented accommodation. The recall of strange and uncanny events served to sharpen their memories and reinforce their friendship. The haunted home becomes an extended motif of shared experience: Pam: We go back a long way, don’t we? Christine: We’ve done all these things

For perhaps a majority of participants, particularly those who have lived in their homes for a relatively long time, there is a sense of developing belonging through narratives of past social or familial events, despite their homes being haunted. The social dynamic between participants, their friends, family, colleagues and neighbours, is played out or enhanced in the act of telling the ghost stories; shared memories of events enhance or develop relationships, although contested interpretations of events also expose or sharpen divides. In general, people seemed to enjoy this aspect of living in a haunted home, particularly when relating experiences in a family or friendship group, where the role in reinforcing relationships through recalling shared experience is particularly marked; perhaps not experiencing events alone also allows people to feel more confident and courageous. In the weaver’s cottage, the memory of a particularly dramatic uncanny event is raked over by Hilma and Adam, who enact an old argument about the event, recalling it in great detail although it had occurred many years before. The dynamic between the couple was reinforced as they took up their habitual stance. However lacking in meaning itself, the event is conferred meaning for becoming part of their shared past in the house. They disagree about what happened – one heard a loud, urgent whisper, the other heard someone ask a question; one heard a rustling skirt, the other didn’t. They also disagree about the cause – one is bemused by it but disputes the other’s belief in the supernatural. Their shared history of the event is contested, and this sharpens their separate memories, repeated in defence of their particular positions. This is an example of how the sensory experience is ‘made sense’ of over time, is given a coherent narrative – even in its very openness and uncertainty – and this becomes part of the enactment of their own relationship. In Wiltshire, Rosa guided me through photographs showing the physical changes she had made to her cottage in the past; these were as much of people as of rooms: Rosa: [Showing photos] Um, me and me [laughs]. My son helped at times. And kids coming and going. It needed to be gutted almost … There’s my little girls, who were that age at the time. And did this, did that … There’s my son sanding the beam, a very old beam, it goes right through the two cottages. And that’s B the builder who first saw Annie the ghost. And look at what they did

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But elsewhere, a sense of attachment to home is less celebratory for Dora in Liverpool, who describes how her own memories are contained within the home and stop her from moving on, even though she doesn’t like the rundown inner city neighbourhood she lives in, and that many of her memories involve a divorce from her husband and illness: Dora: As the years went by I used to think, ‘Oh, I’d like to move. I’d like to move’. But there’s something keeping me here. I don’t know why. I would like to – have a complete change. And then you think, ‘Well, all my memories are in the house, so there’s something keeping me here too’. If I could pick the house up and move it somewhere in the country where I wanted it to be, I’d be fine

Her memories are ‘in’ the house, shackling her; she can’t leave her own past behind. Memory is given agency – it is the ‘something keeping me here’. But, again, it is not the fact that the house is haunted that matters; the uncanny events didn’t figure in this personal narrative. Dora feels haunted by her own past in the house, which grants an identity she can’t let go of. But elsewhere, participants’ personal memories of previous homes seem to influence the way they relate to their current ones. Karen in the maisonette carries with her an ideal of home which symbolises qualities lacking in her childhood home in Ireland, the latter which she describes as an uncivilized and chaotic place. It is previous inhabitants who allow these ideal qualities to emerge: Karen: From the minute I walked in here there was a really nice feeling, of elegant living or something. I just have this sense that people lived here in a civilised way, of people living harmoniously [pause]. That’s suggestive of the way I’d like to live, I think. Which is calm and orderly and civilised … When I go back to my [childhood] house … a sort of echo of misery for me can never leave that house. And I just feel that in some houses, flats, homes, that there’s – that something does reverberate through time. I can accept that that’s like leaving a footprint … There is an energetic resonance, is how I feel … I don’t think of it in terms of how I will shape the character, for the future. But obviously if I believe that other people leave their resonance, then obviously I believe that mine will be left

Re-imagining Domesticity Karen suggests that influences, in the form of ‘energetic resonances’ continue through generations of inhabitants – a similar sense of affects and emotions mingling and reverberating long after people die that was suggested to explain atmospheres. But there is a more specific way in which the past echoes through the present. As described, many uncanny events seem to ape repeated domestic routines. Whereas a calm or positive atmosphere is sometimes assumed to suggest

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the contentment of previous domestic lives, at times uncanny events are also interpreted in terms of the familial value or tone ascribed to past inhabitants’ lives. An example of this is the corner of the living room in the house on the Wirral, where, as described, pleasant smells emanate in the evening. For Mia, these conjure an imagined scenario of a contented family at rest after a day’s work: Mia: You see, this is my favourite place. I love to read there [a chair in the corner where the smells occur]. And there is this [side] light. So I sit here very often in the evenings. Then, so I have the same experience very often because I used to sit there very much C: Does it make you feel differently about that space? Mia: Maybe it’s only nice to know, ok – perhaps they have had a – rather nice life. [Pause] Whoever has been here before, or have been here before. [With a warm, nostalgic smile] They are – I think it’s very cosy if they are sitting here and drinking coffee and the men are smoking pipes. Nothing to worry about

Again there is a sense of continuity, of shared domesticity, here as an ideal of family contentment, even if the activities differ in content. Mia’s sense of this domestic routine of the past is reinforced by a material clue, which, for her, explains at least one of the smells she experiences – pipe smoke. The previous owners dug deep into the living room during repair work and discovered some small pipes: Mia: You know those white porcelain pipes that were sometimes fashionable in the nineteenth century … I never thought about these pipes when I felt this smell thing. But now I can make a connection

There are historical facts to back up an uncanny event: the house has revealed something of itself, reinforcing the imagined scene. In Mia’s account, the smells are associated with her own favourite spot in the living room, which reinforces the pleasure she has in making the connection with the imagined previous family. But it is unclear whether Mia believes she is somehow influenced to sit in that spot to read. Perhaps she imagines this cosiness as somehow emanating from its past use; or perhaps she imagines this as a cosy space for previous inhabitants, given this is her own experience of it. Elsewhere, the influence of the past is more overt. Christine in the maisonette recalls a strange experience: Christine: And we were laughing and laughing, making these Christmas puddings. We were having such fun, we were reminiscing about this, that and the other thing. And I remember thinking: ‘Why are we doing–’ … And as we were doing it, she kept saying, ‘Why are we doing this?’

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Her knowledge, or speculation, about the previous domestic ritual of making Christmas puddings – the time of month and of day – suggested to Christine and her friend that they had been strangely compelled to repeat the annual event, that it was ‘what we were supposed to do’. It is interesting that the implied connection here is with the servants of the house, who made the puddings after doing the ‘housework’; perhaps the connection is reinforced by being the same class background or at least the same gender. Continuities at times seem to go the other way, as the ghosts appear to engage approvingly with domestic sights they would recognise from their own day. In the Wiltshire cottage, the ghost of Annie has been seen separately by a builder and a friend, always wearing an apron and enjoying the view of the garden or the jams that Rosa had made: Rosa: [The builder] saw – this is the kitchen sink that looks out down the back – and he saw this tiny little lady, at the kitchen sink, with a – they both said the exact same thing – a criss-cross apron at the back, you know, an apron criss-crossed over the back … There’s the study window sill, looking out at the back … She was sort of looking at the jams, like that. And so it’s the same way as looking out down the – big back garden

There is a continuity of pleasurable domesticity here – Rosa makes jams, enjoys looking out over her back garden. This is reinforced by her knowledge of the past: ‘She was a fruit picker. Perhaps that’s why she liked the different colours of the jams.’

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Past-in-Present This sense of domestic repetitions, connections, and re-imaginings – and, of course, the continuing presence of the ghosts themselves – suggest a set of complex temporalities, reinforcing the idea of the haunted home as a holding vessel which accumulates content, character, agency, patterns of movement, relationships, habits and engagements. As well as offering a wider canvas of space and possibility to reflect on senses of connection and belonging to place, the presence of ghosts also grants participants leeway to imagine their perception of ‘time’ more creatively. There is a belief, for example, that the ghosts’ own sense of time is not linear. But despite a belief in their ‘return’, the suggestion that ghosts might be traumatised – a very common notion in the literature (Dawson, 2005) – came up surprisingly little in the interviews: C: Do ghosts have a concept of time? Christine [maisonette]: No. I don’t think there’s any sense of time. I wouldn’t imagine there is. I think a lot of it could be ritual as well. Things that have happened at a certain time. And the ritual continues. But I think, yeah, they wouldn’t have the sense of ‘Oh next week, I want to do this’, or ‘last week I did that’, or whatever Pam: The old mental hospitals I think are cram-bam full of ghosts. I’m really sure of that. Of course, the reality of the situation is creepy enough – so I don’t know where it overlaps – and people are living hardly in reality anyway. Maybe it’s their ghost lives, they are half in the world and half not

The belief in co-existing non-linear forms of time is a common motif; participants don’t seem to have difficulty accepting that different temporalities might be active simultaneously. Some knowingly refer to theories of time. Rosa in Wiltshire, for example, is open to the Jungian notion of the ‘collective unconscious’ which, she explains, is ‘beyond time’. Other suggestions include time loops and imprints: Rosa: I don’t think she [Annie the ghost] chooses [to appear or not to appear]. It’s a time thing, a loop. A very strong impression is made … I believe if it happens she’s also going into a time loop …

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Rachel [Wales]: I can buy that somehow we’re connecting with something. I don’t know how it works. But I can buy it C: When you say, ‘Connecting with something’? Rachel: I don’t know. Something from the past maybe … Magnus [Bristol]: It’s a question of time, isn’t it? I mean – I’m interested in the idea of people leaving imprints, which can be – ghosts C: Imprints on places? Magnus: Imprints on places.. There’s also a question of time slips

But the past isn’t just a residue, it is part of a collective mesh of energies, continuously being added to and incorporated with what has gone before in a lineage going forwards as well as backwards. As a dynamic container of different kinds of memories, the haunted home dramatically illustrates this: Ben [caretaker]: The house is the sum of many parts. It’s the people as well. Its ghosts, its history, the memories. I want to add to that. I don’t know if what will be added are more ghosts or more historical moments. History is a constant line through time. The memories, the energy of the ghosts, these are little snapshots … Everything is not lost, it’s all recorded somewhere, and it is adding to the energy of the house and is accessible

Ben becomes part of the temporal continuum, of the accumulation that makes the house what it is. This continuum has parts that cannot be easily separated – all creating the house’s distinct ‘energy’ and character; nonetheless, he feels the weight of the house’s charismatic and important history bearing down on the present: Ben: It’s very interesting historically. Lord mayors have lived here, masters of the royal mint, King Charles II, Samuel Pepys. Wesley preached here. Cromwellian leaders had it before Charles II. Back and forwards between the two sides. The house has never belonged to the one family. It’s been fought over. There have been arguments to gain possession of this house. Words have been written [about it]. A countess feared the house would fall down because of the weight of books

The weight of words written about the house, ideas which reinforce its historical myth, threaten at one point to destroy it. The house itself does not just contain its own history but stands for something bigger, a part of the history of London, a ‘witness’ on the city:

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Ben: This house has been here a long time. Since the seventeenth century. It is like a witness, an eye on London, to the history … There have been great moments here. The house becomes a kind of time capsule, like a record

Such an illustrious past is intimidating, but it also gives Ben a sense that a foothold is possible because the house has never been owned or monopolised by one family; there is room for different forms of ownership, attachment and commitment. When he calls on a benign historical figure from the house’s past to help him fight off a ‘demon’, he is conscious that he is utilising his knowledge of the house’s public history in a very personal, intimate way: Ben: I sort of thought of A [a famous seventeenth-century woman] because she was the first, the most influential – well, one of the most influential people that has lived here

Past-in-Past In this way, Ben’s house is both about and from the past, both past-in-present, and past-in-past. A non-linear sense of time does not preclude a belief in a more conventional sense of the past as something behind us, as part of a linear, chronological time moving forwards in straight motions: Ben [caretaker]: Maybe they [the ghosts] can transcend time, they can visit different times, but are somehow from their own time as well

The old objects and material fixtures and fittings of many homes remind people of this double sense of ghosts of their own and in current time. Susan in Ipswich believes that the former (deceased) inhabitants of her home continue to be active, and yet is aware of material reminders of their own, very particular, past in the house. There is a poignant image of the elderly couple painting around furniture they are too weak to move: Susan: They’d obviously polished the floorboards at some time, and stained the floorboards, but done it round the furniture. Because when we lifted the carpet up, to get rid of it … they were quite elderly, what they’d done was literally just paint around it

The very particular domestic routines and habits of the couple’s past also influence Susan’s sense of their presence as ghosts because there are clues left by the material remnants of their lives; the couple’s son had not cleared the house of their possessions when he first put the house on sale. So when Susan interprets an experience of seeing the vague ‘outline’ of a human form near a back bedroom,

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she assumes that this is the wife not the husband partly because this bedroom contained a wardrobe full of women’s clothes when she first viewed the house: Susan: I’ve found out since that the back bedroom – when we came to view the house, that had one of these chaise lounges, and all her clothes were in the wardrobe in the back room … all her clothes were still hanging up in the small back bedroom

There is an assumption that the back room was ‘her’ space, where she had her personal belongings and got dressed. Susan intuits from this the woman’s domestic routine. The past as chronological history seems, for some, a form a rational bedrock from which to imagine the world otherwise; but there also appears to be a need to keep the past at bay, to maintain its separation with the present. A focus on historical facts is one way of downplaying the possibility of active agents from the past continuing to be present. The historical past of the home becomes, instead, a tantalising place of difference, suggested in particular by imagining the physical hardships of previous eras: Hilma [weaver’s cottage]: Imagine how dusty it would have been, and how bad for the babies especially … They cleaned the wool, they carded it, they spun it. It must have been full of dust Adam: They used to have to hawk the wool for ten, fifteen miles on donkeys Hilma: If they had donkeys … Rosa [Wiltshire]: And she lived alone. With no gas, water, electricity

Some participants have carried out detailed research into the history of their homes (and some their ghosts), although there is often a sense of defeatism: Daniel [Wales]: It isn’t a place with a history of that – sort … Nobody else knows anything about anything … C: Did you ever wonder who the footsteps belonged to and look into the history of the house – to try to – make some kind of connection? Magnus [Bristol]: Well, I suppose I haven’t. I didn’t think it was possible to be sure, really

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But some participants seem reluctant to find out about the history of their home which might shed light on their ghosts, preferring not to know who they are. People’s different relationships to historical knowledge suggest the varying ways in which they gain a sense of belonging to their homes: for some, this involves gaining more information; for others, about keeping things vague. In Liverpool, Dora hints she prefers to believe the land underneath her modern house was not a graveyard: C: You said on the phone there might have been a graveyard here? Dora: Yeah. [But] someone who’s lived in the area a lot longer than me, when she was a child, she said it wasn’t. She said there wasn’t a graveyard C: So who said that it was? Dora: Yeah, a few people have said to me, just people locally have said to me, that was a graveyard. This girl, she said, ‘No’. She said: ‘I was born around that area. That was never a graveyard’. So I don’t know. It might not be what was before this house, but what was before that again, because it’s hundreds of years since it was a deer park

Dora prefers the explanation of one person – to whom she confers authority because of her long association with the area – rather than of others. Perhaps this is because of the rather sinister association in the popular media between graveyards ‘disrupted’ to build housing estates, echoing a common motif. Tobe Hooper’s 1982 film, Poltergeist, for example, is based around what happens when a property development is built on top of a graveyard, the corpses left under the ground – part of a wave of cult horror films during this period (Kellner, 1995). Dora prefers a vague rather than specific explanation, despite her keen interest in local history. In the North London maisonette, Pam is reluctant to hear about the history of the house – even though there is the possibility to find out from a third party – because this might make her own relationship with her home less personal: C: Has the experience made you want to look into the local history? Pam: It’s amazing. I haven’t. I’m almost quite scared to. I know that the bloke that owns the basement flat, Mr Jones, he’s been attached to this house a long time – and he knows a lot of the recent history. Somehow I want my experience of this house to be – personal. I don’t want any other – I don’t want just to rely on Jones – I don’t like Jones, the bloke who knows about this house. I don’t really like him. And I don’t want to be dependent on his interpretation

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Change Versus Continuity As the above examples suggest, the relationship between linear and non-linear senses of time, between the past-in-present and the past-in-past, sometimes needs to be negotiated. The deep attachment to place, and the way the past is embroiled in the haunted home, sometimes suggest something more troubling – the possibility that the past, the home and/or its ghosts – might need to be appeased, or that the current inhabitants need to be accepted, earn their place. There is a belief that this will only happen over time, the proof of which is either that uncanny events have become more intense, or conversely that they have stopped altogether. So, for example, for Hilma in the weaver’s cottage, living in a haunted home has added ‘another dimension’, but she interprets the fact that the events seem to have stopped as a sign she has been ‘accepted’ in the house: Hilma: Well, it’s different – of course. It’s got another dimension to it. It’s good. It’s good [pause]. Because it hasn’t happened again. We are obviously accepted

Magnus in Bristol, who experiences more dramatic events as time goes on, believes that a house ‘reveals its secrets’ over time: Magnus: Perhaps if you live in a house longer, it’s more inclined to reveal its secrets to you. It probably reveals its secrets to some people and not others C: And do you think the house does hold secrets? Magnus: May have! C: But not secrets you – discover? Magnus: It’s more abstract, yes

For both, but for opposite reasons, there is a belief in a simple equation: the amount of time spent in a home denotes the level of attachment to it, the level of legitimate belonging. The problem is, as Pam in the maisonette points out, current inhabitants can never be as attached to their home for as long as the ghosts; the ghosts will always have the greater claim and participants afford them status for having this longer attachment than them: ‘[The ghosts] are strangers to me, but they are not strangers to the house.’ Ben the caretaker feels he has to earn his place and constantly claim his right to be part of the house’s history: Ben: At first I felt – not an imposter – but that I had to earn my place here. I felt I should earn my keep by adding myself and my commitment, being honourable, a positive energy for the house, a positive force … It was almost like testing

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myself to see whether I was accepted in the house – whether I was part of the house, in the history … I’m carrying the baton of history. I’m part of the line … I’m part of the house

But he is conscious of the weight of the house’s own complex agency. He wants to make his mark as the house’s new guardian, but this, he admits, is an ongoing and intense negotiation. At times the co-habitation seems to be on a knife-edge, taking up all of his energy and will; at others, he talks emotionally about contributing to the house’s energies rather than fighting them. It is particularly important for him to feel ‘accepted’ by the house, as described by the event in which he felt ‘saved’ by a female ghost. He interprets this event like a rite of passage (‘I felt I had been tested’). He is conscious that the house contains ‘demons’; these are ill-defined, but are characterised as having made home in the house for a long time and, related, not accepting his right to live in the house. Thus he has to ‘stand up’ to these presences, which is also about standing up to the house’s history, which is what makes it what it is: Ben: I’m standing up for myself as I walk through the house at night … Striding out through the house without fear, feeling that I’m not going to be pushed around [laughs]. If I got nervous in the house, I’m lost to the house. I’m out, I’m gone. I have to walk the house in a way like – the beacon, like the energy of the house. I’m holding the baton. I say what goes.. I have to stand up to the history C: And does it become natural – to stand up for yourself? Ben: No, I need to conjure up energy. Sometimes I feel a bit low, so I – I know that that may be the – weak point. That may be a moment when my guard is down, that things may happen. All these historical figures who might not want me here, you know … And I have to fight that, you know. It’s almost like fighting the fear … It’s not to the general public. It’s to the house itself. I have to stand that, walk like that. In my privacy. It’s not a public display. It’s a private charge, force, I have to hold up

The compensation is the privilege of enjoying the house and its grounds in its privacy, as described. There is a lot at stake for him personally. The house is a home and a job, and a life-line. He had been down on his luck, living in ‘one room with a hole in the roof’. He had been made redundant, suffered a relationship breakup, been ‘almost on the street’. He cried when offered the job: a turning point in his life. The house is a lynchpin, initiating deep changes within him. He no longer ‘hides’ from life, and revels in being at the centre of a community: Ben: I’ve changed as a person. I’ve developed. I’ve grown … I’ve turned into a different person. If you’re engaged with life a lot, are positive and undefended, and always show your face, not hide away from the world, then you will get

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Ben’s ‘public’ face is effective and positive, one which connects to others. The more complex, private connection he feels with this historical, charismatic house – with its pasts in the present – has challenged him to ‘stand his ground’, to justify his sense of place, his contribution to the house’s history. There is a complex and symbiotic relationship between the public and private, but it is not without its tensions. The benefits of co-habitation come at a price he is willing to pay. To feel accepted as the house’s guardian, Ben also has to accept and respect the house’s good and bad aspects: Ben: I don’t want the ghosts to leave. Whenever people come in – New Age people who’ve come in and tried to cast out spirits and want to clean the history, clean the energy up in the history – try to clean, clear, clear out, clear up the place of its energy, of maybe its dynamics, you know. I just don’t like that. Because I think they’re erasing some of the past which is important to the house. I don’t want to take away from the house anything of that, because I respect it. Whether it’s good or bad, whether it’s dangerous or it’s a horror – I’m just a part of that, of time, you know. And I’m good and bad, everyone has their good sides and bad sides. But I don’t want to make everyone, I don’t want to make everything clean and sweet and happy. I’m not interested in that. I’m interested in life. The capacity of life is not just good, and that’s what makes it [what it is]

Many ghosts are assumed to harbour a sense of ownership of their home: some uncanny events are interpreted as showing displeasure about change, or else are a reaction to the ‘disturbance’ of the house’s fabric, a rupture to its body, which in some accounts is deemed to release memories contained from its past. How people deal with this differs. For many, it is about trying to negotiate ownership whilst respecting the ‘feelings’ of the home’s past and its ghosts. The different ways in which people retain their right to, and sense of, ownership, is explored in more detail in Part II. For present purposes, these assumptions suggest the continuing ‘presence’ of the past in the haunted home as a key motif. Claims to ownership are temporal ones, signalling a tension or interplay between continuity and change within the home. For many participants the ghosts might pose a challenge to their own habitation whilst simultaneously positively reinforcing a wider sense of attachment. This relationship between continuity and change has, then, a very material basis: it is about physical changes to the fabric of the home, placing one’s ‘mark’. Although most carry on regardless, a few participants feel inhibited about making changes, such as Pam, the owner of the maisonette: Pam: [Walks into bathroom] You have the sense it’s really old, and I don’t want to interfere with it really. I mean, like, obviously, it’s totally undone up, but it’s

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very old, the tiles, I really like – they are genuinely ancient [laughs] – and I like that. And the basin is cracked, and you just think, ‘Well, you know, haven’t you got round to replacing it yet?’ But I actually really like the oldness of it C: Are you attracted to old things in general? Pam: I do feel comfortable with old things. And I don’t like disrupting things. You know, I have grand ideas about, I’m going to do this, I’m going to change things, but actually when it comes to it, I hate to rip, rip, rip up! And [pulls a face]. And I also wonder how I’m fearful of changing things. Getting it wrong, actually [pause]. Making a mistake. And, er, destroying something that – has value and has history

In many cases, building work is believed to herald the start of uncanny events. This is construed in different ways by participants. Susan in Ipswich describes how children played with old curtains still hanging up when she first moved into the house. The viscerality of the home’s crumbling past becoming part of a playful, disruptive, fascination: Susan: [Show’s photograph] That’s the bigger back bedroom, with the curtains. And every time you touched them, they shredded. It was so old. My cousin came round to help us do something, and he brought his two children, and they had great delight putting their fingers through the curtains

She is at pains to describe how she has put her own mark on the house, claimed ownership. For her, this home is significant because it is her first move beyond her parents’ house. Through making it her own, she creates her new independent life; the fact that it is her boyfriend, a builder, who is carrying out the renovation work reinforces the symbolic importance of this. Susan believes the previous owners check in to see what is happening, but prefers a positive interpretation. She imbues the ghosts with a kindly empathy, accepting changes to the house with open-minded curiosity, as well as accepting differences in taste. The latter is important because Susan owns cats but has been told from a neighbour that the previous owners, the ghosts, hated cats. In her narrative there is no overt tension between continuity and change, but there is subtle unease: Susan [Ipswich]: She’s [the female ghost’s] probably going to be about a lot if she’s going to be, because after Christmas we’re starting on the two back bedrooms … This year obviously we started on the kitchen, and they’ve got more active again C: You made a little joke about how you hope they’ll like the changes that you make –

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C: Also the fact that they seem to appear more when there’s work being done. What do you make of that? Susan: I just think they – are curious to what is going on. If they’ve lived there and they suddenly think: ‘Oh! Something’s happening there, something’s changing’ – C: Would they be concerned? Susan: I don’t know. I would think, I would hope, that they would think, ‘Oh, they’re updating or doing what they want to do there’. You know, like they did, perhaps. You know? They’ve changed things obviously from when probably the house was built, like the floorboards, or a bit of decoration, and things. And that’s all going to be changed. And I just think, hope, they’re fine with what we’ve done. And understand it

There is a tussle between what she ‘thinks’ or knows, and what she ‘hopes’, suggesting lingering doubts. Perhaps for this reason keeping a record becomes more important. She may have hated the old wallpaper and rushed to strip it off, but she keeps a sample of it in a scrapbook. The scrapbook acts as a memory of the process of change, reinforcing Susan’s ownership whilst at the same time memorialising and revelling in the house’s previous materiality. The wallpaper becomes a scrap standing in for the whole, from a different time, now out of place. The past, in this way, is contained and rendered powerless, whilst also being respected and kept alive. This way she appeases the old house gods – the ghosts who chose the wallpaper, the house itself. But she reveals more respect for the past and more concern to appease it, in relation to the discovery of a little plastic cat on a window sill. Her mother had told her of a superstition that anything found left by previous owners mustn’t be removed from the house: Susan: There’s the little cat, there. I tend to leave it there C: Is that exactly the place where you found it? Susan: Yes

Given the previous inhabitants dislike of cats, it is a strange artefact to find. And although Susan doesn’t say so overtly, perhaps the fact that Susan keeps cats increases its resonance: a gift from the old owners to the new, and a signal of their acceptance of change through an unobtrusive token of continuity. In Wiltshire there is a similar belief about changes triggering the start of uncanny events, in particular a recurrence of pictures moving on the walls:

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Rosa: Four years ago I had a new greenhouse. The old one was smashed to the ground. [Shows photo] You can see how big it is. Sixteen feet long. And they had a skip. And they were thundering backwards and forwards over the back windows … with the stuff for the skip. And that’s when the pictures started going. And I think she just doesn’t like skips and upheaval and building [work]

Rosa admits the ghost might be concerned about changes, the uncanny events a signal of disapproval: Rosa: Why should it [the paintings] always be on a slant? I just don’t get it. I just sometimes feel that, you know, when I’m out, she goes round, and if she doesn’t like something that’s going on a bit, in the house, she goes round and moves – just brushes the pictures … But what she doesn’t like, I think, is – upheaval. You see, B was there as a builder. And I wasn’t there. My friends [one of whom saw the ghost] were staying, and I wasn’t there. So there would have been a bit of change. I don’t think she likes change … My mum’s talked to her. She said: ‘Anne, don’t worry’ – I think once we came in and the pictures were everywhere – ‘Anne, don’t worry, it’s all right. No one’s going to hurt your house’. My mum said it so nicely. I said: ‘Look at that picture, mummy. You know. It’s ridiculous’. She said: ‘Annie, stop worrying. It’s alright’. It was so sweet. ‘Don’t worry. Nobody’s going to disturb your lovely house’

Rosa comforts herself by her belief that the ghost would like the changes being made – they are in keeping with the house’s past, although again there is room for a hint of doubt between ‘thinking’ and (emphatically) ‘knowing’: Rosa: I don’t think I’d do anything that she wouldn’t like. [Pause] I know I wouldn’t. I know I wouldn’t. You see, I know that for a fact. Ah. Now I’m sounding very flaky! No, it’s true though. She would be pleased. Because these four windows I’m having rat’s tail handles, you know, and proper casements. None of your plastic. I think she’ll like it

Change is also recast as respect for the house, granting it a new lease of life whilst returning it to a ‘pristine’ state: Rosa: [showing photo] This was three hundred years old and in a bad way. And then this is all lovely when it’s all completely pristine and tip top

The ghost, ‘Annie’, is given particular status because of the longevity of her attachment to her home: she was born and lived in the house for nearly 90 years, for much of the time head of the household. There is a further tension between continuity and change. Rosa’s historical research indicates that the ghost was the last in a very long family line (even a local lane is named after the family). Annie died alone and childless, having outlived her many siblings. There is a severing of

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continuity at the point of her death, which suggests that Annie, as a ghost, demands that her memory – and that of her family – is kept alive; at least that becoming a ghost is an act of continuity, defiance against the rupture of new ownership. In the weaver’s cottage, there is also an assumption that the ghosts are previous inhabitants, who are also disturbed by material change. Even avowed sceptic Adam slipped this suggestion into the conversation on a couple of occasions: Adam: This house was sort of renovated, what – three, four years before we came into it. So I suspect that any thing or any body or any – had been disturbed before we arrived. If you like. If these things exist – If the fellow who renovated upset someone, but we were here three years later. So I would have thought after three years it would have settled down

Adam is loathe to offer agency to the ghost – note the uncertainty of the use of ‘thing’ and ‘body’, and the slippage between ‘someone’ and ‘it’. But what Adam omits to mention here is that they did carry out some work early on, which is also when they experienced uncanny events. Again, there is oscillation between events as complaints and a more accepting interpretation: Hilma: Oh, they just came to check on us Adam: But it’s been settled for 20 years Hilma: Touch wood C: So it’s like someone saying – Hilma: Objecting

For Ben the caretaker, changes made to the house – in particular, the creation of a private caretaker’s flat within it – only serve to decrease his sense of ownership, since this is of little consequence to a house that has been altered numerous times over many centuries: Ben: I’m part of the house. Locking the door doesn’t do anything. Alarming the house doesn’t do anything. Locking all the gates. So I’m aware of it all the time C: [The flat is] a sectioned off area, but still part of the house? Ben: In a sense, there’s – through time, the house has changed. The walls have been moved, they have been raised, they have been taken down. Doors have appeared, disappeared, through time. People have walked through doors at one point in history, now they don’t walk through them. Or they would walk still

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through them doors, although they don’t exist anymore. So they actually in this time – in their own time they’re still operating. Yet in an older fabric C: So to separate your section from the rest of the house – Ben: It’s irrelevant. It could be the heart of the house

Here the house itself seems to poke fun at any attempt at privacy, of creating a separate space which leaves the rest of the house intact; the past is always present, and can withstand any change to the house’s fabric, any attempt to carve up the house in different ways. * * * The overwhelming sense of the presence of the past is a motif which threads its way through all the households. Even those living in relatively modern homes assume the ghosts must be previously attached to the space, if not the home then the land it sits on. In two cases, the ghosts are attached to people rather than places, relating to the familial rather than the home’s past, but these are exceptions. In most cases, the past is characterised as something which potentially grants the ghosts, and the home, greater levels of power, ownership and belonging and therefore needs to be negotiated (Miller, 2001). This is, in part, the reason why different ideas of time are often at play simultaneously. If the ghosts somehow come from the past but are active in the present, are both present but also in their own time, this suggests room for a sense of the past as something linear, different to and ‘other’ than now. Despite the linear past being an intrinsically foreign part of the domestic, a central part of its unknowability, it also offers a useful gap, mitigating any greater impact of the ghosts if they were only ever and completely in the present, leaving more space for the current inhabitants. In such a space, there is room to feel confident in making connections and to imagine previous domestic arrangements – usually in a positive light – reinforcing a sense of home as a space which has been carved out, offered as an inheritance, a gift. This also accounts for many of its atmospheres – the ghosts as previous inhabitants have instilled something nourishing, enhancing for the new inhabitants by dint of their own contentedness, positive relationships, elegant living; such atmospheres reinforce specific ideals of home. Home in such a light becomes a place of deep and continuing senses of accumulated belonging and ownership, a pantheistic vision of connection and co-operation, of collective belonging, and of the richness afforded by such encounters. But the past can never be only linear. Its powerful affects are construed differently, offered different values depending on the context and confidence of householders. It is impossible to separate the ghosts, the house’s history, and the experiences and memories of current inhabitants: all have to be accommodated because they collectively make the home what it is. It is a shared space rather than a singular, individual and

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private resting place. The uncanny events become the home’s own memories and experiences; the home becomes a container within which dynamic interactions between time and space take place, where time is bent into multiple shapes, where the past and the memories of the past form a collection of multiple agencies. These are animated and formed through belongings and engagements, whereby the home’s distinctive identity is continually reinforced. Such engagements are, again, imbricated through the physical fabric and processes of home-making; uncanny events are often triggered by building work. Sometimes this plurality of spaces, times and agents is expressed as competition and struggle: some agents may need subduing, appeasing, pacifying, standing up to – in the way Ben the caretaker feels it necessary to acknowledge the collective agents of the past as offering little leeway and requiring a robust stance. At the least, the ghost as previous inhabitant is always more familiar with the home; its relationship with it will always be the longer and its knowledge of it deeper. Despite this, Miller is incorrect to assume a difficulty in ‘making home’ under such circumstances, although the process is clearly an uneasy one for some.

PART II Strategies of Cohabitation

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Chapter 4

Embodying, Domesticating, Gendering the Ghost The figure of a ghost, or uncanny events which suggest a ghost, is central to the narrative of a majority of events described by participants. In the following two chapters I consider in more detail how this ‘other’ is defined or placed in relation to (living) householders, how this self–other relationship plays out within different homes. Although the ghost remains difficult to categorise, participants develop ways in which to reinforce a belief that it is more rather than less similar to themselves, reinforcing Sara Ahmed’s insight that: ‘in the gesture of recognising the one that we do not know, the one that is different from ‘us’, we flesh out the beyond, and give it a face and form’ (Ahmed, 2000b: 3). This may be to reinforce the ghost’s subjectivity, with, as shall be shown, a particular focus on its gender; and, although the agency offered to ghosts is rather limited, there are risks involved in such a strategy. The Ghost as Personhood In Part I, I explored how the uncanny has been situated in a common definition as something ‘not quite but nearly normal’, but found that nearly-normal events do not necessarily create unease. Ahmed’s insight – that we give the other a ‘face and form’ that we recognise – suggests, in fact, a tendency to anthropomorphise, including a desire to seek out the familiar in what is unfamiliar. People, we are told, show an ‘impressive capacity to create humanlike agents – a kind of inferential reproduction – out of those that are clearly nonhuman … (by) attributing characteristics that people intuitively perceive to be uniquely human to nonhuman agents or events’; these include physical and mental features, including the ‘capacity to have conscious awareness, possess explicit intentions, or experience secondary emotions’ (Waytz, Epley and Cacioppo, 2010: 58). Despite a belief that ‘humanness is not a binary quality but a continuum’ and following this, ‘for many agents, their placement on this continuum is … ambiguous’ (60), people anthropomorphise due to a lack of ‘certainty, predictability, or control’, and the ‘overwhelming number of biological, technological, and supernatural agents that people encounter on a daily basis’. A way of attaining understanding of these ‘often-incomprehensible agents’ is to ‘use a very familiar concept (that of the self or other humans) to make these agents and events more comprehensible’ (59).

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Anthropomorphising a ghost is perhaps easier for the fact that it was once human. One assumption running throughout participants’ responses is that ghosts maintain their previous humanlike qualities after death, despite the complex time-spaces they are also perceived to occupy. And when the ghosts were known when alive, such as previous family members, it is not just personalities, but often family dynamics and social relations that continue. But uncanny events differ, and people’s responses to the ghosts require adjustments. At its most simple, seeing a ghost distinctly lends itself to the most clear-cut description of the ghost as a somewhat, or almost, ‘normal’ human person: Susan [Ipswich]: I saw him recently, yeah, when I was in the kitchen … He was a person, yeah. Definitely … Rachel [Wales]: I saw a monk walking.. I just saw a flesh and blood monk … And there was a girl dressed in a long sort of blue cloak. And she was bent down, stroking the cat … I didn’t take any notice of it – I mean I wasn’t thinking ‘spook’. She and the cat – dematerialised, and there’s nowhere she could have gone

More often, however, there is a greater degree of uncertainty. Here Rosa in Wiltshire is aware that the label she gives to her ‘ghost’ is tentative in relation to her personal experience (‘I call her a ghost, but I have never seen her’). But at another point, she uses the words ‘spirit’ and ‘alive’, suggesting she imagines a vivid, active agent (‘I find it almost heartening to know there is a spirit alive in this house’). At times, uncanny ‘beings’ are positioned as less than human, and at other times, more than human. For some, ghosts are automatically conferred supernatural, or ‘spiritual’ powers. These can be protective, or threatening. Here Karen and Pam in the maisonette agree: Karen: I suppose, if there really are ghosts here, then even if I talked about them a hundred miles away they would hear me anyway Pam: Yes, I share that Karen: Spiritually, they would hear me wherever

But Pam is rather uncertain about how to categorise the ghosts, calling them at one point: ‘The people who live here’, and at another: ‘The people, spirits, whatever.’ She rejects the term ‘ghost’, because although they are not quite ‘real, fleshy people’ they seem rather ‘ordinary’. What ‘ghost’ implies to her is something culturally

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specific – something both ‘silly’ and also strange. Above all, she wants to cultivate their normality as a way of maintaining them as part of the ordinary domestic: Pam: I’ll dodge around the word ‘ghost’, because I find it a bit, a bit silly C: Why is that? Pam: Well, it sounds so mysterious – when I don’t think they’re very mysterious. But then obviously they’re not strong, real, fleshy – people … I actually do feel a very ordinary presence of those ghosts. And it is extremely ordinary. It doesn’t seem unusual at all that people should be living here

Pam is not alone in her struggle to articulate a definition of ‘ghost’, and this also involves a difficulty in thinking beyond the idea of the human. It is not easy to talk of things which exceed normal categories; the tendency is to make them even more ordinary. Perhaps this helps to maintain an ‘ordinary’ response to them, an affected nonchalance (Pam goes on to say: ‘I’m hardly curious about them’). Elsewhere, in an old castle tower in a Cornish village, I asked the gardener if he believed the house contained ghosts. He corrected me: ‘They are not ghosts, they are spirits. I don’t know what ghosts are. This place is full of spirit energy – healing energy. You’ll feel it if you’re sensitive to it.’ But whether the ghosts are given more-than or less-than human characteristics (or the category ‘ghost’ is rejected in favour of ‘spirit’, with its religious or New Age connotations) – in most cases it is human beingness which remains a central benchmark of definition. As described, the gap between what is normal and what is not can be tantalisingly narrow. Ghosts can be like humans, or as if they are still alive; participants keenly sense a difference, but they don’t quite know, or can’t articulate, what it is. The drive in most cases is to define the ghost as something as ‘normal’ as possible – as a person rather than an unknown ‘other’ – and this requires that the ‘other’ becomes more like the ‘self’, thus to assume the ghost is more familiar than strange. As described, ghosts can appear as ‘flesh and blood’, but most events are auditory – footsteps or vocalisations such as whispers and name-calling; these might still suggest a human source. But even indistinct events are sometimes explained in such terms. How are such ‘others’ which are not ‘us’ defined or described? In many interpretations, the desire to anthropomorphise must be checked because agents that are ‘capable of judgment, intention, and feeling are also capable of directing their judgment, intentions, and feelings toward us, and therefore become agents of social influence’ (Waytz, Epley and Cacioppo, 2010:60). In what follows, I describe two contrasting responses: a household where the person of the ghost is taken for granted, and one where personhood is denied. In the first example, what is important is that the ghosts, although different to the householders in many ways, share a similar attitude. In the second, the possibility of agency is dealt with by denying the ghosts certain features which might render them uncomfortably too human.

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The Ghosts Are Not Orthodox In the North London upper maisonette, the ghosts are assumed to be like humans. Three ghosts are connected by family relationship – a mother, father and daughter: a social dynamic paralleling that of the three living householders, who talk about the ghosts as if they were alive. A striking aspect of Christine’s description of the ghosts is the level of detail she is able to offer, as a ‘sensitive’ who has had many supernatural experiences. She situates the ghosts in their historical time, describing their dress as of their age, trade and cultural group, with the men dressed as tailors. As explored in Chapter 3, she also assumes that the ghosts are simultaneously present in the here and now. There is a continuity of cultural and social relationship; the ghost’s post-death personhoods are defined by the circumstances of their lives. Their central characteristic is being of Jewish heritage. The clues to this are three-fold: the householders know from the neighbour in the basement flat that the house has been a ‘Jewish’ house; more generally, that the neighbourhood is ‘Jewish’, more so at the time the ghosts are assumed to have lived in the house, during the early twentieth century. Lastly, there is material evidence in the form of mazuzot, encased Jewish prayers nailed onto doorframes, some of which remain. But if the ghosts are conventionally ‘constructed’ to fit their appropriate social context, there is a striking addition to the narrative which suggests a strategic move to limit difference. The ‘otherness’ that matters is not the fact that they are ghosts, from a different era and culture, or of a different religion to the householders. Nor does it seem to matter that the ghost family conforms to the conventional heteronormative type, in contrast to the participants (two of whom define themselves as bisexual). What matters is the attitude towards difference assumed for the ghosts themselves, how accepting of difference they might be. The way participants reveal this is to fixate on the form the ghosts’ Jewishness takes. The critical issue is the level of the ghosts’ religious observance, in particular, how far they were/are orthodox Jews. The participants are adamant that they are not orthodox, suggesting a desire to share cultural and social values, at least enough to allow householders and ghosts to co-habit harmoniously. This is particularly important because participants’ modern, independent lives and liberal beliefs might place them at loggerheads with the assumed ‘repressive’ intolerance of traditional religion: Karen: They are not orthodox. Even though I know I don’t know – I’m absolutely sure … Pam: I think they are not orthodox. I wouldn’t want to be living in an orthodox house! It just seems repressive and dreadful

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Difference is only allowed within certain bounds. The level of ‘otherness’ must not pose a threat to the status quo of the co-habitation; the current inhabitants do not want to feel judged by the ghosts. The humanlike agents that make up the ghosts are thus, to an extent, denied a level of agency to be themselves because they have to conform to certain ‘rules’ of belief and attitude imposed by others. The Ghosts Don’t Feel A more determined limitation on agency is at play in Wales, where the ghosts are denied feelings. This is despite three ghosts having been seen, and their immaterial bodies thus ‘fleshed out’ in the most straight-forward interpretation; eye contact is even, unusually, made with one. But the narrative insists that no real engagement is possible. Rachel strips them of any human characteristics which might cause them to infringe on the ‘private’ spaces of home; the ghosts are denied their own emotional interiority. I ask Rachel about her relationship to privacy in a home full of ghosts. She reacts flippantly at first, with a joke: Rachel: Oh well, they’ve seen it all before, haven’t they! [Laughs] C: Some people feel they have to – distance themselves a bit from whatever is – it’s their home, their private space Rachel: Hey, that would be a good one for fending my mother off. Because when we had a parrot, we had it in the bathroom. And she used to put a towel over it when she went to the bathroom! [Laughs] I’ll say, ‘Mum, the spooks might be watching you!’ [Pause] It has never occurred to me. Because I don’t sort of think of them quite on that – really think of them, not really like that. I don’t really think of them as people [emphatic pause]. They are spooks. And they’re sort of like – well, I don’t think of them as human beings. Like, maybe like – pets? [Pause. She smiles in a defeated way] – Robots. Or something. They’re not human beings. With feelings. [Pause] No, I don’t think about them on that sort of level … No. I wouldn’t mind if the cat walked into the bathroom. Or the spider sitting there, and I’m in the altogether. That wouldn’t worry me. And so, I think, that’s the same. It would be on that sort of level I should think … Although I talk about them as if they were human beings, I don’t think of them as human beings

The ghosts don’t ‘feel’ so you can be in the bathroom or naked and wouldn’t feel ‘watched’ in the sense of something responding like you might. So the focus here is on difference not as something which creates fear but which allows for personal space. The otherness, the difference, is something diminished – the ghost becomes like an animal, a parrot, spider, cat: something assumed to have limited emotional vocabulary, that doesn’t pose a threat because it is a less-than human thing but no more stranger than a domestic pet. This is a striking belittlement of

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something unpredictable, of ‘human’ appearance, and of unknown cause: ghosts are domesticated. They find themselves compared to, and placed within, the very ordinary and very familiar. By denying them humanness, Rachel is containing their potentially uncanny aspects, maintaining her privacy. Naming and Humour The above examples suggest ways in which ghosts are ascribed personhoods, and how this is limited. There are different strategic responses to co-habiting with ‘others’, suggesting that, in many cases, there is a certain leeway to interpret ghost identity in ways which suit inhabitants, in particular by containing agency or modifying difference – what might be called, as suggested above, a way of domesticating the ghost. Other ways of doing this include humour and naming. The act of naming is part of the way we categorize things, but requires that we decide there ‘really is a phenomenon of sufficient distinctness and stability to warrant giving it a name’ (Danziger, 1997: 6). This application of naming might imply giving a phenomenon such as a ghost more definition and therefore more power. But, arguably, naming the ghost also takes away its mystery, which accounts for much of this potential power. The way naming takes place becomes key particularly, if by doing so, the ghost can be infantilised or, in the case of a male ghost, emasculated. Similarly, humour appears to be part of people’s strategies for dealing with ghosts. Things that are funny, we are told, are ‘incongruous, surprising, peculiar, unusual, or different from what we normally expect’ (Martin, 2007: 63) – a list which is easily applicable to a ghost. But other ideas about humour also might fit. In particular, participants might use it as a defence mechanism, in line with Sigmund Freud’s belief that humour ‘enables us to protect ourselves from painful emotions associated with adverse circumstances’ (49), of ‘maintaining our self-esteem and mental sanity in the face of adversity’ (55). Further useful concepts include humour as an ‘emotional anaesthesia’, whereby we can ‘avoid feeling too much sympathy for others, which might otherwise overwhelm us’. Most of these theories suggest some form of deflection, in that by limiting ghosts’ capacity for agency, including their ability to feel, witnesses must also limit their own emotional response to them; if this is not obviously possible, to maintain a lightheartedness in response, to ‘make light of’ the ghosts as part of a more general attempt to limit agency. In the Welsh example, described above, Rachel refuses to allow ghosts human feelings, reinforcing this position in contrast with her mother’s imagined stance: her mother is likely to be stupid enough to grant the ghost too much agency. She thus makes a joke at her mother’s expense. If her mother feels her privacy is invaded in the bathroom by a parrot, how much more by the presence of a ghost? The joke is that the couple can use the ghost to ‘fend off’ the mother – the reverse of what would ordinarily be expected: to fend off the ghost. Despite this, the couple continue to

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name the ghosts in a tone suggesting amused belittlement. Here arch-cynic Daniel is happy to accept that he is being ‘strategic’: Daniel: And so we make jokes about the spooks and what they’re doing, give them names, and say silly things about them C: And that’s a strategy, is it? Daniel: [Laughs loudly] Yes, it probably is

Rachel defines the act of naming ghosts as no more than the personifying of inanimate objects: Rachel: I talk about them as if they were human beings. I’ve given them names, and that’s more for – fun? Like you’d give – you could give a car a name, couldn’t you? Our first car was called Miriam [laughs]. But, I mean, it’s on that sort of level

But if naming the ghost doesn’t confer personhood, if it is as meaningful as naming a car, such a move shows, rather than a distancing of emotion, that Rachel might have feelings for the ‘spooks’. Naming here is an act of affection, allowing for a level of emotional connection without the complication of this being a twoway encounter. Domesticating the ghost is about making it both familiar and family – it’s about an act or stance of caring for something. And what is more affectionate and emasculating than calling the ghost of the monk ‘Dolly’? Such a move contains the ‘other’ as something idiosyncratic rather than threatening. The name ‘Dolly’ also personalises this ghost on the level of associational memory, as Rachel explains: Rachel: When I was a kid in Guernsey – in the memoriam column every year in the press, it used to say: ‘To our dear Brother Adolphus’. And in brackets it was always: ‘Dolly’. And this – it just moves me. And it came to mind, Brother Adolphus

She is amused by the incongruity between the monk’s formal and affectionate names, and adopts the latter for her ghost monk. She then talks about the ghost as a ‘house guest’ – another way of domesticating it and of giving it a particular place in her home, as someone who is also just passing through, politely taking hospitality, not an equal co-habitee: Rachel: Brother Dolly was the name I gave to him. Because, you see, when you’ve got a ghost, or what have you, you’ve got to give him a name. I mean, you know, you have to when you’ve got a house guest [laughs]. It’s only polite

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But, later, she exposes a major flaw: seeing ghosts is still a sticking point. Rachel seems to reluctantly acknowledge some sort of independent agency for the ghost after all. But she does not attempt to square this circle, and the ambiguity of the ghosts’ status as ‘persons’ is left hovering in the air: C: But at the same time, you are making characters out of these – Rachel: But you have to, don’t you? C: Why do you have to? Rachel: [Pause] Well, because I’ve seen them

Elsewhere, Rosa in Wiltshire offers another example of naming the ghost as an act of domestication and affection. I note that she often refers to her ghost as ‘Annie’, whereas, as she herself has pointed out, the historical records name her as ‘Anne’. In her response, Rosa makes personal family connections for her use of the name: C: Interesting that you’re calling her ‘Annie’ Rosa: I know, because – I think because in Northumberland all ‘Annes’ get ‘Annie’ and because there’s a lot of ‘Annies’ in my family [she offers a long description of various Annies, and Annes called Annie] C: I thought it might be a way of making another connection with her? Rosa: It’s a way of making a connection perhaps. Yeah, it must be. Without me realising it. Unconsciously I must be making a connection in calling her ‘Annie’

In a further example, the family on the Wirral inherit a ghost known to local villagers as the ‘Pink Lady’. This name offers a suitably simple narrative of a rather generic figure of a woman wearing pink. The ‘pink-dressed lady’ becomes the catchy and emphatic ‘Pink Lady’. The name is a strategy of co-habitation, familiarising and domesticating the ghost, and rendering it harmless and unthreatening by subtle allusion, pink being the colour conventionally associated with young girls. Humour is also used as a strategy of domestication, and most often, like naming, it is used to belittle, disempower or infantilise the ghosts. Many interviews are punctured by sarcastic or jokey retorts. Daniel in Wales, for example, notices a new word appearing on a wall in the living room spelling out in Welsh, ‘welcome’. This is taken as a response to my visit. Daniel made light of it: ‘That’s not there, hasn’t been there – you know, it really does try to keep up to date.’ Joking, for him,

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keeps the uncanny in its place: ‘Now you’re trying to make me think and analyse it – I mean, most of the time we joke about them.’ If humour is used to belittle uncanny events, this also serves a social purpose, anticipating and glossing over any potential conflicts between married partners. On the Wirral, for example, the couple downplay the role of the ghosts in their lives. During the interviews, the husband, a sceptic, clashes with his defensive wife. But in the end she plays down their disagreement: ‘We are more or less joking about it.’ In Blackpool, the family makes jokes as a way of ‘normalising’ the situation, where events are various and occur almost daily. There was much laughter throughout the interviews, even though the two daughters were very young and described events which frightened them. Humour also reflected the social dynamics within the family, used by the mother and daughters to laugh at the men, and sometimes by the children to laugh at the mother. At one point, discussing an impending holiday, Victoria joked she’d ‘leave them [the ghosts] a list of do’s and don’ts’ – the joke being she is treating her own dead parents (the accepted interpretation of these ghosts) as unruly children. Gender Conventions A theme running through most case studies is the prominence of cultural conventions used by participants to interpret the gender of their ghosts. Uncanny events – such as fragmentary sounds – are defined as humanlike through conventional notions of dress, habit and role, and the ghosts are often conferred personal characteristics which mirror participants’ ideas about gender. This process, in turn, dictates how and where inhabitants feel comfortable co-habiting with different ghosts and where ghosts are ‘allowed’ to be located within the home. One exception is an event shared by all case studies: footsteps. These tend to be heard ascending or descending staircases and are invariably associated with males; participants generally emphasised that the tread sounded particularly heavy. And yet, although footsteps are granted access to traverse the different storeys of a home, they are usually limited to the passing places; they rarely enter rooms. The use of conventional gender categories is another way in which the experience of being haunted is contained, another way ghosts are rendered ordinary, familiar and unthreatening. Perhaps also, without the specificity of actual, ‘situated’ material bodies, it is easy for the immaterial body to become a onedimensional representation shaped by the living bodies around it in ways that suit them. Here, Pam in the maisonette describes how she manipulates a hazy image of the ghosts, knowingly giving them a form she feels is appropriate for them: Pam: Certainly long dresses for the women. And long and dark – how unusual for a ghost! I haven’t literally seen them, so I think this is my imagination. This is what is appropriate for those people to be wearing. I dress them up myself

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The couple in the weaver’s cottage offer a further example of assumed conventional gender and social relations. A key event suggests a female ghost: Hilma: About a month after we moved here, I remember being on my knees on the attic space – stowing suitcases and things – busily putting things away. And the hatch upstairs into the attic was open and the metal ladder was in place. And I heard – definitely I heard rustling skirts coming up the staircase [which] stopped at the foot of the ladder. And there was a beseeching sort of [she makes a strange, loud, whispering sound] – no words. I couldn’t say what language it was. But I interpreted it – it was a lady needing urgent help C: How did you make that assumption? Hilma: Rustling skirt. And a – whisper. It was a lady’s whisper. It wasn’t a male voice. It was a beseeching [makes the sound again] – as if she’d run out of breath, and she was looking for help. And I made a beeline down the ladder, expecting to see my neighbour, in trouble. There was nobody there, but Adam. Coming up the staircase, saying, ‘What do you want?’ He was troubled. He thought it was me Adam: Yes. I didn’t hear any rustling skirts.. But I heard a noise, and I heard a question. Somebody asked a question

Adam later asked his wife how she knew the ghost was female: Adam: How do you know it was a lady? I – someone asked a question. I don’t know if it were a lady or not Hilma: Well. Silk skirts. Rustling Adam: Someone asked a question Hilma: Yes. You didn’t hear the rustling silk skirts Adam: Oh, so that suggested it to you, the skirts, did it? That it was a female? Hilma: Yes. [Pause] No. The beseeching request was a female voice. It was a strong whisper. But also the skirts. I heard the skirts first. It didn’t occur to me that a male would put silk skirts on Adam: Unless he’s a member of the House of Lords with silk stockings [laughs]

The sounds suggest a female ghost to Hilma; she couldn’t contemplate anyone but a woman wearing a skirt, but her husband teases her about this. A further uncanny

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event offers a further interpretation of gender, this time a male ghost: the sound of big boots being wiped as they come in the front door, repeated occasionally but always at the same time, around ten o’clock in the evening. The downstairs room where the boots are heard to come in is not used on a daily basis, as described, whereas the room where the couple sits is directly above, next to a winding staircase which continues on to the bedrooms on a higher floor in this tall, narrow house. It is easier for Hilma to distance herself from whatever male presence she imagines makes the sound of boots, whereas this is less possible for the female ghost, whose silk skirt is heard going up the staircase: Hilma: I don’t particularly like this [the downstairs] room because I could hear somebody coming in and wiping their feet on the doormat so many times. No, I prefer being upstairs C: There’s something that lingers in you, in relation to this room? Hilma: Yes. But the lady going up the stairs – I quite like, so that’s alright [smiles] … Sympathy. [Pause] And not threatening. You know – there’s nothing sort of bad or evil about her … particularly because I’ve always thought it was a lady

There are grounds, then, for viewing Hilma’s gendering of the ghosts as a strategy of co-habitation. It doesn’t seem incidental that the sound anomaly is given a negative value because of its association with a room which might already be disliked or is underused: C: If it had been a male voice, would your response have been different? Hilma: Well, at the time, if it had been a male, and he had come up the stairs, and up to almost the attic, and I was in the attic, I might have recoiled and been concerned. Until I realised that it wasn’t a real one

Her response would be different if the ghost had been male. But she would have only recoiled until she realised the male voice was not that of a living human. Dora in Liverpool said something similar about feeling vulnerable in response to a potential male intruder in relation to her own experience of heavy footsteps on the staircase – until she realised he was a ghost. These assumed male presences are still more threatening than female ghosts, despite their male physicality being generally of the immaterial kind, reflecting women’s anxieties concerning ‘danger and fear of attack in connection with places of residence’ (Taylor, 2010: 104). Dora describes a further event where this fear of physical attack is implied by an everyday sound: that of the backdoor handle being turned. This is a heavy handle which makes a loud sound when pulled down. The repetitive event led Dora to look out the back window to check if someone was trying to get in.

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Even though the door was locked and there was never anyone there (and thus the event was eventually placed into the uncanny category), Dora’s fear of actual physical intruders increased the negativity of her response to this otherwise non-dramatic phenomenon; her wider narrative of home focused on her dislike of the neglected and threatening inner city area in which she lived. In Ipswich, Susan tolerates the presence of the elderly couple who haunt her home. But there is another geographical divide between where the male and the female ghosts are seen. The male ghost is never seen in the upstairs bedrooms or bathroom; sightings of him are confined to the ground floor living room and kitchen. In contrast, the female ghost is only ever seen upstairs. In turn, whereas the male ghost is seen ‘fully formed’, the female ghost is only ever an outline, which seems to be a further strategy for maintaining distance. Here, the vagueness of the ghost’s form, and the fact it is always just one step away, seen through open doorways – a fleeting reflection on the landing in a bedroom mirror; something quickly passing the open bathroom door whilst Susan is in the bathroom one night – the nature of these events offer some leeway in the way she interprets this ghost. How does she know – why is she so adamant – it is a female? The material remnants of the old couple’s life, as described, become a clue for her: women’s clothes left in the back bedroom, hanging in a wardrobe, suggest the area might have been where she frequented. But Susan’s explanation is more to do with feeling: C: If I asked you to draw the outline, would you be able to? Susan: Yeah, it was defined like the hat, head, then the shoulders, and then straight down C: Was it male or female? Susan: I don’t know. I’ve assumed it’s her, it’s the lady, as opposed to the man … It’s like a grey silhouette, but it’s not – looking at it, you wouldn’t tell if it were a man or woman. Just a shape. Um. But I just had this feeling that it was the lady – I’ve always just felt it was a lady C: Why’s that? Susan: Because the two times I’ve seen the figure, I’ve always just felt it was a lady. And the man – I’ve seen him once, and my friend’s boy – he’s seen him [downstairs] C: So on that basis, you think she’s upstairs, and he’s downstairs?

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Susan: Yeah. I’ve seen him downstairs, recently. But I’ve only seen this figure upstairs. I’ve never seen him upstairs. I just get the impression that the figure was a woman … I just get the feeling that – I don’t know, inside – that that is a woman not a man. But I don’t know why

She seems able to tolerate the female ghost close to the bathroom and bedrooms – this is a repeated motif and forms a key strategy of co-habitation. In the Wirral house, the main female ghost is described as non-threatening, respects privacy, and keeps her distance – the perfect ghostly co-habitee, one of the domesticated female ghosts concerned with maintaining order we encountered in Chapter 2. The Pink Lady is even allowed into the bedrooms, placing blankets on a daughter in the night. She is mistaken for the mother; her ‘special relationship’ mirrors that of a mother for her daughter: Gaby: My sister told me that every night she goes to bed, either before she falls asleep, or sometime during the night she wakes up, and there’s this lady in front of the door, checking her. At some point during the night [when sleeping in the same room] I heard somebody moving her sheets – like when mum’s coming and checking if you are in bed, and if the blanket is off, to put it on you. So there was this kind of rustling noise. And then I had this feeling that somebody was really making sure that she was fine. And then [laughs] my sister said: ‘Thank you’. I thought about that in the morning. I felt a bit – Mia: Strange! [Laughs] Gaby: – a bit stressed about that Mia: I think my [other] daughter has a special relationship with the Pink Lady – she has had a lot of these kinds of experiences, that somebody is taking care of her. Once she told me in the morning: ‘Thank you mum, you came to put the quilt. I was freezing. I’m so sorry I didn’t say anything but I was so sleepy’. I said: ‘It’s not me you should thank’ [Smiles]. And this happened a couple of times actually

This story echoes a conversation with a previous inhabitant which usefully reinforces the belief in the ghost’s caring nature: Mia: The story goes that before the husband [the previous owner] died, he saw the Pink Lady twice. The lady came in the bedroom and sat on the bed. The daughter told me. She came here to collect some things she had forgotten, and then we started talking. And she said, quite seriously: ‘Oh, the Pink Lady, she’s so kind, she doesn’t mean any harm. When she comes, she only comes to take care’

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Mia is happy to believe in the ‘Pink Lady’, but more taciturn about the possibility of male ghosts – implied by events which include the smell of pipe tobacco, a heavy tread on the landing, and a shadowy form seen from the garden – the last two at first mistaken for her husband. There is also an ambiguous event involving a window closing in her own bedroom which unnerves her at a time when her husband is away on business. An exception to the positive-negative gender binary is that the pipe-smokers are described positively. But Mia is reluctant to be explicit about their gender, although she makes the conventional association. And she seems particularly comforted by the thought that the smokers form part of a large, mixed gender family group, implied by other smells – sweet bread and fresh coffee. She starts off using the neutral ‘they’ to describe them, but when pushed, prefers the convoluted phrase, ‘a being who likes tobacco’ rather than to state that the pipe-smokers are men: Mia: I think [she sniffs], ‘Oh, it’s coffee today!’ Or, after a while [sniffs], ‘Obviously, he has his pipe now’ C: So you think it’s a man? Mia: No. it’s only, I think that – somehow I think it’s a being who likes tobacco C: Would it be a pipe that men use, not women? Mia: [Nods quietly] Yes. I don’t know

In some households, as described, female ghosts are tolerated in bedrooms, often acting in physically intimate ways. In Liverpool, the ghost of the doting grandmother slaps her grandson in his bed if he has forgotten to do something; in the caretaker’s flat, the female ghost of a previous inhabitant lies on top of him in his bed to protect him. In contrast, male ghosts in the bedroom are usually characterised as threatening, or as an invasion of privacy. Tara, the Romanian employee, has to deal with intrusive male presences in two bedrooms. First, she describes a sinister male ghost in a previous rented room: Tara: I was very frightened.. I left the light on and the music on all the night. And one night somebody says, ‘Stop the music!’ But I leave the lights on. And after that, a few days – ‘Stop the lights!’ C: A female or a male voice? Tara: I think it was a man. I have to leave London and go back to Romania. And the last night before I leave, I had a very bad dream, like somebody from the back touch me, and say, ‘I cut you’

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Olive: I caught you C: Caught? Tara: Like somebody hauled me from the back, and I see a leg with hair, horrible leg hair Olive: Somebody grabbed her

The ‘horrible leg hair’ reinforces Tara’s narrative about a threatening male ghost. In the current home, Tara stoically puts up with the attentions of another male ghost in a room she is paid to stay at every night. At one point, she wakes up to hear snoring next to her pillow (‘The snoring was a man. Definitely, like a man breathes’). At another point, she finds a handprint on her body whilst getting dressed one morning (‘Like a male one, you know. Finger by finger, a perfect one’). The Blackpool family provide another example of this gender binary. The family relies on a local medium to explain who the ghosts are. She tells them they are dead family members, with the grand/mother most prominent amongst them. One night the family experience disruptive, poltergeist-like events, which the medium blames on a dead uncle. In contrast, she also mentions a dead aunt who is ‘helpful’ and only visits to be supportive. The dead uncle is the unruly male, the aunt the caring female: ‘Victoria: The medium said: “Leave the others. He’s got to go.”’ The dramatic incident which the caretaker describes involves a male ghost which is angry and threatening, and a female ghost which is benign and protecting. The male ghost proves difficult to define: Ben: I suddenly heard the sound of running feet from the long gallery. And it got louder and louder.. I heard roaring, shouting … It was a man. Very angry. Extremely nasty. And crazed. I thought, ‘God almighty, this is awful’. The sound got louder and louder, then bursting in through the door. And this thing came straight for me. Straight up to the bed. It was just a charge, all the way, unrelenting

The female protector/saviour is granted the bodily contours and sensations of human physicality: a soft, intimate, comforting, female body. The male entity is described by its own rage and momentum, the female presence by the feeling it engenders. Ben feels not only saved from the angry force, but also accepted as a part of the house, as described in Part I: Ben: And something rolled over on top of me. A body. Rolled on top of me. From the side C: Can you remember how it felt?

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The female ghost is also allowed super-human, pseudo-spiritual powers to avert evil – a power of love opposing a power of anger. But this ghost is also a named, gendered person, a well-known historical character. The angry force is both formless and nameless: uncontained, undomesticated. Ben describes this thing as ‘not human’. The category of ‘normal’ is expanded to incorporate the female ghost. The male ghost, however, falls outside such a category, and Ben struggles to articulate how it might be defined, more confident in stating at first what it is not: Ben: I just knew this was not normal, this was not real. It was not human. It was something – ghostly – monster. Something horrible. It was just a charge, all the way, unrelenting

He uses three words which replace each other, as he struggles to describe and thus contain the phenomenon: ‘ghostly’ is rejected for ‘monster’, but he settles on a vaguer phrase – ‘something horrible’ – before moving to define a process rather than a ‘being’. Even here there is a tacit gendering of the thing that has feet to run and a voice to shout: from angry male to something horrible in one description. Such an extreme force cannot be named, domesticated, personified, or laughed away. It requires an emergency response, one which upholds other more comforting conventions. * * * The ghost as previous inhabitant is then a figure, someone who (alone or collectively as part of ‘families’ of ghosts in corners of rooms and on landings) has a distinct presence – even if such a presence isn’t usually ‘fleshed out’. Some believe that the ghosts should be allowed to be, and have a right to do their thing, that it’s not participants’ business to know. But most people are less able to tolerate the idea of a ghost which is a free agent within the home; the more abstract aspects of the haunted home are allowed their mystery whilst the more figurative ones need to be contained. The underlying desire is to maintain a positive relationship with home, one which reinforces a sense of self rather than threatens it. In general participants did, indeed, call such places ‘home’ with unexpected ease. The ability to do so, however, depends in part on how far participants are able to render their ghosts as mundane aspects of home – or how far the ‘other’ is deemed to impinge upon the self. As a human-likeness, the ghost suggests singularity, complexity, something which one might judge or be judged by, and which one might imagine to be similar to oneself. This is, as described, a form of anthropomorphism which is perhaps more easily attained for those ‘others’ who were previously human. There is often leeway for participants to imagine their ghosts in ways which

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contain and limit any potential aspects of personality or attitude deemed too different, too alien. This is a further way in which the ghost becomes – like the uncanny events – potentially familiar. Granting the ghost a level of familiarity is a way of closing the gap between self and other in safe ways – by assuming for the entity a gendered form of personhood – whilst reinforcing the gap in other ways. A number of narrative and rhetorical devices are employed to belittle or ‘domesticate’ the ghosts – naming, labelling, humour. Most importantly, ghosts are defined in such a way as to fall into particularly conventional cultural categories or stereotypes; in this way, they are confined. What is conventional is more easily known, understood, categorised and thus contained. Limiting individuality is also a way of limiting agency to act differently, out of character. In general, categorising entities which are ultimately uncategorisable is a one-way process of attempting to maintain space for the self-at-home by diminishing an other’s power. Ahmed’s insight that we deal with the ‘other’ by giving it a recognisable ‘face and form’ (Ahmed, 2000b: 3) repeatedly resonates. Participants’ ability to feel at home often depends on how they can shape the ghosts’ own immaterial bodies, in an uncertain, liminal, and thus safe place somewhere between reality and imagination. This shaping is a process of making knowable, or at least similar enough to self, within the bounds of normal, creating something recognisable on some cognitive and emotional level; a someone is more containable that a something. If one can know the measure of the ghost, trace its boundaries, its immaterial bodily outline, one can place it – and put it in its place. This process of domestication sometimes requires that the ghost becomes a more limited form of human, even less than human, like a domestic pet. Any hint or fear of supernatural capacities or unearthly powers is more easily subdued by narrative strategies of infantilisation, feminisation or emasculation. Such not-quite humans are spoken for as well as sometimes spoken to, as will be described. Within such a scheme, women ghosts are welcomed most of all as unthreatening forms of otherness, implying something benign and non-threatening, tending to respect privacy, to be vulnerable or protective, and, as shown, to be more domesticated (even keepers of domestic order, as described in Chapter 2). Women ghosts are seen in a positive light in eight case studies. But whilst ghosts are rarely caricatured as unhappy or malevolent, sometimes agency presents itself as a fait accompli. In positioning the ‘other’ to be like the self there is a risk of granting too much agency. The fact that some events are more challenging means that conventional categories must extend to phenomena which may unnerve, which may reinforce an understanding of human nature as having capacity for both good and bad. The fact that male ghosts are often described as potentially physically threatening, and at the least, intrusive, shows the extent to which people project their social experiences and anxieties onto the ghosts; here a sense of home harbours a particular kind of insecurity, especially for women. Experience always, or always threatens to, exceed the narrative. Ghosts, then, don’t always appreciate being contained or domesticated, defying conventional categories by their very nature. This is the central irony: any attempt to control, contain, resist, or anticipate an uncanny event has to yield to the

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pull of the opposite, the fact that it is uncontrollable, uncontained and unexpected by nature. The problem with fleshing out the beyond, giving it a face and form, also at times reinforces gender tensions, grants the ghosts more agency, and the possibility for such forms to become more unruly and disruptive – to demand a radical ambivalence, break with convention. This is where the ghosts go – in the excess of language and matter. They can’t be pinned down or grasped. The strategy to maintain a self-at-home is a project that can never be completed.

Chapter 5

Strategies of Distance and Communication We might interpret the way participants’ descriptions of ghosts attempt to limit their agency and their ‘otherness’ as a co-habitation ‘strategy’. As shown in the previous chapter, this is complicated by the fact that conventional gender categories include threatening male ghosts as much as benign and caring female ones. But there are many other ways in which people attempt to ease their co-habitation with ghosts, and these form distinct patterns. By far the most prevalent strategy creates distance between householders and ghosts, keeping them at bay. But there are also ways in which householders talk up their positive experiences and relationships with ghosts, including a surprising amount of communication – at least to or at the ghosts, even if this is sometimes motivated by defensiveness rather than a desire for connection. Distance Geography The most obvious way distance is maintained is through the geographies of the home, in particular, how participants differentiate between its more public and more private areas. How far ghosts are allowed to ‘roam’ depends on participants’ relationship to them and their assumed characteristics; as discussed in the previous chapter, female ghosts are allowed more leeway than male ghosts because they are felt to be less threatening. Bedrooms and bathrooms are deemed the more private areas, where bodies are most exposed. Passing places such as staircases, hallways, and landings, are more public, as described in Chapter 2. Confining ghosts to these spaces is a key strategy of spatial distancing. There are very few examples of ghosts in bathrooms. Even in Ipswich, where Susan sees a ghost whilst in the bathroom, the ghost doesn’t actually enter the room but is seen fleetingly in the hallway. The ghosts are even assumed to share respect for personal space: C: If you’re in the bathroom – Victoria [Blackpool]: I don’t think I’ve ever experienced anything in the bathroom. I think they do give us privacy in certain places, like that

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Not everyone can maintain such a belief. Karen in the North London maisonette – who has not experienced the ghosts – is self-conscious because the toilet is directly at the bottom of the staircase where the ghosts reside: Karen: I have to close the toilet door because I feel like there’s someone on the stairs watching me. I don’t know if they are. I just feel like that’s just my paranoia about me being watched. You know, I just don’t like the idea of anybody watching me anywhere

In this house, as described, participants necessarily have to walk passed the ghosts’ spot on the landing, but the ghosts are always conveniently somewhere else (Pam: ‘They are always at some distance’). The thought of being watched by something unseen is often the main motive for desiring distance. On the Wirral, geography is important: Mia: I think this is the limit. This is the limit. That I can accept somebody living here, or some ones are living here – or some things are here. [Pause] But I think I wouldn’t like anybody to stand there. It depends on the situation, and what would happen, and things like that. Maybe it would be a nice experience. But I am not looking forward to that C: You mentioned you wouldn’t be happy at the thought of somebody watching you – who you couldn’t see Mia: Yes C: How do you feel about that? Mia: Now, sometimes when I come down the stairs, I know that someone’s standing there – up the stairs there. On the landing C: Really? Mia: I don’t see anything there. But it’s a very strong feeling that somebody’s watching when I’m coming down. But it’s only the stairs C: How would you feel if it wasn’t the stairs? [Pause] C: If you felt watched – Mia: [quietly] – everywhere. Yes

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[Pause] C: You would feel – different? Mia: Yes. I think it would be. Then it would disturb my privacy – in my home. But I haven’t got that feeling C: So the ghost is – respecting your privacy? Mia: Yes. So really – we let them be, they let us be! [Laughs]

The rules are clearly set out: the staircase is not a threatening place to feel watched, but don’t come into places where she spends time, and don’t come too close. As will be described, for Mia it is also important for the ghost not to be seen. But the thought of being watched by something unseen is equally unnerving. So different strategies are employed, building upon one another; if one doesn’t quite work, another piece of scaffolding is added to prop up the narrative. One assumption, for example, is that people are never being watched; this requires a belief that the ghosts are disinterested in the living and that they are also themselves ‘submerged’ in their own form of familiarity which renders them unaware. Here, there is no need to feel self-conscious in the bedroom or bathroom: Christine [maisonette]: I don’t think that matters. I don’t think these things bother [the ghosts] at all. In that sense, it’s just part and parcel – they’re not interested. I don’t think they’re interested in what I do, in my day to day life. But I think it’s that newness, where something that happens – it’s a reaction to, you know, what happens

The ghosts react to novelty (in a similar way as participants), but are not ‘bothered’ by ordinary domestic activity, by people’s everyday routines. Christine deals with any potential intrusion into her private life assertively: C: How do you feel about doing personal things? Christine: That wouldn’t bother me at all. They’re dead. They should move on. If they have a problem with that, move on!

But even she wavers a little as the thought of her dead father enters her head: Christine: My dad. I have felt him around, I have seen him once. I remember thinking, ‘Oh, I couldn’t have sex, because he’d be watching me’. But then I realised, ‘Look, he obviously had sex himself at some stage, or else I wouldn’t be here’. Anyway, and he’s dead. So [laughs]

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Playing Down Impact Another major strategy is to play down the ghosts’ impact on domestic life. In Chapter 4, I suggested ways in which naming and humour are used for this purpose. There are more overt distancing strategies also employed, including mental and emotional ‘blocking’. Rachel in Wales talks about distancing herself from events as a form of mental trick: ‘They’re – in the background. And I can do this, distance myself from it.’ The ghosts’ importance in participants’ lives is downgraded significantly. Rachel admits she talks about them, but, as described, plays down their centrality on an ‘everyday level’. Sometimes there are protective reasons to play down events: Hilma [weaver’s cottage]: Oh yes, we told them [the children, about an event]. Because it was so unusual and odd. But we didn’t sort of play on it, we played it down rather than anything else

For Pam in the maisonette, there is a belief that thinking about the ghosts might ‘conjure’ them, something she avoids: Pam: If I thought about it a lot, I might be perturbed, maybe that’s why I avoid thinking about them. I try not to – conjure them up

Her ‘sensitive’ flatmate, Christine, requires a more elaborate distancing strategy: C: You say you never actually see the ghosts? Christine: No. I have to learn to block it out. So when I’m with the presence in a house, I don’t want to be picking up too – much energy – because – it’s very tiring. It’s absolutely exhausting, actually. It just knocks too much out of me – I think you can block it out. It’s something I had to learn to do a while ago – shut down. How do I do it? It’s almost like a conscious thing. ‘I’m not – I don’t want to know’, and I ignore it. And they get tired of – hanging around

People also dwelt on more positive events, playing down negative ones which might not fit their overall narrative. Rosa in Wiltshire, for example, talks at length about her positive connection with her ghost. Right at the end of all our conversations, she lets slip in passing she had been hit by a bottle: Rosa: When I was in the bath an empty shampoo bottle hit me at the back of my head. It flew at me in a way that couldn’t have been an accident. The bathroom was her [the ghost’s] living room. I see it as her fear

And despite the amount of effort she puts into researching the ghost, she doesn’t want me to think it is a central feature of her life:

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Rosa: I don’t have any affect about this, if you know what I mean. There’s no psychological – I’m not emotionally attached to it really. I mean, I’m interested and I’m intrigued. I find it strange, funny

Tara, the Romanian employee, has no choice but to face up to the uncanny events with stoicism as she has agreed to stay in the mansion for money. Her strategy is to accentuate the positive, dwelling on the economic benefit. Stripped of emotional content, the situation sounds too good to be true: Tara: For me it’s the same whether I sleep here or in my room. But with a great advantage because she’s paying me for this. She’s paying me. So I start sleeping there all the time in this house. All the time. And I’m very happy

It becomes clear that Tara takes the brunt of the ghost’s attention, but she refuses to give in to fear, because she needs the money: C: So you can treat the ghost like it’s – not threatening? Tara: No. I try to don’t. Because then I lose my job, you know? If you start to be frightened, you collapse only. You can’t go on like that

Tara needs to maintain a sense of distance, a boundary between her and the ghost; she does so through enforcing a particular emotional attitude – not to ‘collapse’. Not Seeing In Chapter 2, I described how the majority of events are auditory. Many participants prefer this, actively discouraging events from being too ‘clear-cut’. Not seeing offers leeway for co-habitation; a strategy of distance, as Karen in the maisonette states: ‘I don’t mind other people [seeing ghosts]. I just don’t want to have them [these experiences] myself.’ For Mia on the Wirral, seeing the ghost would make the haunting too ‘real’. Despite her generally positive attitude towards the main female ghost, she needs it to keep to its ‘place’, which means not witnessing it up close. Here she lets slip her anxiety: Mia: Then the man from the alarm – told a lot about this lady [the ghost]. And in the end he said, ‘Oh my dear, it would be so exciting and interesting to see the real ghost!’ And I thought that, ‘Not if you are living in the house!’ [Laughs]

She imagines how it might feel to be in the garden and see a ghost at the window, to be outside looking in at a haunted house she has to re-enter. Again, this fantasy – which mirrors her neighbour’s experience of mistaking her for a ghost at the window – causes unease:

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C: You said before [the ghost] makes the house more interesting Mia: Yes, but I don’t like to see it. Once we were standing in the garden and I said to my daughter: ‘Look at the windows upstairs. What would you think about if you see somebody looking back?’ And we talked about it, and we both came to the same conclusion – that it wouldn’t be very nice to go back inside the house after that [laughs]

This is interesting because she had previously laughed at her neighbour for being fearful – even though what frightened him wasn’t even in his own home. It also parallels another uncanny event. She describes being in the garden and seeing a shadowy form walking through the house. The anxiety she expresses is an example of the way in which her positive narrative shows some cracks. The more she talks, the more she allows herself to imagine scenarios and explore the wider range of her feelings about the situation. But the key issue here concerns her desire not to see the ghost – and this hasn’t happened, at least not distinctly, at close range, and she believes this cannot and will not happen. Other beliefs back this up, offering more weight than mere wishful thinking: C: So is there a difference between hearing things and seeing things? Mia: Yes. I haven’t seen anything except these shadows, you know. But I know that I am a woman – the Pink Lady won’t come to see me C: Why do you think that is? Mia: [Laughs] I believe what I’ve been told. You see. It’s only men she like to see C: Is that a relief? Mia: In a way, yes. Because I don’t want to come face to face with anything – like – that. As long as it’s more like a fairy tale. It doesn’t matter so much. [She talks of the shadows, smells and noises, how these don’t frighten her because they are ambiguous]. But I’m not sure what I would think about the situation where I was standing – face to face with the Pink Lady. I wouldn’t like that. That is something I wouldn’t like C: Would that make her more real? Mia: It would make it more real. Now I can always – take it so – whatever. There is space enough for all of us. There is room enough for all of us. As long as we don’t disturb each other

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C: And disturbing means – don’t – materialise? Mia: [Laughs] Yes C: Don’t – show your face? Mia: Yeah. I don’t like to see her

The distinction between seeing and not seeing is very clear. To come face to face with the ghost is to make it ‘real’: there would then be no leeway for imagining the ghost otherwise, a key tactic for negotiating space to allow co-habitation. There is a strong imaginary component to how space is sensed: seeing ‘constricts’ space. But there remains an underlying anxiety in avoiding an experience one has no control over. Mia’s solution is to take on board a rather vague myth about the ghost – she doesn’t appear to women. This belief doesn’t strictly fit experience. Mia has already described a sighting by one daughter. Her other daughter tries to raise this point: Gaby: We are not sure that – [they confer in Finnish] – if women can have – Mia: – only the figure. Because those who have really seen her – C: You are talking about your daughter? Mia: Yes. The youngest daughter – [speaks in Finnish, then laughs, takes a deep breath, as if about to embark on a story, then changes the subject]

The language barrier acts as a filtering system for the narrative, allowing Mia to discuss finer points before presenting them to me as an outsider/researcher. But she just lets the point hang, suspended in the air. She seems to give up and move on, to refuse the challenge. Further ideas are tried out, to mould and wriggle her distancing strategies into shape. Mia’s compatriot, Hilma in the weaver’s cottage, also employs the same sense hierarchy. I asked her the usual question: did she ever feel she was being watched? Hilma: [Quietly] No. [Pause] No. I never saw anybody. I never saw anything at all. I only heard things C: Does that make a difference – if you actually see something? Hilma: Oh, I think so. I think so. Because then if you have an image – say this monk my neighbour saw – she was – I mean, she had to talk about it to somebody. She came over the field to talk to me. She couldn’t sort of rest about it. She was disturbed

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C: The fact that you don’t see anyone makes you able to live with the experience [Pause and silence as I spoke – as if she is holding her breath] I find that quite interesting. [Pause] Is it because it’s not given a – form, a reality? [Pause] Hilma: I think it’s a lesser phenomenon in many ways. And there was absolutely no threat. The lady asking for help

I pressed her further: C: Because there hasn’t been a fully-fledged visual form seen, then it’s slightly distanced? Hilma: Yes, it is. Yes C: Does that make it easier to deal with? Hilma: Oh yes. Definitely. Oh definitely. If I’d been in the shoes or skirts of my next door neighbour, who saw the dark monk-like figure – Adam: She’d had too much gin! Hilma: She wasn’t drinking gin!

Hilma takes pity on her friend, who was ‘disturbed’, because she saw something and had to come round and talk the experience out of her system. There is a difference between seeing and imagining the form of a ghost, or seeing a shadow or something without clear ‘form’. As described, participants have different responses to this: on the one hand, formlessness can be more frightening because it suggests something not categorisable, more-than human, with greater potential power, such as the ‘demon’ described by Ben the caretaker. There is a suggestion also that such formless entities cannot be ‘contained’ to particular places within the home, just as they are not ‘contained’ by human-like bodies. On the other hand, sightings that are vague are less threatening. Mia does not include in her narrative, above, the event of seeing the shadowy form of what she takes to be a man. In Ipswich, I suggested earlier that it seemed significant that the distinct form of the male ghost is only ever seen downstairs, whilst the female ghost upstairs is described as an outline, like a silhouette of a person. Such a vague sighting becomes a less ‘real’, less ‘present’ phenomenon, and leaves room to imagine a human-like form. As described, participants prefer an ordinary someone rather

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than a strange something; it becomes important for an indistinct form to imply something human-like, but distinctly seeing a ghost is too intimate an event within the confined spaces of the domestic interior. Not seeing allows for the possibility that things aren’t quite as they ‘appear’. Reality is valued and graded in order to contain experience. As suggested in Chapter 2, ‘seeing’ ghosts is often similar to ‘sensing’ them for some people, suggesting a strong imaginary component: they ‘complete’ the hazy picture in their mind, allowing for a level of control and containment. Rachel in Wales dismissed one vision (‘I saw what I wanted to see’); Pam in the maisonette conceded that she ‘clothes’ the ghosts she only sees as hazy outlines (‘I dress them up myself’). Magnus in Bristol also described how he developed a ‘mental picture’ of a man he didn’t completely see: Magnus: I saw someone through the corner of my eye. Through the music room window – the back window looking out onto the garden. I saw a movement. And I developed from this a mental picture of a large man with red hair. It was a flicker of movement

As described in Chapter 2, Susan in Ipswich looks but ‘doesn’t want to see anything tonight’. For Magnus, it is ‘better not to look out’. These participants respond in opposite ways to each other, but both suggest an anxiety about seeing a ghost, and how this might disrupt, at the very least, their night’s sleep. Ghosts Don’t/Can’t Communicate For many participants, it is important that events are not interpreted as attempts to communicate or engage. The ghosts might be in the home, but they are only tangentially a part of domestic life. Pam in the maisonette, for example, expresses ambivalence, claiming that she would like to make contact with the ghosts, but then argued that this wasn’t possible, and that, in fact, she would rather prefer to avoid them: C: Would you be intrigued to see them closer? Pam: Yes, but I feel like that’s never going to be a possibility. I feel very strongly that I won’t get to know them. But then, I’m very shy too. You know, I wouldn’t be marching up towards them. I would be definitely avoiding them

A key strategy, as suggested, is to believe the ghosts are living parallel lives, with their own concerns, and hence ignoring their co-habitees: Christine: I don’t think they’re watching. I think they’re entertaining themselves Pam: I’ve felt like that. That they’re not watching me. I don’t feel infringed, or spied upon. But they are there and they are concerned with their own concerns.

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I don’t even know if they are aware of me. I haven’t felt that they were coming to see me, I just felt that they belonged in that place and that’s where they were, that they were doing their own thing

Christine removes any anxiety about having a male ghost in her bedroom by describing him as disinterested in her, and he respectfully keeps to the corner of the room, too: Christine: He’s totally ignoring – I’m inconsequential. He’s doing whatever he’s doing. But sometimes I do wake up and I sense his presence there very much. But that doesn’t frighten me C: Because he’s just – Christine: He’s doing his own thing. He’s reading something, and he’s just standing, reading … I think most people [ghosts] are generally respectful, and I think – they’re just doing whatever they’re doing, they’re there for whatever they’re there for

A lack of interaction, for Christine, equals proper etiquette, good manners. The ghosts know how to keep distance and, importantly, wish to do so. Susan in Ipswich offers a variation on this idea; the ghosts will warn her when they are around: ‘I just think the only time they’re about is when you see them or you hear them. I don’t get the impression that they’re here all the time.’ Victoria in Blackpool also plays down interaction in a similar way: ‘We just carry on as normal. And just [pause] if they want to let us know they’re here at that particular point, they do.’ Elsewhere, Rosa in Wiltshire prefers to believe her ghost isn’t a constant presence; Dora in Liverpool can only believe that the Catholic saints are ‘watching over me’, but glosses over the idea of ghosts doing likewise; and Magnus in Bristol similarly says, ‘I don’t get a sense that the house is occupied’. He also interprets the ghosts as distanced from him: events happen despite his own presence in the house. He doesn’t believe he is singled out to hear the sounds (C: ‘Did you think these footsteps were doing it for you – knowing you were there?’ Magnus: ‘No. I don’t think so’). Less successfully, there are also certain beliefs that afford the idea of temporal distance. Rosa in Wiltshire believes, as described, that the ghost is in a ‘time loop’, something that happens to her and is not of her choosing; and yet she also describes the ghost being anxious or displeased and ‘goes round and moves – and just brushes the pictures’, and is seen interacting – staring at the jams – which suggests intentionality. But she persists in returning to her first theory: ‘I don’t think she chooses. It’s a time thing, a loop. A very strong impression is made.’ I expressed surprise at such an idea that the ghost is a passive residue of non-linear time, rather than having the level of wilful agency that many events suggest. Rosa didn’t answer, swiftly moving on to a different topic of conversation.

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Rachel in Wales – who, as described, is adamant the ghosts don’t have ‘feelings’ – admits that if she thought ghosts had ‘personalities’ she would feel ‘uncomfortable’. Revealing an underlying anxiety, she suggests how much effort is required in maintaining her particular stance, and imagines how she might respond if interaction were possible, if that important boundary is breached: Rachel: Although things happen, we don’t interact with them. I mean, we don’t seriously interact. And I wouldn’t want to seriously interact with them, even if I thought I could, because I think that would screw my head up. And then I wouldn’t be living here. I would be out of here [pause]. If I really, really put my mind to it, maybe I wouldn’t want to live here [pause]. For me to live here I’ve got to – distance myself. I can’t connect with it. I have to distance myself from it. [Believing ghosts have personalities] would get uncomfortable

Such strategic beliefs, again, don’t fit with her descriptions of some events. For example, she interprets objects such as wooden picture frames having been burnt or singed as a way the ghosts communicate displeasure (‘A lot of the burning, that comes when people have done, said something stupid’). Negative events are forms of punishment. Here, she criticises her husband for sarcastically asking the ghosts for lottery numbers: Rachel: You were very rude to the spooks – and so we got most numbers [appearing on the walls] between one and forty nine. It was sort of, take your pick

She also describes a rare example of eye contact, which suggests a level of recognition on the ghost’s part (‘She seemed to eye-ball me. She seemed to – indicate that she’s seen me’). Here, again, there is a disconnection between a desire for distance and events which suggest present-time interaction. Not Talking Rachel suggested, above, a need to be respectful about how one talks in the presence of the ghost. There appears an element of superstition (Magnus in Bristol: ‘We shouldn’t try to communicate’), related to a belief that ghosts might have more-than-human powers, or, perhaps, that to communicate is to cross an unnatural boundary. As described, some participants believe that ghosts can hear what they say, might even be able to get inside their head. This suggests an anxiety that no real privacy is possible in a haunted home, with privacy defined here as the ability to speak one’s mind (or thoughts) without feeling inhibited or worrying about consequences. This perhaps explains why some people express reservations about talking about – or to – their ghosts. There is a related belief, vaguely expressed, that words/thoughts in themselves have power to affect events. Pam in the maisonette, as described, said she didn’t want to ‘conjure up’ the ghosts by thinking about them; describing the ghosts might make them more ‘real’, the

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words defining them into existence. But there is something again about etiquette here too. Perhaps this is partly what Rachel meant when she told her husband off; cause and effect are seen to work on a level of human morality. For Pam, to talk about the ghosts might be to lack respect for them; it might cause them to be misinterpreted. Words categorise the ghosts, thus potentially imposing upon them a false reality: Pam [maisonette]: I keep it very private. I wasn’t dying to talk to anybody about them. And in some ways I’m happier not to talk about them. I didn’t want to explore them too much or make them more real, or misinterpret them. In a way I’m reluctant to talk about them and it’s strange to talk about them, because I don’t know what they’re up to and I really – don’t know how much is my business. Because when you’re putting things into words, you have to be quite clear. And I don’t feel that clear – I don’t want to pigeon hole the poor old ghosties!

Despite such concerns, participants seem to spend a lot of time talking about, and in particular, talking to, the ghosts, as explored later. People’s reticence to talk does imply a level of unease; but, as will be described, it is often unease which compels people to talk despite their concerns about doing this. Of course, by agreeing to be interviewed, participants talked to me about their ghosts, whilst often also playing down the need to do this: Susan [Ipswich]: We don’t tend to talk about it. Maybe my mum and my sister, if we are together. But other than that, no. We talk about other things

The social context is also important here, because Susan lives with her sceptical male partner who isn’t interested in talking about the ghosts. Her mother and sister, on the other hand, are fascinated. Victoria in Blackpool also expressed some nerves about talking about her dead mother, the main ghost in the house. I was surprised by this, given she was close to her mother and the events seem a constant talking-point in the family: C: So you’re nervous talking about her. Are you not used to talking about it? Victoria: Not so in depth. Just little bits, here and there, really – isn’t it, that we talk about it?

The family uses a familiar form of shorthand with each other – perhaps, having shared many uncanny events, they are unlikely to need to spell out every detail when recalling them. But there is anxiety here, as if to talk so explicitly, so in depth, might create a different, more emphatic effect than speaking ‘little bits’ of description.

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Elsewhere, a lack of desire to communicate with the ghosts is less about nervous reticence, more an expression of defiance. For Christine in the maisonette, who, as described, is a ‘sensitive’, opening up lines of communication with the ghosts might ‘encourage’ them. Her stance is hardnosed; there is no desire to cohabit here. Ghosts are in ‘someone else’s space’ and have no rights of their own, should be neither seen nor heard: Christine: I think they’re very selfish, and the reason they’re so selfish is because they’re still hanging around in someone else’s space, really. I just feel: ‘You’re dead. You go away’. You know, it’s like a third person in your relationship. The ex-girlfriend, hanging around when she knows she should go! And if they thought that someone will give them an opening at all, they would C: Do what? Christine: Come in to talk, to acknowledge them. I don’t know – C: Take up more of your space? Christine: Yeah. Take up more of your time and your space. In a selfish way

There is more to Christine’s willed lack of communication. In talking about the ‘selfish’ ghosts she is referring to one ghost in particular: she believes the family on the landing consists of a couple and their teenage daughter. It is the daughter who creates problems for her co-habitation in terms of both her specific claims to space – Christine’s bedroom is next to the landing space (‘I think it’s very territorial. I think it’s very much about her room … When I first moved in I felt she was always standing at the bottom of my bed, looking down at me – willing me out of the room’); and also because of her persisting character (‘she’s so petulant … spoilt … not a nice person’). Despite this diminishing of the ghost as merely a spoilt, petulant teenager, she suggests a belief that by attempting to communicate, she might give the ghost too much power: Christine: I did feel that if I attempted to communicate with her that she would gain feeling – that she could invade my space even more. I suppose what I’m afraid of is if I open up any bit to her she’d completely invade me C: Would she have that much power? Christine: I think they can. They can really torment you

But there is an irony she acknowledges in the troubled relationship with the teenage ghost. Despite attempting to block her out and dismissing her as selfish

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and petulant, she acknowledges that she also shares character traits with her. This makes the ‘stand off’ between them all the more intense: C: So in a sense – it’s a bit of a – stand off? Christine: Yeah. About who’s going to win C: Is that how you see it? Christine: Yeah, I do. I feel very much that she’s so – petulant – that she needs to just go away C: It’s surprising that you stuck it out Christine: Well, I suppose it’s that balance, that battle of wits – who’s going to win. I’m the youngest child too. And I’m very spoilt in my own way. So it’s like – you know C: You’re just as petulant? Christine: Yeah C: You’re a match for her!

Communication The above examples illustrate how participants use distancing strategies to keep the ghosts ‘at bay’. In contrast, some participants actively play up the positive nature or value of their ghosts, or the experience of living in a haunted home. They open up tentative channels of ‘communication’, even a desire to connect, or moments where this appears to happen spontaneously, at least in a limited sense. But not all communication is engendered with a spirit of positive and confident openness; as will be described, people ‘talk to’ their ghosts for different reasons. This section explores positive interpretations of people’s co-habitation with ghosts. Connecting On the Wirral, there is an assumed sharing of sensory pleasures: the uncanny smells of fresh bread and coffee are appealing to Mia and her daughter, as is their location – Mia’s favourite place, where she loves to read. As described, Susan in Ipswich believes there is a relationship between the ‘calm’ atmosphere and the ghosts, and Rosa in Wiltshire likewise attributes the ‘good vibes’ in her cottage to the ghost. Like others, Rosa reverts to describing her ghost as a ‘spirit’ when

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emphasising the positive aspects of the haunting, as if being a spirit carries more moral weight (‘All I know is it is never frightening. Almost heartening to know there is a spirit alive in the house’). Participants also emphasise how some of the uncanny events can have a positive, even intimate, emotional effect. In two cases, this involved singing. Magnus in Bristol, a music teacher, describes an experience of being ‘taken over’ by the sound of singing: Magnus: The next [event] – I think was after my father died. Must have been. Months afterwards I was in the breakfast room, when I suddenly started to hear beautiful female choral singing. It was like heavenly singing C: What do you mean by ‘heavenly singing’? Magnus: I couldn’t – I didn’t know the language. It might have been Latin, I don’t know. But – I mean, it was just voices, unaccompanied C: Being a music scholar, would you expect to recognise the piece? Magnus: No. It was nothing I knew. I felt – it’s funny, I thought I was in a trancelike state at the time. I was awake, but – [Pause] C: And did it give you an emotional feeling while you listened? Magnus: Oh, it was very calming. Yes

He begins the story by connecting it with his father’s death, although it is unclear if he uses this date as a memory aid or associates the event itself with his father. The ‘heavenly’ choir has a calming, mesmerising effect on him. There is an intimate sense of enchantment in his description – a rare example where an inhabitant seems to completely let his guard down, at least for a few minutes. Sound permeates the air, there is no separation between him and the event, which emerges around him and merges with him. In the maisonette, Pam also hears ghosts singing and at prayer, which she finds comforting: Pam: I have heard very comforting singing. It was not public singing. It was kind of private. It would be someone singing to themselves, not a performance. And it wasn’t intended to be heard. It’s very soft and comforting C: Like it’s reassuring?

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Pam: It’s not personally reassuring to me, but I get a sense it’s reassuring to them. It’s independent of me. They are not my prayers [pause]. I quite like to hear other people engage in their – prayers. The prayers on the stairs are private and genuine. I have a feeling it’s people praying together. It’s a comforting feeling

Here it is a participant who eavesdrops on the ghosts’ private moment. The sense of their distinct life in the house, and their separate agency, is very clear. But despite the geographical distance and lack of personal meaning, it is still quite an emotionally intimate experience. It calms Pam when she can’t sleep at night. Accepting Susan in Ipswich puts a positive spin on the ghosts’ desire to interact: they are curious. Curiosity is rendered benign because it is not interfering or judgmental, and mirrors Susan’s own curiosity about them. As previous inhabitants, the ghosts have a common interest in the house and what happens to it (‘I do think they only come back when they want to see what’s happening, what’s changing around here’). As described in Chapter 3, Susan prefers to believe that the ghosts would ‘understand’ that she likes to do things different to them (including liking cats), wants to assume empathy, that the ghosts are like her, with a common-sense attitude to change. In the same way, the friends in the maisonette want to assume that the ghosts share similar values, even if they are different in so many other ways. For Ben the caretaker, as described, it means accepting the good and the bad, for the ‘capacity of life is not just good … I want to live with the ghosts – they’re my neighbours. I don’t want the ghosts to leave’. Rather than seeing the ghosts, as others have, as mere ‘house guests’, Ben affords them the respect of being equal ‘neighbours’. For others, there is even the fantasy of ‘companionship’: Magnus [Bristol]: Some people just live companionably with ghosts and just accept them, don’t they? [Laughs]. I suppose – there’s no point getting alarmed about it, really

Similarly, Christine in the maisonette describes the possibility of an ideal form of co-habitation with ghosts: Christine: I do believe that people can – spirits and non-spirits like us can live very happily together, and you can sense a great feeling – warmth and security as well

She offers an example of a ‘best of all worlds’ scenario: the ghosts keep their distance whilst also looking out for the living inhabitants:

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Christine: [In] my last flat, I was very comfortable. Because I felt that the spirits there were just going about their business. And I felt they were actually quite protective and they were minding me as such

Her flatmate, Pam, who is the owner of the maisonette, also feels protective towards the ghosts, the family living on the landing: Pam: I see them as being very vulnerable – and needing of protection somehow from me C: How can that happen? Pam: To keep the peace for them. To not disturb them. I felt a tremendous responsibility for protecting their space actually, for protecting them from intrusion … My feeling is they have every right to be here. And I never wanted to challenge their right to be here – or make them feel uncomfortable even, because I actually think that the people [ghosts] I’ve seen on the stairs really, truly belong here, belong here much more than I do

But in suggesting that the ghosts have more rights to the space than her, she allows them a level of greater ownership. Although she is reluctant at first to admit this, she muses on the disappointment she feels about not fully ‘inhabiting’ her flat: Pam: I don’t think that I have less of a right to be here, but there is something in me that stops me taking up the space in a way that I imagined that I would. And it’s quite strong. It is strong. It’s quite disappointing [pause]. I don’t think it’s because of the ghosts. But it seems strange that I am very aware that they’re here. And I feel respectful of their space. It’s sharing the space. And not feeling I have any rights over them. It’s not that I have a – stronger claim over the place than they do. And, you know, maybe why I’m trying to be so respectful of them. Maybe I really don’t want to upset them. [Speaks slower] Perhaps I don’t want them to have more rights than me – in this place [pause]. I think in my ideal home there wouldn’t be any questions of my occupation, or competition. I don’t think

Engaging There are times when the ghosts do seem to directly engage with participants. These moments may be downplayed where the overriding strategy is of distance not connection. Examples given above include eye contact in Wales. I got rather excited to hear a further instance of eye contact in Ipswich – the old man who Susan’s friend’s son saw whilst kickboxing; a ghost who ‘looked at [him] and smiled’. Despite this, Susan reacted rather ambiguously to my suggestion that this had constituted a ‘real’ interaction. However she also described trying to ‘set

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up’ situations for the ghosts to communicate, including placing a paper and pen on the table next to the chair where the old man appeared. Similarly, Rosa in Wiltshire tried to replicate a scenario described to her by someone who saw the ghost admiring jams piled up on a window sill, in an attempt to ‘bait’ the ghost to appear: Rosa: She was seen looking at the jams and her hands went up like this as she looked, in admiration … I’ve made a lot of jams this summer and piled them up at the window to try to attract her [pause]. But it didn’t work

Another way people attempt to make a connection is to interpret events as having personal meaning, most obviously where the ghosts are believed to be members of the family. In Liverpool, the uncanny events which centre upon Freddy manifest his close relationship with his grandmother. He can accept being ‘watched’ over by her, and find it comforting ‘just knowing that she’s there, watching me. And everything I do’; in another set of circumstances his response might be rather different. In Blackpool, Victoria admits that if she didn’t believe the ghosts were family, she wouldn’t want them to stay (‘I think if it hadn’t been family then I would have let [the medium] take them away’). Instead, a strong family narrative has developed: Gill [young daughter]: We do like them very, very much and we do miss them C: How come you like them? Anna [Gill’s younger sister]: Because we know that they’re there Gill: Yeah, and especially grandma Victoria: They’re looking after us, aren’t they? Anna: They’re family

Elsewhere, there is a real sense of connection through the sharing of home. In Chapter 3 I noted the way in which a love of particular domestic materialities connects Rosa in Wiltshire to her ghost, ‘Annie’, and through her, to the past of the house. This aids a positive sense of shared co-habitation. The ghost appreciates and shares Rosa’s particular expression of domesticity, and is thus more likely to accept her: Rosa: She’s harmless. She likes the same things as me C: She can’t mean you any harm because she must recognise your similarities?

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Rosa: I just think – something like that. And we like to live alone. I love to be alone. And I’ll probably be found dead in my chair by the fire [like Annie was]. She couldn’t frighten me

Rosa knows that the ghost lived alone for many years at the end of her life, just as Rosa does now. It is, perhaps, telling that she can live with a ghost and still think of herself as living alone. Talking With the Ghosts An important way in which participants engage with their ghosts is to talk to them. This is a one-way process, although there are incidences when a ghost appears to be communicating. The form that talking to ghosts generally takes is more akin to talking at them: participants don’t expect – usually don’t want – a response. There are times when there is a momentary frisson, an openness or genuine desire to communicate; at other times, a command to back off. In general, talking is more a statement of fears or wishes as much as it is to do with actual communication, reflecting and externalising participants’ relationships with the ghosts. I noted, in the section on not talking, above, the complexity of such a strategy of distance; it can’t be assumed that talking as such is always a strategy of connection. In the weaver’s cottage, as described, Hilma compares her experience of not seeing her ghost with her neighbour’s encounter with a monk by her kitchen door. She assumes that her neighbour’s need to talk to her is a reflection of her anxiety about it. In contrast, Hilma’s daughter, who also hears the female ghost, reacts by refusing to engage at all: ‘And she put it out of her mind altogether, wouldn’t talk about it. She just didn’t want to talk about it at all.’ But there are multiple examples of talking to ghosts (or a belief that they are trying to talk), reinforcing an assumption that ghosts are like people in that they might be able to communicate or understand in ordinarily human ways. Perhaps also, in the frequent absence of an actual visual experience, the spoken word becomes more important as a form of communication. Ghosts Speak to Inhabitants When an uncanny event involves hearing words, these are often names of householders being called. It is a tantalising sound, because it implies that communication might be possible. But if the word cannot quite be understood, it has the opposite effect; it emphasises instead the impossibility of real communication and reinforces that slight but significant distance from normality – the not-quite word spoken by a not-quite voice. In Liverpool, the ghost of the grandmother is heard to call Freddy’s name, as described:

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Co-habiting with Ghosts Freddy: About two years after she died, she just like started shouting my name. It’s loud. I’ll be sat there, and my mum would be sat here, and I’ll just hear, ‘Freddy!’

The communication goes no further: there are no other words heard, no message imparted. Freddy’s mother and sister have also heard his name being called – but never their own names. This reflects the previous family dynamics, as Freddy’s mother Dora was not close to her mother when she was alive and Freddy was the favourite grandchild. Name calling is a repeated domestic pattern, a ritualised memory of the banal act of shouting from one place in a house to another. But the calling of a name to attract attention merely reinforces the limited nature of the communication loop, never getting beyond first base. In the Wirral house, Mia recalls how the ghost, the ‘Pink Lady’, calls the name of her daughter, the one with the ‘special relationship’: Mia: My daughter was cleaning upstairs, and I was cleaning downstairs. And then she comes downstairs, saying [annoyed voice], ‘What it is you want to tell me?’ And I said, ‘How so?’ ‘Because you keep on calling me, and when I say, ‘Yes, what it is mum?’ You don’t answer. And you call again. And I say, ‘Yes, mum. What it is?’ And you don’t answer. What do you really mean by that?’ She was very annoyed [laughs]. I said: ‘Oh, my dear, I haven’t called you, once’. And then, because her name is [a Finnish name], and the pronunciation is rather impossible for English people. I said: ‘Obviously, you don’t know if it was your Finnish-speaking mum – to call you, or somebody else who doesn’t speak Finnish. And the pronunciation was so beautiful, so perfect, that you didn’t hear any difference. He or she must be a very, very considerate and kind person!’

The daughter’s name, although difficult to pronounce, is spoken perfectly by the disembodied voice. The ghost may not be Finnish, but it is polite enough to make the effort to learn how to pronounce the name properly – another example of assuming shared social etiquette. This reinforces the myth of the ghost passed down by previous owners, that she is kind and caring. It is also a protective gesture towards the daughter, seeing the positive in an uncanny event. The ghost is interpreted as trying to respectfully understand and communicate in their language, despite it being they who are the foreigners. There is also the sense that, by doing this, the ghost also respects differences between them. Name-calling also occurs in other households. Susan in Ipswich told me that her husband, Gary, had never experienced the ghosts. But, in passing, she mentioned he had heard his name being called, assuming Susan was playing a joke. The event is not logged as something worth the category ‘uncanny’, such is its banal and ubiquitous nature within the domestic interior: Susan: Sometimes [fiancé] Gary has come upstairs and said, ‘Why have you called me?’ And I’ll say, ‘I haven’t called you’. Or I’ll hear something calling

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me sometimes. Like a ‘Susan!’ [an urgent, staccato whisper] but there’s no one there. And he was convinced it was me playing a joke on him. But I’ve never done that, no

Hearing one’s name being called doesn’t always have the same purchase as other events: even footsteps get more attention. An exception is in the weaver’s cottage, where the pivotal uncanny event involved hearing something being said. The details of the words are not quite understood, leaving a gap in understanding which has vexed the occupants since; another near-miss event, where what is heard is not quite heard – the words are fuzzy and distorted as if there is bad radio reception: Hilma: And this is where the strong whisper came up. It was definitely an urgent request for help. But what the lady said, I do not know. There was no real sound to it. The vocal chords didn’t kind of come into it [she demonstrates by whispering loudly]. But it must have been loud, because my husband heard it downstairs

The two participants hear slightly different things. Hilma interprets it as an attempt to communicate, and feels responsible because she can’t understand what was needed from her. She continues to attempt to translate a meaning from what she didn’t quite hear. Like her Finnish acquaintance’s daughter on the Wirral, she reads the event in culturally specific ways. Here, the word she thought she heard is a female name, but it also means something else in Finnish: Hilma: What I thought she said was, ‘Anna!’ Anna is a girl’s name. But it’s also Finnish – ‘Give me!’ Now obviously there are no language barriers in these sort of – ghostly – but I thought I was imagining this ‘Anna’ because it’s a Finnish word as well. But since it didn’t repeat itself and nothing happened, we couldn’t get to grips with it

In contrast to Hilma’s inability to understand the ghost, the ghost is conferred superhuman powers – to be bilingual in human terms. There may be no ‘language barriers’, but the communication barrier is all too real. Hilma finds meaning in what might have been said from her own personal background, but simultaneously she questions this, accepting she might have imagined the word because the association was already in her head. The dual possibilities of meaning of the word reflect back her dual identity, as a Finnish woman living in England. Again, there is potentially an understanding – by the ghost – of difference, and a desire to connect. The fact that the near-communication is between two women plays into conventional notions of female ghosts as either vulnerable, in need, or caring and sensitive: ‘[Shakes her head] I’m just sorry that I didn’t understand the question. You know, the language of the question – or what she actually said. But it was a very intense request for help, urgently.’

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Inhabitants Speak to Ghosts The assumption of the ghost’s sensitivity as an extension of shared social values is replicated in Hilma and Adam’s own narrative as they try to recall their immediate responses to the event. It is interesting to explore a particular moment in the discussion, where they can’t remember what they replied to the ghost at the time. They seem to back each other up in describing how they would have responded, suggesting a desire to present themselves as polite and dignified. Hilma censors their memory of her response: Adam: She replied also – to whoever had asked this question C: You said? Hilma: I don’t know. ‘What do you want?’ Adam: You know, ‘What do you want?’ Or – ‘What is it?’ Hilma: ‘What’s the matter?’ Adam: Yep Hilma: ‘What’s the matter?’ Probably. ‘What do you want?’ is rude. ‘What’s the matter?’ I would have said. As I head down the ladder, Adam was coming up, saying, ‘What’s the matter?’

There is another example of a cry for help – but in this case, it is a householder appealing to a ghost – Ben the caretaker pleaded to be ‘saved’ by the previous inhabitant (‘I just thought, well, I said something like: “Save me – A!”’). As described, the appeal to a female is in contrast to the threat from a male – whose ‘voice’ he could hear coming towards his bedroom (‘I heard roaring, shouting – great anger’). The former ghost, the famous historical figure of A, does not respond with words, but acts swiftly: words would have been useless in such an emergency. At another time, Ben also uses words strategically. He doesn’t talk directly to a ghost, but lets the ghost know he knows she is around. This strategy might allow him to take control of the situation – stating his knowledge aloud as a way of projecting his confidence. The ghost, in turn, makes vocal sounds – laughter. Perhaps the fact that this is a jolly-sounding female takes away any unease that a ghost in his private flat might otherwise create: Ben: I was in my flat [within the house], and I was chatting with my brother. Then there was a presence of a woman in the flat. Laughter. Someone giggling. Almost like, not a mocking laughter, but sort of like – having fun. Near me. Giggle. And I just talked to my brother about it, in real time. ‘This is happening. Someone is

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here in my flat, laughing. They’re giggling’. And I kind of made the ghost aware of it. But I – didn’t feel threatened. I was almost amused by it

There are other times when participants speak in order to assert territorial needs, often reacting to an infringement of space. As described, Ben also finds himself talking aloud to the house as he walks through it, not in response to a particular event, but to reinforce his sense of himself within the house, his own presence and right to occupation (“‘I’m Ben. I’m here. Notice me.” I’m standing up for myself’). At times, people also expose more direct anxiety about their ghosts. As described, Susan in Ipswich wants to assume the ghosts look benignly on the current structural work taking place. But at one point she describes what she might ask if she could communicate with the ghosts: ‘Are you fed up with what we’re doing?’ Susan is left speaking her anxiety into the air. The openness of the narrative here is about a lack of a response from the ghosts to clarify her reading of the situation. For Tara, who puts up with an invasive male presence in the room she is paid to sleep in every night, any communication with the ghost is about standing up to the ghost, speaking her fear as an attempt to contain it: Tara: Honestly, when I go home I say: ‘I’m here. Don’t scare me!’ Sometimes, another night, I hear a noise in a room … I say, ‘Ok. You scare me. Enough. I’m here’

But she plays down her fear to the landlady (‘I tell her: “Look, I’m not scared. I’m not frightened. I don’t care what I hear, you know”’). This is telling because the landlady does not communicate with her about her own fears about the ghost – even though it is obvious that this is the reason she pays Tara to stay at her home. Tara has to overhear, second hand, how the landlady feels, as she recounts: Tara: And [the landlady] says: ‘Oh, you are lucky, you are alone in the house, because I hear noises and I’m scared’. So that’s the truth, why she employ me to sleep over night … She’s frightened to go alone in the house. And she tells me what time to be there … I must wait at the front door to go together in Olive: Mother can’t but guess what other experiences the lady has had with this spirit in the house. She doesn’t know and it’s not something you can talk about over tea. It’s kind of hard for the lady to admit, you know Tara: And if I start talking, you know, it’s more bad for her than for me. Maybe we live like this and see what happens in the future

Olive has suggested to Tara that she might want to communicate with the ghost in order to find out why he is there, suggesting that the ghost might be trying

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to communicate, however obliquely (‘Maybe he’s just trying to draw attention because he wants something from you’). She reasons that as Tara can hear the ghost ‘snoring’, he might also be able to speak too. By finding out what the ghost wants, it might leave her alone – the goal of such communication is not to reach out for the sake of communication, but to do so in order to attempt a withdrawal, to gain privacy. But Tara is ‘not ready’ for such direct communication, preferring to alter her own stance towards the ghost; a part of this strategy being to talk at but not with the ghost: Olive: So from that moment on, mummy started to say: ‘Ok, I know you’re here and ok, so what do you want from me? What can I do for you?’ Tara: I’m not ready for this … I’m scared to try to talk with it Olive: She’s not really ready for that Tara: Not yet Olive: But she’s trying to accept it … [Discussion in Romanian] She said she tries to go on knowingly. She doesn’t try to ignore it. She acknowledges it is there. But she tries not to be bothered by it. By the ghost. She takes it as it is. ‘Ok. You’re here. I’m here. This is my job. I don’t have to be scared because now I sort of know you’

Her strategy is rather not to ignore it, but to wilfully, consciously, carry out her domestic routines and to get used to the ghost over time. There is a stoical acceptance here, although she is also comforted by the thought that the ghost might be haunting because it ‘needs’ something; this reinforces it as something vulnerable rather than powerful. Playing down her fears and anxieties about the situation to her landlady, and perhaps to herself, is a successful enough strategy of co-habitation in a context where communication is oblique between all householders, whether human or nonhuman. Rosa in Wiltshire talks to her ghost in a rather more intimate way, acting as if the ghost can hear and respond. This move is both about connection and containment; and again about taking control of the situation: Rosa: I’ve got this picture over the kitchen table, which is a painting of fruit I did when I was fifteen. I go out to karate, and come back, and the damn thing’s hanging sideways – it’s on such a slant. And I just had to say: ‘Annie, please. You know, really, this is outrageous’

Rosa tells the ghost off, but there is something familiar in her manner, fitting with the way the uncanny is ‘familiarised’, domesticated. Rosa’s mother also talks to the ghost, but in an effort to soothe her:

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Rosa: Oh, my mum’s talked to her. She said – I think once we came in and the pictures were everywhere – ‘Anne, don’t worry, it’s all right. No one’s going to hurt your house’. My mum said it so nicely: ‘Annie, stop worrying, it’s alright.’ My mother’s like Mary Whitehouse, frosty schoolmistress, you know. It was so sweet. ‘Don’t worry. Nobody’s going to disturb your lovely house’

The ghost of Freddy’s grandmother in Liverpool communicates through banal domestic acts, as described in Chapter 2. But through such indirect communication, Freddy feels able to ask her to do something for him: Dora: I know one night he said: ‘I was so tired in bed. The telly was on, I didn’t feel like getting up and switching it off. I said, “Oh, moma [grandmother], put the telly off.”’ He said, and the next thing, the telly just went off

In contrast, there is sometimes even camaraderie with the ghosts against outsiders. In Cornwall, Clare, who works in the garden and is also the girlfriend of the owner’s son, explained that her strategy for dealing with a feeling of being watched by things ‘unseen’ was to talk to them ‘as if they were alive’. She added that she was often ‘in cahoots’ with the ghosts against the ghost hunters who are allowed to visit the property from time to time. She recalled one time when these visitors were looking around the place, Clare ‘sensed’ the ghosts at the bottom of the tower staircase, and said to them: ‘They’re at the top of the stairs, so if you want to avoid them, stay down here’ – whereupon she was convinced she heard laughter. This imagined communication served to reinforce her insider status. In Blackpool, the ghosts, as family, are insiders par excellence. In particular, the mother and eldest daughter speak poignantly about the conversations they have with their dead grand/mother. The frustration that these are probably one-way is keenly felt. The uncanny events – such as footsteps, doors opening and closing, the doorbell ringing, electronic equipment turning on and off – do not communicate anything in particular. The following discussion starts hopefully – with the possibility that the grandmother can hear the eldest daughter’s words/thoughts and respond ‘in her own little way’. But it ends with an admission of disappointment and sadness: Anna: I know now that because grandma is here, if I ever get upset or anything, I can go to my room and I can just talk to myself because I know she can hear me. And in her own little way, she can answer me back C: Does she ever answer you back? Anna: I don’t know, it’s a bit weird, because I don’t know whether it’s me kind of like talking to myself in my head or it is her answering me back. I can never properly tell whether it’s grandma or it’s just me C: Do you ever talk to her directly, out loud?

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C: What kind of things do you say? Victoria: [starting to look sad, emotional] How we’re feeling and stuff. You know. If we’ve had a bad day, you know. How we miss her, not being here to be able to talk, to have a proper conversation. Or on the phone, talking about it. If she wasn’t here, she was always on the phone Anna: If the phone rings, it was always like, ‘I’ll get it. It’ll be grandma’. Then you just know, ‘No, it’s not’. Cos she’s not around anymore C: It was quite recently really that she – went Victoria: Two years this May C: Yeah – So, the fact that it’s still sad, even though you feel she’s still with you – Victoria: It’s reassuring, yes. Yeah. That she’s still here C: But the sadness when you talk to her is about not having a – Victoria: Yeah. Yeah. Have the conversation back that we used to Gill: And sometimes when we talk about it, it makes me upset. Because I miss her really, really much

The gentle, internal conversations try to replicate habits of communication, but they can never be sure if the grandmother talks back or if the conversation is imagined. The not-quite two-way conversation reinforces their sense of loss as much as it comforts them to think there might be communication. The frustration this causes is reinforced whenever the telephone rings. The moment of initial forgetfulness that it cannot be the grand/mother, as it so often would have been, makes such a habitual sound event take on its own uncanny resonance. The repetition of normal routines becomes a jarring reminder of change; the mundane act of the telephone ringing is displaced by a sudden remembrance of loss. Previously, it was described how the recalling of shared uncanny experience can become an important social ritual, and through sharing their thoughts about their grand/mother, Victoria and her daughters reinforce their own existing relationships. For some, this is not just about private conversations, but about

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spreading the narrative further afield (including inviting researchers into their home). Although less common, this might be seen as another way in which ghosts are contained, through a willed superficial enjoyment of the haunted home as something with ‘public’ status. Telling such ghost stories might reveal a glimpse into the private interior, but is meant as a form of display, closer to the way ghost stories are ‘performed’ in the tourist and heritage industry, rather than a revealing of private moments. For some, such as Mia on the Wirral, there is a level of mockery in other people’s responses – as previously described, a neighbour gets a fright mistaking her for a ghost at the window. This reinforces her ability to co-habit as an ‘insider’. Telling the story publically – beyond the household – confers status and character through anecdote: C: Did you see this as an annoying aspect? Daniel [Wales]: Oh no. It’s good after-dinner conversation

Susan in Ipswich also enjoys the attention she receives from her work colleagues: Susan: It’s quite a topic of conversation at work for some reason. They were like, ‘Can we come round?’ And I was saying, ‘Yes, if you want’. They were like, ‘Wow! Wow!’ I think with any story, they’re very interested to hear it

Susan’s home becomes a place on the wider map. She herself believes there is a move to be less coy about ghosts, suggesting, at least in her social circles, it has become an acceptable form of local folklore: ‘More and more people talk about it now. Because I think years ago people wouldn’t talk about it. They’d just sweep it under the carpet.’ But some participants continue to be reticent about talking about their ghosts, such as Pam in the maisonette, who sees this as disrespectful. Magnus in Bristol is concerned not to speak of uncanny events to neighbours, and the couple in Wales acknowledge that by speaking so openly they might make their house more difficult to sell. But in general, as Susan suggests, there is a sense that talking about the ghosts confers certain benefits. Perhaps, like Hilma’s neighbour across the field, there is sometimes a need to tell the tale as a form of purging difficult emotions, or rendering it less unnerving by giving it an ordinary social context, where strategies of humour, infantilisation, domestication, containment, can be utilised in the act of creating narrative. On the one hand, then, the need to talk indicates the level of dis-ease associated with uncanny events. On the other hand, telling ghost stories creates and reinforces close relationships and offers a focus for new social engagements. Indeed, the social aspect of some participants’ lives becomes more important in the wake of the uncertain and the unknowable; there is a greater need to connect to tangible structures, processes and relationships.

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* * * This desire for the ordinary and tangible – or to render ghosts as such – is, then, played out in a raft of strategies cut-through by different interpretations, which often assume the ghosts’ own beliefs and attitudes. Narrative strategies employed by participants form a complex, careful grid, a tool kit for handling experience. Despite the range of contexts, events and responses, these strategies fall into clear categories of distance and communication. Ghosts communicate rather obliquely, and this leaves useful narrative gaps for householders to fill in ways which suit them. A sound or a smell, out of context with its surroundings, leaves a trail towards the imaginary construction of a humanlike form. Encounters offer fragments to be picked up and pieced together into a whole which may or may not fit. People fill in the details, ‘flesh out’ the ghosts in ways they believe to be most appropriate. The level and type of communication possible becomes important in the process of examining, understanding, and tacitly attempting to create or influence the ghostly ‘other’. The degree to which people attempt or block potential communication became part of their strategies for dealing with the ghosts. But either way, the assumption, again, is of likeness, that communication must be of the human kind, despite frustration when this proves limited or impossible, although communication is sometimes also about knowing and facing down the other. Sometimes strategies are required to mitigate against the undesired effect of others who are too similar to the difficult aspects of self. For Christine in the maisonette, for example, the petulant ghost is met with her own petulance. The need to maintain distance may suggest a reiteration of a common assumption, that in order to maintain subjectivity (even to create it), one must ensure alterity is dispelled (Brennan, 2004). Thus ghosts are usually somewhere else, don’t have much impact, aren’t usually visible, can’t communicate, and are in any case disinterested in talking to or being involved in the daily lives of living inhabitants. As described in Chapter 2, home’s spaces are delineated into those which are more private and more public, and there is a need to maintain ghosts in the more public areas where possible, keeping them at bay. In the case of employees, where the place they live and sleep is tied to their work, there is perhaps a greater incentive to maintain distance; but it is interesting to note how these participants are those who are particularly challenged by their experiences. Yet, as we have seen in previous chapters, there is often a push-pull tension between privacy and sharing, distance and intimacy – between connecting with the ‘other’ as a potentially enriching experience, and maintaining a sense of difference which involves an assumption that no communication is possible. Thus strategies of distance and communication are sometimes employed, but these are not necessarily opposed to each other. The use of one set of strategies does not preclude the simultaneous use of others. For example, connections are usually only encouraged within certain space-time bounds, and often only desired once other strategies – of distance – are in place, when participants feel secure in their own sense of separate self-home space to be able to reach out. Some participants need to

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downplay events which don’t fit the overall (usually more positive) narrative; these tend to be subsumed or sidelined within a wider interpretation. But if the motive is to maintain comfort and privacy and a sense of belonging, it is not necessarily to assume these things are only possible alone, singularly, independently. The desire for a deeper sense of habitation, of curiosity and a need to connect, often outweighs the possibility of entering unknown territory. Again, such behaviour is bounded: participants will only feel comfortable to reach out if they already sense that a respectful distance has already been secured, or if the capacity of the ghosts to harm or to invade space in any way is limited. At the heart of such strategies is a struggle to fully articulate experiences of the uncanny, to place experience, and by doing so, to reinforce subjectivity. Such a project risks becoming embroiled in the self’s own uncertainty and unfathomable aspects, becoming part of the struggle to maintain a ‘degree of coherence’ (Varley, 2008: 55), a degree of ‘centring and consistency’ (Conradson, 2005: 106). The process of creating a self-at-home – and a self at home with itself – is never automatically conferred in the haunted home.

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PART III Belief, Knowledge and Experience

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Chapter 6

Knowledge and Uncertainty In Part III, we turn to a consideration of the beliefs which inform people’s interpretations of uncanny events, placing these in social and cultural context. This chapter begins with a discussion of different ways in which knowledge is perceived or experienced, moving to explore how people negotiate different forms of knowledge and responses to uncertainty. Different Types of Knowledge As described, most participants express perplexity as to the meaning, cause or reason of uncanny events, although sometimes these are assumed to be a specific response, emotion or idea being communicated. Some people work towards a broader meaning of an event in relation to a system of belief; but mostly, they assume that an event’s meaning will never be fully known and will always be open to different interpretations. For hard-line rationalists, the fact that meaning is obscure, however, leads directly to the conclusion that an event is meaningless. Just Knowing As discussed in Chapter 2, ‘knowledge’ includes an intuitive or instinctive sensation of ‘just knowing’ – that a house will be up for sale, that a ghost has a particular characteristic, that the atmosphere is accepting. At times, ‘just knowing’ is a status given to those who cannot know any other way: it is tacitly assumed to be a lesser form of knowledge than ‘rational’ knowledge. In Wales, the couple’s 22-year-old adopted son, Jim, who has Down’s syndrome, is described as someone who cannot properly analyse and who reacts instinctively. He is embroiled in anomalous events in ways which cannot be explained: Rachel: [After she sees the ghost of a young man, the word ‘Tom’ starts to appear on the walls] I said to Jim: ‘What’s the name of the boy?’ And he said, apropos of nothing [clicks fingers] ‘Tom’. Just like that. He didn’t have to think. And he hadn’t been told that we’d seen a name, ‘Tom’, appearing, and he just knew. ‘How do you know?’ He didn’t know how he knew

This non-analytical ‘knowing’ also relates to other forms of knowledge such as body memory, or to a micro-knowledge of a home’s physical spaces; the

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practical and esoteric, physical and metaphysical experience and knowledge of home intermingle: Ben [caretaker]: I’m aware of every – nook and cranny, every lock, and everything about the house I think. Every – almost inch by inch. Every tile, every lock, every – the makings of the locks, the interior of the locks – the alarm system, where things are, where every – almost – the floorboards. Where I’m going to find nails in floorboards. Almost. It’s just like I have a memory of the house. I know cellars, I know everything in the attic. I can describe the small detail of everything

Sometimes participants express self-doubt, wondering if they themselves are a cause of events; here knowledge is submerged, just out of reach, and suggests the possibility of a lack of self-knowledge: Rachel [Wales]: I could probably produce stuff that wouldn’t be very nice. And I don’t know how. And I don’t know how I know that. But I rather think that I could, if I wanted to – connect. I suspect I’m not that distant from it. I’m not doing it consciously – I’m not coming down in the night and sleep walking. As far as I’m aware

Here, a participant wonders whether she is somehow involved in creating uncanny phenomena. Her knowing is of the vaguest and most uncertain kind – like her son, she doesn’t know how she knows. In this case the social context is important, for this household has been the focus of parapsychology research, which concluded that the couple must have had some involvement in producing the uncanny events. Rachel had discussed theories pointing to the role living people might have in producing uncanny phenomena, but stressed that if she was involved it was unwitting and unconscious. In contrast, some people use the feeling of ‘just knowing’ as a way of legitimising their reliability as a witness: Mia [Wirral]: But this was something I definitely knew. That somebody walked through the dining room, passed the window, and back

Personal Meanings Uncanny events are perceived by many participants as emerging from the space itself, separate from their presence in it. But there is sometimes a parallel underlying search for personal significance. Meanings can emerge, as described, through shared memories of events, storytelling conferring meaning through the reinforcing of social bonds over time. But these are arguably side effects of events, and some people seek more intimate interpretations which are not just about seeking meaning as a general ‘making sense’ but about construing events

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as meaningful. My first potential participant was a woman who later changed her mind about being interviewed. She emailed: I apologise for not contacting you sooner, but I’ve thought long and hard and decided not to continue further with this as I really don’t want to share my ‘experience’ as it was only meant for me. Thank you for your time and good luck

A personal connection reinforces an event as something with credibility and depth. In the following example, the event echoes and anticipates ‘real-life’ events, as if it has knowledge of its own: Rachel [Wales]: We got the word ‘affil’, apple, and ‘cariad’ on the wall in April. And just after, we get passed my legacy from my late dad’s estate. And, um, ‘affil’ is apple, ‘Cariad’ is love. And when I was a girl in Guernsey, sometimes tomatoes were called ‘love apples’. And dad made his money, his mint, by growing Guernsey tomatoes

Contested Beliefs Most participants accept that knowledge should be based on evidence which is robust enough to provide proof. There is an assumption by some that there is only one legitimate form of knowing (which is also the process of acquiring knowledge): the mainstream logics of rational materialism. For others, however, there is the potential for widening the definition of knowledge, whereby rational materialism becomes one system of knowledge amongst others. However, those who question the orthodoxy are also deeply culturally informed by it. Some people seem invested in maintaining one position. This is easier for the sceptic, who has the weight of mainstream culture to back him or her up. For Luke, Mia’s husband on the Wirral, there is no room for doubt or uncertainty. A neurologist by profession, he provides a neat description of one common reductionist position, combining psychology and neurology to create a picture of false experience leading to, or informed by, false belief: Luke: My own view is that there isn’t anything. I’d be quite happy to explain it just from the point of view of how the human brain works. You know, with expectation and anticipation as such – by interpretation or something which is partially imagination and partially just a phenomenon that people don’t have an understanding for C: You say some phenomenon isn’t understood? Luke: Well, but that happens all the time. I mean our observations aren’t as clear-cut. So you may have – the occurrences might be towards the end of the day, when there’s only dim light inside or outside – in an old house like this there

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Co-habiting with Ghosts is always all sorts of noises. The brain makes mistakes all the time. And then you have circumstances where, if you strongly expect to see something – that someone is going to move across the lawn, and – it’s late in the day, you actually might think someone is going there. So our mind does tricks. And if there is a cultural setting for them – then you actually might be geared or primed into seeing one eventually, in the right circumstances

In the opposite corner, there are also examples of belief in ghosts as the ‘taken for granted’ position. Ben the caretaker doesn’t need to prove or disprove the existence of ghosts. He doesn’t question whether they – or his experiences – are real. He incorporates the idea of ghosts into his idea of home and his place within it. But there are times when people admit to an awareness of a tendency to assume a supernatural cause when this isn’t necessarily warranted. Alex in the rented North London flat concedes, for example, that she often blames her ghost cat, Billy, for life’s little mysteries: Alex: [Pointing to a living cat in the room] He was looking in there [assuming the cat is staring at the ghost cat] – actually, there’s a spider there. I take it back. It’s gone. Oh, it’s here. Sometimes she gets the blame for things nothing to do with her. I’m ashamed to say, I probably do instantly assume it’s her and occasionally it’s not. I’m not sure if Billy becomes the archetypal can carrier for all mischief

Some people contradict themselves, at one point avowing scepticism, at others conceding the possibility of ghosts. Abby, the elderly owner of the castle tower in Cornwall is generally scathing about belief in ghosts, laughing at the people who go on ‘ghost tours’, happy for them to believe her home is haunted as long as they pay her: ‘I generally see them drifting around. They come back! I recognised one woman and said: “I’ve seen you before.”’ She is happy to talk romantically about her home (in a pamphlet about the history of the castle she writes: ‘Nothing that the ebb and flow of Fate has thrown at it has yet diminished its enchantment’), but is keen to separate this from any belief in it being haunted. Later she casually mentions she is open to the possibility of one particular ghost, a monk. At another time, she claims she has seen a photograph of ‘ghost rats’ taken in the garden: Abby: In the mists they saw the form of rats appearing. All of them saw it. And it came out in a photo. Most bizarre. Even I was convinced. Ghost rats

The oscillation between different positions seems, at times, a response to seeking a middle ground, to negotiating between the ‘legitimate’ form of knowing, and other, different kinds of ‘knowing’. Karen in the maisonette, for example, expresses this contradiction (‘Even though I know I don’t know – I’m absolutely sure’).

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Rachel in Wales is open about her sense of the multiplicity of possible explanations. But she is more open when being interviewed on her own than when responding to questions as part of a couple, perhaps because of her awareness of her husband as far better conventionally educated than herself. Her awareness of this seems at times to make her defer to her husband’s greater ‘intelligence’ (‘My husband is very analytical. He’s a very intelligent person, as you can tell. I’m not’). This belief in her lack of standard knowledge leads her to doubt herself. But it is also an emancipating position, because it allows her leeway to sit with, to accept, not knowing. She doesn’t expect ordinarily to know very much about the world anyway: Rachel: Daniel – has to know. And he doesn’t want to believe in spirits of the dead. As I don’t understand physics, I can [laughs] – I can distance myself from it! I mean, I’ve got no evidence. Daniel wants evidence – you can’t go above, beyond the laws of physics. Daniel tries to be logical. I don’t bother with logic. Logic never gets in the way [laughs] where I’m concerned! And that irritates him completely … I don’t know. I don’t sort of have to pin it down. Daniel has to be totally analytical and say, ‘It must work – there must be a mechanism’. But I don’t know if there’s one mechanism … I can hold a few different positions in my head at one time

It became clear just how disputed facts are between them during a discussion about a tombstone in the garden – dug up by previous owners during landscaping and usually propped up against an outside wall. It keeps going missing, and at this point is found buried under a blackcurrant bush, which Daniel points out has been damaged, suggesting some human effort had been used. He argues that he is ‘just collecting facts’, and looking for the ‘natural associations’. Rachel questions his analysis, suggesting it is fuelled by an existing scepticism, but then becomes defensive: she wasn’t around so at least he can’t blame her. Daniel explained that he did accept the existence of different theories, but only negotiates plurality in a search for the one truth that explains everything: Daniel: In all honesty, in science or in management, I never reject the data. Or try not to. Because it’s convenient. Or because it means that – that means you can hold your hypothesis or your belief and you forget about this. I tend to keep all the balls in play. And, Rachel’s great at telling – when I say, telling stories, I mean in the sense of giving narrative! Er, interesting narrative! Otherwise we aren’t going to come out in the end, in this case, with an interesting truth, with a theory which actually covers the whole thing fully

The category ‘supernatural’ is rejected because it doesn’t explain anything, in the terms of his paradigm:

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Co-habiting with Ghosts Daniel: Intellectual dishonesty is the other position. The one that says, ‘Um, yeah, I’ll pretend that doesn’t – happen’ C: I’m assuming you sit uneasy with theories of the supernatural – Daniel: They’re not an explanation! What do you mean, ‘That’s supernatural’? You mean – C: You don’t know what else it can be? Daniel: So you just give it a label, ‘the supernatural’, and somehow think you’ve explained something. But you haven’t, have you?

Supernatural theories, for Daniel, constitute sloppy science, a failure of intellectual stamina. Part of Daniel’s truth-seeking also means accepting ‘those inconvenient things’ which, in the history of science, have actually shown ‘the truth’. His personal ‘inconvenience’ is having to suspect that his wife – often at home when events occur – might be involved as a cause of uncanny events: Daniel: Well, it’s a possibility I can’t rule out. There are various happenings which tend to move in that direction, which suggest that’s the case. Like any good scientist, I’m pointing them out. There are also examples which suggest that Rachel couldn’t possibly be the person responsible [because she wasn’t there at the time]. I’m pointing them up. As you might have noticed

Elsewhere, a dogged desire to be ‘rational’ can be a defence against the fear of the paranormal. In the maisonette, Karen is very open about this being her main motive behind the need for a rational explanation; she wants one which denies supernatural ‘reality’. But there is a contradiction, because, within her social context, she also accepts and respects her flatmates’ uncanny experiences, and is sometimes persuaded of her own: Karen: Obviously I believe [in ghosts] enough to think I’d rather they didn’t appear to me. It’s like I would absolutely do my best – to block any interpretation of the supernatural … The thing is how to interpret things. I just feel like, if there was a breeze passing over my face, I would never think that it was that. And I wouldn’t want to. So I think I really resist the interpretations that [pause], I would always think it was psychological. And I would never, ever, ever want to interpret, you know – I think that whole side of myself I haven’t wanted to explore and I’ve always been very frightened of … I interpreted [banging doors] in a rational way. But it wasn’t rational, because I thought, ‘Oh that must be the wind’, and I didn’t give it another thought. And it was only when Christine came and started to say, ‘This is a very active house’, and I [heard] a lot of doors were banging. I thought, ‘God, she’s right. I’ve really noticed that’. And when

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I walk in a room and a door bangs behind me, it’s very, very – noticeable. And I thought, ‘Yes, that is strange’, because it wasn’t windy. But I still can’t just, you know, I just to myself, I interpret that as the breeze. God knows where that breeze is supposed to be coming from, but anyway

She is conscious of an irony in her attempt to maintain a rational stance whilst knowing this might be an irrational move in the light of the events she and her friends experience. In contrast, flatmate Christine is content to accept she is ‘not rational’. She doesn’t need to analyse uncanny events, for this reason: they cannot be explained rationally. This leads again to ‘just knowing’ as a statement of confidence; her ‘sense’ is a form of ‘making sense’ that doesn’t rely on rationality at all: Christine: A lot of this I can’t explain. I just sense it. And I’m not rational. I wouldn’t be like Karen, trying to get a rational answer to it. I just accept it for what it is. I don’t analyse it

Christine also becomes a key depository of information, suggesting the interpretation of the uncanny to Karen, who in turn confers authority on her for possessing knowledge she lacks. In a similar way, the local psychic medium is also influential as an ‘expert’ in Blackpool, trusted to know what the family ordinarily could not. The medium becomes a conduit between the strange and familiar, translating the unknown into the knowable, explaining cause for effect. In Ipswich, Susan also expresses interest in popular cultural ideas about the supernatural, attending the shows of well-known mediums. But she is able to step back and question their veracity, complaining that they are often ‘vague’ in what they say, and testing them by withholding information in order not to offer too many clues: ‘I just tend to let them feed it all to me – I decide it for myself. I don’t tend to ask any questions.’ At one point, the medium doesn’t give her specific enough information about a suicide, and Susan doesn’t risk upsetting her neighbour, the widow, for no reason. As in examples where participants protect friends or children from information which might disturb them, the social context of knowledge is important here. It is not just about different types of ‘knowing’, but what to do with the information one knows: knowing when to communicate information, and when to keep quiet. Susan questions what accounts for legitimate knowledge, despite her belief in the supernatural and her embrace of popular cultures related to it: Susan: My next-door neighbour but one committed suicide. And [the medium] said, ‘I’ve got a man here who’s committed suicide’, and everyone looked around at me. I kept quiet. [The wife] came round the other night and I thought, ‘I can’t tell you. Because you’ll probably think that’s all loony’. I mean, she [the medium] didn’t give me any information. If she’d said what his name was or gave me something that maybe I could use as a key word then that would have been different. And I thought [sceptical tone] ‘Mmm’. I’ve seen her before and she’s very fast but very vague. So it could have applied to anybody

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The social context of knowledge transference is important and might explain how some people – such as Karen in the maisonette – can hold seemingly contradictory beliefs. Susan won’t allow tarot cards into her otherwise eclectic belief system, but it is unclear if this isn’t more to do with her relationship with a colleague – a ‘white witch’ who offers her a reading – or some pre-held belief: ‘And I was like [dismissively]: “No, I don’t think I’ll go that far, thank you!”’ In Wiltshire, Rosa expresses an internal conflict between competing systems of belief. In her public sense of self, Rosa, an academic, is a rational materialist. She dismisses believers in the supernatural as ‘flaky’ (a word she repeats), suggesting something silly and ungrounded against the solid bedrock of Western civilised thought. At the same time, she separates general statements of belief from the particular story of her household ghost (‘Annie’), detailed over the course of a number of emails and conversations. I was surprised that, without my pushing her, she did not reflect on the irony of her position, the impasse between general belief and specific experience. This tension came to the fore right at the start of our first meeting: Rosa: I don’t believe in ghosts. Let me say that very clearly C: Really? Rosa: Yep C: After all that? All your emails? Rosa: I don’t. I can’t. [Very emphatically, arms crossed] I don’t believe in ghosts. I definitely do not believe in ghosts. [Quickly] But I’ve got a ghost

She states the dilemma dramatically. Analytical and articulate, Rosa wishes to stress her rationalist stance at the outset, to clarify her position, before we got on with the task at hand: to talk about her ghost. How does she manage this? She doesn’t. The rational stance again becomes an irrational one. She expresses her contradiction with a flourish: Rosa: … But I’ve got a ghost C: Ok. How do you square that one? Rosa: How do I square it? By being divinely, inconsistently irrational

It’s as if her dogmatism wears her down as swiftly as she states it – she swings teasingly to the opposite pole. Again, the wider context seems important. The ghost might play a role in deepening her personal connection to her home, but she plays down any need to believe, focusing on a lack of emotional investment, an attitude of nonchalance:

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C: Would you prefer not to [believe]? Rosa: Well, no. I couldn’t care le – I’m very indifferent. I don’t care. I don’t have an emotional kind of thing about it. I think that’s flaky, in fact. I think I’m just quite – detached about it ... I’ve never believed in ghosts. That’s obvious. I’m quite old. I’ve been on the planet half a century, and ghosts haven’t come into my, um – C: But they have now? Rosa: Yeah. But I can’t be bothered to believe in them. Put it that way … [Later] It’s just that I can’t be bothered to believe in ghosts. In a way, I just think that people add that to themselves and it’s a bit flaky. I just think, ‘Come on!’ There might be a rational reason for it all in the end. There might be a bit of subsidence which makes the pictures go wonky. It could be my central heating which is drying out the house. You know, there could be a rational reason. Well, there’s so much bollocks in the world, isn’t there? There’s so much flakiness. You know. [Pause] I really don’t know. [Pause] Just don’t know. I just don’t know

Her ‘not being bothered’ stance seems motivated in part by a need to distance herself from the ‘flaky’ people who are gullible in believing things which can’t be substantiated, and might have a need to believe which makes them, in her eyes, rather pathetic. She toys with a few rational (physical) reasons why the pictures on the walls might move – subsidence, central heating. But she is left with the only other possible position: to admit that she just doesn’t, cannot know. Her next argument to explain a lack of concern about the ghost dwells on her emotional response to it, and, in doing so, rather reinforces her contradictory position: ‘And also my ghost’s a good ghost. She’s very – opposite of malevolent. You know. She’s a dear little ghost, I think.’ Rosa positions herself and her experience in relation to certain cultural assumptions, replicating traditional ideas about ghosts, here that ghosts are malevolent. Despite distancing herself, she spends much time wanting to prove the existence of ghosts, as will be explored; and at times she stumbles into vague but acknowledging statements like this one: ‘I kind of believe that there are things that do happen like that, yeah.’ In the Wirral house, Mia explores a tension between the more rational and more imaginative aspects of herself: the uncanny events force these differences into open relation. Mia, a historian by training, has learned to sift materials for facts, but the uncertainty of what she witnesses makes her question the line between fact and fiction. Whereas Rosa in Wiltshire flamboyantly accepts the contradiction of her position, Mia’s response is to reflect upon what is ‘real’: C: How do you feel about having a ghost?

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Co-habiting with Ghosts Mia: I am curious about it. We think that if you can’t prove something, it doesn’t exist. Like historians can’t say – we can’t say anything that is only opinion – we have to prove everything. And everything must be real. You are not allowed to assume anything. And then this is – my education is so much against these things, that I’m so curious if it’s – [laughs]. On the other hand, I think it can’t be possible. [Disparaging, critical voice] That’s just my imagination, it’s only that I like this house to be so special, that I make it all up. But I know I’m not doing that

She can’t prove the ghost exists, but she can allow herself to be fascinated by the possibility that what she has learned, and how knowledge is gained or what constitutes the ‘real’, is too narrow to embrace all of life. She can’t bring herself to finish her sentence: ‘My education is so much against these things, that I’m so curious if it’s – ’: she is going to say, ‘actually true’, but changes direction. Self-doubt creeps in: she must be imagining what she has experienced to bolster her relationship with her home. But another voice steps in to silence the critical one, a part of herself that trusts and ‘knows’ that her experiences are valid: ‘I make it all up. But I know I’m not doing that.’ We explore her feelings further, and she elaborates: Mia: [On her disbelief] I think it’s because of all the training, of thinking, you know. I think, as I said, all academic people have been trained to think in a certain way. That if you can’t prove it, it doesn’t exist. And I can’t prove it

This dilemma, explored later, is acknowledged and resolved by an embrace of uncertainty. But Mia’s trusting in her experiences of the uncanny is also subject to the specific place context of these events; at times she oscillates between belief and non-belief depending on where the event occurs. In general she is adamant that she does experience uncanny phenomena but at one point she is more ambiguous: Mia: I like to leave the window open. And two mornings I woke up and noticed that the window was closed. And it was rather strange because – this [she moves vertical and horizontal metal window fasteners] the wind can’t do. But it was closed like that [the window is fastened shut]. Maybe it was the wind [opens the window, attaches horizontal fastener to a notch securing it open]. But from this position in the morning [she closes the window again] C: They have to be lifted up and put back down again Mia: To this! [Laughs] it could be done by the wind but – It happened twice

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What I expected her to say at the end of such a detailed investigation was: ‘It could not have been done by the wind.’ But she says the opposite, leaving the sentence prematurely before moving back to a neutral statement of fact. This event took place in her bedroom when her husband was away. A feeling of vulnerability might have stopped her from labelling the experience as uncanny. Gender and Self-doubt For Mia’s husband, Luke, the belief that the house is haunted is an example of ‘suggestion’: here, the idea of ghosts is transferred from one group of people (the villagers) to the household incomers. Luke himself is not subject to suggestion – the only rational individual in a household of women, the ‘odd man out’: Luke: It has amused me when people have come here and have actually found this topic not only fascinating but also something that they somehow associated their own experiences with [chuckles]. The peer pressure is that – you know, everybody else in the house has seen all these ghosts or whatever. ‘Why don’t you?’ [Laughs] But I’m happy to be the odd man out, because I truly haven’t – had any experiences of any kind which I could not very easily explain by – in a purely, utterly, completely, totally natural way

Despite the diversity of households, there is a distinct gender division between all the heterosexual married couples in Wales, Ipswich, the Wirral, Blackpool, and in the weaver’s cottage near Oldham. Tensions between husbands and wives concern levels of openness to belief and levels of tolerance towards different forms of knowledge. The women are more open to believing in ghosts, the men are far more sceptical. Luke’s argument, above, insinuates a long-standing belief that suggestibility is a trait of susceptible, gullible, and irrational people who are easily influenced emotionally and intellectually: children, women, simple folk, old wives (Kuhn, 2002, Blackman and Walkerdine, 2001). There are variations: two case studies were instigated by male believers (Magnus and Ben), whilst some women wanted at least to be seen as questioning (Rosa, Mia and Abby). But for a perhaps surprising number of households, cultural beliefs and roles are conventional and conservative, reinforcing stereotypical gender differences which mirror those reflected onto the ghosts themselves, as described in Chapter 4. In Wales, for example, Rachel describes having ‘psychic flashes’ since her menopause: premonitions of forthcoming events, intuitive knowledge of things she shouldn’t rationally know. This ‘just knowing’ becomes knowing too much for sceptical husband Daniel; he questions her when she knew where to look for the tombstone after it disappeared. For him, this becomes a suspicious activity, in an atmosphere, as described, where a hoax is deemed a real possibility. Rachel responds that her new-found psychic abilities are related to the physical changes she is experiencing as a woman:

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Co-habiting with Ghosts Rachel: Ever since the menopause I have these – it’s no good to me – I just, I get these psychic flashes as I call them. And they’re no good to me. And they’re disconcerting, but from time to time, I just know – something. It doesn’t do me any good. I don’t do anything with it because I don’t want to

She tries to rationalise her experience, distancing herself from this ‘psychic’ part of herself by emphasising its irrationality, lack of practical or personal utility and the fact that the ‘flashes’ happen without good reason. Hilma in the weaver’s cottage also spends much time defending her interpretation of experiences whilst being gently goaded by her husband: Hilma: This is where the lady comes up with the rustling skirt Adam: [Firmly] Never in this world! The wind came up the – the tunnel Hilma: It didn’t! There was nothing – to – rustle. Nothing at all. These curtains [velvet curtains separating the living room from the narrow staircase] didn’t exist. It was just a bare staircase. And she comes a-rustling. You could hear. [Pause] I know what silk rustles sound like Adam: [Now standing away from her, looking out the window on the opposite side. He speaks quietly, firmly] Too much taffeta. Too much television. [He turns back from the window and gives me/the camera a subtle cheeky grin] Hilma: [Ignoring him] And – and it was definitely a long, rustling silk skirt that – came up the stairs. Absolutely came upstairs here

Here there is a performance of roles – he acknowledges as much with his grin to the camera. He accuses her of embellishment – too much television-watching (impressionably soaking up popular ideas about ghosts), too much sewing (affecting her judgement, making her ‘hear’ fabric). Hilma also describes how the neighbour who saw a ghost monk in her kitchen kept the experience from her husband and sons: ‘She said: “I can’t tell the men folk, because they’d just laugh at me.”’ Her friend anticipated the reaction of them and decided to keep quiet. But then one of her son’s friends has the same experience: Hilma: And then, maybe a couple of months later, one of her twenty-or-so year old children’s – son’s friends came to see her and said: ‘You know, there’s something else here besides you lot’. So she said: ‘Tell me’. And this boy described exactly the same thing, exactly the same doorway. He’d been having coffee in the kitchen, around the table, and the lad said: ‘I couldn’t tell the boys either because they’d laugh at me. But I thought I could tell you’

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The two women spoke of their experiences because they could trust each other to take them seriously. For the same reason, the son’s friend confided in another female, not the men. These women are (are perceived as more likely to be) more open to tolerating the possibility of processes which cannot be explained by the mainstream rationalist paradigm. But, under pressure from sceptical spouses, they also display self-doubt, even when acknowledging and defending differences of opinion. A repeated way in which this manifests is in passing comments which question their mental health. Women are self-conscious, internalising the doubts of their sceptical male partners: Rachel [Wales]: ‘I could be totally barking’; Susan [Ipswich]: ‘I think he [her fiancé] thinks I’m a loony sometimes.’ And in Liverpool, when describing hearing the baby’s cry, Dora mentioned that her husband at the time (before their divorce) had called her ‘stupid’: Dora: And he used to laugh at this and say, ‘Don’t be so stupid!’ I get ridiculed all the time. But I’m a level-headed person. I don’t make things up

In the rented flat, Alex is reassured by other witnesses that she is not ‘mad’: ‘I thought I was going mad. It was only when other people started seeing her [the cat] too … You obviously don’t tell everyone you have a spirit cat. So obviously I hadn’t. You are likely to be sectioned.’ People also looked to me, as an ‘expert’ researcher, to reassure them that they were not mad; being rational is also about being sane or ‘normal’. It is usually the women who want to know they are, at least, not alone in having uncanny experiences. The slant of one question by a male sceptic was rather loaded, and led me to emphasise how interviewees appeared normal to me. Note how he distances himself – and especially his own wife, a believer – from being a ‘crank’ (who are also positioned as social or economic failures, living in ‘dumps’): Adam [weaver’s cottage]: Would you say generally the people you are meeting are fairly normal, or are they cranks living in dumps? I’ve got to say I’m suspicious. I mean, I know this isn’t your brief, but what do you think personally?

Embracing Uncertainty Adam’s desire for knowledge is a rejection of uncertainty, but underlying all uncanny events is an inability to fully know – this is the key fact about the uncanny to be faced and tolerated. Not knowing becomes an active process, a reality of its own, not just a marker of the limit or boundary of knowledge: Dora [Liverpool]: It was frustrating because I never knew what it was. And probably I’ll never know what it was. There’s no explanation at all – for it … Just things you can’t explain. You couldn’t begin to. I don’t know. I just don’t

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Rachel [Wales]: But I – I don’t know. I mean, to be perfectly honest, I really don’t know … Mia [Wirral]: The trouble is that you’re never quite sure

Even when an uncanny event is shared, there is still sometimes uncertainty about whether it was really an uncanny event; here for example, distinguishing sounds within the already noisy terrain of the domestic interior, as described in Chapter 2: Gaby [Wirral]: [Talking about hearing footsteps upstairs] But there is also this slight question of interpretation, because sometimes you just – I don’t know, the heating, the – Mia: Yes. In these old houses, there are so many noises – Gaby: So you say, ‘This could be somebody – walking’. But it’s not like it’s absolutely somebody C: So it’s not so distinctive that you can say, ‘definitely footsteps’? Gaby: I think the first times I was quite sure it was footsteps. But maybe I was so prepared to interpret

Later, the doubt about the ‘reality’ of uncanny experience is more a phenomenological one related to the ability of the witness to observe in a fully objective and rational way: Mia: And then we started talking about these things that have happened in the house – or things we think have happened. I think I – I felt somebody moving around. But then I don’t know if I was sleeping and dreaming or if it was false

People react to uncertainty differently. But uncertainty itself has its uses; it is not necessarily a difficult experience or an uneasy staging post on the way to certainty. Not everyone has a desire to know who the ghost is, or that an event definitely has an uncanny cause. This can be a co-habitation strategy, as described in Chapters 4 and 5. People also take positions around ‘knowing’ for different reasons. Here, Pam in the maisonette is so accepting of the ghosts, of their right to exist in her home, that she exhibits no urgent need to know: ‘I’ve hardly wanted to know any more – when I say I know, the thing is, maybe I don’t know know, but I’m not at all surprised.’

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Similarly, for Mia on the Wirral, there is a lack of a need to know because an event doesn’t make enough of an emotional impact to warrant it: ‘It hasn’t made such a strong impression that I would like to find out more about it.’ The couple in Wales work through different responses to uncertainty. Rachel accepts the events as radically uncertain in their very nature. She allows events to just be, on their own terms. Her narrative is full of contradictions, of bracketed off explanatory anecdotes leading nowhere, or sudden twists; stories are suspended and allowed to hang in the air. As described, Rachel doesn’t know if there is one mechanism to explain the uncanny event, but she can live with this uncertainty. But for husband Daniel, as described, the drive is for a coherent, linear narrative; uncertainty yields to a fantasy of the possibility of truth. He hasn’t yet found a cause for the events, but that doesn’t mean he never will. Knowledge is deferred, and becomes a kind of messianic presence guiding him to future possibilities, reinforcing his resolve to stick to one system of belief. At the same time he revels in uncertainty, in terms of enjoying the intellectual riddle, the interesting process of gathering information whilst confident that all will eventually be revealed: Daniel: If you could actually answer all the big questions of life for certain, now, it would take away a lot of the interest, wouldn’t it? … I find it almost eternally interesting. To be faced with a problem where, at the moment, all you can do is to try to collect the information together. And speculate about possible reasons. That’s just interesting C: And the fact that there is no – that this is a constant process of gathering – Daniel: Yes C: Material that never yields an answer Daniel: But you don’t know that it can never yield an answer … I’d be very surprised if sometime in the future we don’t discover a mechanism C: So, you’re happy not to know? Daniel: No, I’m not happy not to know! I’d love to know. [Raising voice] But I sit and live with uncertainty on all kinds of fronts, all the time. I used to. It was called management! You never knew what was going to happen from moment to moment! Throughout the day. You had to deal with whatever occurred. There’s that sort of uncertainty. I don’t know if I’m going to live tomorrow, do I? You work on several bases, don’t you? One is: ‘I’m competent to deal with nearly everything that hits me. If I’m not, I know someone who is’. And if it gets beyond that – well, life’s full of experiences. That’s what it’s for! Let’s wait and see what happens. Yes, it’s quite true that I sit with [uncertainty] and enjoy it. But what are the alternatives?

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But for many people, there is also a fear of too much knowledge; their emotional need is not to know. Karen in the maisonette states this explicitly: ‘I feel like I don’t know everything that’s going on around here and I’m happier in my ignorance.’ As described, Karen favours a ‘rational’ explanation for the same reason – to avoid confronting her fear of ghosts. The desire to remain ignorant has the same motive; it is a form of avoidance. Dora in Liverpool also doesn’t want to explore why her feelings change in different places, and is quite adamant about this: ‘I don’t like the back. [But] quite happy with this part and the front garden. I don’t like the atmosphere in the back garden. I don’t know why. And I don’t want to know why.’ For Magnus in Bristol there is a similar preference not to know, but here the motive is clear. Like Daniel in Wales, uncertainty – for all the frustration – can be more interesting than having everything bolted down in ‘reality’. For him, it is an escape from mundane life. He ‘dwells’ in uncertainty as much as he dwells in his haunted home – a mental as much as physical space. But his backdrop is a ‘certainty’ of belief in the supernatural. So uncertainty here adds an emotional frisson rather than being caught up in any process of searching for knowledge or avoiding doing so: ‘There is an element of uncertainty. But I enjoy dwelling in that uncertainty. I’ve been a teacher a long time, which is pretty sort of mundane.’ But at another point in the conversation, Magnus expresses a similar sentiment to Dora in Liverpool – a preference not to investigate an event because this might impact on his emotional state at the time: C: [About hearing footsteps in the back garden] And your bedroom was at the back of the house at this stage? Magnus: Yes C: Did you look out of the window? Magnus: I did go to the back, but then I thought it was better not to look out [laughs] C: Why not? [Pause] C: Because – did you not want to experience anything else? Magnus: I suppose so – ignorance is bliss, isn’t it?

Magnus loves to collect theories and has read many books on the paranormal. But an actual experience creates a different response: a desire to look the other way. Here ‘ignorance’ is something to be maintained as part of an experience; to be ignorant of experience, as if experience somehow grants its own knowledge, in the

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sense that people talk about ‘knowing’ what they experience, trusting their senses. Keeping the experience vague – in this case, as previously described, keeping an uncanny event auditory rather than potentially visual – allows Magnus to avoid too much experiential knowledge in favour of the more abstracted, distanced, knowledge that comes out of books and theories. Experiential knowledge creates unease in Wiltshire too. Rosa describes how she responded to what she considered good evidence of the existence of her ghost. Her unease about this – despite her desire expressed elsewhere to know for sure – was not about the certainty of disbelief; rather, it was about a preference against the possibility that such things can be made certain at all. In Blackpool, the youngest daughter of Victoria (still a child) also expressed unease at the idea of certainty – the implication of a particular experience which seemed to leave little leeway for other explanations. Here she knows the footsteps had to be that of a ghost, whereas at other times they could have been caused by the other householders: Gill: One day, when I was – being ill … and mummy was asleep on the couch, and I could hear footsteps upstairs going from mummy’s bedroom to the office. And that scared me because I was the only one awake in the house

The leeway to imagine the uncanny event as something radically uncertain – that might be real, or unreal – is also played out imaginatively as a relationship between ‘fact’ and ‘fiction’. But the line between them is often contested within a particular social – gendered – context, as described above. Daniel in Wales hints that his wife embellishes. Whereas he is ‘just collecting facts’, she tells ‘stories’ (‘Rachel’s great at telling stories … in the sense of giving … interesting narrative’). But often those imaginatively interpreting their ghosts are clear about the boundary between fictional narrative and experience. Rachel describes writing stories about the ghosts, but distinguishes these from ‘facts’ that might fit: Rachel: I’ve made a very good story out of it. I’ve written up a story about how the monk got her [the ghost of the pregnant woman she saw] in the family way! [Laughs] C: They [the two ghosts] are connected? Rachel: Not really. That’s a story – it’s a possibility. I could write that up as a work of fiction because I’ve no idea. Because, quite honestly, [the ghost whose name is on the grave stone] Jane Jones is 1778. The monk is supposed to be 1613

The facts don’t add up, so her theory can only become ‘certain’ as fiction, which broadens the category of possibility. Sometimes this relationship between fact and fiction is reproduced knowingly to offer leeway for interpreting events otherwise, or to place them in the safe world of the not-real. In the Wirral house, for example,

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Mia separates the rational from the imaginative, and favours placing the category of ‘ghost’ in the realm of imagination – perhaps it can do less harm here, it cannot infringe on the ‘reality’ of domestic life. I ask her if the ghost ‘adds’ anything to her life: Mia: In a way it’s – my imagination is fascinated by these things you know C: Is your imagination separate from your – Mia: [laughs] I think it is! You see, if I write an essay on such things and send it to an historical journal – I wouldn’t do it. But if I can tell a story, and use my imagination, these things I have seen – not seen so much as heard and smelt in the house – I would write a story. I wouldn’t mind to write a story C: Stories are fictional, historical essays are fact? Mia: Stories are fictional, yes C: So there’s a separation Mia: Yes, I think they are two different things. You know. And even if I – it attracts my imagination, that something is happening in the house. But then, this part of me that is trained to think academically refuses everything like that. But still there is a part of me which says that [lowers voice to a whisper]: ‘This is too fascinating to be not true!’ [Pause] I think that if I hadn’t had the training to think theoretically, logically [laughs], to prove everything, I think I would be a lot more prepared to believe those things. And maybe make up more, just to make it more fascinating, or something! To use my imagination

But despite this, at other times she asserts the greater value of her experiential knowledge for counting as a ‘reality’ that cannot be dismissed as mere imagination: Mia: But you see, those things I have seen! They are real to me – yes, they are real. I can smell – I can hear – I can see … I don’t think I’m a loony if I can smell that! I’m still quite – ok [points to her head] – in my head. Within certain limits!

She does trust her experience after all; her reality, which is her experience and makes up her everyday knowledge, is what she senses. She rejects her husband’s assumption that this ‘reality’ is not ‘out there’ but is a part of some psychological or neurological response to the home. But what she senses she cannot ‘make sense of’, it does not confer the kind of knowledge that she has been trained to value as ‘real’. The only response can be to reinforce a split between what is imagination and what is reality – despite the fact that what is ‘real’ by this definition is also imaginary. The realm of the imagination is a space where events can be ‘uncertain’

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by the rules of rational knowledge, and yet still find existence. This seems to work for her. She acknowledges a desire to believe (‘this is too fascinating not to be true!’). But her rational side still disparages her belief, making it into something motivated by desire and thus less ‘real’ in itself, because it is not subject to the rigours of rational enquiry. She reasons that if she wasn’t so well educated, she might more easily believe and even embellish her experiences to create better stories – to ‘use my imagination’. Here, the ghost becomes a character in a fairy tale, belonging to an imaginary (by extension, childish) fantasy world. And yet, tantalisingly, she clearly does believe. She seems to use this expressed ambiguity, this uncertainty, as a tactic, to maintain her privacy, to keep herself grounded. She suggests that the ‘imaginary’ has its own reality and she wants to allow it its own existence. There is a desire to remain in the realm of uncertainty, the space of ambivalence, of the liminal, to ‘hang in the air’ – literally, narratively – between knowing and not-knowing, believing and not-believing. In Chapter 4, I discussed not knowing as a strategy, with its connection to not seeing (a point taken up again in the next chapter). Here, Mia states that not seeing the ghost is preferable because it confers a less-than-real status, making her able to question whether it is, after all, merely an imaginative – a lesser – reality: Mia: I don’t want to come face to face with anything – like that. As long as it’s more like a fairy tale it doesn’t matter so much C: So you say fairy tale – is there still a question mark about the Pink Lady’s existence Mia: Of course it is. But I’m not sure what I would think about the situation where I was standing – face to face with the Pink Lady C: Would that make her more real? Mia: It makes it more real. Now I can always – take it so – whatever. There is space enough for all of us

As described, there is a hierarchy of senses at work, and it is embroiled in her idea of what constitutes ‘reality’. To see something or someone is to make it (and here it is an ‘it’) more real, and she doesn’t want to confront reality, she doesn’t want to end the uncertainty, the tantalising ambivalence – a retreat both physical and metaphysical. But an impasse remains. She wants to take away the ‘reality’ of the Pink Lady, yet not to discount her experience. This tension is itself deferred; the narrative is allowed its own ambiguity, its own contradictory momentum. As these examples show, uncertainty is double-edged. It reminds people of the precariousness of their ‘experience’, of aspects of themselves they can never be fully aware of, of their lack of control over the unknowable future. It prevents the narrative being neatly closed, stalls the search for meaning. Uncertainty has

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to be worked with, fought against, or accepted as having a reality of its own, something which can fascinate and animate mundane ‘reality’. The latter echoes the rather romantic ways in which some commentators have picked up on Jane Bennett’s (2001) call to ‘re-enchant’ everyday life. And, although this is never the full story, uncertainty can be a good thing for some participants, allowing leeway to interpret phenomena, to allow subtly differing ‘grades’ of reality they can deal with, and to negotiate between knowledge developed from lived experience and knowledge internalised from wider social and cultural mores or systems. But the former ‘experiential’ knowledge forms the backdrop, already informing the wider social and cultural context in different ways. * * * Rationalist materialism maintains a central place as the dominant paradigm informing responses to the uncanny. People position themselves in relation to this. In response to uncanny events, then, participants are challenged, perturbed but naturally seek to interpret such mental/emotional pressures: to maintain a stance which upholds their experiences of the uncanny as legitimate in the face of knowledge that this is irrational, to accept that rationality does or does not explain everything, or to retain rationality’s ascendancy despite also maintaining the authenticity of experience; and to do so within the context of knowing that no interpretation will yield an answer, that the events will forever maintain their mystery. How far people can negotiate this depends on how far they can tolerate the possibility of different interpretations, how far their emotional or ideological responses to events suggest an imperative to uphold one interpretation over another. Certainty and coherence are only available for those doggedly maintaining an extreme position; but they often have to ignore aspects of experience which suggest other possibilities. The constant reminder of what accounts for wider cultural legitimacy can make some participants feel undermined, unsure, whilst others brush it aside. And, yet again, there is a clear gender divide, a gap between education and its lack, between the rational and what is deemed gullible, stupid or flaky; it seems that for some there is a vested interest in maintaining such a gap. That interpretations are contested, sometimes contradictory, and rarely complete, is a source of tension for some – who continue their efforts towards the goal of certainty – and yet for others this incompleteness gains space to think, to feel differently and possibly to be different. That ghosts or uncanny experience remain elusive – even when what is witnessed seems to present itself as a clearcut event – allows for the possibility that selves and their relationships – with their homes and with others, with themselves – do not need to be complete, fixed, overly determined. As Part II explored, this openness is not easily tolerated by all, who seek to fix their ghosts even if they can’t fix their meanings. But such an openness also allows for personal meanings to be explored and developed, or for more nuanced and embodied ways of ‘knowing’ to develop, which in turn reflect

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and reinforce connections between selves and others, self and home. Uncertainty allows emotional leeway in which to dwell within the haunted home; accepting uncertainty is a way of negotiating uncanny experience. Despite this, experience itself is scrutinised rather than taken for granted: participants question subjectobject relations, battle with insecurity about the status of themselves as witnesses, question the reliability of others’ experiences, beliefs and viewpoints, and explore the interplay between representations and affects. Thus participants can be seen as engaging with and grappling with the relationship between the beliefs they or others hold and experiences which may or may not challenge them. They don’t need any help in understanding the complexity and incoherence of uncanny events, which, as Luckhurst rights says, are ‘points of pressure’ compelling a ‘rethinking or extension of knowledge formation’ (Luckhurst, 2004). The gaps which emerge in the narrative – points where people let ideas float in the air, swiftly change topic, contradict themselves, offer interpretations which seem too neat or too quickly arrived at – suggest experience, again, always hovering over explanation.

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Chapter 7

Belief, Evidence and Experience This chapter scrutinises, in turn, the relationship between experience, wider beliefs and different forms of evidence. Interpretations of an event focus on its experiential details, the evidence available at the time, and the particular context in which it is witnessed. Inherent within this process is also the act of matching up the details of experience with expectations of the relationships between evidence, proof and knowledge. For some, no evidence is enough to offer ‘proof’; for others, the relationship between evidence and proof remains inarticulate as a tantalising possibility. As described in Chapter 6, there are those whose understanding of what may count as ‘knowledge’ is an uncomplicated trusting to experience – trusting the ‘evidence’ of the senses, or to their intuition to show them what is ‘real’ or authentic, along with a broadening of what can be defined as ‘real’. For most, the relationship between knowledge, evidence and proof is complex, but the tendency is to use standard rationalist means to test out the irrational. In the absence of any belief in the supernatural, as described in the previous chapter, generally no evidence will suffice to force a change in position. But as will be shown, there is often a hierarchy of status accorded to different types of evidence, and the social context is important; close attention to people’s stories reveals ways they reinforce their own, or others’ reliability as witnesses, and the way interpretations are weighed in the balance. Different Beliefs A spectrum of beliefs – religious, folkloric, cultural – interconnect and are brought to bear on participants’ interpretations, reflecting the ways experience is mediated. There is interplay between experiences and beliefs about experiences and it is not always easy to say exactly how far some beliefs develop through repeated experience, and how far beliefs influence people’s experiences; this process is too complicated to reduce to one explanation, but some of the clearer markers of this process are worth noting for what they illuminate about participants’ own awareness of it. Cultural Belief Various assumptions are made by participants about what haunted homes and ghosts should be like. I call these beliefs ‘cultural’ because they seem to be formed in wider society over time and permeate people’s outlook and expectations, if in vague and

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nebulous ways. In Chapter 1, I noted work on the broad historical overview of belief in ghosts. Some of the popular media representations of ghosts are based on reformulations of experience, fictional representations from the past, supernatural theories which have gained popular expression, or famous if contested cases of ghost investigations still within living memory. In Chapter 2, I also noted how participants compare their own experiences to these wider cultural beliefs, more often to point out differences – for example, that extreme or negative emotions are not always the primary response to the uncanny. There are a few examples where participants state very clearly that their experience must be directly ‘culturally’ induced or influenced. Here Rachel in Wales discounts a ‘vision’ of the Virgin Mary adjacent to her home, in a field where similar sightings had taken place: Rachel: You know how [the Virgin Mary] always wears a blue cloak and that. And – all the pictures of her are pretty much the same, aren’t they? Well, that’s how I perceived her. Because that’s my image. If I think of the Virgin Mary, that’s the image I’ve got in my mind. So I saw what I wanted to see. I don’t think it was anything out there, I think it was totally in my brain

Elsewhere, it is not clear if people ‘use’ cultural conventions of the haunted home knowingly as a strategy, or if there is a genuine belief in them. In the weaver’s cottage, for example, Hilma invokes the convention of the spooky haunted home being a place of mysterious cold draughts to comfort her daughter, arguing that the family’s experience differed from this and therefore the ghosts cannot pose any ‘threat’: Hilma: I heard rustling [of a silk skirt] more often [after the first experience], and my daughter had … I kept saying, ‘Look, there are no traditional cold winds, and our candles’ – because we burn candles a lot – ‘our candles don’t flicker and go out’. I tried to comfort her saying, ‘Look, it’s not – a malevolent, it’s a benign presence’. You know. ‘There is no coldness about it, no threat’

Contrasting a convention with the ‘reality’ is a form of comfort here, but elsewhere it is not clear whether emphasising how an experience is different to conventional ideas is a way of authenticating it, marking it out as singular and genuinely unexpected, not following any assumed cultural norm: Rachel [Wales]: Some people have the idea that spooky activity happens at night. We get it day and night here

Karen in the London maisonette suggests that cultural beliefs influence her on an experiential level. But if experiences are indeed culturally-induced, how come they actually happen like that? There is a sense that experiences must be ‘real’ despite their conventionality: there has to be a legitimate reason why these conventions arise in the first:

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Karen: What I do not like [laughs] – my horror is one [a ghost] is going to pop up at night time. I suppose I’ve got that very age-old association that if it’s happening at night time then, you know, only wicked things come out at night time, bad things happen. Within the culture I was brought up with, things were abroad at night time that weren’t during the day. The devil was more likely to be stalking around at night time. A lot of this is all the sort of fears – harking back to when I was a child, the sort of very primitive fear of things coming out at night time that were scary, and that ghosts occupy that category. So I don’t understand why they appear at night time. Is that because you’re more sleepy? C: I don’t know Karen: That’s what people say

For flatmate Christine, there is a greater faith in her experience reinforcing the belief that ghosts are more active at night: Christine: From twelve o’clock on is like almost a haunting hour. Twelve midnight C: Do you think you’re influenced by the stories you were brought up with? The ‘witching hour’ being midnight Christine: It’s probably through my experience. But I have had experiences at other times of the day as well, so it doesn’t necessarily mean it’s always after twelve o’clock. But it tends to be

There are exceptions, but the cultural myth here is based on accumulated experience: experience isn’t necessarily belittled for following convention. Susan in Ipswich notes the different representations of the paranormal in popular culture: Susan: Sometimes I think television itself spooks people a lot more than it should because – you see these programmes and things are thrown across the room. And I know you get the poltergeists and things, but, they’re like – you see the figure of the old man standing there and throwing the bowl at the woman, and I think: ‘That doesn’t happen’. And the medium I go and see says, ‘They can’t touch you, they can’t do anything to you’. But then you see [television series] ‘Most Haunted’, and they can

She prefers the ‘evidence’ of her own experience – which is also to apply a gentler account available to her from the medium, a trusted ‘expert’ in such matters, rather than the poltergeist-like events seen on a popular television series. Both Susan and Victoria in Blackpool use psychic mediums to help interpret uncanny events. In Blackpool, the local medium is conferred absolute authority.

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Her narrative – that events are caused by dead family members – is doggedly maintained throughout: the medium’s word is accepted even when explanations seemed to me garbled or forced. The idea of family members being around as ghosts perhaps offers comfort during a period of mourning – a form of haunting constituting a classic motif in many literatures. But in this household, there’s nothing particularly comforting about many of the events. The youngest daughter, Gill, questions the medium’s interpretation in a moment of innocent directness: Gill: How do you know if it’s the family or not? Victoria: [Uneasy] Well, it’s – I don’t really know, darling. But – Jane [family friend]: It was [the medium] who tuned into them Victoria: Yeah. But they must tell the psychic who they are and, you know, whether they are related or not to you Gill: Oh

It is important that the narrative is passed down to the children, that they all tell the same story as a family ‘unit’. Victoria has had previous uncanny experiences which also centred around the death of family members, and these seem to set the scene for the current scenario: events reinforcing continuing family connections. But in a similar way to Susan in Ipswich, there are times when the medium is tested out, although this is done within the parameters of belief in the supernatural. Family friend, Jane, for example, probes whether the medium has an accurate sense of the relationship and characteristics of the grand/parents: Jane: I said to P [the medium] about – when she said your mum and dad were here. And I said to her, testing her: ‘Were they together?’

The correct answer should have been (and was) ‘no’ – the dead mother was in one corner of the living room, her dead husband in another. In life the parents had grown apart and led separate lives; as ghosts, the grandparents are assumed not to have settled their differences. Underlying this is a belief in the continuity of personality and social relations after death – another popular convention. Further evidence of the medium’s authenticity comes in the form of information she reveals that had not been divulged to her previously about a friend’s nickname. Thus it was not enough to believe the medium, the family needed signs to reassure themselves she could be trusted: Victoria: Now I hadn’t mentioned his name or anything. I’d just said my husband and his friend was here. Only my mum [now a ghost] called him Desperate Dan. Nobody else has ever done it. Only my mum

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C: So that’s when you realised that – Victoria: That my mum was here. Yes

Karen in the maisonette, despite her fear of ghosts, also expresses an interest in New Age beliefs, and is aware of how her beliefs differ from her flatmates’. Pam believes in ghosts but finds anything New Age ‘hogwash’; whereas for Christine, it’s part of the same system: ‘that’s all one package you know. That spirits come and talk to her and tell her things’. Karen describes herself, with self-irony, as a ‘sucker’ for New Age belief. Note the way she oscillates between wanting to believe and being critical of doing so: Karen: The whole world of magical, mystical, spiritualism – you resort to magic when you don’t have control in your life. Fundamentally I think I want to organise my life in a different kind of way. Because I used to be so fascinated [pause]. But I’m such a sucker for it. I’ve been to every form of psychic reader you can think of [pause]. I don’t think it’s a good way to structure your life around an overdependence on signs and symbols from the supernatural. That’s what I’ve decided. As a conclusion [pause]. I’m still not averse to throwing the tarot cards

Folklore Belief There are also stories from neighbours or the local community which influence or inform interpretations of uncanny events. Not every participant, as described, deems it appropriate to tell neighbours of their experiences, and not every participant who does so helps a local story to circulate and take on a life of its own. It is not always possible to distinguish between what is a distinct belief with its own specific, long-standing, traceable, genealogy, and ad hoc hearsay, rumour and informal comments. At times anecdotes seem to forge themselves surprisingly quickly into something with an apparently deeper and wider status as a shared public narrative; a few repeats of a story and the seeds of local mythology take hold. There is also the question of how well established a community needs to be to develop and maintain local folk myths. This is, of course, not an exhaustive study, but my interviews do back up a conventional notion of folk beliefs thriving in smaller communities where there is a continuity of habitation (a place such as the Wiltshire rural hamlet where Rosa is still considered a ‘newcomer’ after living there for 20 years). But there are other examples which show that the process of circulating local beliefs does not require a particularly stable community; it only takes one or two relatively longer-established neighbours to be granted authority and status as holders of the ‘knowledge’ of the local neighbourhood, including those who offer information about past inhabitants’ lives which might provide evidence for a ghost’s identity.

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The Wirral house provides an example of straightforward transmission of a folk belief circulating in the village; the house is known to be the oldest in the village, and thus an obvious candidate for a local haunting. When the new owners, my participants, moved in, they were bombarded by people curious to know if they had seen the ‘Pink Lady’, or wanting to tell them about her: Luke: I can tell you four people who came here and introduced me to the idea of this being a haunted house. And these were people – we have invited over to do something – be the electrician or plumber, or – who lived locally. And they would come and they would say, ‘What a lovely house’. They always went through the same protocol. ‘What a lovely house’. And I would say, ‘Yes, an old house, it has all these curiosities’. And then there would be a pause and they would say, ‘And yes, and having lived locally, we know something about it’. Or they would hint at that, and so would test if I knew anything or if I had – had witnessed anything – and then it turned out that they had heard – stories – circulating in this village. I think the Pink Lady – it’s something in the village folklore. And people sort, if you like, in a light-hearted manner, accept this

Mia also described the odd behaviour of one local resident: Mia: We had been there a couple of weeks. Then one day a lady was – in front of the door. I remember this conversation so well because it was rather strange. First, she was standing there with these plants in her hands – she said … ‘You are the new people living here?’ I said, ‘Yes’. ‘Do you know the house is haunted?’ It was exactly the – thing. She didn’t recognise me, being a new inhabitant. The first thing to tell me was that the house was haunted [pause]. I’ve never seen her after that. And those plants, she was selling them for church. At least that’s what she told me. But to me – it was obviously an excuse to come to talk to me [pause]. She told me, ‘Yes, everyone knows in the village that in the cottage there is living a ghost called the Pink Lady’. And that she is dressed in pink clothes, has some kind of bonnet, and what else? Can’t remember exactly. But then it was rather strange that in the end she said, ‘Do you want to buy the plants?’ ‘How much do you want for them?’ ‘Give me anything you like. Just whatever you like’ [laughs]. This obviously was an excuse to come to the door

The ghost is such a source of fascination that people seem to forget social etiquette in their desire to tell the new owners of their inheritance. Perhaps these locals were curious to test the reaction of the newcomers, and perhaps, by doing so, to reinforce their status as knowledgeable locals. The continuity of folklore and its transmission is very direct in this instance. It is perpetuated through informal social networks, through small talk and loaded asides. But the myth doesn’t move around seamlessly. Not everyone responds in the same way. Here Mia herself jokes to a neighbour – thus perpetuating the myth herself – but she doesn’t get a response:

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‘And if I say something like, “Ok, I go home and if the Pink Lady’s around –” they ignore it totally. They don’t want to talk about it.’ Another example if folklore attached to a house is the castle tower in Cornwall. When Abby and her husband (since deceased) bought the place, they became aware of its reputation as haunted. Soon people were asking to conduct ‘ghost tours’, and, as described, Abby realised there was money to be made, and agreed to host the ghost hunters. Abby herself expresses knowledge about the folklore of the area: Abby: There was bad luck down the valley, lots of people were dying of cancer. This was four or five years ago. A dowser said it was to do with a bad spirit, and he would move it. Since then no one else has had bad experiences with cancer … [Listing other local myths, expressing scepticism] A fireball coming down from the valley was seen by people in the cottage … There’s the myth of a witch on an upturned boat … [About another local manor house] People seeing ghosts there. I don’t believe it

Although Abby is dismissive of these stories, it is interesting to hear how, as the owner of a building marked on the map due to its reputation for numerous ghosts, she gets to hear all the folklore circulating within a local radius; the list is surprisingly long. The house in Blackpool provides further examples of how folk traditions persist. Where Abby talked of fireballs and removing bad spirits, the medium brought in to help the household in this suburban estate likewise disposed of an unruly spirit in a manner reminiscent of a magical act in a fairy tale. The family seems to accept this as a valid means by which a spirit can be made to exit a house’s interior and be prevented from re-entry: Victoria: She took him [the spirit] with her – ‘He’s got to go’ C: What would she have done with him? [Pause] Sent him off somewhere? Jane: She put him up her sleeve. And then says: ‘Right. He’s there. When I go out the door Victoria: – he’ll go Jane: – ‘I’ll let him go.’ And then she says she’ll put a ball of protection around the house, so he could never get back in

The influence of folk beliefs from different European cultures was also apparent in a couple of households. Romanian employee Tara, for example, maintained a belief that the dead have power, telling a story of a short-term job cleaning crockery in a school which backed onto a cemetery: ‘And I looked at the graves. It sounds crazy, but I says: “Oh, spirit of dead people who was dead here, help me

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to find a job.”’ The plea is perhaps symbolic of her disempowered, outsider status; she has no one else to ask for help but dead strangers. But she believed her prayers are answered – she does find another job soon afterwards. She explained a number of serendipitous coincidences which had led her to make useful contacts over the years of working as a cleaner in London. Her belief in superstition offers order and explanation in her world of fluid, random connections and chance encounters which she relies on for financial survival. Elsewhere, she used a folk tradition to appease a spirit, which she assumed was causing a noise in the chimney. Her daughter translated: Olive: She had a [previous rented] room on the second floor, and inside this room there was a fireplace, which they didn’t use. And every time it was windy you could hear up on the chimney noises of someone was howling or crying, really sinister noises. And she couldn’t sleep Tara: I tell them, ‘Don’t cry. I give food for you. I will look after you.’ And because I worked in the coffee shop, with many cakes – after the shop is closed, you can have all the cakes home, or in the bin. So I give to the friends, ‘Take this’ [continues the story in Romanian] Olive: It is like a tradition. If you have someone who is dying. For two days you have to have this really big meal and you give food for poor people in the name of the person who’s died. And this is what she did. She took the cakes from the place where she worked, and she gave them to friends. And she said: ‘This is for the soul that’s in my chimney’ Tara: And then it stopped. And never came again for months Olive: The next time it was windy, of course you could still hear the wind, but not the same sound C: So it was like a ritual offering? Olive: For our tradition, you have to take care of the dead people. It’s like you’re never forgetting them, you’re mentioning their names and if you think about them or if you dream about them, you have to give something to someone who doesn’t have, like an offering C: So in your religion you are honouring the dead? Olive: Yes C: So the idea of ghosts isn’t so strange?

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Tara: No. It’s somebody who need – no peace. He don’t go in other world

Here the line between folk and religious beliefs and rituals is blurred. She appeases the ‘spirit’ in her chimney by adapting a religious ritual for honouring the dead. But it also becomes a social commentary, a reinforcement of the differences between Romania and her London home, a voicing of pride in her homeland: Tara: There are very few ghosts seen in Romania. Very few. The priest make special ceremony when you move or paint the house. He bless the house. Because everybody takes care of the dead, it’s more quiet. We put the name, we give presents. Here nobody looks – you can see half the cemetery is damaged

That she is paid to sleep in a haunted room becomes a part of her social commentary. In her home country, such a ghost would not exist because they ‘take care of the dead’. These beliefs reinforce the alienating aspect of her current situation in London whilst providing an outlet for nostalgic pride in her place of birth. The Finnish household on the Wirral also provides insights into a different folk tradition. Mia and daughter Gaby suggest they are more receptive to the idea of ghosts because of their understanding of Finnish mythology: Mia: We have very old Pagan traditions. I think it was up to the nineteenth century, on the eastern part of the country, they still sacrificed for the old gods. Even if Christianity – it’s told that – there were two religions – living everyday lives. So there was Christianity, and then there was the Paganism. Side by side. Sunday morning they came to the church, and when they came to the church, they sacrificed to the old gods. Just in case! It’s rather fascinating that it’s so deep, in Finnish people, this thinking, that some traces are still left C: Part of the Pagan tradition includes, if I’m right, household gods and spirits Mia: All kinds of – every place. They were everywhere. But basically, it was a good thing, because they took care of the things … The rules have been forgotten now. It’s the modern time … Now it’s not very serious. [But] maybe they’re more prepared to think unnatural things. So, the western civilisation [in Finland] is rather young, and maybe those beliefs are so deep, you know. I must say my daughters don’t believe anything like that anymore. They are stories, now they are old traditional stories

Although the old beliefs are now mere ‘stories’ there is the possibility that people steeped in the culture are ‘more prepared to think unnatural things’. So although Mia presents an analysis of the pre-modern progressed out of existence by the modern (‘Western civilisation’), there is also an underlying less linear counternarrative. Just as, prior to this, Christianity had to accept the continuation of Pagan rituals (‘side by side’), so too is there a hint that something might still rub off

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from the old beliefs and inform the Finnish outlook. Mia shows her knowledge of history and her acute observations about the possibility of a ‘deep’ cultural resonance affecting the way in which (by implication) she might be influenced to believe in ghosts, or at least be more open to such a prospect. Lastly, there are also folk legends from a specific culture which are ‘applied’ to an uncanny event in a different context. Magnus in Bristol refers to the Celtic myth of the banshee, and transfers it as both description and explanation for an experience in the living room of his Bristol home: Magnus: About two or three o’clock in the morning, I was down there. And I heard this – unearthly – the only way I can describe it was like a banshee. A cry C: Where was it coming from? Magnus: Just in the room. It sounded unearthly. Quite loud. Quite human. One long sustained cry

Magnus likens the sound to the cry of a banshee as a way of illustrating the nearest equivalent to an auditory experience that is difficult to categorise. He is, perhaps, forced to mine stories of the imagination to explain what was, to him, real but ‘unearthly’. He also superstitiously suggests there might be something more ‘real’ to this sound than a descriptive simile. The banshee traditionally gave off a wail around the home of someone about to die. Magnus says he has been watching out since the experience: Magnus: And I’ve been waiting for someone, you know – for someone to pass away! [Laughs] But this was some time ago now C: Because of the Irish legend of the banshee? Magnus: Yes, you know. Just before a death. There’s a name for it. I can’t remember what it’s called. The Welsh and Scots have different names C: But no one’s passed away? Magnus: Not so far. No

The myth hasn’t made it into ‘reality’ because the sound did not herald an actual death. But there is a slight hesitancy in the description. It is assumed the cry happens rather vaguely ‘just before a death’, but what is the exact time scale? What remains unsaid, but was at least in my mind as Magnus spoke, was the fact that his wife – who I never got to meet because she didn’t want me to come to the house to be interviewed – had been suffering from an unspecified illness.

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Throughout our conversations, she remained an unseen, disapproving presence. The connection between myth and ‘reality’ was never stated, and hadn’t – after some years – come to pass, and therefore the banshee story remained safely that: just a legend momentarily used to describe and test out an uncanny event. But the narrative isn’t closed – Magnus perhaps doesn’t want to ‘tempt fate’ by stating that as no one has died yet, no one ever will do: ‘Not so far.’ Religious Belief Religious belief tends to be kept separate from belief in ghosts in the supernatural literature, but, as Bowman (2004) argues, there are complex overlaps, and indeed, some of the examples in the previous section suggest a slippage between religious and folk rituals and beliefs. Few participants considered themselves religious believers. As expected, those sceptical about the supernatural tended to be ambiguous about religion. Some who were open to believing in the supernatural seemed to play down their religious belief a little – perhaps not wanting to make a connection between belief in something that cannot be proven (such as the existence of god) and what might influence them to believe in other ‘realities’. But there are no rules. Some believers in the supernatural are also active in religious observation, others are not. However, it seems easier to believe in ghosts if there is a pre-existing religious belief: Magnus: I’ve read a lot of books on ghosts, actually C: What started your interest? Magnus: Well. I think if you’re a church-goer, you are likely to believe in it anyway C: You are a church-goer? Magnus: Yes. Yes. I’m the church organist. Obviously if you believe – obviously you’re more likely to believe in the supernatural C: So you would suggest if you were open to that then it would lead you to be more open to the supernatural? Magnus: I would think so, actually. More so than somebody who didn’t believe in anything. I suppose if you believe in the supernatural, you just accept these things. I mean – I just accept that whatever happens, happens. You know – There are more things in heaven and earth … I get more convinced as time went on. Obviously, I get more convinced

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Dora in Liverpool, a practicing Catholic, was perhaps the most overtly religious of all participants. In contrast, she seemed to be ambivalent about the presence of ghosts in her home. This could be a strategic move: a preference to share it with ‘saints’ than with potentially wayward, dead strangers: C: There’s no sense of a constant presence? Dora: Spiritually, yes. Of the saints. I do believe they’re watching over me

Religious belief affects the way she interprets one uncanny event: the sound of the baby’s cry. She associates it with a plaque of a saint holding the baby Jesus, and also with the sound of her own baby at the time – who, in turn, resembled in her mind the figure of the baby Jesus on the plaque; three connected babies, one real, one ghostly, and one religiously symbolic, transforming the uncanny event into something vaguely spiritual: Dora: Funnily enough, the baby Jesus looked like Freddy.. I used to associate this plaque of St Joseph with the baby for some reason. Because it was only when I brought this plaque into the house that the baby was crying. The baby Jesus is on the plaque, and he used to cry. I used to think, ‘I wonder if it’s the baby Jesus that’s crying?’ It was only the same time that I brought the plaque in that this had happened C: So you’re thinking it was something spiritual? Dora: I really don’t know. Yeah. Yeah

The influence of childhood familial beliefs still persists for some. Karen in the maisonette describes how, although rejected in adulthood, her family’s religion continues to dictate her response to ghosts: Karen: I’m not saying necessarily that I think the ghosts are evil. I’m just saying that I think that I grew up with this – idea that it was all very – scary, and that ghosts were somehow, not necessarily evil people, but I think because in the Catholic tradition ghosts are unquiet spirits – I think Catholicism is very against ghostly spirits in that sense … I feel like it’s the tradition I was brought up in … And obviously their going on about the Holy Ghost, and about apparitions – you know how it is within religions, you can manage to maintain contradictory views simultaneously quite easily

She is conscious about not being conscious of these beliefs, as she describes with irony:

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Karen: It’s sort of un-thought-through. Like I haven’t examined my beliefs around the supernatural or around ghosts very thoroughly. And I think what I’m left with is this sort of fear and suspicion from childhood – that can get sort of, you know, whipped up – as an adult. In a way, I’m no longer conscious of my own un-thought-through childish ideas about it

Ben the caretaker also seems influenced by his childhood religion. Describing his pivotal uncanny experience, his language falls back on religious categories – of demons and prayer – suggesting continuing allegiance to a residual religious paradigm, even if another part of himself has outgrown it. The language he uses to tell the story appears to influence his reading of the event, to be intrinsic to its interpretation: Ben: I didn’t think of, I don’t know if I thought of god, or – prayed, or anything like that. I don’t think I really had time. I think I said something like, ‘Save me – A!’

Instead of praying to god, he chooses a more ‘tangible’ person – albeit one with whom he has no personal relationship. His description of the caring force of this benign rescuer, for me, suggests the influence of a religious mother-figure guarding him from the forces of evil: Ben: It was the only name, the only word that occurred to me – and I was immediately protected. This demon – evaporated, disappeared. And this comfort, which remained, this weight. And I didn’t move. I felt happy. I felt accepted

Evidence, Proof and Experience In Chapter 6, I described different ideas about knowledge in the context of the uncertainty of the uncanny event. In the first section of this chapter, I surveyed the influence of specific beliefs. In this last section, I build on these insights to explore people’s attitudes to evidence as ‘proof’ of the cause of uncanny events. Natural Explanation First In the encounter of an uncanny event, participants are immediately confronted by contested forms of knowledge within a dominant materialist rationalist paradigm, as described. There is an established history of questioning the reliability of witnesses of the uncanny; either they are suggestible women (or from other minority groups) or – as Luke on the Wirral might argue, they don’t know the neuroscience which explains why it’s all in the mind. This belief in false witness is reflected in the work of parapsychologists, who nonetheless admit that ghost sightings have been reported by ‘a large number of seemingly trustworthy witnesses’ (Wiseman

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et al., 2003: 195). Scientist and psychologist Dean Radin also notes: ‘One challenge to prematurely banishing the apparition is the observation that ghosts appear often enough to reasonably sane, well-educated, well-adjusted individuals to sustain ghost legends even among persons who would not readily admit interest in such things’ (Radin, 2001: 165). But, as has been seen, the general presumption is that reasonable sanity is no defence against seeing things which aren’t there. In the light of such a cultural backdrop, and wherever they position themselves on the spectrum of beliefs, most participants use the tools of rational materialism in their appraisal of evidence. For Ben the caretaker there is a pressing reason for him to assume a natural explanation – he is responsible for the house’s physical fabric. Ben believes in ghosts, but equally has to ensure nothing material harms the house or himself. But many others’ also seek a natural explanation; this is often the first response after witnessing an anomaly; the hunt for natural ‘cause-and-effect’ processes pepper people’s narratives. This might be motivated by an emotional response, for although many people, as we have seen, play down any negative feelings involved in living in a haunted home, they may feel it is better not to have a ghost than to have one. But people’s descriptions suggest that this response is more likely a means of justifying their conclusion that an event must be unnatural. By showing natural explanations have been discounted, the participant’s own ‘reasonableness’ is reinforced; it subtly supports their claim to be trustworthy witnesses. Magnus in Bristol, for example, runs through natural explanations as he tries to delineate between natural and unnatural sounds: Magnus: The only other possible explanation was that [the sound of] these steps had been on the stairs of the adjoining house [but] it sounded too loud. It sounded too close at hand. I mean, because at that time we didn’t have any carpet on the stairs … I went to the place and I couldn’t see anything that could have caused [the crashing sound]. I couldn’t see anything that could have fallen over … The garden is enclosed, because there’s a high wall at the back. And [the footsteps] didn’t seem [to] attempt concealment: a slow, deliberate tread … It couldn’t have been caused by wind up the chimney or anything like that – that chimney’s capped anyway

Mia on the Wirral describes seeing a shadowy form from the garden moving from one room to another. The only rational explanation was that this was her husband, who was in the house: Mia: I was outside looking in. And I thought my husband had something to tell me or he needed something. I came in immediately. And went upstairs to the bedroom to ask what was the problem and he was fully asleep. [Pause] Hadn’t moved anywhere for – for an hour. And in the morning I asked if he was walking around. ‘No’

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Conversely, sometimes a sceptical witness finds a natural explanation and sticks with it, ignoring aspects of the experience which might call this into doubt. Again, ‘rationality’ is applied so doggedly in the face of alternate evidence it appears to become irrational. In the weaver’s cottage, Hilma has no problem favouring a supernatural explanation; her husband, Adam, cannot make the switch: C: Do you remember how you reacted at the time? Adam: I thought, ‘Well, it’s the wind or something’. The wind through the eaves of the house. Or something like that. I dismissed it as a draft or something – a whistling around the old stonework, never mind the chimney or something like that C: And have you heard similar noises like that? Adam: No. No

If a natural occurrence was responsible for the sound, it might be expected to repeat itself. But Adam always stops short of acknowledging anything strange, despite recalling that ‘somebody asked something’ – a long way from the sound of wind: Adam: It was a question. Somebody asked something. The intonation was, ‘Will you do this?’ Or: ‘What’s this?’ ‘What’s that?’ C: But you decided it was the wind? [Pause] So it wasn’t as if it were an actual question to you, it just sounded like one? Adam: Yes, that was my interpretation of it C: Your logic – Adam: My logic, exactly

I pushed him a little further, because I didn’t quite understand his response: Adam: I keep coming back to this question. Somebody asked a question, and we both simultaneously replied to it, or acknowledged that somebody, something, wanted some information. The intonation in the voice – ‘Have you?’ ‘Is it?’ Hilma: And I said, ‘It wasn’t me’. I knew it wasn’t you C: So when you’re talking about this very specific incident, you’re talking together

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Adam: Oh yeah. We both agree on that point Hilma: Oh yes C: But when you’re talking generally about your beliefs, you’re very scathing Adam: Well. Yeah. Yeah

Adam cannot allow this very specific event to push him beyond a natural explanation, even though he was now challenged by his wife. He is left inarticulate (‘Well. Yeah. Yeah’ becomes: ‘No. Yeah. Well’): Adam: I’m sceptical about it all, quite honestly. But if someone said, ‘Yes, I know, and I was there’, and it’s not hear-say, well, ok Hilma: But then what about – Adam: Hooded people and rustling skirts and all that – Hilma: But what about us responding to – the same urgent whisper for help? Adam: No. Yeah. Well

Elsewhere, the line is drawn more clearly; a natural explanation is found without question. Abby in Cornwall is disgruntled because she is often kept awake during the night by the sound of a heavy wooden door at the top of the castle tower’s winding stone staircase, which leads to a flat roof. The door bangs in the wind, and she complains that it is left unlocked by ghost hunting groups. She has to drag herself (and her bad leg) up the stairs to close it. There is no room for ghosts; the ghost hunters are to blame. One variation on the natural explanation is an assumption that unnatural processes should differ from natural ones. In Wales, the movement of a gravestone, as described earlier, leaves scuff marks on the ground, leading Daniel to suggest the event was too banal, too close to ordinary to be genuine: ‘It didn’t look like a genuine piece of phenomenon … If a human being was moving the tombstone, who didn’t have a great deal of muscular strength, that’s how they’d do it.’ Material Evidence The house in Wales is also a rare example of events which linger within the physical fabric of the home – words which fade only slowly on the walls, or etched and scratched onto surfaces, and objects which are moved from place to place. Sceptic Daniel acknowledges that these constitute ‘hard’ evidence – ‘hard’ meaning both ‘material’ and ‘robust’: ‘Most experiences of hauntings don’t

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seem to have the hard evidence that this has got … You don’t get much harder than words chiselled into walls.’ And yet, despite this, such evidence does not for Daniel constitute ‘proof’ of the supernatural. As described, because he refuses this category, no amount of material evidence will be enough ‘proof’: ‘Yes, [the parapsychologist] collected evidence. But in the end – what could he come up with? [Pause] I know of no means of accounting most experiences of hauntings – I’m not saying this is a haunting, incidentally.’ Later, we talked about the brown stains making up many of the words on the walls. I mentioned the possibility of ‘testing’ the substance to find out what it is, but his response suggested he was reluctant to do so: Daniel: I meant, when I was at Sussex [University] to get it analysed. But I never got round to taking a piece of the stuff down to the chemistry department there. So whether it’s a modern chemical, or whether it’s made of, I don’t know, goat’s urine and oak gorse or something [Laughter] C: Well, if you want to give me a sample, I’ll take it back to Queen Mary Daniel: It might be worth doing, yes C: I’m sure there’s a department there Daniel: Getting the, um, getting the ink [from computer printouts] analysed would be interesting. We’ve got the – um – impressions on the walls. When did the computer phenomena [strange words] occur?

Daniel acknowledged my offer but shifted quickly to talk about a different set of events. It seemed less obvious why he would want to analyse ink rather than the more perplexing materiality of the brown stains, particularly as he prided himself in forensically examining all evidence. Elsewhere, historical ‘facts’ as well as artefacts can also provide indirect evidence of ghosts, offering depth to the narrative. Often the link is implied rather than overt. In the Wirral house, as described, old pipes were found in the living room, suggesting a source for the smell of tobacco. A different form of ‘evidence’ is available to those who knew their ghosts when they were alive: the belief that personality traits continue in death allows events to be interpreted in the light of this knowledge. In Liverpool, the son, Freddy, knows he is haunted by his grandmother because he hears her call his name in a very particular way, using a unique intonation – ‘dragging his name out’ – and she also liked a particular brand of cigarettes, which ‘smell like a different smell [to mine]’. He concluded: ‘I just know she’s there. Just around the house.’ Living householders can also inadvertently provide ‘evidence’. Adam in the weaver’s house uncharacteristically changed his behaviour, responding ‘out of character’:

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Hilma: I think the funniest thing – apart from us coming nose to nose – I mean, I would have moved, I’m very quick to respond to people. But Adam usually needs two or three requests before he – and he was there, as soon as my feet hit the floor from the ladder – Adam was there … I mean, Adam is totally phlegmatic. You have to call him five times before he might make a move … Knowing Adam, I was the most amazed person there was about the fact that Adam had responded. Not that he’d heard it, but that he’d responded so quickly. That was my biggest surprise C: So there must have been a real sense of urgency in the voice Hilma: Very Adam: Yes there was, yep … Somebody wanted something, and I was responding

Elsewhere, as described, the fact that Dora in Liverpool is so tidy and organised added strength to her narrative that it must have been a ghost moving her passport. But the evidence is not always so clear cut – as explored in Chapter 2, the domestic uncanny sometimes has to fight to be seen or heard, and people often question whether or not something is genuinely strange or whether, like Alex’s cat, the ghost too quickly gets the blame. Here Romanian cleaner, Tara, describes this process of trying to distinguish less clear-cut causes: Tara: Sometimes the door I leave it, close it, I find it open. Maybe the [land]lady, she look if I’m there or not, you know? I think … But when I saw the cushion in the middle [of the room], I didn’t think it was her. And then another day the lady was very upset waiting for the daughters to come. She’s shopping a lot. She has a spare fridge in the garage. And the next morning the freezer door was open completely and defrost. And sometimes I tell her, ‘Look, last night you forgot to put the alarm’. She said: ‘I’m sure I put on the alarm. Or maybe my mind is going’

Tara rationalises that some experiences are stranger than others. Finding a cushion (on a shoe) in the middle of her bedroom, as if it had been thrown, ranks stranger than finding the bedroom door open. The latter might have been caused by the landlady looking in at her; she is less likely to have thrown a cushion. There are further disruptive but ambiguous incidents involving freezer doors and burglar alarms; the line between supernatural high jinks and human forgetfulness can never be definitively drawn, but in such a charged atmosphere, every type of domestic disorder becomes potentially uncanny.

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Experiences Challenge Beliefs On the whole, non-believers witness fewer events than believers. This is sometimes used (as by Luke on the Wirral) as evidence in itself that events are not ‘real’. If only believers see ghosts, their beliefs are predisposing them to do so; experience is predetermined by belief. Other explanations are also sought for this. In examples of couples divided on gender lines, it is assumed that the men have generally spent less time at home and more time at work than their wives, and therefore have less opportunity to experience uncanny events. In Ipswich Susan tries to account for the difference in their experiences by suggesting it is something to do with the routines of everyday life rather than a difference between belief and non-belief. She suggests that her fiancé hasn’t experienced anything because he is not at home much. But nor it transpires is Susan – they both work full time. Beliefs passed on from previous owners or local neighbours can also have an initial impact but lose their credibility over time. On the Wirral, Mia’s daughter Gaby is at first nervous about the idea of living in a haunted home, acknowledging how the stories affected her: Gaby: I remember once, when it was just newly bought – this house. Because I was kind of feeling – a little bit afraid. Because also it’s a big house, and because of the stories from the previous owners, I didn’t want to sleep alone in the room [laughs]

She experiences an event for herself, and felt ‘a bit stressed about that’. But she hadn’t noticed anything for so long that the idea of the ghost has become distant and feels unreal, and she concludes with a tone of doubt: Gaby: So for a while I guess – and then we were talking about how the previous owners felt in the house, and I was – it felt very real for a while. But now I have never experienced anything. And now I have been sleeping in that room, and I – I don’t feel anything there at all

Alternatively, non-believers come round to the possibility of the supernatural after witnessing uncanny events. In Wiltshire, the builder is a sceptic who sees the ghost. Rosa paraphrases his response: Rosa: And – he – saw – and he doesn’t believe in ghosts. He says: ‘I’m 63. I’ve never seen a ghost. I don’t believe in ghosts’… And then he looked again and she wasn’t there. So he probably thought, ‘Stupid B’. You know. Yeah, he was quite – he’d seen a ghost

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In Liverpool, Dora recalls the response of her ex-husband when she makes him investigate the baby’s cry; he was convinced it was their own baby: Dora: He came in that door, and he went, ‘It’s not the baby. He’s fast asleep’. We said: ‘There you are. You’ve heard it now, haven’t you?’ And he said: ‘I can’t believe it.’ He said: ‘He’s fast asleep and the baby’s crying in the house’

Elsewhere, Alex in the rented flat also expresses unease about believing in ghosts because, like some of the other women, she considers herself well-educated and rational. But she accepts the evidence of her own experience: Alex: I didn’t believe in this kind of thing. I’m not crazy. The things that happen just cannot be ignored. I used to think, once you’re dead, you’re dead. I’m a highly intelligent person. I’m not supposed to believe these sorts of things! Yes, it’s totally changed my beliefs

Susan in Ipswich describes her father as a sceptic: ‘You can tell him something and he’d be like, “Yeah, right”’. But she describes how he changes his mind: Susan: My dad – he was sat in the [ground floor] backroom, with the back bedrooms above. And he heard these big, heavy footsteps above him. And he thought, ‘That’s a bit strange’. And he said it was definitely above him as opposed to a next door noise. It was the footsteps in the back room above him that made him – think again C: So your dad, once sceptical – Susan: Now he’s not

Her father was apparently happy to admit to the experience and able to incorporate it into an expanded world view: a particularly prized example of corroborative evidence. But elsewhere, in Blackpool, a husband/father’s refusal to believe becomes a figure of fun, particularly when he refuses to get out of bed during the night of dramatic poltergeist-like events, where objects were being thrown around the downstairs rooms: C: How did you feel? Victoria: Terrified. I phoned [the medium] and she – Gill: Mum was crying Victoria: – came out, didn’t she? She got a taxi over here

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Gill: Dad didn’t believe it. He said, ‘Oh, just leave it’ Victoria: Yeah! ‘And go back to bed!’ [Laughter] Anna: Dad was upstairs in bed. He didn’t even come down. We went in and – [can’t hear over laughter] Victoria: He did! He just stayed in bed! He left us to face it! Anna: We went up and asked him to come down, told him what was happening, and he said: ‘Oh, forget it!’

Nonetheless, they hint that he might be changing his mind: C: You mentioned that [your husband] was quite sceptical to begin with Victoria: Yes, he was. He didn’t believe at all, did he? C: Even at that stage? [We had been discussing a number of events] Victoria: That was the first thing that made him start thinking that maybe – [The children laugh; she joins in] there is something C: Now he’s accepted it? Victoria: Yes. Or starting to anyway

Seeing is Believing In Chapter 5 I touched upon a desire not to see as a strategy of co-habitation. To see a ghost is to suggest for it a level of ‘reality’, a point explored further earlier in this chapter. Seeing might be the least utilised sense, and often, in any case, constitutes something indistinct – a vague or shadowy form, something in the peripheral vision. But it is the kind of witnessing accorded most status as evidence, suggesting the continuing cultural ascendency of sight. The rationalist credos of ‘seeing is believing’ is often taken for granted as a benchmark against which events are judged. For some participants, the desire to see the ghost is greater than a desire for distance, because seeing confers a level of ‘proof’ not possible otherwise. But seeing is not enough for others, who will not allow, as described, any evidence to sway disbelief. Luke on the Wirral offers his manifesto:

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He cannot believe because he hasn’t experienced anything. This suggests that someone who has had an experience must therefore be allowed to believe. He conceded the logic, but returned to his default position – faulty neurological processes: C: So evidence to you means personal experience? Luke: Personal experience. Yes C: So the experiences of somebody who you obviously trust, like your wife – Luke: But it wouldn’t be – because – her brain might be making the mistake – in fact, her brain would be making the mistake almost certainly! I mean, I have been a director [of neurology] for thirty years and I’ve seen all kinds of things, you know – I mean, even in high fever you may go into delirium, and you hallucinate. You know. It’s commonplace. What I’m saying is – it is braingenerated, and the rest of the brain doesn’t understand that. So the interpretation is, ‘I must have seen something’

For some, seeing is not enough for a similar reason: they doubt the ability of ‘sight’ to confer absolute proof, even if they have had an experience and they are otherwise open-minded. Rachel in Wales talks about seeing things ‘in the corner of the eye’. But she also describes a more distinct vision of a ‘flesh and blood’ monk, and also the ghost of a pregnant woman who is so ‘real’ she assumes she is a visitor. But she remains ambiguous about these: Rachel: I’ve seen [the ghosts] … I saw a monk walking that way with his cowl up and – I just saw a flesh and blood monk … I still think I’m projecting. It’s coming from me – I think my mind was playing tricks, but that’s what I saw

She sees an image, it is a product of her mind, yet at the same time, ‘seeing is believing’: her mind played tricks but that’s what she saw, not ‘that’s what I saw, but my mind played tricks’. Clearly, people don’t doubt everything they ordinarily see. But it might be easier to believe that the mind plays ‘tricks’ over things which don’t belong ordinarily in the world anyway. At the same time, and despite this phenomenological angst, there appears to be a deeply ingrained common-sense assumption that on an objective level, we have to believe what we see. But the psychological or neurological explanations are never far behind.

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This creates a tension between ideas about experience and the experience itself. Rachel next questions the validity of an event, but the act of recalling the incident seems to convince her afresh: Rachel: I’m not sure what other people have seen is the same as what I’ve seen. Other people have had experiences. It’s not just me [gives an example of a disbelieving writer who sees the monk during a radio broadcast from the living room]. And he kept stopping. So I said: ‘What’s the matter, Phil?’ He said: ‘Well, there’s this figure walking up and down.’ [Laughs] ‘Oh’, I said, ‘So pleased you’ve seen it! I see it frequently’

Asked if her husband had seen a ghost, she responded that it wouldn’t make any difference if he did: Rachel: No, unfortunately. But if he did he’d probably think he’d had a dodgy curry … For Daniel, even if the monk walked through him, now, he’d still think I had a film projector or something … I just wish he’d see the apparitions. But as I say, if he did he’d think he’d had a dodgy curry or something

There is a unique issue involving the role of witnessing in this household. Most events are short-lived, unexpected or episodic, whilst in Wales they often linger. What becomes significant is the fact they are not witnessed more often in the process of becoming. Daniel, for example, points out how certain words have been chiselled out and painted over, describing a laborious and time-consuming process; not witnessing such a process becomes part of the uncanny narrative. For Rosa in Wiltshire, seeing is key to believing. This rankles in particular because she hasn’t seen her ghost, whilst others have. What she has witnessed (the result of pictures being moved) is not in the same league: Rosa: If I’d seen a ghost I’d believe in them. And this is what B the builder said: ‘I don’t believe in them. But now I’ve seen a ghost.’ You know. Very sensible chap C: You sent me an email with the latest – Rosa: Yes C: – And then you said to me, ‘Now I know’ Rosa: Yeah C: So, what’s your relationship to evidence?

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Rosa: That’s not enough, no. I haven’t got enough evidence, you know. If I’d seen a ghost, I’d be telling the world! I think my relationship to reality would have to be that I would have to see her. I think. Before I believed. I’d have to have something even spookier happen, like I would have to watch it [a painting] move, you know. Or, like, watch her. It would be fantastic if she was invisible and suddenly she went [does a gesture] and moves the picture, and puts it right C: You say it would be ‘fantastic’? Rosa: Or, if my jams – yes. Or say I put jams – I put jams on the window sill because when the light shines through, you know, they look like jewels. It’s lovely. If I saw her looking at the jams again, say, then I’d believe it. It would be wonderful. That would be the most amazing thing. Because then I would know that there was another dimension. Then you could start thinking: ‘Your dad’s in heaven. You’re going to meet your dad again’. But I’m not up for, you know – needing that

Here she fantasises about the end of doubt – ‘fantastic’, ‘wonderful’, ‘amazing’ – the certainty of knowing there is ‘another dimension’. She quickly moves to stress she doesn’t need such reassurance, the comfort of the afterlife, but nonetheless personalises the potential emotional impact of such a position: to fantasise seeing her dead father again. Corroborating Experience Corroborative accounts, where other people experience the same events, separately or simultaneously, are given much weight as ‘evidence’, as implied in some of the above examples. Although its status varies, corroboration potentially allows a switch in interpretation. For some, corroboration of belief is easily conferred. Here Tara the employee recounts arguing with a researcher studying gypsy life. He complained that everyone told the same story, lowering its status to just a myth that had got repeated too many times. For Tara, it meant the opposite – that the folklore was true: Tara: And when he finish I ask, ‘Are you happy with researches?’ ‘Oh, everybody say the same story.’ I say, ‘It’s the same story because this is the truth! If one say one, another one different, so what is the truth? But when it is everybody say the same, sorry. So this is the truth’

For most other participants, however, corroborative accounts focus on specific events or experiences, and are often contested. Returning to the event of a ‘vision’ of the Virgin Mary in the field in Wales; Rachel moves through different

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explanations. She starts, as described, with the fact that her ‘vision’ conformed to a cultural stereotype and therefore must have been a mental projection. But then the terms of Rachel’s narrative change. She describes her daughter and friend standing at the top of the field at the time as she sees the vision: Rachel: Then the girls ran down, and [friend] N said, ‘Oh mum’, she said, ‘While we were standing there, we felt – we didn’t see anything, but we felt a presence beside us’. And I hadn’t said anything to them

She allows her vision some validity after all because there is corroboration. The last sentence is emphatic, but doesn’t speak to the previous belief that the vision was in her head. The story ends there, floating in suspension, its contradictions unacknowledged, but with a rather strong hint that annoys Daniel: Daniel: [speaking over Rachel’s head] People tend to find what they’re looking for, in my experience! ... It’s hardly confirmation is it? The rest is hearsay

In the next example, Dora in Liverpool starts to doubt herself until another family member experiences the same thing: Dora: [On hearing the cry of a baby] Well, sometimes you think to yourself, ‘Is there a baby next door?’ And then you’d think, ‘Is it me? Am I going mad?’ You know. Then my daughter heard it. She heard the baby

In Wiltshire, Rosa backs up her beliefs by pointing to the responses of other people. Corroboration, as described, is still a weaker form of evidence compared to the key goal which alludes her: to see her ghost. But two recent witnesses have done so, and their accounts are very consistent. Both see, as described earlier, a ‘tiny’ lady with an apron criss-crossed at the back, hair in a bun, back towards them, staring in the same direction out of the back windows. They are similar experiences but are witnessed separately. Their responses also mirrored each other. They both avoided telling Rosa in case she might get frightened. Their protectiveness and sensitivity to her feelings becomes part of Rosa’s account. There is no suggestion of boasting or exaggeration: Rosa: Now they didn’t tell me about the ghost. Neither him nor my friend. Right? This is the amazing thing … And they both saw her looking down the back way. And he didn’t tell me because he didn’t want to frighten me … And she didn’t tell me. Neither of them told me because they didn’t want to frighten me. But it came out that – B must have told me eventually or something. I must have said: ‘I’m not scared of ghosts’, and he said, ‘Oh well’. Something like that. So then I told her and she said, ‘I didn’t like to tell you’. But they both saw the same thing

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A further witness – a daughter’s friend – also described seeing the ghost, but Rosa discounts this because she is unsure whether her daughter had previously mentioned the ghost to him. Most convincing of all is a conversation with neighbours which impresses Rosa and her family so much that they – almost – allow themselves to accept this corroborative evidence as proof. Their excitement, as described, is short-lived. In the cold light of the next day, they react against certainty with more scepticism, a collective boomerang response from one extreme to another. In the end, corroboration is not enough. They need to maintain the ‘seeing is believing’ ethos. No one else’s experience, however similar, will do: Rosa: My mum’s got very sceptical recently – ‘I’ll believe it when I see it’. We’ve been given more evidence, but more evidence has made us more cynical … We went to a local party. Up the hill … And N is going on 80 and they knew the evacuees … He said to me: ‘Have you seen the ghost yet? Miss B?’ He said: ‘You know the S’s who lived in the cottage before you – Mr S has seen her. Mrs S has seen her … Most of all, the son, who lived in a caravan, went into the house and saw Miss B going through their things. He was going to buy the house, but after he saw the ghost he got a fright and never bought it. I’ve seen her’. The matter of fact way! My friend C, B the builder, have both seen her – they don’t know the people up the hill. Mrs P just nodded. ‘Yes’. ‘Was she very little?’ He just took it for granted. I went back and told [my daughter] and her eyes went as big as saucers. ‘That must mean it’s true. There is life after death. But I don’t believe it.’ I think ‘rational materialism’. We don’t know. Mum too. ‘I just don’t believe it’ C: So despite hearing more evidence for the ghost at the local party, you all became more sceptical, not less. That’s odd Rosa: Yes. We had a rational day the next day. It must have been a reaction. But I’m waiting to hear the next thing

The neighbours, who she describes as having previously been unfriendly, eventually invite her to a party and talk about her ghost in a ‘matter of fact’ way. The story told by the 80-year-old patriarch of the hamlet is a clear example of the way long-standing neighbours are conferred authority; the accounts they offer are afforded much status. But the family has a ‘rational day’ the next day. Rosa alludes knowingly to her ‘rational materialist’ position; even the mother seems to lose her belief in the ghost. But Rosa psychologises their response. They didn’t want it to be true, or not so clear-cut – as described in the last chapter, another example of the freedoms of uncertainty. But perhaps also it was just too strange for their ‘rational’ minds to comprehend or incorporate, being presented by such an exciting treasure trove of witness accounts. Restoring rationality was, Rosa said, an emotional reaction. But in the next breath, she reinforces her continuing hopeful openness. Like others, she defers certainty into the future.

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The figure of the knowledgeable neighbour also becomes an important verifier of experience on a number of other occasions. In Ipswich, for example, Susan finds out about the previous owners (now the ghosts) from the next door neighbour: C: Everything you know about the couple is from the woman next door, is that right? Susan: Yes. [Her friend’s son] told me what the ghost of the man looked like. And I mentioned it to the lady next door. And she said: ‘Oh, that sounds like the previous owner.’ And I told her that we’ve heard things, and you know C: How come she had a photo? Susan: She used to come in and look after him when his wife was ill C: Did you show the photo to [your friend’s son]? Susan: Yes … He said that was – he said: ‘What are you doing with that photo? That was the man that was in the room’

I described earlier the role that gender plays in determining attitudes to belief in the supernatural, and also how a previously male sceptic was, for Susan, better evidence than her sister and mother, who she described as nervous believers – the less likely the witness, the more robust the testimony. In the weaver’s cottage, this sense of the most unlikely witness being the best evidence is also employed. Here again there is a conventional gender category employed – the event uncharacteristically involved a ‘big burly’ rugby player who ‘trembled like a leaf’: Hilma: [Describes an annual folk ritual where the young people let their hair down for a night] Our son brought back after midnight three friends … In his bedroom up here. And – they were big, burly boys. One of them was a rugby player. Huge, big lad. And our son said: ‘Something went on that night, mum. It was dark still, and M was trembling like a leaf. And he actually climbed over me to sit and tremble against the wall – between me and the wall – on my bed’. And M hadn’t been – I mean, huge, burly rugby player. And he wasn’t able to explain what had happened to him, what had scared him [Pause] Adam: He never came in this house again, did he? Hilma: No Adam: He wouldn’t come here

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His status as alpha male is emphasised as a way of tacitly suggesting some event must have taken place. The fact that the witness doesn’t give voice reinforces his role as a representation rather than an individual. The experience so impressed even the stubbornly sceptical Adam that he acknowledges it as odd: ‘It doesn’t alter the fact that a group of friends, of fairly close friends – this lad just disappeared off the scene as far as this house is concerned. He just didn’t want to have anything to do with it.’ For Abby in Cornwall, the ‘real’ – for which there is ‘evidence’ – fills her with more excitement than the thought of ghosts. She talks of a secret smugglers’ passage from the local cove to her building. She ‘knew’ this passage existed because she’d ‘seen the entrance and the exit of it’. But when workmen came to build an adjacent house, they dismissed the story, she claimed, to avoid the delay of carrying out a historical survey, and probably filled it in. But she knew it was there, even though it can no longer be seen. She then listed evidence for other hidden or unseen elements of the history of the place – a previous house in the grounds, Medieval and Stone Age remains. These are the ‘facts’ that make it into the history of her home she is writing. But there is slippage in her narrative, a subtle shift to embrace wider forms of ‘evidence’. For example, she accepts that ‘sensible’ people believe in ghosts after witnessing events: Abby: It’s all in the mind. And yet there are very sensible people who believe they have experiences. They’re quite sensible. These touchy, feely people having funny experiences

She then concedes that a woman was writing a ‘sensible’ ghost book. I joked that perhaps, for her, saying ‘sensible’ and ‘ghost’ in the same breath – she finished my sentence: ‘Is a contradiction?’ The writer, she explained, had properly researched her stories, wasn’t just repeating myths or hearsay, therefore she was right to call such a ghost book ‘sensible’. I pressed her further. If ghost stories could be researched as ‘history’, by rational people, would she allow such experiences to overlap with her category of ‘historical evidence’? Her first response was denial, arguing that knowledge of the history of the castle conjured the ghosts through suggestion. She pointed to a legend that a murder had taken place in the bedroom: ‘People can work that up in their minds.’ But later, as described, she mentioned the ghost of a monk, giving examples of different sightings, and admitting she was beginning to take this seriously:

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Abby: There might be something in the monk story. I do think there must be something in it … The monk is the only one I’m convinced of

Sightings of the monk made sense to her because his existence could be verified; a previous owner had been excommunicated for attacking a monk who had come to gather tithes. The monk is even mentioned in a history pamphlet about the castle, which reads: ‘And what about ghosts? A black-robed monk has been seen more than once by the present owners of the Carter’s cottage. Could this be the monk from H Abbey, denied his dues in 1330, come to reclaim them?’ The monk is granted a privileged position, making it into a written account otherwise reserved only for historical ‘facts’. Testing the Ghosts If, as described in Chapter 5, some participants actively attempt to engage with or communicate with their ghosts, one motivation for doing so is to gain proof. Some experiment to entice ghosts to appear or communicate. They do this by setting up material ‘conditions’ which they consider might work as a trigger. Often these reflect a mixture of ideas about ghosts being both super-human and rather banally ‘ordinary’. As described earlier, Susan in Ipswich left a pen and paper for the ghost of the old man to write something down – although she acknowledged the absurdity of hoping to bridge the gap in such a way (‘nothing obviously got left’). She also takes to psychic readings the little plastic cat found in the house, presumed to have been left by the ghostly couple when alive: Susan: The only time it ever gets moved – it sounds really silly – is when – every so often I’ll go to a medium night. And I’ll take that with me in my pocket – and think, well, if – they wanted to come through, they’d know it was me by having this little cat. But nothing has ever come through

Rosa in Wiltshire has also attempted to entice the ghost to appear to her, piling up jams at a windowsill to replicate conditions of a previous sighting (‘But it didn’t work’). At another point, she even challenged the ghost to create an event, and when this does happen, she decides this is a form of evidence: Rosa: There’s this damn picture that nobody could touch … And hanging there, on a slant. I mean pictures don’t generally, do they? Pictures go slanty when people knock them, when people touch them. They don’t do it on their own, do they? So I went to bed, here was this picture on a slant. I thought, ‘Oh, man’. I deliberately put it straight. And I thought, ‘Right. That is so strange’. This is midnight. In the morning, there it was on a slant again. I thought, ‘Right. You definitely exist.’ I just wanted to prove that she does exist. I thought, ‘This is strange. I want to really see this tomorrow’. And there it was. And, I mean, this

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She runs through the usual natural explanations, but the experiment to test her theory of the ghost – ‘I deliberately put it straight’ – wins the day. But, as described above, these moments of believing the ghost definitely exists are never sustained. Tara the employee also tests out the ghost by asking it to ‘prove’ its existence by responding to her command. She is helping in the kitchen of her landlady during a dinner party. Guests have brought flowers, which Tara has been asked to place into vases. These were left in the kitchen with her (‘I don’t go in the room with the guests’). As she washes plates, she saw the flowers move, as if by wind: Tara: But it’s not wind. I say: ‘Ok, you are here. But if you are here, move the flowers!’ I look. One flower – Doo!’ [she gesticulates a flower collapsing downwards] I said, ‘Oh, maybe one was broken before’. Then the flowers were shaking like this – look, like this O: As if there was like wind Tara: But there wasn’t in the room, nothing Olive: There wasn’t a draught Tara: I say, ‘Ok, you’re here. If you’re here, move a flower!’ And then I put plates back, and I look and one flower was down, like that! And I make laugh

Again, there is apparent proof through a direct response – through communication by action; natural causes have already been discounted. Uniquely, as described, the participants in Wales are themselves tested – by a parapsychologist they allow to investigate the uncanny events. Daniel positions himself above and beyond the possibility of doubt, because he is such a major doubter: Rachel: [The researcher] was too gullible at the start Daniel: To my mind [laughs] he’s not sceptical enough!

He backs up this researcher, as described, in suspecting his wife. He also seems aware that I might suspect him also, such is the tension in the house: Rachel: I mean there’s nothing that couldn’t be hoaxed in this house. I don’t think. Although there are some things that you wonder how the heck –

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Daniel: Well, the hard one to hoax is the chiselling. Because you know, you need time, when you know you’re going to be undisturbed to paint the plaster, sweep up the mess – as for cutting it into the sand stone, you really do need time to finely chisel the words well. Our researcher was suspicious of you, wasn’t he? Rachel: [Laughs] Yeah Daniel: Because you were the person who had time uninterrupted

They become united at one point, in their agreement that they could in fact be carrying out the hoax together; by admitting that, it suggests their innocence: Daniel: It is perfectly true that between us, um, we probably have the skills to do all of them Rachel: I mean it could be a family effort. We’re conning the world

But Daniel also gives specific examples of suspicious events. A camera pointed at a wall stops recording, and when it starts again, words have appeared in the interim. The uncanny events themselves become ‘anomalies’, in relation to the search for evidence and proof of the cause or culprit. The researcher ‘found two or three anomalies which you need to know’, Daniel assuming here that my main interest is also in analysing the evidence. He argues with his wife over the robustness of ‘evidence’ the researcher produced: Rachel: I never found that explanation convincing at all Daniel: The explanation was entirely convincing Rachel: No, it wasn’t

Another ‘anomaly’ was the emergence of a Welsh word on a wall which contained a spelling mistake – ‘the kind of spelling mistake that you might well make if you were unfamiliar with the language’ (Daniel). The researcher pointed out that the words and images always appeared where it was easy to reach and see – between picture frames, for example, rather than behind a radiator. This conveniently occurred next: a carving behind a radiator. Another question was why the images or words appeared so quickly but didn’t fade quickly. Soon after, this also happened, although in an ‘unconvincing’ way: ‘It looked as if polyfilla or something similar had been put into the [carving of the] monk and then painted over’ (Daniel). The very absurdity of these incidents leaves Daniel with more questions: Daniel: Those points are significant. Because they need explaining. Do you have a spook that sets itself up deliberately?

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The job of haunting here is, for Daniel and the researcher, rather amateurish, not done properly. It has to be a hoax, because hoaxers are more likely to ‘get things wrong’ than real, authentic spooks. The evidence gathered might be against the witnesses, who become potential instigators of events rather than guilty of the lesser crime of gullibility. * * * Established systems of belief and wider cultural influences work side-by-side more informal or local influences to construct narratives explaining uncanny experience. Different systems of belief and knowledge overlap and inform or trouble one another. Sometimes a witness changes his or her belief or understanding of the world after such an experience, whereas others are reluctant to do so. Social networks – of childhood, family, friends, neighbours – become important in determining the ways ideas about the uncanny are circulated, developed and tested. Religious beliefs, popular culture, local myths passed through word of mouth, all have to be weighed up, navigated, accepted or not. If rationality is the dominant knowledge paradigm which positions uncanny events as a lesser reality, a rather suspect form of ‘experience’, people utilise techniques of evidence-gathering which attempt to incorporate rational methods and objectives and utilise popular forms of rationalist maxims, such as ‘seeing is believing’. There is a tension between believing (or wishing to believe) experience on the one hand, and an understanding that ultimately rational methods will never suffice – and that, as shown in the previous chapter – uncanny events can never be known in their entirety, at least within the bounds of ‘knowledge’ as defined by ‘mainstream’ culture. This leads to a constant deferral of positions amidst a constant questioning of evidence, which sometimes appears to lead to solid ground, but always, up close, shifts away again. This is an emotional process, because not everyone wants to know or believe fully – the desire for suspension of belief is a desire for the process of suspending itself – to never quite arrive. It is the ‘not quite’ which makes uncanny events both familiar and unknowable. This allows all possibilities at once, including the possibility that the witnesses are not as irrational as they may feel. What is important is the double meaning of ‘sense’: the act of making meaning, making sense, for some is more important than (but for others always subservient to) the sensory – the experience of the uncanny or the fact that the uncanny is experienced. And if the event itself is a surreal, elusive kind of effect, some partial meaning is sometimes gained through it being shared, which serves to reinforce or create relationships between householders and, especially, between householders and their homes.

Conclusion: The Liminal Home/Self This book has demonstrated the efficacy of an approach which moves beyond a common configuring of the ghost as fiction, metaphor or social figure. By doing so, I have been able to show the richness and complexity of people’s experiences. I have allowed the effect of these experiences centre stage, have dwelt within the gaps between what can and cannot be said and what can and cannot be known, in order to investigate people’s own relationships to knowledge, belief and experience. This ‘middle ground’ approach doesn’t naïvely accept uncanny experience as authentic but traces contestations about what is ‘real’ and what is not within particular situated contexts; in these haunted homes, affective, sensual and emotional engagements become enmeshed in the formation of meanings and identities. Ghosts have been shown to be an intrinsic part of material geographies, experienced in and through specific homes, and changing relationships to and within them. The participants who kindly offered their time for this book have provided detailed and nuanced insights into the domestic uncanny, the way it is made up of a wide range of experiences within many different types of home, tenure, location, age and household. That it is difficult to generalise about haunted homes, even if one wanted to do so, testifies to the fact that they constitute a diverse plurality; they might be any home on any street. A Bounded, Charismatic Place … Participants’ descriptions of their homes suggest the haunted home is a bounded place with a particular presence which is made up of a complex mixture of spatial and temporal elements; a rooted, animated depth. There is nothing indeterminate or uncertain about its external boundary, which becomes an outline, a membrane, a shell, marking it out as a distinctive space. Being haunted reinforces the uniqueness of individual homes, whether a modern, mock-Tudor suburban house in an estate of look-alikes, or the oldest house in the village, standing large, proud, and imbued with historical ‘character’. The home emerges as a singular entity, something with its own atmosphere, an agency in its own right. It is more than the sum of its parts: a charismatic presence excessive of its original human creation, taking on a life of its own. Such a vision of home as somewhat bounded and distinctive is a rather different figuring of place than has become the norm within human geography. A number of commentators have insisted that ‘places should not be thought of

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in terms of stasis and boundedness but are instead the product of processes that extend well beyond the confines of a particular place’ (Cresswell, 2004: 50). Influentially, geographer Doreen Massey has called for a definition of place as fluid, characterised by flows and interconnections, as ‘not so much bounded areas as open and porous networks of social relations’ (Massey, 1994: 121). Her vision of place destabilizes any claims to the ‘authentic character of any particular place’, which is not ‘self-enclosing and defensive’ (147), has no ‘single unique “identities”’ (155), and the specificity of which does not result from ‘some long internalized history’; it is, instead, a ‘particular constellation of social relations’ (154). Where ideas of place as bounded persist, they are often given a negative value. Geographer David Harvey characterises a particular place, the focus of a study, as having a ‘name, a boundary, and distinctive social and physical qualities’, as having ‘achieved a certain kind of ‘permanence’ in the midst of the fluxes and flows of urban life’ (Harvey, 1996: 293). But he uses such a place to make a negative point – it represents exclusivity and reactionary politics. In contrast, we can see that more fitting to people’s vision of their haunted homes is an earlier, humanistic idea which describes place as somewhere people feel attached to and have a sense of ownership of (Agnew, 1987, Relph, 1976). Home in this sense is a foothold of identity, an ‘anchoring point through which human beings are centred’ (Blunt and Dowling, 2006: 11), where people ‘invest’ in a ‘search for comparative fixity’ (Cresswell, 2004: 74). It is an intense series of places carved out by different memories (Bachelard, 1994), and a ‘pause’ in the movement of space, whereby ‘each pause in movement makes it possible for location to be transformed into place’ (Tuan, 1977: 6). Geographer Julian Holloway argues that there is no ‘single essence’ of place: it is ‘constructed in a myriad of ways’ (Holloway, 1998: 11). But if for participants their homes do have a singular essence, this requires that we explore how such places become fixed, how Tuan’s ‘pause’ might work. This is the striking thing: how places manage to ‘stick’ in such intense ways that allow some to be granted their own agency, force, charisma. It is the charisma, in particular, of haunted homes – including those that might otherwise be overlooked as rather ‘ordinary’ – that gives them their bounded, distinctive, presence. If this implies something a little queasily essentialist, we should remember that there is a danger in cultural work of imposing ideas which should rather than do work for people on the level of ‘everyday life’, even if these are deemed out of step with current theory. For example, participants assume that their home contains private spaces where the self should be able to reside in peace, even if this isn’t a state always or easily conferred. But elsewhere we are told that a ‘suspicion remains’ that the family is ‘still home to the private haven … However distorting and inappropriate to the patterns of social change, the division of private and public worlds remains the background to family life’ (Richards, 1990: 100). This ‘ideal’ of home or family appears to be the wrong ideal. But who is to say that this is – or should be – people’s experience?

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… Containing Multiplicity Within But the haunted home defined as a bounded, distinctive space does not tell the full story. For if its presence reinforces, through its atmospheres and particular spaces, the boundary between public and private, this doesn’t mean it is a homogenous or closed space. Rather it becomes a container of a multiplicity of spaces inhabited by a multitude of different agents within. Part of what gives it its charisma is the fact that the identity of the haunted home is believed to emerge out of an accumulation of materialities and temporalities, of bodies and agencies. It is both a ‘layered location replete with human histories and memories’ (Lippard, 1997: 7) but also something rather more lively, containing potentialities and present pasts – a place which is not just created through social practices (Thrift, 1997), but also through encounters between humans and nonhumans. Defining such a home as a container, a bounded place, cannot therefore be easily dismissed as a defensive strategy, for what it contains ‘behind closed doors’ is as complex and challenging as what separates it from the outside. The home as agent refuses to be placed or contained, subdued or domesticated. This being the case, then, we need to take seriously the home’s ‘own forces’, between ‘potential and determination’; indeed, the material spaces of the home are often described by participants in terms of their potential to ‘be themselves’ (Dewsbury et al., 2002: 439). Its spaces – especially those that are unused or unseen – are granted a dangerous potentiality; in most cases this is something to celebrate, for it reminds participants that there is a ‘contingency about the world that opens up possibilities’ (Grossberg, 2010: 318). Geographer Tim Cresswell suggests that landscapes (and, by extension, homes) are ‘never finished or complete, not easily framed or read’ (Cresswell, 2003: 280). This ‘never finished’ quality is also how the haunted home is granted power, since it is formed of a collective accumulation of materialities and lived experiences, of previous, current and potential inhabitants and events, emotions and affects. Ben the caretaker’s relatively newly constructed ‘private’ space within the old house in which he lives and works becomes a mere temporary, flimsy structure, affording no useful separation from the rest of the house in the light of the weight of these accumulated histories; the haunted home is not a passive recipient of bodies and events but needs to be respected and negotiated as much as its ghosts. These complex and continuous accumulations grant it agency and also its rootedness and depth. Such a rootedness is free to be wayward and mysterious, secretive and complex, the realm of private experiences that cannot always be accessed. Daniel Miller rather dramatises the negative aspect of living in an already-lived-in house, but he is right to suggest the importance of history and memory in the way the act of being haunted is framed by inhabitants. He suggests that people need to come to terms with the ‘agency’ expressed in the temporality of the home and its material cultures – to develop a ‘larger cosmology of authenticity, truth, negotiation and identity’ (Miller, 2001: 111). For many participants, this involves an expanded notion of materiality and temporality, a sense of continuing influences and claims –

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nothing anachronistic or inert, but the past as intrinsic to the present in active and felt, if not in measurable ways. As a lived place full of uncanny encounters, the haunted home also becomes a set of differentiated spaces, mapped out in terms of micro-geographies, myths, memories and emotions. The domestic interior becomes patterned in particular ways through a multitude of movements and sensations within these spaces where the lingering after-effects of uncanny events reverberate. The liminal places where most uncanny events occur both unsettle and emphasise boundaries, disturbing and reinforcing those spaces deemed more private and more public, more fixed and more porous. A majority of events took place on staircases, landings, corridors and pathways, others in ante-rooms, box rooms, a coal shed and the corner of a living room, and a good few involved mirrors, walls, paintings, and reflections in windows. These events differentiate between spaces used and underused, hidden and revealed, the passing places and the places to linger, spaces one can see beyond and those where vision is curtailed. The uncanny interior is thus differentiated by different maps and thresholds; feelings, memories and affects demarcate and differentiate space as much as physical markers and boundaries. Nonhuman Encounters If the haunted home is a collection of spaces within which different agents coalesce, engage and accumulate, this requires an extended vision of domestic materiality. Matter itself in such places is given agency and animation – a ‘wayward expressiveness’ (Kearnes, 2003: 139). The uncanny event is variously immaterial and material, coming from and going to where we cannot say; indeterminate, elusive, yet having effect. It calls to mind a Deleuzean materialism where ‘matter as the plane of immanence is a dynamism of the differentiations, speeds, and flows of particles that are prior to any organized form’ (Cheah, 2010: 87), and of ‘pure intensities, prevital and prephysical free singularities’ (Deleuze and Guattari, 1987: 255). This means, for our purposes, paying attention to the less easy to represent emerging ‘forces’ of the home, its ‘intensities’, atmospheres, agencies and presences, a wider set of interactions that can’t be described through a focus only on social relations. Useful for thinking about such a cauldron of encounters is a developing strand of work building on Latour’s proposition about human and nonhuman ‘actants’, of (following readings of Spinoza) a form of ‘distributive agency’ – where subjects are not the main cause of effects; and of (again following Deleuze and Guattari) ‘heterogeneous assemblages’, which are ‘adhoc groupings of diverse elements, of vibrant materials of all sorts’ (Bennett, 2010: 23). Although much of the language of these interventions arguably recalls a superstitious or spiritual form of animism – of a world populated by animate things that Freud’s essay The Uncanny (1919) tried to dispel – this work focuses on a material vitalism. Thus it is a resoundingly materialist vision, perhaps too limited for the subject of this book

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(no doubt these philosophers would baulk at my borrowing of their ideas for thinking about ghosts). But moving beyond ideas of matter as a form of common sense solidity ‘out there’, perceivable with ease by human witnesses, allows us a level of freedom in thinking about uncanny events as material and immaterial in often baffling ways, the sense in which the haunted home is granted agency through the relationships between its material and immaterial components, even if these are so diffuse it is difficult to prise them apart. If the haunted home is more than the sum of its parts – a ‘more than’ that is impossible to fully name or represent – we can at least grant it the status of something on its own terms. For objects ‘can become vibrant things with a certain effectivity of their own, a perhaps small but irreducible degree of independence from the words, images, and feelings they provoke in us’ (Bennett, 2010: xvi). There is a certain hesitancy in this description of the ‘small but irreducible degree of independence’ (one might ask ‘how small? How is this degree quantified?’). But it suggests wider possibilities of agency for the haunted home, containing as it does an ‘assemblage’ of human and nonhuman agencies, and where objects (at their widest definition, including homes and ghosts) are not objects of knowledge; they are ‘detached and radically free from representation’ (Bennett, 2010: 4). There is a sense of exhilaration for some participants in being forced to loosen the grip of human witness, to accept an invitation to make fresh connections and to allow that other things or agents may well be doing likewise elsewhere. It requires a necessary playfulness, at least a bemused shrug conceding that certain spaces or forces in (although not necessarily of) the home contain secrets that may or may not be revealed. This requires an embodied form of knowledge and interaction with the materialities of home, and an acceptance that the current human inhabitants take their place as part of a shifting continuum of human and nonhuman conglomerations. Reinforcing Subjectivity That is not to say the different agents that make up the haunted home form some deep harmonious ecology; such openness could never be sustained. There are many frictions: a jostling for space, for greater senses of ownership and belonging. Exhaustive effort is required to contain ghosts. Participants hold in tension a stable idea of the home as a private, authentic place to ‘be’ and ‘belong’, and home as a collection of unexpected incursions and encounters. The haunted home can be viewed as a form of coalition (Wiley and Barnes, 1996), at times an antagonism or competition for space and ownership, at others – often simultaneously – something more synergistic, affirming, harmonious, where the multiplicity of agencies from past and present create depth, even in the right circumstances, enhancing ideals of home. Recalibrating the world as a collection of excessive materialities and pre-personal, quantum-level affects – for all its creative potential to rethink spaces

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of interaction – tends to under-theorise the human subject (a reaction, perhaps, to a belief that the role of humans has tended to be over-emphasised). As described in the introductory chapter, a number of social theorists and geographers have recently critiqued this turn to a particular rendition of affect, within which subjectivity ‘becomes a no-place or waiting room, through which affects as autonomous lines of force pass on their way to somewhere else’ (Wetherell, 2012: 123). Whilst many are moving towards a definition of subjectivity which emphasises its open, contingent and unstable aspects, there is a growing counter-argument calling for descriptions of affect to be theorised against, or at least alongside, a more embodied focus on situated selves, and a more social focus on emotions.1 The experiential insights emerging from people’s descriptions of uncanny experience show, indeed, how the self–other relationship plays out in complex ways, but the project for most is to maintain a sense of self in the wake of such incursions into their private space. Returning to the example of Ben, his role as caretaker and his place in the house allow him to fulfil an ideal of self, but he doesn’t merely imagine this into shape. The house itself provides a challenging multi-agencied space – of which he sees himself as playing an active part – to perform and create his subjectivity. The challenge posed by the house and its ghosts sharpens this sense of self as much as shakes it. Thus it is with and/or against the haunted home’s agency, that of its nonhuman inhabitants and uncertain, spontaneous events, that participants shape their own subjectivity. It is a process in which the self is continuously challenged and moulded, through which participants attempt to reinforce their subjectivity in response to different claims to belonging. Ghosts are rarely believed to be traumatised or malevolent in these households, but they often suggest that levels of continuing attachment amount to territorial claims, even if the home itself is distinguished by being a collective accumulation of identity. Either way, the emotional significance of attachment is too great to be bounded by only linear ideas of time and space, or by narrowly human concerns; the reinforcement of identity is contingent upon the location and shape of nonhuman others. Much of this process involves participants upholding an assortment of different boundaries in an attempt to clear forms of material, temporal and emotional ‘space’ for themselves. Brennan (2004) and others describe the way boundaries and binaries work to separate and distinguish, but they do so in order to critique such a project as an intrinsically false state of being. They assume, for example, that defensive barriers to ward off the affects of others, in the right conditions, should be replaced by a celebration of interconnected and interdependent relational porosity. But the formation of boundaries cannot be dismissed only as a defensive construction, rather as a partial and sometimes necessary response, an intrinsic aspect of the complex, oscillating, daily push-pull of inside and outside, self and other, private and public. 1 See Thien, 2005, Tolia Kelly, 2006, Lipman, 2006, Rose et al., 2010, Pile, 2010, Edensor, 2012.

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In her analysis of the horror genre, geographer Deborah Dixon calls to mind Deleuze and Guattari’s figure of the sorcerer, ‘an anomalous subject who establishes an alliance with the domain of the other and calls to witness all those whom approach’ (Dixon, 2011: 451). Drawing on the work of Kristeva, Constable and Grosz, she explores the ‘complexity of same/different relations between self and abject’ (439) whereby the focus on the porosity, instability and incompleteness of bodies, the ‘blurred nature of subject identities’, ensures that the ‘abject cannot be ritually expelled’. In this way, she argues, monsters are the ‘perverse, excessive double of ourselves’, which in turn drive a ‘horror of submersion in an alien otherness, an incorporation in and by the other’ (440). But as described, people strategically contain the incursion of the ‘other’ in many ways. For example, strategies of domestication are utilised to contain levels of strangeness, at least where this is deemed to impact too much on successful co-habitation. The uncanny, as shown, ideally becomes personalised as a someone, conventional, ordinary, unthreatening (ideally, female), not too different from ‘self’ in terms of sharing similar values or ideas of social etiquette, including a wish to keep distance, respect privacy. Keeping the ghosts within bounds on one level allows participants to maintain their own boundaries – keeps the ghosts out of bounds, on another. Certainly the more frightening a ghost’s ‘otherness’, the less able participants are to contain it. The banshee cry in Magnus’s living room is not the scream of a frightened female, but the war cry of a powerful malevolent force, a predictor of death; the equally malevolent force in Ben’s house is so monstrous it cannot be described. But these are short-lived exceptions. An opposite problem for participants is that by granting ghosts human likeness, there is always a danger that they will find too much agency or become too like the challenging aspects of self. For the most part, people’s strategies aim to distance the other whilst making it a diminished, unthreatening, even sympathetic, form of self, thus allowing space for selves as well as – but not subordinate to – others. This is a necessary and partial form of narcissism, and does not preclude moments of, or attempts at connection. When the affective moment allows for it, a sense of real openness to experience is possible such as when participants hear beautiful music or pleasant smells, and few intimate encounters are threatening; the home as a container sometimes can also act as a protective force – offering a calming or healing atmosphere. Intermediary, shifting alliances between self and other are possible, working in the service of both maintaining difference as well as creating connection. Deleuze’s sorcerer might unsettle taxonomic classifications in the moment of witness of the other (Dixon, 2011), but most often conventional mores of self and home are actively reinforced rather than troubled, as powerful weapons against the disruption of normalcy. If the subject is at times forced to encounter the ‘intersubjective, performative, and contingent aspects’ of its formation (Korf, 2008: 715) – as well as more troubling aspects of itself or fear of being submerged by the other – in all the cases examined in this book participants manage to restore ‘a degree of centring and consistency within the relations that shape it’ (Conradson, 2005: 104–5;

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italics added). The ghosts might instigate, intensify, trouble, and enhance this process, but it is the work to both exclude and assimilate others which helps to reinforce subjectivity, neither just collapsing self into other or keeping alterity at bay (Varley, 2008). This process, of course, can never be completed. The haunted home, as described throughout this book, is always a place of vivid almosts. Just as uncanny events and the ghosts are described in the language of not quites and as ifs, so too does subjectivity always almost come into stable being, as the shifting matches and fits between home and self are lived, felt and imagined: securing subjectivity is a fragile, unstable project. Nonetheless, most people I interviewed continued in such circumstances to speak of ‘home’, which becomes, at least for short periods, the interaction of dynamic processes contained within an intensive space rather than somewhere to rest, singular and inert. Ghosts and the Familiar There is a traditional belief, according to historian Peter Maxwell-Stuart, that the dead form a community which is an extension of the living, inhabiting a ‘separate but connected’ place which living people may glimpse from time to time, an other world similar to, but ‘not quite like ours’ (Maxwell-Stuart, 2006: 11). In a similar way, many participants presume that their ghosts are somehow the same or similar to when they were alive, in terms of personality, attitude, even dress and social relationships – a particularly useful convention for making the other not too different from self. But the relative success of many strategies of domestication point to a more place-specific relationship between the efforts required to make the other familiar and the fact that the other seems at times already familiar. The domestic uncanny might be a place where the strange emerges out of the ordinary, but by doing so, events often reflect ordinariness and the ghosts become more ordinary for inhabiting such places. Relationships between selves and others are formed through the ongoing process of living in homes, of ‘making home’, thus suggesting the importance of home-making routines, social rituals, and repeated patterns of movement in defining the domestic interior. It may not be a coincidence that many uncanny events emerge out of these ‘everyday’, mundane, familiar routines; many experiences – in particular sounds – imitate these domestic routines. The domestic uncanny is an uncanny of its place, of the domestic, not just in the domestic. A curious but pertinent rendition of the relationship between the uncanny and the familiar can be found in the work of American ghost hunter John Sabol, who has attempted to apply archaeological methodology and techniques to his research into ghosts. He concludes that the vast majority of hauntings ‘have been oriented toward the repetitive, the mundane, and the habitual ... The ordinary and everyday routines and practices of cultural beings are what are manifesting in haunted space’ (Sabol, 2009: 175). The ordinariness of these hauntings takes the ‘otherness’ away from ghosts, he argues, believing that what he observes

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constitutes a stable ‘ghost culture’. Such a culture is ill-defined but appears to relate to the traditional belief, described above, that ghosts exist in a separate but similar world to our own. Sabol’s insistence that the movements and, by extension, motivations of ghosts are repetitive, mundane and habitual is perhaps one take on Esther Peeren’s related but more general comment that the ghostly and everyday should not be seen as separate realms (Peeren, 2010). In fact, Peeren suggests an association between ‘repetitive, unchanging routines (tasks that are never done for the first time and will always need to be done again)’ and a form of ‘ghostly entropy’ (Blanco and Peeren, 2010: xiii). Here it is ‘ordinary’ bodies condemned to repetitions of housework: the effort to maintain order within the home can never subdue its stubbornly disorderly materiality into tidy inertia (even if some of the ghosts themselves wish to help with such a task and are well placed to do so). This offers an ironic twist on the psychoanalytical insistence on the ghost as the return of the repressed, condemned to not-quite repetitions of past trauma. What is returning here are the mundane actions of the domestic – uncanny events often involve walking up and down staircases, name calling, doors closing, singing, lights being switched on and off, lingering at doorways, peering in and out of windows, smoking cigarettes and pipes. The domestic uncanny as the strange within the familiar is in this sense the familiar within the strange, for the uncanny seems to be domesticated by its surroundings at the same time as drawing attention to the existing wayward rhythms of the ordinary and everyday. The intricate fluidity of domestic processes – in particular, the home as a complex soundscape – vie with an idea of the domestic interior as a place of order, where everything is in its place; rather these processes point to the domestic as a place where order and disorder are constantly held in tension. Throwaway concepts such as the ‘everyday’, ‘familiar’ or ‘mundane’ are, then, not always experienced as they are assumed to be. The initial jar or surprise of an uncanny event forces a sudden heightened awareness, which reflects the fact that, in fact, most of the time the domestic interior is a place of submerged repeated acts, a kind of deep zone of subconscious performative knowledge. Many events emerge out of such moments, during the act of carrying out some chore or mundane task, suggesting that the mental and emotional state involved in ‘making home’ is sometimes conducive to an openness and receptivity to different, less familiar realms of space and time. By focusing on the inconsequential moments and repeated rituals of making home and the ways in which uncanny events within the domestic become normalised over time, I have also shown how participants form attachments to and a deep knowledge of the spaces and senses of home through daily routines, and thus the way mundane repetitive acts are involved in the establishment of senses of belonging, ownership and connection. This is to reiterate a broadly phenomenological approach to identity and place, where the repetition of habits produce feelings of belonging (Seamon, 1980), and where, according to Casey, places become sedimented through ‘habit memories’ formed by the repetition of routines (Young, 2005: 139–40). It points also to Pierre Bourdieu’s notion of ‘habitus’, whereby past practices become ‘embodied in social actors so they

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acquire a kind of sediment’ which includes the development of dispositions, preferences, and standpoints (Wetherell, 2012: 105). I argued above for a greater consideration of how people’s definition of home becomes fixed and bounded. Here we can see how this process works, in part, through a different rendition of affect, one defined as ‘everyday affective practices’ which help explain how affects come to be ‘held’ in particular places through ‘processes of developmental sedimentation, routines of emotional regulation, relational patterns and “settling”’ (Wetherell, 2012: 22). This helps us to think through what might be happening at the moment of an uncanny event and its after-effects, something that affect theorists wishing to decentre subjectivity have little to contribute. Social psychologist Margaret Wetherell usefully calls for attention to be paid to the ‘persistence, repetition and power, and the continuities threading through … situated moments’ (102), to ‘everyday meaning-making’ and to ‘practical activity’ which is ‘infused … with sedimented social and personal history’. If, as described earlier, the ghosts reflect home as a place of accruing senses of ownership and belonging, they do so through such repetitions, as do the living inhabitants. Cultural Conventions By allowing the human and nonhuman an equal place in my analysis, I can offer space for a definition of affect which doesn’t draw a divide between ‘bodies and talk and texts’ (Wetherell, 2012: 20), because, as Wetherell rightly argues, affect is ‘inextricably linked with meaning-making and with the semiotic (broadly defined) and the discursive’; it is about ‘sense as well as sensibility’. Drawing further on her analysis, affect, she suggests, is about how the body is ‘patterned together’ with feelings and thoughts, social relationships, narratives, interpretative repertoires, personal histories. These constitute ‘components and modalities, each with their own logic and trajectories’, which are ‘assembled together in interacting and recursive, or back and forth, practical methods. Pattern layers on pattern, forming and re-forming. Somatic, neural, phenomenological, discursive, relational, cultural, economic, developmental, and historical patterns interrupt, cancel, contradict, modulate, build and interweave with each other’ (13–14). The language of patterns, components, modalities and practical methods perhaps suggests a rather systematic and organised set of interactions; we might want to add to her list different more fluid sets of materialities and immaterialities. But it is a focus which helps us think through the frictions between experience, narrative and belief. These form a different set of repetitions within the haunted home – people continually attempting to make sense of their experiences through repeated narratives. The focus here is less on the moment of witness – which some affect theorists dwell upon as a constant realm of emergence and becoming – but rather on the less dramatic fact that we ‘only become conscious of how our bodies and minds have been recruited and entangled after the event’ (Wetherell, 2012: 21) –

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that we do not mostly live in the ‘active chronological moment of the turn-by-turn’, rather perhaps in a ‘more extended present moment’. Either way our making sense often most strongly takes place in ‘narratives ruminating on some outburst of affect after it has taken place’ (85), whether these narratives are expressed internally or to others. This is a useful intervention if we don’t want to accept that humans are constantly ‘entering new and unknown terrain’ for which all previous experience has us ‘unprepared’; rather, that affective experience of space is ‘conditioned by previous experience, by habit, by familiar emotions and sensations that produce feelings of belongingness or otherwise’ (Edensor, 2012: 1114). It suggests that affects are not just momentary, fleeting and transient, as they are usually configured in much current theory (Massumi, 2002), but ‘through the iteration of similar experiences, and therefore similar affects, they accumulate in the form of what could be considered dispositions that predispose one to act and react in particular ways’, including an accumulation of ‘bodily memory’ which may evade consciousness (Watkins, 2010: 278–9). As has been shown, it has been necessary to explore the ways in which participants frame their uncanny experiences, how they deal with the frisson between pasts and potentialities and the continuous excess of meanings. These may be encapsulated in and by the excessive moment of witness, but its lingering after-effects provide clues as to what people bring to the process of making sense – the cultural conventions, beliefs, social influences, attitudes, standpoints – sometimes standoffs. The danger in focusing on these is, of course, that it raises a different kind of spectre: that of a rather over-determined cultural and social constructionist model of place (Harvey, 1996). At its most external definition, the haunted home is indeed held up as a long-standing cultural icon, and it would therefore be easy to argue that it has been constructed and reconstructed through media, place marketing and the continuity of popular fictions. In his thesis exploring belief in ghosts in post-war England, Paul Cowdell suggests that popular representations are among the ‘influences on narrative negotiation of belief [in ghosts]’ (Cowdell, 2011: 17). But he argues against any simplistic assumption that this creates belief, for ‘believers are not duped by stories’, rather they ‘weigh evidence’. He explains: ‘A straightforward connection between report and belief, or experience and belief, is commonly posited. The evidence points instead to their complicated negotiation’ (105). Narratives of ghost experience are ‘contested as they are recounted’; they are not ‘simple, fixed, accounts of fact’ but ‘adjusted for audiences, in line with existing traditional motifs, other beliefs, expectations, experiences and … scientific thinking’ (88). These narratives, he argues, are performative and require a scrutiny of social context (106). This book has likewise shown the complexity of people’s framing of experiences, descriptions and different forms of belief. The haunted home is certainly ‘constructed’ in particular ways by local or previous inhabitants, through the legacy and circulation of stories about it – where expertise and authority are conferred to those with neighbourhood or occult knowledges, or where an idea

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gets attached to a place over time. Informal social narratives circulating within households and/or local neighbourhoods can indeed reinforce a home as haunted, but that doesn’t mean that such an idea isn’t contested; such narratives do not travel in smooth, straight lines or circulate seamlessly. The social mechanism of the origin of the Pink Lady’s home on the Wirral appears to be quite clear-cut, although her reception at her home by the current inhabitants is less so. In general social narratives tend to circulate in very limited and uneven ways, complicated by different interpretations and perspectives within the same household, by the fact that people experience events differently, or don’t experience anything at all, and that some people will actively resist the influence of others’ experiences and beliefs. The status of haunted is only conferred in response to witnessed, uncanny events over time, rather than hearsay. Participants employ a number of cultural assumptions or historical stereotypes about ghosts and haunted homes, but often they do so to compare these to their own experiences as part of attempts to scrutinise the ‘reality’ or ‘authenticity’ of their experiences, to set them against wider contexts. Experiences are filtered through the cultural tool kits people bring to them, as described throughout this book. These social, moral and cultural conventions, along with rhetorical devices, are often implied as part of the fabric of participants’ narratives, forming part of playful, thoughtful, sometimes urgent, strategies of negotiating co-habitation. These include attempts to make the uncanny familiar by making it known, understandable, give it a clear ‘meaning’. They are only ever partially successful because they are never able to reach full completion or coherence. In some households, arguments over the ‘truth’ of an event continue many years after it is experienced. Underlying such effort is a desire to trust one’s own experience, or to have experiences one can trust. This becomes an important, if elusive, a touchstone of identity, because, as Annette Kuhn points out: ‘My experience – my memories, my feelings – are important because these things make me what I am’ (Kuhn, 2002, 33–4). That such narratives need to be repeated suggests that they continue to disturb and fascinate. Their repetition, at best, only serves to reinforce or highlight existing social relations between householders. Some also draw attention to people’s economic and social situations, particularly those who do not own their homes. Employee Tara would be unlikely to put up with the intrusive ‘male presence’ if her economic circumstances were different. Likewise, Christine, a tenant in the maisonette, confided that she only put up with the difficult teenage ghost because she didn’t view her stay in the house as anything more than temporary. And as a caretaker, Ben’s habitation within the house – where he has also experienced challenging phenomena – is dependent on his employment. However, his sense of belonging to the house is rather more complex than theorists such as Miller (2001) might suggest. It is clearly far too simple to conclude that these experiences only ever reflect social and economic circumstance and are only social or cultural constructions. Participants showed too much awareness to become passive dupes of circumstance. They may form

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positions around a vast network of social relationships, ideas and beliefs, but this book has shown that the haunted home and the ghosts within it cannot be reduced only to the creations of any of them.2 The Ghost Approached This book has examined how people grapple with ways of making sense of their experience and what’s at stake for them in doing so. As researchers, just like many participants, our focus shouldn’t be on the impossibility of finding ‘truth’ but on the attempt to arrive at some – partial, multiple, contested – truths. By attending to what people tell us, we can watch for the ‘gaps’ and shifts in their stories, explore how these are informed by a complexity of relationships, encounters and beliefs. I have suggested that such an exploration of haunted homes helps to illuminate different definitions of home and self. I have shown how the home is bounded but with an identity formed through the shifting multiplicities of times, spaces and agents it contains; where identity and ownership claims jostle for space, reinforcing as much as (or because of) challenging subjectivities; and where home becomes a space where such claims to belonging are enhanced through repetitive domestic routines. The home has thus been shown to be an affective space in different, but not mutually exclusive ways. There may be a mere hair’s breadth between what is real and what is not, between uncanny and ordinary in the domestic interior. The gap between real and not real, like a good copy, might be small; but if the focus can shift to the likeness, to the fact that the copy is so good, it must always shift back again as events compel a recognition of difference. Strategies might attempt to contain the uncertainty of experience, but part of this process is made possible because of its uncertainty. Keeping experience vague allows people to use their imagination, to fantasise the ghost in the image or attitude they want, offers imaginative space which allows some people to co-habit with more ease. For this reason, sightings for many are to be avoided; they confer too much detail, afford less distance. Although to see a ghost remains the Holy Grail of proof for some, for many there is a desire to not quite believe that what they might have seen is quite there! To be relegated to the realm of the imaginary allows witnesses to believe and disbelieve simultaneously, to accept that the ghosts and uncanny events cannot be made known, certain or real, whilst continuing to be effects, making their presence felt, having an impact on senses, on relationships and movements around the spaces of home. In this way they become known, certain or real on their own, on different terms, allowing the possibility that different types of knowledge and different forms of agency are possible in the world. Uncertainty becomes intrinsic to the haunting experience; for some, it is a way of respecting otherness, not needing to know the other, because this in any case will never be possible. It is to accept an 2 

See Sack, 1997 and Malpas, 1999 for further discussion of this argument.

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excess of meaning in the excess of material and sensory experience. The boundary between the known and the unknown, the openness of events as both real and unreal or imagined: experience itself is liminal – something that can’t quite arrive at its destination; narrative is suspended between these two positions. None of the fixed categories of knowledge that the participants have inherited help them to explain what they experience. This isn’t a failure. It reveals a sometimes unsettling truth: the interconnected but liminal nature of identity, experience, place, and self. I suggested at the outset that the ‘middle ground’ approach must stop short at making certain claims. It is this stopping short itself which becomes a position in its own right. It is the one thing and another nature of the domestic uncanny and the haunted home which becomes the only definition possible: events are real and unreal, familiar and strange, mundane and dramatic, almost and already, material and immaterial, public and private, fixed and porous; they involve selves and others as well as times and spaces in complex and entangled ways. Such a friction of opposites creates many different responses, as explored throughout this book. But this positioning of home, self and experience is not to maintain a set of categories in juxtaposition to each other; it is to suggest that something which shifts between rigid and fluid is embodied in these ands; it is a form of liminality. Like the ghosts who are betwixt and between, this might mean a waiting, a pause, and indeed, by some definitions this is what the place of home amounts to. But it also implies a rather more active state in itself rather than only a hovering between opposites.

Appendix: The Households

Rachel and Daniel Rachel and Daniel live in an old detached house in a rural hamlet of North Wales. A married couple in late middle age, Rachel wrote an online diary for a website about her uncanny experiences at the house. Her husband is, at time of interview, a recently retired headmaster. An adopted son also made a brief appearance. There are many and frequent uncanny events, including sightings of a monk, young man and pregnant woman, but the main events involve words and images which appear on walls and other surfaces of the interior and garden. Pam, Karen and Christine This is an upper maisonette in a Victorian house in inner-city North East London. It is shared by three thirty-something friends: Pam, the flat’s owner, and her tenants and close friends Karen and Christine. Christine is considered a ‘sensitive’. There are many ghosts, including two lone males, but the focus is on a family group consisting of mother, father and daughter who ‘reside’ on the landing midway up the staircase, in front of Christine’s bedroom door. Susan Susan is a twenty-something woman who lives with her fiancé, a builder, in their 1930s semi-detached house, situated in a suburb of Ipswich. They bought the house four years before the interview and Susan’s fiancé, who did not want to be interviewed, is slowly modernising it. The house had been owned by the same family. The previous inhabitants, an elderly couple, had died – the woman first and shortly afterwards, the man. The house had not been cleared of their possessions when Susan first viewed it. Rosa This participant, Rosa, is a fifty-something academic. She lives in two knockedthrough old farmers’ cottages in a rural Wiltshire hamlet. Her mother owns the adjacent cottage. The female ghost, ‘Annie’, is believed to be a previous owner.

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Rosa has done much research into her life. Annie brushes pictures on the walls, leaving them aslant. She has also been seen by a few people, but not by Rosa. Mia and Luke This is a large detached house – the oldest building in a Wirral village. Mia and Luke are a middle-aged Finnish couple who, at the time of the interview, had lived in the house for about five years. Mia trained as a historian and Luke is a neurologist. Their daughter, Gaby, who was visiting at the time, was also interviewed. There have been a number of uncanny events experienced, including smells and the shadowy outline of a man. However the focus of the haunting is a female ghost, known in the village as the ‘Pink Lady’. Tara and Olive Tara, who is a middle-aged single woman, is originally from Romania, and she had been living in London for 10 years at the time of the interview. During the day she works as a cleaner, and at night she is paid to sleep over in one particular room of a large North London mansion. The owner of this mansion, a wealthy middle-aged widow, is afraid to be in the house alone at night. Tara describes the ‘attentions’ of a male ghost in this room. She also rents a bedsit where she keeps her belongings and where she sleeps when the landlady is on holiday or has family to stay at the house. Her daughter, Olive, who also stays in her flat when she is visiting London, contributed to the interviews and helped with translation. Magnus This interview took place in Bath, although Magnus – a middle-aged freelance music teacher – lives with his wife in a Victorian end-of-terrace house in a suburb of Bristol. His wife, who suffers from an unspecified illness, was unhappy about me visiting the house, so we met on neutral ground. Magnus has experienced a number of different uncanny events in the house over many years. Dora and Freddy Dora is a middle-aged divorcee who lives with her son, Freddy, in a modern council house in an inner city area of Liverpool. She has lived in the house for 32 years, ever since it was built. Uncanny experiences are varied in nature but sporadic. Freddy also believes he is haunted by his grandmother, Dora’s mother.

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Victoria Victoria is in her forties and lives with her husband and two daughters (aged about 11 and 7) in a northern suburb of Blackpool. The house is 13 years old and forms part of an estate of mock-Tudor detached houses. There are numerous and frequent uncanny events, including electrical equipment powering on and off, footsteps, doors opening and closing, and objects moving. Victoria believes she is haunted by her recently deceased parents. Her daughters took part in the interview, but the husband was not present. Ben Ben is in his forties and is a caretaker of a large old mansion within a park. The house is used as a community arts centre. At the time of the interview, Ben had lived in a flat on the first floor of the house for eight years. A number of ghosts have been witnessed. Ben focused on one particular event – a frightening incident in his flat a few years previously. Hilma and Adam Hilma and Adam are an older couple living in an old weaver’s cottage in a small rural hamlet near Oldham, Greater Manchester. Hilma is Finnish, and an acquaintance of Mia on the Wirral. Adam was born in Yorkshire. They describe uncanny events which suggest separate female and male presences, but the house has been ‘quiet’ for some years. Alex Alex is an actress and writer in her late forties living in a top-floor rented flat in North London. She described how she was haunted by her dead cat, who has ‘followed’ her from her previous rented accommodation in a different part of London. Abby Abby, at time of the interview, was the octogenarian owner of a small castle tower on the outskirts of a coastal village in south Cornwall. She had lived there with her son for about 30 years. The building is medieval and set in large grounds, and includes a ground floor extension making up the living room and kitchen. The castle hosts ‘ghost tours’, for which Abby received a cut of the profit. In the marketing literature, the castle boasts many different ghosts, but Abby herself was generally sceptical.

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Index

Ackroyd, Peter, 15n18 Adey, P., 6 affect, 19, 21–2, 198, 202–3, 205 agency of ghostly manifestations, 84, 105–6, 196, 199 of haunted homes, 58–60, 62, 64, 79, 196–7 of material objects, 65 of ‘others’, 20 Agnew, 194 Ahmed, Sara, 4, 19, 21, 89, 105 alienation, 5, 8 Anderson, Ben, 14–15, 20, 61 animism, 7, 196 anthropomorphism, 89–90, 91, 104 atheism, radical, 2 atmosphere of the garden, 154 of haunted homes, 14, 28, 60–63, 65, 66, 120, 139, 178, 193, 199 of the home, 15n18, 70 uncanny as, 32 Bachelard, G., 194 Bammer, A., 19 banshees, 170, 199 Barnes, F., 197 bathrooms, 34, 41, 50, 67, 80, 93–4, 100–101, 107–10 bedrooms, 17n21, 42, 56–7, 59, 75–6, 81, 99–102, 107, 109, 116, 119, 128, 149–50, 155, 174, 178, 180, 187, 188 Beetlejuice, 11 belief/beliefs. See also knowledge contested, 141–9 cultural, 161–5 eclectic, 146 experience challenged by, 179–81

folklore, 165–71 in ghosts, 16n19, 17n22, 21, 89, 101, 108–10, 113, 117, 119, 125, 142, 162, 163, 171, 202–3 vs. knowledge and experience, 28, 139, 141, 143, 148–9, 153, 192 193, 203 mainstream vs. alternative, 3 religious, 3, 171–3 seeing as, 181–4 in subjectivity, 22n27 in superstition, 7, 13, 117, 168 in supernatural, 1, 17, 28, 55, 60, 61, 69, 73, 75, 78, 82, 83, 145, 154, 157, 165 Bennett, A., 8 Bennett, Gillian, 4, 17, 24 Bennett, Jane, 158, 196, 197 Bennett, K., 24 Bermann, Karen, 13, 34, 53 Blackman, L., 4, 22, 149 Blanco, Maria del Pilar (with Peeren, Esther), 6, 7, 9n11, 10, 24, 201 ‘blocking’, 110 Blunt, Alison (with Dowling, Robyn) 8, 9, 14, 16, 43, 58, 65, 194 body/bodies ‘body-at-home’, 19 dead, 17 of ghosts, 84, 103 ghosts’ lack of, 42 of the home, 23, 63, 83 of the home’s inhabitants, 23 immaterial, 97 nature of, 23n29, 202 physical sensation of, 33 strange encounters with, 19, 21 transcending, 2 Bondi, L., 4, 15, 22 boundaries between self and ‘other’, 18

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circumvention of, 11, 25, 64 formation of, 198 of the ghost, 105 in the haunted home, 53, 63, 196, 198 private, 12–13, 18–19, 199 reinforcement of, 11, 64 Bourdieu, Pierre, 201 Bowman, M., 3, 171 Brennan, Teresa, 15n18, 18, 198 Brogan, K., 25 Buchli, V., 9 building work, and ghostly manifestations, 81, 84–5 Buse, Peter, 24 Buttimer, Anne, 3 Cacioppo, J., 89, 91 Callard, F., 21 Capps, L., 25 Carpenter, L., 9, 39 Casey, Edward, 9, 15, 43, 201 Casper the Friendly Ghost, 11 Catholicism, 116, 172 cats, as ghostly manifestations, 33–4, 82, 142 Celtic myths, 170 cemeteries, 13, 167, 169 change, vs. continuity, 78–85 Chapman, T., 12 Cheah, P., 196 chimneys, 13, 34, 168–9, 174–5 Christian Platonism, 17n22 Christianity, 17n22, 169, 172 cities interpretation of, 14 modern, as haunted places, 2 Clarke, A., 9 cohabitation with ghosts. See strategies for cohabitation collective unconscious, 73 Collins, J., 2 colonialism, 59 communication accepting, 122–3 among inhabitants, 118 connecting, 120–22 engaging, 123–5 by ghosts, 134

ghosts speak to inhabitants, 125–7 idea that ghosts can’t/won’t, 115–17 inhabitants speak to ghosts, 128–32 not talking, 117–20 testing the ghosts, 189–92 Conradson, D., 199 continuity, 15n18, 62, 66, 71, 92, 164 vs. change, 78–85 of folklore, 166 of popular fiction, 203 corners, 54, 104 corridors, 13, 17, 54, 196 Cowdell, Paul, 2, 3, 4, 203 Cresswell, Tim, 194–5 Cromby, J., 22 cultural conventions, 97, 162, 202–5 Danziger, K., 94 Davidson, J., 15 Dawkins, R., 2 Dawson, Graham, 7, 18, 73 de Certeau, Michel, 6–7, 14n17 dead, community of, 200–201 death, and home, 17n21 deconstruction, 5 Deleuze, G., 196, 199 demons, 55, 114 Derrida, Jacques, 5, 6, 7 Devereux, Paul, 23 Dewsbury, J., 64, 195 distance, maintaining, 28, 57, 93, 99, 100, 101, 107, 108, 110, 111, 116, 117, 122, 123, 125, 134–5, 147, 181, 199 temporal, 116 Dixon, Deborah, 7n8, 199 Doel, Marcus, 20 Doll, The (Lee), 40 dolls, as ghostly manifestations, 40–41 domestic. See also domestication; domesticity anti-domestic, 34–40, 51, 64 disturbances, 17n22 ghosts’ engagement with, 50–51, 65, 67, 68, 72 habits, 39 ideals, 13

Index interior, 14–15, 31, 32, 34, 41, 43, 57, 53, 63–4, 115, 126, 152, 196, 200, 201, 205 materiality, 124, 196 order/disorder, 37, 38–9, 105, 178 ordinary, 91 past as part of, 85 role of women, 9 routines, 9, 28, 38–9, 41, 42, 64, 70–73, 76, 109, 126, 130–31, 205 uncanny 13, 64, 178, 193, 200–201, 206 domestication, 94–7, 105, 133, 199. See also domestic; domesticity domesticity, 39, 40, 70, 75–6, 201. See also domestic; domestication doorways, 13, 42, 54, 57, 100, 150, 201 Douglas, M., 12 Dowling, Robyn (with Blunt, Alison), 8, 9, 14, 16, 43, 58, 65, 194 Dreamtime, 23 Edensor, Tim, 15, 20, 21, 22, 63, 203 emasculation, 105 emotional temperature, 15, 60 emotions. See also feelings and the affective turn, 21, 198, 203 of the home, 15, 65, 70, 195–6 negative, 94, 133, 162 secondary, 88 spirits’ attraction to, 13n16 uncanny provocation of, 46, 50 of women, 4 ‘energetic resonances’, 70 ‘energy trails’, 34 environmentalism, 59 Epley, N., 89, 91 event, 156. See also uncanny events uncanny, 20, 48, 52, 71, 105, 112, 125–6, 152–3, 155, 170–73 use of term, 2 everyday, concept of, 1, 6, 9n11, 9–10, 16, 21, 25, 26, 41–5, 48–50, 64, 65, 99, 109, 110, 156, 158, 169, 179, 194, 200–202 exorcism, 18 experience. See also uncanny events religious, 3 use of term, 2

233

explanations, for uncanny events corroborating experience, 184–9 material evidence, 176–8 natural, 173–6 visual evidence, 181–4 familiarity, and the uncanny, 9, 11n13, 44–7, 51, 64, 105, 109, 200–202 feelings. See also emotions and the affective turn, 21 of belonging, 201, 203 of alienation, 5 of ghosts, 91, 93–4, 117 of a home, 8, 14, 15, 15n18, 18n23, 62, 80 of inhabitants, 42, 95, 112, 148, 154, 174, 185, 197 negative, 56, 174 personal, 25, 202–4 uncanny as trigger for, 8, 16, 56, 196 feminine. See women feminism, and the idea of home, 12n15 feminization, 105 Ferber, M., 3 folklore, 4, 23, 23n30, 133, 165–71 footsteps, 34, 44–5, 52, 54, 76, 91, 97, 99, 116, 127, 131, 152, 154, 155, 174, 180 Fortier, Anne-Marie, 12, 22 Freud, Sigmund, 7, 8, 196 on ghost belief, 16n19 on the uncanny, 10, 12 Frith, Chris 24n31 Frosh, Stephen, 25–6 Gelder, K., 25 Gell, A., 65 gender. See also men; women and belief in supernatural, 4n5, 149–51, 179, 187–8 of ghosts, 1, 89, 97–104, 105, 107 and self-doubt, 149–51 geographies of the ghost, 57 of the home, 1, 107–9, 193 material, 193 ghost and ghosts. See also ghostly manifestations

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academic study of, 3–4, 26–7 appeasement of, 2 banishment of, 18 belief in, 1–2, 1n1, 142, 146–7, 179–81 everyday, 10–11 as metaphor, 5 objects to repel, 13 as presence of absence, 5 and religion, 3 self as, 5 as social figure, 6 use of term, 2 ghost stories American, 9, 39 dolls in, 40 fact/fiction, 3, 10n12, 12, 17n22, 18, 25 as irrational/female, 4 telling, 25, 69, 133 ghostly manifestations. See also communication; ghost and ghosts; presence, ghostly; uncanny events agency of, 84, 105–6, 196, 199 anticipation of, 50 approaching, 205–6 avoidance of, 50 beloved relatives as, 33, 39, 102, 177 benign nature of, 39 and building work, 81, 84–5 cats as, 33–4, 82, 142, 209 containment of, 133 denial of feelings of, 93–4 dolls as, 40–41 domestication of, 94–7, 105, 133, 199 domesticity of, 39, 40, 70, 75–6, 201 ephemeral nature of, 183–4 former inhabitants/previous owners as, 66–8, 75, 76, 83–4, 86, 92–3, 104 in the garden, 34 gender of, 1, 89, 97–104, 105, 107 geographies of, 57 humour and, 94–7, 105, 133 liminality of, 13, 206 malevolent, 27, 103–5, 199 monk as, 31, 34, 90, 95, 113, 114, 125, 142, 150, 155, 182–3, 188–9, 191, 207 naming, 94–7, 105 as personhood, 89–93, 105

‘Pink Lady’, 96, 101–2, 112, 126, 157, 166, 208 pregnant woman as, 155, 182, 207 rats as, 142 religious inclinations of, 92–3 sense of ownership in, 80 smell of tobacco from, 71, 177, 201 testing, 189–92 threatening, 102–4 visual, 90, 96, 111–15, 181–4, 205 Ghostly Matters (Gordon), 5 Gordon, Avery, 5 graveyards, ‘disrupted’, 77 Greening, E., 173–4 Grossberg, L., 195 Guattari, F., 196, 199 Gunew, S., 5, 25 hallways, 31, 60, 107 Harrison, Paul, 3, 195 Harvey, David, 194, 203 Haunted Doll’s House, The (James), 40 haunted/haunting. See also haunted homes academic study of, 3–4 ambiguity in, 23 and the domestic interior, 14 by former residents, 13n16 inhabitants’ view of, 68, 111, 121, 130, 163–4, 166, 177, 192 limited locations of, 38 material objects and, 65 narrative of, 43 in popular culture, 7, 10 rationale for, 3 subjectivity and, 1 topography of, 7 uncertainty and, 205 use of terms, 2 haunted homes. See also home/homes age of, 66 as agent/agency of, 58–60, 62, 79, 196–7 atmosphere of, 14, 28, 60–63, 65, 66, 120, 139, 178, 193, 199 as belonging to someone else, 5 as bounded and charismatic, 193–4 complex nature of, 204–5 construction of, 203 as container of multiplicity, 195–6

Index experience of, 24 geography of, 1, 107–9, 193 histories of, 17, 60, 76–7 liminal interior of, 53–7, 64 as living spaces, 7 location and characteristics of, 14, 26–7 materialities of, 28 multiple interpretations of, 2 ownership of, 194 as popular motif, 1–2 pristine nature of, 83 in public housing, 5–6 reinforcing subjectivity in, 134–5, 196–200 role of, 10–11 as sanctuary, 62–3 and the self-at-home, 135 temporalities of, 1, 15–17, 28, 65, 195 as unkind, 63 hauntology, 5 Hepworth, M., 12 Hirsch, Marianne, 16n19 Hitchings, R., 20 Hockey, Jenny, 11, 12 Holloway, Julian, 2, 7, 23, 194 home/homes. See also haunted homes awareness of, 54, 140 belonging, sense of, 8, 12, 15, 19, 34, 67, 69, 73, 77, 78, 85, 135, 197, 198, 201, 204, 205 and death, 17n21 defined, 14, 202, 205–6 geographies of, 1, 107–9, 193 identity of, 66, 86, 194–5, 198, 205 as imaginary space, 24–5 ownership of, 5, 38, 58, 75, 80–82, 84–5, 123, 194, 197, 201, 202, 205 nature of, 1, 8–9, 12–13 pasts of, 16 public/private, 12n15, 14–15, 107 uncanny, 8–18 vibes of, 61 Victorian view of, 12 Hook, D., 22 Hooper, Tobe, 77 horror genre, 199 Hoskins, A., 16 humanism, 20, 22, 194

235

humour, in dealing with ghosts, 94–7, 105, 133 identity, 3, 15n18 formation of, 18–19, 22, 70, 127, 204 of the ghost, 94, 165 of the home, 66, 86, 194–5, 198, 205 liminality of, 206 of place, 201 immateriality, 3, 202. See also materiality infantilisation, 105, 133 irrationality, vs. rationality, 141–9, 161 Jacobs, Jane, 27n35 James, M.R., 40 Jervis, J., 2 Judaism, 68, 92 Kageki, N. (with MacDorman, K.), 40, 64 Kaika, Maria, 13, 53, 64 Kearnes, M., 20, 196 Kellner, D., 77 kitchens, 31, 35, 42, 46, 50, 72, 81, 90, 100, 125, 130, 150, 190 Kneale, Nigel, 7, 23 knowledge. See also beliefs and belief in hauntings, 1, 28 embracing uncertainty, 151–8 ‘just knowing’, 139–40 mainstream vs. alternative, 4 personal meanings, 140–41 types of, 139–41 Kolmar, W., 9, 39 Korf, B., 22, 199 Kuhn, Annette, 4, 17, 25, 149, 204 landings, 31, 54, 55, 57, 67, 100, 102, 104, 107–8, 119, 123, 196. See also staircases/stairs Latham, A., 20 Latour, B., 196 Laurie, N., 14, 18 Lee, Vernon, 40 legend, contemporary, 4. See also folklore liminal spaces, 23, 53–7, 64, 205 liminality of ghosts, 13, 206 of identity, 206

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Lippard, L., 195 living rooms, 31, 35, 43, 56, 71, 96, 100, 110, 150, 164, 170, 177, 183, 196, 199 Luckhurst, Roger, 7, 13, 24, 25 MacDorman, K. (with Kageki, N.), 40, 64 Maddern, J., 6 Marcus, Sharon, 12, 34, 39 Martin, R., 94 Marx, Karl, 5, 5n7 masculine. See men Maso, Ilja, 27 Massey, Doreen, 14, 194 Massumi, B., 203 materialism, 20, 21, 24, 196. See also materiality/materialities rational, 141, 158, 174, 186 materiality/materialities, 1, 13, 19n24, 19–21, 31, 48, 195, 197, 202. See also materialism Matless, David, 6, 24 matter, nature of. See materialism; materiality/materialities Maxwell-Stuart, Peter, 200 McCormack, D., 20 mediums, 145, 163–4, 167, 180, 189 melancholia, 7 memory/memories, 1, 15–16, 18, 21, 65–6, 70 associational, 95 body memory, 139 collective, 18 ‘post-memory’, 16n19, 17 ‘re-memory’, 16 men as ghostly manifestations, 31–3, 71, 92, 94, 99–100, 102, 103–5, 107, 114, 116, 128, 204 as more sceptical, 4n5, 149–51, 179, 187–8 Miller, Daniel, 5, 16, 65, 85–6, 195, 204 mirrors, 42, 50, 54–5, 100, 196 modernity, and the uncanny, 1, 2, 5, 7, 13, 14n17 monsters, 7n8, 104, 199 Mori, Masahiro, 40 Morley, D., 18

Most Haunted (television series), 7n8 multiplicity, 143, 195–7 Murdoch, Iris, 26 mythology, 169, 170. See also folklore name calling (by ghosts), 45, 125–7, 177 naming (of ghosts), 94–7, 105 narratives of attachments, 67–70 devices, 16, 177 gaps, 114, 128, 153, 159 ghost/ghostly, 4, 6, 89, 92, 93, 96, 103, 143, 153, 155, 157, 178, 183, 185 haunting as, 43, 54, 81 performative, 203 personal, 25–6, 68, 100, 133,164 public, 165 relationship with experience and belief, 1, 18, 68–9, 70, 105, 114, 128–9, 171, 188, 202, 203, 206 strategies, 105, 109–10, 112, 113, 134–5 wayward ghost, 4 nature, 4, 13–14, 59 eternal, 34, 35 of ghosts, 101, 105, 120 human, 105 of identity, 199, 206 unruly, 64 necromancy, 7 neurology, 141, 182 New Age, 80, 91, 165 new materialists, 19n24 nonhuman encounters, 20, 89, 130, 196–200, 202. See also ghostly manifestations; haunted homes normality, 10, 10n12, 11n13, 64, 91, 125 Ochs, E., 26 Offutt, Jason, 10n12 O’Keefe, C., 173–4 ordinary/ordinariness domestic practices, 39, 42, 109, 200–201 ghostly presence as, 41, 90–91, 94, 97, 114, 133–4, 176, 189, 199–200 objects, 38 places, 6, 9, 194

Index vs. ‘uncanny’, 43, 51, 53, 55, 205 ‘other’, 13, 16, 18, 28, 85, 95, 134, 199, 205 defining, 89 relationship with self, 1, 18–19, 89, 91, 104–5, 198, 200 ‘othering’, 18 pagan traditions, 169–70 paintings, 55, 196 Pallasmaa, J., 14 Papadopoulos, D., 22 Papoulias, C., 21 paranormal. See also supernatural in popular culture, 145, 162, 192, 204 parapsychology, 173 past-in-present, 73–5 pathways, 34, 196 Peeren, Esther, 6, 10, 18, 41, 201 with Blanco, Maria del Pilar, 6, 7, 9n11, 10, 18, 24, 41, 201 personal space, ghosts’ respect for, 107 personification, 50 phantom hitchhiker, 23 Philips Michael, 21 Pile, Steve, 2, 7, 65 place attachment to, 78 defining, 14, 158, 194 of the ghost, 105, 111 home as, 8–9, 12, 12n14, 14, 17n21, 35, 36–8, 62, 63–4, 85–6, 193–7, 200–202, 206 memory and narrative and, 18, 135 models of, 203 sense of, 80 specificity of, 7, 135, 148, 200 Polard, Fiona, 27 Poltergeist (film), 77 poltergeists, 17n22, 34 popular culture, and the supernatural, 145, 162–3, 192, 204 porosity of bodies, 199 of the home, 13, 14, 18n23, 34, 64 of the interior, 53 relational, 198 positivism, 2 prayers, 92, 121–2, 168, 173

237

presence ghostly, 5, 10n12, 11, 27, 31–4, 41, 53, 62, 73, 75, 91, 94, 99, 100, 103, 110, 116–17, 128–9, 162, 172, 185, 204–5 of the haunted home, 8, 58, 60, 62–3, 64, 193–5 of the past, 15, 80, 85 privacy desire for, 18, 18n23, 28 and ghosts, 93–4, 117, 134 psychic flashes, 149–50 psychoanalysis, 201 psychology, 141, 182 psychosocial theory, 22n28 Punter, David, 6 Radin, Dean, 24n32, 174 rational materialism, 141, 158, 174, 186 rationalism, 17n22, 139, 161 rationality, 186 vs. irrationality, 141–9, 161 rats, 142 reason, 24. See also rationalism; rationality reductionism, 141 reflections, 54, 196. See also mirrors relationships and analyses of the sacred, 3 and ghostly manifestations, 92–3 self-other, 1, 18–19, 89, 91, 104–5, 198, 200 religious beliefs, 92–3, 171–3, 192 Relph, 194 repetition, 7, 9, 132, 200–202 research/researchers, 3–4, 26–7 Richards, Lyn, 12n14, 194 ritual experiences, 3 Rogerson, Peter, 5 Romantic Movement, 17n22 Rose, M., 195 Rose, Nicolas, 25 Royle, N., 8 Rubenstein, R., 12 Rybczynski, W., 12 Sabol, John, 200–201 saints, 116, 172 sceptic/skepticism, 97, 141–3, 151, 167, 176, 179, 180, 186, 187

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Seamon, D., 201 secrets, 8, 12, 14, 78, 197 Selberg, T., 1, 3 self definitions of, 205–6 as ghost, 5 maintaining, 26 nature of, 22 private/secret, 60 relationship with ‘other’, 1, 89, 91, 104, 200 sense of, 18–19, 198 self-doubt, and gender, 149–51 sensations, 8, 16, 21, 33, 40, 103, 139, 196, 203 Shelter, 6 Shiach, Morag, 14 Shouse, E., 20 Shove, Elizabeth, 9, 10 sightings. See ghostly manifestations, visual Singapore, ghost rituals in, 2 singing, 121–2 Slemen, Tom, 10n12 Smith, M., 216 social relationships, in haunted homes, 28 social science, and religious experience, 3 sorcerers, 199 sounds/auditory events, 32, 97, 134 cries, 41, 57 footsteps, 34, 44–5, 49, 52, 54, 76, 91, 97, 99, 116, 127, 131, 152, 154, 155, 174, 180 knocking, 52–3 movement, 49, 53, 99 name calling, 45, 125–7, 177 prayers, 121–2 singing, 121–2 snoring, 130 voices, 99 whispers, 98 spaces affective experience of, 203, 205 domestic interior as, 62, 64 haunting of specific, 6, 10, 11, 13, 43, 56–60, 85–6, 113, 123, 195 home as distinctive, 1–2, 15–16, 19–21, 24, 28, 34, 51

personal, 86, 107 possibility of, 59–60 private, 12, 195, 198 public, 14 space-time, 15, 61, 65, 134, 201 spectrality of, 7–8 umcammu, 56 urban, 14n17 speaking ghosts don’t/can’t, 115–17 ghosts to inhabitants, 125–7 inhabitants don’t, 117–20 inhabitants to ghosts, 128–33 Spearey, S., 5 Specters of Marx (Derrida), 7 spectrality, 7, 23 spirits. See also ghostly manifestations affinity of for theatres, 13n16 belief in 143, 165 casting out, 80, 167 coexisting with, 122–3 of the dead, 7, 143, 169, 172 entry points for, 13 vis à vis ghosts, 90–91 spiritual/spirituality, 2, 3, 90, 104, 172, 196 staircases/stairs, 13, 17, 44–5, 54, 55, 66, 97, 99, 107–9, 122–3, 131, 150, 174, 176, 196, 201. See also landings Stanley, Liz, 27 stereotypes cultural, 105, 185 gender, 149 historical, 204 racial, 4n5 Stevens, P., 173–4 Stewart, V., 5 Stoetzler, 26 ‘Stone Tape,’ 65 Stott, Andrew, 24 strangeness, 9, 27, 48, 62, 199. See also strangers strangers. See also strangeness definition of, 27 ghosts as, 5, 13, 17n21, 18, 39, 78, 168, 172 researchers as, 27

Index strategies for cohabitation accepting, 122–3 assigning gender, 97–104, 105, 107 assigning personhood, 89–91 communication, 120–35 connecting, 120–22 cultural assumptions and, 204 delineating differences, 92–3 denial of feelings, 93–4 engaging, 123–5 geography of the home, 107–9 ghosts don’t/can’t communicate, 115–17 ghosts speak to inhabitants, 125–7 humor, 94–7, 105, 133 inhabitants speak to ghosts, 128–33 maintaining distance, 107–20 naming, 94–7, 105 not seeing, 111–15 not talking, 117–20 playing down impact, 110–11 subjectivity, 1, 20, 26 of the ghost, 89 reinforcing, 134–5, 196–200 theories of, 22, 22n27 supernatural. See also paranormal belief in, 1–2, 1n1, 3, 17–18 exploration of, 2 as experience, 24 and popular culture, 145, 162–3, 192, 204 rejection of, 143–4 secularization of, 17n22 superstitions, 7, 13, 117, 168 Taylor, David, 5, 6, 11, 13, 53, 99 temperature, emotional, 15, 60 temporalities complex, 73 in the haunted home, 1, 15–17, 28, 65, 195 linear/non-linear, 73 overlapping of time, 85 past-in-past, 75–7 past-in-present, 73–5 sense of the past, 85–6 temporal distance, 116 Thien, D., 22

239

Thrift, N., 195 time. See temporalities Tolia-Kelly, Divya, 16, 65 Trubshaw, B., 4, 23 Tuan, Yi-Fu, 15, 60, 63, 194 uncanny. See also uncanny events academic study of, 3–4 articulation of, 135 as atmosphere, 32 domestic, 13, 193, 200–201, 206 interpretation of, 10n12 use of term, 2, 8 Uncanny, The (Freud), 7, 196 uncanny events, 28. See also explanations, for uncanny events; ghostly manifestations; nonhuman encounters; sounds/auditory events; uncanny as anti-domestic, 38 as challenge to beliefs, 179–81 corroborating experience, 184–9 and cultural conventions, 202–5 described, 31–2 disappearance of objects, 37 disorder, 36, 40 domestic activities, 42–5 as domestic routines, 70, 72 doors moving, 45 escalation of, 43 and the familiar, 44–6, 64, 200–202 framing of, 203 frightening nature of, 46–7 intimate experiences, 33–4, 64 liquids, 35 material evidence for, 176–8 as memory, 66 natural explanations for, 173–6 as negative reinforcement, 55 olfactory, 41, 43, 70, 102, 120, 133 ordinary nature of, 41–5 perceptions of by inhabitants, 68–9 regularity of, 48–9, 64 repetition of, 64 response to, 51, 204 snail trails, 35 uncertainty concerning, 151–9, 205 visual evidence for, 181–4

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words as manifestations, 35–6, 44, 176–7 Uncanny Valley (Mori), 40 uncertainty, 151–9, 205 unheimlich, 8, 12. See also uncanny; uncanny events Upton, D., 9 urban modernity, 14n17 urban myths, 23 Varley, Ann, 19, 22, 135, 200 vibes, of a house, 61 Vidler, Anthony, 5, 6, 11–12 Virgin Mary, 162, 184 visions, 162. See also ghostly manifestations, visual; uncanny events, visual evidence for vitalism, material, 196–7 Walkerdine, V., 4, 149 Watkins, M., 203 Watt, C., 173–4 Waytz, A., 89, 91

Wetherell, Margaret, 198, 202 Wiley, C., 197 Wilson, Christine, 9, 38–9 windows, 13, 33, 34, 46, 49, 51, 54, 56–7, 60, 72, 82–3, 99, 102, 111, 112, 115, 124, 133, 140, 148, 150, 154, 184, 185, 196, 201 Wiseman, R., 173–4 women in ghost stories, 9, 39 as ghostly manifestations, 31–4, 39, 72, 76, 79, 81, 97–105, 107, 111, 114, 121, 125, 127–8 as more open/tolerant, 4, 4n5, 149–51, 187–8 response to haunted houses by, 9 traditional gender role of, 39 words, as manifestations, 35–6, 44, 176–7 Wright, E., 12 Wylie, J., 2, 195 Young, Iris Marion, 9, 12n15, 43, 64, 201 Yuval-Davies, 25