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Steven and Janice Brose Lectures in the Civil War Era
Tales from the Haunted South: Dark Tourism and Memories of Slavery from the Civil War Era
In this book Tiya Miles explores the popular yet troubling phenomenon of "ghost tours," frequently promoted and experienced at plantations, urban manor homes, and cemeteries throughout the South. As a staple of the tours, guides entertain paying customers by routinely relying on stories of enslaved black specters. But who are these ghosts? Examining popular sites and stories from these tours, Miles shows that haunted tales routinely appropriate and skew African American history to produce representations of slavery for commercial gain. "Dark tourism" often highlights the most sensationalist and macabre aspects of slavery, from salacious sexual ties between white masters and black women slaves to the physical abuse and torture of black bodies to the supposedly exotic nature of African spiritual practices. Because the realities of slavery are largely absent from these tours, Miles reveals how they continue to feed problematic "Old South" narratives and erase the hard truths of the Civil War era. In an incisive and engaging work, Miles uses these troubling cases to shine light on how we feel about the Civil War and race, and how the ghosts of the past are still with us.
166 pages, Kindle Edition
First published August 12, 2015
About the author
Tiya Miles
18 books495 followersTiya Miles is from Ohio, "the heart of it all," though now she spends summers in her husband's native Montana. She is the author of All That She Carried (which won a National Book Award for nonfiction and more), and of three prize-winning works of history on the intersections of African American and Native American experience. Her forthcoming book, Night Flyer: Harriet Tubman and the Faith Dreams of a Free People, will be out in June 2024, right on the heels of her short but sweet exploration of childhoods in nature: Wild Girls: How the Outdoors Shaped the Women Who Challenged a Nation (September 2024). Her debut dual time period (historical-contemporary) novel based on her early career research, The Cherokee Rose: A Novel of Gardens and Ghosts, was revised with new scenes and released as a paperback original by Random House in June 2023; check out the new version! She has also published a study of haunted plantations and manor homes in the South that reads like a travel narrative. (And she is as surprised as you are that two of her books focus on ghosts!) Her newest book, just out from W. W. Norton, is Wild Girls: How the Outdoors Shaped the Women Who Challenged a Nation. Tiya's favorite activities are reading good books while her three teenaged kids write stories together in the background, spending time in old houses, walking along forest trails, and drinking hot chocolate. She is currently working on a history, a novel, and essays about climate change and historic sites. Check out her Substack: Carrying Capacity, for news and updates! https://tiyamiles.substack.com/
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September 11, 2018
Wow. Tiya Miles does a very good job of showcasing some of the popular ghost plantation tours in her book and dissecting them. I honestly didn't even get that ghost trails were a thing let alone ghost plantation tours.
Miles shows that for the most part, the stories told about slaves were not truthful at all, or if there are some truth to things (Delphine Lalaurie) some parts were embellished. She also gets into looking at how many African American women were portrayed in these stories. They were either Mammies, Jezebels, or Voodoo queens. They were shown to be sneaking, lying, or trying to seduce the poor slave owner and take him away from his wife.
I loved that she showed historical evidence and context in her book and showed that many things we believe about the south and plantations is fiction. It wasn't Gone With the Wind, people owned others and treated them terribly. You had to worry about being raped, being forced to "breed", and having your family sold off from you. It's still mind boggling to me anyone would be interested in doing any type of plantation tour.
Miles is able to peel back stories told about Molly and Matilda (see Sorrel-Weed House in Savannah), Delphine Lalaurie (see Lalaurie Mansion in New Orleans), and Chloe and Cleo (Mrytles Plantation in Louisana) and have you see them as living and breathing women. If you are interested in hearing about these women, you can Google and include the word "ghost" and see what pops up. I do concur with Miles findings though and don't believe that most of the people described in this stories existed besides Matilda and Delphine.
I really loved the writing and there were a lot of passages I highlighted in this book.
I also loved that Miles included some information about Native Americas too.
I also never really thought too much about who was behind that whole Mammy thing that many people in the south seemed to talk about. Those that read and saw "The Help" showed that it got pushed into another generation until the Civil Rights Movement. Black women are either supposed to be motherly or we are shown as being "fast", or angry if we dare to speak up for ourselves. It's frustrating to be a black woman in this world right now.
The locations that Miles goes to in order to investigate this ghost plantation tours are Old Savannah, the French Quarter, and Louisiana plantations.
Miles shows that for the most part, the stories told about slaves were not truthful at all, or if there are some truth to things (Delphine Lalaurie) some parts were embellished. She also gets into looking at how many African American women were portrayed in these stories. They were either Mammies, Jezebels, or Voodoo queens. They were shown to be sneaking, lying, or trying to seduce the poor slave owner and take him away from his wife.
I loved that she showed historical evidence and context in her book and showed that many things we believe about the south and plantations is fiction. It wasn't Gone With the Wind, people owned others and treated them terribly. You had to worry about being raped, being forced to "breed", and having your family sold off from you. It's still mind boggling to me anyone would be interested in doing any type of plantation tour.
Miles is able to peel back stories told about Molly and Matilda (see Sorrel-Weed House in Savannah), Delphine Lalaurie (see Lalaurie Mansion in New Orleans), and Chloe and Cleo (Mrytles Plantation in Louisana) and have you see them as living and breathing women. If you are interested in hearing about these women, you can Google and include the word "ghost" and see what pops up. I do concur with Miles findings though and don't believe that most of the people described in this stories existed besides Matilda and Delphine.
I really loved the writing and there were a lot of passages I highlighted in this book.
"African American bondsmen and bondswomen had been transformed into virtual ghosts, absent and yet eerily present in historical tours as invisible laboring bodies that made their owners’ fortunes shine."
"Enslaved black women on plantations were particularly vulnerable. Historians of black women in slavery have detailed the pervasiveness of sexual coercion and rape in a system that not only offered no legal protection for black women but also rewarded masters economically for forced sex and impregnation that resulted in the growth of the slave population."
I also loved that Miles included some information about Native Americas too.
"The enslaved African American ghost is the Indian ghost’s double. While the red ghost keeps alive the memory of Indian removal in U.S. history, representing white “terror and lament,” the black ghost marks the demonic spirit of possession through which Americans transformed people into things."
I also never really thought too much about who was behind that whole Mammy thing that many people in the south seemed to talk about. Those that read and saw "The Help" showed that it got pushed into another generation until the Civil Rights Movement. Black women are either supposed to be motherly or we are shown as being "fast", or angry if we dare to speak up for ourselves. It's frustrating to be a black woman in this world right now.
"As scholarship on black women’s history shows, the Mammy myth was called into discursive being by defenders of slavery in the 1830s who sought to challenge abolitionist critiques of the sexual abuse of slave women. Mammy’s image was embellished by memoirs of slaveholders’ children published during the Civil War as well as by tributes to her memory in the late 1800s and early 1900s in the Aunt Jemima pancake-mix brand and plans for a national Mammy memorial spurred by the Daughters of the Confederacy."
The locations that Miles goes to in order to investigate this ghost plantation tours are Old Savannah, the French Quarter, and Louisiana plantations.
May 19, 2021
full post can be found here:
http://www.nonfictionrealstuff.com/20...
"... let our ghosts be real, let our ghosts be true, let our ghosts carry on the integrity of our ancestors."
I loved this book. I seriously do not remember why I bought it in the first place, but some time ago I chose it from my history shelves completely at random and started to read. I was instantly blown away and have recommended this book to any number of people. It's that good. It's that necessary.
In 2012 Professor Tiya Miles had gone to Savannah to work on her novel; after lunch one day, on her way back to her hotel, her attention was drawn to a woman waving at her. The woman asked if she would like to take "a historic tour" of the local Sorrel-Weed house, and Miles was "intrigued" enough by the idea of "being beckoned into history" to buy a ticket. As she was guided through the house, she learned the story of its owner, Francis Sorrel, a "cotton tycoon" of Haitian heritage, passing for white. Sorrel had lost his first wife to typhoid and then married her sister Matilda afterward. As the story goes, Matilda had committed suicide "by jumping off the second-floor balcony," because she had caught her husband and his "mistress," a "slave girl" by the named of Molly, in flagrante. A week later, Molly herself had been found "strangled, dangling from the ceiling rafters of the carriage house," and while Francis moved to a nextdoor townhouse, Molly and Matilda remained as resident ghosts. The author was told that if she wanted to visit the scene of Molly's death, she could come back that evening for the "Haunted Ghost Tour," which she did. In the "stillness of that night" Miles writes that she cannot say if she "felt Molly's presence," but she did feel a "kind of call," to
"search for evidence of Molly's life in the archival rubble of urban slavery, to tell her story and redeem her spirit from the commericialized spectacle of bondage I had witnessed"
along with a pledge to "restore her memory and her dignity." Afterwards, going through historical records, she discovered nothing at all to indicate that a woman named Molly had been owned by Sorrel;
as she notes,
"Although many young women like her surely existed in antebellum Savannah and the torturous rice plantations of the surrounding countryside, this Molly was not among them. Someone had concocted her story of racial and sexual exploitation as a titillating tourist attraction."
And now, she writes, she wanted to know why Molly was "invisible in the historical record and hypervisible on the Savanna ghost-tourism scene. " She also was left with a number of questions she felt needed answering:
Why were ghost stories about African American slaves becoming popular in the region at all? And why were so many of these ghosts women? What themes prevailed in slave ghost stories, and what social and cultural meanings can we make of them? What 'product' was being bought and sold, enjoyed and consumed, in the contemporary commerical phenomenon of southern ghost tourism?"
To find the answers, the author took part in several ghost tours in the South, and the book takes us through her experiences and her conclusions based on three of these: the Sorrel-Weed House in Savannah, the New Orleans home of Delphine Lalaurie, and The Myrtles Plantation in St. Francisville.
It is impossible to miss the author's passion for her subject; writing it in the first person not only highlighted that particular aspect of this book, but also made the reading less daunting than a regular textbook and more like I was actually along for the ride as she made her journey. Tales of the Haunted South is not only an important, interdisciplinary study, it should be required reading for our time and absolutely should not be missed.
http://www.nonfictionrealstuff.com/20...
"... let our ghosts be real, let our ghosts be true, let our ghosts carry on the integrity of our ancestors."
I loved this book. I seriously do not remember why I bought it in the first place, but some time ago I chose it from my history shelves completely at random and started to read. I was instantly blown away and have recommended this book to any number of people. It's that good. It's that necessary.
In 2012 Professor Tiya Miles had gone to Savannah to work on her novel; after lunch one day, on her way back to her hotel, her attention was drawn to a woman waving at her. The woman asked if she would like to take "a historic tour" of the local Sorrel-Weed house, and Miles was "intrigued" enough by the idea of "being beckoned into history" to buy a ticket. As she was guided through the house, she learned the story of its owner, Francis Sorrel, a "cotton tycoon" of Haitian heritage, passing for white. Sorrel had lost his first wife to typhoid and then married her sister Matilda afterward. As the story goes, Matilda had committed suicide "by jumping off the second-floor balcony," because she had caught her husband and his "mistress," a "slave girl" by the named of Molly, in flagrante. A week later, Molly herself had been found "strangled, dangling from the ceiling rafters of the carriage house," and while Francis moved to a nextdoor townhouse, Molly and Matilda remained as resident ghosts. The author was told that if she wanted to visit the scene of Molly's death, she could come back that evening for the "Haunted Ghost Tour," which she did. In the "stillness of that night" Miles writes that she cannot say if she "felt Molly's presence," but she did feel a "kind of call," to
"search for evidence of Molly's life in the archival rubble of urban slavery, to tell her story and redeem her spirit from the commericialized spectacle of bondage I had witnessed"
along with a pledge to "restore her memory and her dignity." Afterwards, going through historical records, she discovered nothing at all to indicate that a woman named Molly had been owned by Sorrel;
as she notes,
"Although many young women like her surely existed in antebellum Savannah and the torturous rice plantations of the surrounding countryside, this Molly was not among them. Someone had concocted her story of racial and sexual exploitation as a titillating tourist attraction."
And now, she writes, she wanted to know why Molly was "invisible in the historical record and hypervisible on the Savanna ghost-tourism scene. " She also was left with a number of questions she felt needed answering:
Why were ghost stories about African American slaves becoming popular in the region at all? And why were so many of these ghosts women? What themes prevailed in slave ghost stories, and what social and cultural meanings can we make of them? What 'product' was being bought and sold, enjoyed and consumed, in the contemporary commerical phenomenon of southern ghost tourism?"
To find the answers, the author took part in several ghost tours in the South, and the book takes us through her experiences and her conclusions based on three of these: the Sorrel-Weed House in Savannah, the New Orleans home of Delphine Lalaurie, and The Myrtles Plantation in St. Francisville.
It is impossible to miss the author's passion for her subject; writing it in the first person not only highlighted that particular aspect of this book, but also made the reading less daunting than a regular textbook and more like I was actually along for the ride as she made her journey. Tales of the Haunted South is not only an important, interdisciplinary study, it should be required reading for our time and absolutely should not be missed.
April 15, 2018
I should admit that I think I feel about ghosts the same way that Dr Miles does. I love a good ghost story, and in particular, I love ghost folklore. But I try to be aware of what the stories also say about society - both the source society and the current society. I love the work of L.B. Taylor Jr., in part, because he does deal equally with history and folklore. That's where his interest lay, and while a Southern, he doesn't whitewash.
Miles taps into the question of ghost folklore and tourism in the South, in particular, the use of ghost stories about slave to sell tours. She not only digs at the history (or non-history) behind such stories, but looks at how the various places address slavery. IT is a rather enlighting and anger inducing book, but it does make you think and provides you with a reading list.
Miles' passion and prose is so clear and engaging that I want to read everything she has written and will write after reading this good book.
Miles taps into the question of ghost folklore and tourism in the South, in particular, the use of ghost stories about slave to sell tours. She not only digs at the history (or non-history) behind such stories, but looks at how the various places address slavery. IT is a rather enlighting and anger inducing book, but it does make you think and provides you with a reading list.
Miles' passion and prose is so clear and engaging that I want to read everything she has written and will write after reading this good book.
January 8, 2023
I do engage in quite a bit of dark tourism, mostly historical sites, museums, places that have a role and aim. I am very uncomfortable with true crime tourism or paranormal tourism that relies on real events and would not participate in any of it. It's very easy to go from educational to disrespectful - I remember a sign from a Holocaust memorial in Lithuania that specifically told people not to organize wedding photo shoots there. Like WTF.
And reading the stories of the author regarding the tours she engaged in, there is a lot of WTF. She is a lot nicer about it than I am - I cannot explain why anyone would invent an enslaved child turned sexual abuse victim turned murderer and then romanticize the whole things for tourists' entertainment. Why did she have to be a child? Like WTF.
But in between WTFs related to what tourism has become, I found a lot of thoughtful analysis regarding these stories, which reflect stereotypes, but because it's ghosts, people engaging in them don't have to feel guilty about it. Who knew a silly little ghost story could reveal so much about race relations and perceptions, sexism, romanticization of plantation life, and more? There are some interesting insights about Native Americans as well, who become part of the decorum rather than actual people.
Also it seems I knew a lot of BS about the Lalaurie case, which apparently was quite mundane for the times.
While a niche topic, it's an interesting little book about morality in tourism, the narratives we create, and the impact of silly little ghost stories.
And reading the stories of the author regarding the tours she engaged in, there is a lot of WTF. She is a lot nicer about it than I am - I cannot explain why anyone would invent an enslaved child turned sexual abuse victim turned murderer and then romanticize the whole things for tourists' entertainment. Why did she have to be a child? Like WTF.
But in between WTFs related to what tourism has become, I found a lot of thoughtful analysis regarding these stories, which reflect stereotypes, but because it's ghosts, people engaging in them don't have to feel guilty about it. Who knew a silly little ghost story could reveal so much about race relations and perceptions, sexism, romanticization of plantation life, and more? There are some interesting insights about Native Americans as well, who become part of the decorum rather than actual people.
Also it seems I knew a lot of BS about the Lalaurie case, which apparently was quite mundane for the times.
While a niche topic, it's an interesting little book about morality in tourism, the narratives we create, and the impact of silly little ghost stories.
June 21, 2020
I bought this book on a whim and I'm so glad that I did. It's clearly an academic text, but Miles' writing style and the content of ghost tours make this book super engaging. It feels a little like a travelogue, as Miles spends time in Savannah, New Orleans, and the Myrtles Plantation in Louisiana, using her experience taking ghost tours as her fieldwork. Miles does excellent work explaining the overall fascination with ghosts and history, and moves into how this intersection specifically works in "haunted" Southern cities that can allow tourists to engage with the horrible actions of slavery through a glimmer of magic and a safe distance. The conclusion of this book is particularly strong as she details the lessons to learn about completely fabricating stories about African American ghosts for ticket sales (she shows that these tours are based on little historical facts), especially as the cities she visited had a dearth of Black history tours available at all apart from ghost tours. Ultimately this book brings up important questions about the role of public history - to capitalize on the gruesome stories of the ghosts of enslaved people in order to entertain a largely white group of tourists is inherently problematic. As someone interested in history, how to get others interested in history, and how to best understand how the past informs the present, this book was excellent and I would recommend it to anyone!
May 11, 2023
I think this work is great for folks who want to consider the socio-political impacts of ghost tours, especially when they often rely on harmful, violent stereotypes of people of color to make money. Helped me understand why I would even like ghost tours and cemeteries despite their intent and I maybe trying to confront through experiencing a tour.
I am kinda interested to see if there’s ghost tours or dark tourism in Okinawa and what does that look like and who attends them. What narrative would these tours perpetuate within the context of a nation that’s adopted a peace and forgive mentality since 1945 and its hybrid, animist religion.
I am kinda interested to see if there’s ghost tours or dark tourism in Okinawa and what does that look like and who attends them. What narrative would these tours perpetuate within the context of a nation that’s adopted a peace and forgive mentality since 1945 and its hybrid, animist religion.
February 20, 2021
I have a lot of thoughts about this book, and about southern horror tourism being a convenient (and safe) way for white people to encounter histories of enslavement.
This book is full of many, many excellent words. These are a few of my favorites:
"The South, therefore, functions like a storehouse for the nation’s historical guilt, a sociocultural archive accessed through stories of haunting. This explains why southern ghosts of slavery remain with us even now, calling us to confront them" (32).
"Tourists at The Myrtles can therefore flirt with the danger of racial and sexual taboos while never having to really think about human subjection, the corruption of power, and their own voyeuristic complicity in the reproduction of plantation culture scripts" (97).
"It would be disingenuous of me not to acknowledge that ghost-tour companies are doing the work of making black history visible in some of this country’s oldest places. In contrast to a growing number of haunted tours that actively incorporate African American stories, many plantation heritage tours continue to marginalize black personalities and historical experiences. During my time in Savannah, I saw evidence of urban historian Ella Howard’s observation that “the subset of paranormal tours pay much more attention to slavery than others.” In Charleston, the dearth of black history on offer by established companies was so great that tour guide Geordie Buxton suggested that I, an Ohioan with no special knowledge of Charleston history, should create my own black history tour in the city. Meanwhile, Buxton was interweaving snippets of black folklore and history into his haunted plantations tour. Ghost tours clearly represent a kind of cultural inclusion, but I have to press the question: At what cost? Much of the black history material that I encountered during my ghost-touring journey appeared to me as exoticized, romanticized, or decontextualized. And members of black communities did not seem to control the narratives of these tours or to benefit directly from the commercial success of local ghost-tour outfits.
"I came away from my travels with an overwhelming feeling that ghost tourism at historic sites of slavery appropriates African American history in a way that outweighs the value of inclusion. Whether or not they are aware of it or want to be doing it, tourism professionals use black cultural knowledge (stories, beliefs, practices, and histories) to infuse southern ghost tours with a superficial sense of soul. The recuperated black slave in the form of a ghost is presented in caricature on these tours, positioned outside black cultural contexts, and stripped of the historical realities of American slavery. Experiences of black slaves and elements of black culture are thus diminished in this industry—borrowed, boiled down to an exotic essence, and sold for a price" (123).
"I also came away with an alarming sense that the representation of slaves as ghosts reproduces intersectional racial and gender norms from the antebellum era, often without context, caution, or critique" (124).
But in her conclusion, Miles also points to the histories of African American ghost stories, gathered in the 1930s in WPA interviews. This will stick with me:
"”In Emmaline Heard’s astute story, slavery is a monstrous, industrial machine that consumed African American lives and continues to haunt the southern landscape even after emancipation.
"Stories told by African Americans who experienced slavery indicate their belief that ghosts were dangerously real and not to be dallied with" (127)." Miles then connects this to Toni Morrison's Beloved, which of course has terrifying ghosts of its own. If only, Miles seems to argue, we let Black people tell these ghost stories how they want to tell them. The ghosts would be even more terrifying.
Please read this book.
This book is full of many, many excellent words. These are a few of my favorites:
"The South, therefore, functions like a storehouse for the nation’s historical guilt, a sociocultural archive accessed through stories of haunting. This explains why southern ghosts of slavery remain with us even now, calling us to confront them" (32).
"Tourists at The Myrtles can therefore flirt with the danger of racial and sexual taboos while never having to really think about human subjection, the corruption of power, and their own voyeuristic complicity in the reproduction of plantation culture scripts" (97).
"It would be disingenuous of me not to acknowledge that ghost-tour companies are doing the work of making black history visible in some of this country’s oldest places. In contrast to a growing number of haunted tours that actively incorporate African American stories, many plantation heritage tours continue to marginalize black personalities and historical experiences. During my time in Savannah, I saw evidence of urban historian Ella Howard’s observation that “the subset of paranormal tours pay much more attention to slavery than others.” In Charleston, the dearth of black history on offer by established companies was so great that tour guide Geordie Buxton suggested that I, an Ohioan with no special knowledge of Charleston history, should create my own black history tour in the city. Meanwhile, Buxton was interweaving snippets of black folklore and history into his haunted plantations tour. Ghost tours clearly represent a kind of cultural inclusion, but I have to press the question: At what cost? Much of the black history material that I encountered during my ghost-touring journey appeared to me as exoticized, romanticized, or decontextualized. And members of black communities did not seem to control the narratives of these tours or to benefit directly from the commercial success of local ghost-tour outfits.
"I came away from my travels with an overwhelming feeling that ghost tourism at historic sites of slavery appropriates African American history in a way that outweighs the value of inclusion. Whether or not they are aware of it or want to be doing it, tourism professionals use black cultural knowledge (stories, beliefs, practices, and histories) to infuse southern ghost tours with a superficial sense of soul. The recuperated black slave in the form of a ghost is presented in caricature on these tours, positioned outside black cultural contexts, and stripped of the historical realities of American slavery. Experiences of black slaves and elements of black culture are thus diminished in this industry—borrowed, boiled down to an exotic essence, and sold for a price" (123).
"I also came away with an alarming sense that the representation of slaves as ghosts reproduces intersectional racial and gender norms from the antebellum era, often without context, caution, or critique" (124).
But in her conclusion, Miles also points to the histories of African American ghost stories, gathered in the 1930s in WPA interviews. This will stick with me:
"”In Emmaline Heard’s astute story, slavery is a monstrous, industrial machine that consumed African American lives and continues to haunt the southern landscape even after emancipation.
"Stories told by African Americans who experienced slavery indicate their belief that ghosts were dangerously real and not to be dallied with" (127)." Miles then connects this to Toni Morrison's Beloved, which of course has terrifying ghosts of its own. If only, Miles seems to argue, we let Black people tell these ghost stories how they want to tell them. The ghosts would be even more terrifying.
Please read this book.
February 22, 2021
A really fascinating look at ghost tours at various points in the US south and the stories they tell, especially about enslavement. Miles does a great job of offering up the details of the tours and including interviews with guides and docents. Some of the analysis feels a little stagnated--I was left with big questions about the ways these tours not only tell misleading, violent stories about enslavement that re-inscribe stereotypes and misconceptions while offering up avenues for white-settler moves to innocence, but also the ways that these tours invent ghosts (to make up for a lack of real archive regarding individual enslaved people? Why are we making up stories about extreme violence when real life stories about the extreme violence of enslavement exist?) which Miles herself seems to put aside rather rapidly even though the ghost she was initially drawn into the project with ended up to be untrue.
Otherwise though I think it raises a lot of questions about our engagements publicly with haunting and ghosts, and how the history can be elided through engagement--that avoidance of these narratives is not the only way to fail to grapple with history and its afterlives.
Otherwise though I think it raises a lot of questions about our engagements publicly with haunting and ghosts, and how the history can be elided through engagement--that avoidance of these narratives is not the only way to fail to grapple with history and its afterlives.
May 16, 2023
Non fiction book that unfortunately reads like a college essay. Discusses how southern ghost stories are a booming tourism industry, and reinforce negative stereotypes about black Americans, while also distracting from the tragedies of slavery. Wow. So terrible to see this trend.
I think she could have made a much more direct and compelling argument; all the material was there. She got distracted by telling us the stories of her discoveries in chronological order (not necessary) and by telling us details with no context, like ALL the ages and ethnicities of the other tourists she met. That latter point especially bothered me. She used that to tell us that there were almost no black people on the tours - just SAY that. We don’t need to see your tallies. And also tell us WHY NOT?? she leaves us to draw our own conclusions, which may not align with her intentions. Overall, some interesting proof points for her thesis, but organized in an amateurish way. As a liberal, I would have loved this to be more hard-hitting and something I could recommend to others.
I think she could have made a much more direct and compelling argument; all the material was there. She got distracted by telling us the stories of her discoveries in chronological order (not necessary) and by telling us details with no context, like ALL the ages and ethnicities of the other tourists she met. That latter point especially bothered me. She used that to tell us that there were almost no black people on the tours - just SAY that. We don’t need to see your tallies. And also tell us WHY NOT?? she leaves us to draw our own conclusions, which may not align with her intentions. Overall, some interesting proof points for her thesis, but organized in an amateurish way. As a liberal, I would have loved this to be more hard-hitting and something I could recommend to others.
February 8, 2024
Had to read this book for my Historical Methods class. It was a decent experience, I gained a new perspective on something I had no prior knowledge about. Miles kept me interested with her writing, though it got boring at times. Had to read full chapters, went from interesting to dull and vice versa quickly.
February 28, 2024
Definitely makes you want to go on a ghost tour and tell the guide that what they're doing is stupid.
May 25, 2024
Read while visiting Savannah. Very important read especially if considering going on a ghost tour.
Read
February 5, 2023Whether or not the dead literally come back to haunt this world, ghosts have a real effect on humanity. Tiya Miles demonstrates this in her work Tales from the Haunted South; she makes no statement on whether ghosts exist in any literal way, but she follows the stories told about ghosts and what effect this “dark tourism” has on perceptions of black history. Tiya Miles is an esteemed historian and professor with a particular interest in black, native, and women’s history. In Tales from the Haunted South, Miles travels to and tours several locations which are advertised as particularly haunted in the American South: Savannah, New Orleans, and The Myrtles Plantation. Through this experience, she offers a thoughtful examination of why dark tourism is attractive to particular audiences, why the patterns of dark tourism are problematic for representations of black history, and offers some suggestion of how black history can be better represented, even leaving some room for dark tourism to remain. Even as Miles ultimately takes issue with the trends of dark tourism, her openness to the experience, vulnerable style of writing, and soft conclusions leave space for more discussion and the possibility that unconventional history telling could be valuable.
February 17, 2021
I think this is an important read for anyone who's interested in or involved in the dark tourism industry. Miles explores how ghost tour companies in the South can and do fabricate or embellish narratives that commodify the traumatic memories of enslaved people. The only reason I'm giving this four stars rather than five is because I would've liked to have read a more in-depth exploration of the subject.
August 29, 2023
I finished Tiya Miles work of fiction ("The Cherokee Rose,") and immediately knew I had to pick up this book. I honestly cannot do it justice in my own words, so here are some of my favorite passages:
"Ghosts and the means by which we hold them in mind, ghost stories, make for a special mode of connection to the past-that is historical-the modern ghost story can be understood as a popular form of historical narrative. The stories that we tell about ghosts are a method of history making, then a cultural process by which we create, use, and understand history. Through ghost stories we preserve important personal and collective knowledge about what took place in the past, and particularly about events in the past that we have excluded from active, embraced memory." - pgs 14-15
"Ghosts are our guides to the troubled past, our metaphysical historical messengers, whose stories compel us to remember whether or not ewe want to....The past, they tell us, is a place rife with wrongs, traumas that must be seen in order to be expelled and injustices that must be exposed in order to be redressed." - pg 16
" ...ghosts loosed from a troubled and indeed troubling past besiege the American landscape. Many of us sense that we live in a haunted country, a land of injured spirits. This is a metaphorical truth that creeps to the surface again and again in our national literature and popular culture...we are a country founded on the practice of Indigenous erasure, illegal land seizure and racial slavery....our understanding of this metaphorical reality of haunting seeps from beneath our flood walls of denial and shows in our persistent stories about ghosts of the oppressed." -pg 16
"...But if vacationing tourists must somehow confront the ugliness of slavery that repels as well as attracts their notice, they would probably rather do so from a safe emotional distance. The ghost tour, which showcases violent themes with a playful fright and wink, is therefore proving to be a popular conveyance of antebellum southern history. Tourism in the South today often relays on the appeal of the ghost story to interpret historical events, but does it evade the social criticism implicit in the presence of the oppressed slave ghosts?" - Pg 18
"...African American spirits are not gullibly friendly, delightfully cartoonish, or controllably mainstream. They are deadly serious messengers from another time that compel us to wrestle with the past, a past chained to colonialism, slavery, and patriarchy, but a past that can nevertheless challenge and commission us to fight for justice in the present. We can call forth the power of ghosts as scholars, writers, teachers, artists and stewards of historic sites, as indeed we must if we are to place progressive social justice visions in contention with a culture possessed by ghost fancy. But let our ghosts be real, let our ghosts be true, let our ghosts carry the integrity of our ancestors."- Pg 132
"Ghosts and the means by which we hold them in mind, ghost stories, make for a special mode of connection to the past-that is historical-the modern ghost story can be understood as a popular form of historical narrative. The stories that we tell about ghosts are a method of history making, then a cultural process by which we create, use, and understand history. Through ghost stories we preserve important personal and collective knowledge about what took place in the past, and particularly about events in the past that we have excluded from active, embraced memory." - pgs 14-15
"Ghosts are our guides to the troubled past, our metaphysical historical messengers, whose stories compel us to remember whether or not ewe want to....The past, they tell us, is a place rife with wrongs, traumas that must be seen in order to be expelled and injustices that must be exposed in order to be redressed." - pg 16
" ...ghosts loosed from a troubled and indeed troubling past besiege the American landscape. Many of us sense that we live in a haunted country, a land of injured spirits. This is a metaphorical truth that creeps to the surface again and again in our national literature and popular culture...we are a country founded on the practice of Indigenous erasure, illegal land seizure and racial slavery....our understanding of this metaphorical reality of haunting seeps from beneath our flood walls of denial and shows in our persistent stories about ghosts of the oppressed." -pg 16
"...But if vacationing tourists must somehow confront the ugliness of slavery that repels as well as attracts their notice, they would probably rather do so from a safe emotional distance. The ghost tour, which showcases violent themes with a playful fright and wink, is therefore proving to be a popular conveyance of antebellum southern history. Tourism in the South today often relays on the appeal of the ghost story to interpret historical events, but does it evade the social criticism implicit in the presence of the oppressed slave ghosts?" - Pg 18
"...African American spirits are not gullibly friendly, delightfully cartoonish, or controllably mainstream. They are deadly serious messengers from another time that compel us to wrestle with the past, a past chained to colonialism, slavery, and patriarchy, but a past that can nevertheless challenge and commission us to fight for justice in the present. We can call forth the power of ghosts as scholars, writers, teachers, artists and stewards of historic sites, as indeed we must if we are to place progressive social justice visions in contention with a culture possessed by ghost fancy. But let our ghosts be real, let our ghosts be true, let our ghosts carry the integrity of our ancestors."- Pg 132
February 12, 2023
Tiya Miles illustrates the political aspect of ghosts of enslaved people in Tales from the Haunted South. Miles asserts that ghost tours allow for tourists to interact with the difficult to accept history of slavery in a “safe” manner, as the inclusion of ghosts creates a fictional facade over all of the history shared on the tour. However, these ghost stories disproportionally dehumanize African American people who were enslaved. On these tours, ghosts are treated as “a stuck, lost, and even tortured soul who returns to the material realm due to unresolved, often traumatic experiences” (p. 12). However, a truer understanding of these “ghosts” is the history of slavery that haunts the American.
Miles introduces a popular ghost story in each chapter. These stories are rooted in the tragedies of slavery and are sustained through ghost tours. Miles participates in many of these tours with an open mind. Her recollections of the tour guides, stops on the tour, stories shared, and other tourists provide an accurate picture of how the ghost tours continue to misrepresent slavery; romanticism of rape, fetishization of violence, and portrayal of terrible masters as unique occurrences corrupt the narrative of slavery visitors leave the tours with.
Miles employes thorough, but clear descriptions that invite the reader to appreciate reading the text, while considering the implications of these ghost tours. Her claims and evidence lead the reader to accessible and well supported conclusions that these ghost stories help continue the haunting of slavery in American history. Miles concludes with examples of how to appropriately address African American enslavement and spirits.
Miles utilized census records, documentation from plantations, slave narratives, and personal observations to critique the ghost stories. Miles also utilized many ghost “guide” books and websites; while the historical backing was largely lacking from these sources, they provided valuable information on how ghosts of enslaved people are frequently portrayed and perceived. Miles employs tourism studies and the fields of African American history and American history to analyze why the ghost tours are presented as they are. This text also continues the studies of hauntings by Avery Gordon, Judith Richardson, and Renee Bergland. As such, those interested in ghosts should read this book, to help them critically analyze popular culture ghost stories. Those interested in the history of slavery in America could also benefit from reading Miles’ discussion of how slavery is portrayed today. Most importantly, this book could help those who lead plantation tours or ghost tours ground their tours in history and bring a display of empathy to the subjects of their tours.
Miles introduces a popular ghost story in each chapter. These stories are rooted in the tragedies of slavery and are sustained through ghost tours. Miles participates in many of these tours with an open mind. Her recollections of the tour guides, stops on the tour, stories shared, and other tourists provide an accurate picture of how the ghost tours continue to misrepresent slavery; romanticism of rape, fetishization of violence, and portrayal of terrible masters as unique occurrences corrupt the narrative of slavery visitors leave the tours with.
Miles employes thorough, but clear descriptions that invite the reader to appreciate reading the text, while considering the implications of these ghost tours. Her claims and evidence lead the reader to accessible and well supported conclusions that these ghost stories help continue the haunting of slavery in American history. Miles concludes with examples of how to appropriately address African American enslavement and spirits.
Miles utilized census records, documentation from plantations, slave narratives, and personal observations to critique the ghost stories. Miles also utilized many ghost “guide” books and websites; while the historical backing was largely lacking from these sources, they provided valuable information on how ghosts of enslaved people are frequently portrayed and perceived. Miles employs tourism studies and the fields of African American history and American history to analyze why the ghost tours are presented as they are. This text also continues the studies of hauntings by Avery Gordon, Judith Richardson, and Renee Bergland. As such, those interested in ghosts should read this book, to help them critically analyze popular culture ghost stories. Those interested in the history of slavery in America could also benefit from reading Miles’ discussion of how slavery is portrayed today. Most importantly, this book could help those who lead plantation tours or ghost tours ground their tours in history and bring a display of empathy to the subjects of their tours.
September 15, 2022
Travel—touristic travel in particular—emerged as a central feature of the ghost hunting experience.
The search for ghosts and a quest for novelty went hand in glove at a moment when tourism was steadily rising to become a multi trillion-dollar global industry.
This book was fascinating! I'd heard the term "dark tourism," in passing so I'm glad that I read this book so I could a better understanding of what that means. Essentially, dark tourism is when people like visiting places where terrible things happened, like former concentration camps, plantations, battlefields, etc. Tiya Miles uses the South as an example because it seems to be the most used examples of being haunted. Miles explains that these sites especially are magnets for these ghost tourists is because of slavery. Slavery created an environment in which terrible things happened everyday--acts of violence (physical and sexual) were commonplace and there are a lot of feelings there, as it were.
Miles also explains that much of this dark tourism has to do with exploiting the stories of people of color. The public wouldn't see the September 11 Memorial & Museum the same way as the plantation house for example, stating that people believe that since people actually died on the spot of Ground Zero it's hallowed ground, not realizing that people died terrible deaths on plantations as well. It's a strange dichotomy, thinking that slavery is history while something like 9/11 is something to be memorialized. The public wants to live events, feel what people must've felt at the time--this is where the ghost/haunting stuff comes into play.
Everyone (or mostly everyone) likes a ghost story, they like to be scared. And sometimes history is scary, people were treated poorly--to put it mildly--so something must have stayed behind. There's never a simple explanation, however, to these ghost tours. Many of the ghost tours are exaggerated to make them more gory, to exploit their stories. Tiya Miles explains that this is on purpose, apparently it's easier to exploit people of color because they were treated the worst in American history.
The search for ghosts and a quest for novelty went hand in glove at a moment when tourism was steadily rising to become a multi trillion-dollar global industry.
This book was fascinating! I'd heard the term "dark tourism," in passing so I'm glad that I read this book so I could a better understanding of what that means. Essentially, dark tourism is when people like visiting places where terrible things happened, like former concentration camps, plantations, battlefields, etc. Tiya Miles uses the South as an example because it seems to be the most used examples of being haunted. Miles explains that these sites especially are magnets for these ghost tourists is because of slavery. Slavery created an environment in which terrible things happened everyday--acts of violence (physical and sexual) were commonplace and there are a lot of feelings there, as it were.
Miles also explains that much of this dark tourism has to do with exploiting the stories of people of color. The public wouldn't see the September 11 Memorial & Museum the same way as the plantation house for example, stating that people believe that since people actually died on the spot of Ground Zero it's hallowed ground, not realizing that people died terrible deaths on plantations as well. It's a strange dichotomy, thinking that slavery is history while something like 9/11 is something to be memorialized. The public wants to live events, feel what people must've felt at the time--this is where the ghost/haunting stuff comes into play.
Everyone (or mostly everyone) likes a ghost story, they like to be scared. And sometimes history is scary, people were treated poorly--to put it mildly--so something must have stayed behind. There's never a simple explanation, however, to these ghost tours. Many of the ghost tours are exaggerated to make them more gory, to exploit their stories. Tiya Miles explains that this is on purpose, apparently it's easier to exploit people of color because they were treated the worst in American history.
May 3, 2023
I had already read Miles's "All That She Carried," and then I heard this great piece on This American Life about Savannah, GA, and ghost tours. And they talk about this book. And I happen to be teaching a class on colonial America and museums at this very moment! So I knew I had to read this book. I had my students listen to the radio piece and then, even though we aren't talking about colonial ghosts so much, we discussed the popularity of ghostly, macabre tourism. I mean, we were already discussing Salem anyway.
Miles makes so many good points here. This was really interesting. I confess, my experience of ghost tours is limited to New England and a little bit British Isles, so I knew nothing of this whole southern genre of ghost tours and how they all seem to involve slavery. And the whole "voodoo" angle - I did go to New Orleans once and though I didn't take a ghost tour, I remember all the voodoo stuff. One thing that I hadn't ever considered but really struck me, was Miles noting that the villains in these stories tend to be French - like "French creoles", or "white refugees from St. Domingue (Haiti)," or "mysterious potentially secretly mixed race French creoles." Most of these supposed hauntings involve particularly evil slaveholders and murdered enslaved people that haunt the house forever. So it's like, if we are going to have super evil slaveholders (as opposed to all the normal evil slaveholders) they have to be French? Because it's a little exotic and foreign? Weird. Also I don't get why the ghosts of enslaved people would haunt these houses two hundred years after their enslavers died. Wouldn't the point be "restless spirits" who want to punish their tormenters? Why would they still be hanging around in 2023?
It's funny the way these museums try to have it both ways. They want to say, "well slavery wasn't so bad, but sometimes it was REALLY bad, and probably because of the French. So ghosts." And if you go to the Salem Witch Museum, the whole spiel is "OK, all these people were innocent, witches aren't real, but WHAT IF THEY WERE??? SATAN CAME TO SALEM!!"
Miles makes so many good points here. This was really interesting. I confess, my experience of ghost tours is limited to New England and a little bit British Isles, so I knew nothing of this whole southern genre of ghost tours and how they all seem to involve slavery. And the whole "voodoo" angle - I did go to New Orleans once and though I didn't take a ghost tour, I remember all the voodoo stuff. One thing that I hadn't ever considered but really struck me, was Miles noting that the villains in these stories tend to be French - like "French creoles", or "white refugees from St. Domingue (Haiti)," or "mysterious potentially secretly mixed race French creoles." Most of these supposed hauntings involve particularly evil slaveholders and murdered enslaved people that haunt the house forever. So it's like, if we are going to have super evil slaveholders (as opposed to all the normal evil slaveholders) they have to be French? Because it's a little exotic and foreign? Weird. Also I don't get why the ghosts of enslaved people would haunt these houses two hundred years after their enslavers died. Wouldn't the point be "restless spirits" who want to punish their tormenters? Why would they still be hanging around in 2023?
It's funny the way these museums try to have it both ways. They want to say, "well slavery wasn't so bad, but sometimes it was REALLY bad, and probably because of the French. So ghosts." And if you go to the Salem Witch Museum, the whole spiel is "OK, all these people were innocent, witches aren't real, but WHAT IF THEY WERE??? SATAN CAME TO SALEM!!"
August 29, 2024
3.5
A reread from undergrad, Tales from the Haunted South is an examination of how dark tourism has latched onto slavery in the American South. Miles admits ghost stories, while a radical form, are a potential "historical narrative that can dredge up unsettling social memories for reexamination." However while such stories can provide opportunities for engaging with a past that is often sanitized, there is often a lack of detail and sources to garner any real analysis of these events from a historical perspective. At the end of her research, Miles asserts "I find it a matter of serious concern that ghost tourism has gained a firm foothold within the boundaries of the former Old South, where the bodies of black slaves have once again become fodder for an innovating capitalist industry." I find myself agreeing with this sentiment as someone who resides in the South and has experienced such tours during my own studies. A needed critical examination of this industry, but not her best work in terms of writing.
A reread from undergrad, Tales from the Haunted South is an examination of how dark tourism has latched onto slavery in the American South. Miles admits ghost stories, while a radical form, are a potential "historical narrative that can dredge up unsettling social memories for reexamination." However while such stories can provide opportunities for engaging with a past that is often sanitized, there is often a lack of detail and sources to garner any real analysis of these events from a historical perspective. At the end of her research, Miles asserts "I find it a matter of serious concern that ghost tourism has gained a firm foothold within the boundaries of the former Old South, where the bodies of black slaves have once again become fodder for an innovating capitalist industry." I find myself agreeing with this sentiment as someone who resides in the South and has experienced such tours during my own studies. A needed critical examination of this industry, but not her best work in terms of writing.
November 11, 2018
This book was so damn good. Miles analyzes the ways in which dark tourism in the south often recreates the social dynamics of slavery. I had never given much thought to "dark tourism," tourism surrounding tragedy and pain, before. In fact, I hadn't realized that things like ghost tours were such a big draw and such a money maker for local historical organizations. But it is, and the problems Miles raises with these ghost tours, especially those that are based on a premise of reproducing the pain of enslaved women, are incredibly troubling. Miles is a phenomenal writer, and she draws you onto this tour of haunted tours with her. She doesn't go out of her way to condemn the people leading these tours. In fact, she tries to understand them and their patrons in order to understand why they're so popular. It's really compelling. By far one of the best history books I've ever read.
September 8, 2020
This was such an excellent and thoughtful read, especially as we start moving into Halloween season. All of these familiar themes in ghost stories and tours-the perennial "Native American burial ground" and "the spirits who linger after experiencing extreme trauma"-belie the violence undergirding Southern memory (and U.S. memory, as a whole). When does the line between history and entertainment become too thin to countenance? Dr. Miles takes on these questions to trouble the commodification of tragedy while simultaneously working through those who self-report that the promise of the supernatural draws them into difficult historic truths with which they might not otherwise grapple. I really want to talk with students about this book, especially the chapter on New Orleans.
March 31, 2023
read this book for my geotourism class, which we are talking about dark tourism. I honestly found it interesting in some ways, in discussing the manner about how ghost tours came to be and why people are so interested in them. but miles brings up the great points of why are all the ghost tours in the souths involving the past of african americans, and most of the stories derive from slavery and the civil war. honestly was an interesting read, got slow at some points and tbh it's a pain for me to read books when they are assigned to me
May 18, 2023
Oral tradition takes on a life of its own, and I would love to see more credence given to the power of storytelling, so long as those stories demand a reckoning. I think in places condemnation of ghost stories is conflated with a disdain for easy narratives and popular history, but the criticism is nonetheless well taken, particularly when the stories at issue were concocted from whole cloth. Overall, I'd like more of an adventuresome spirit, but appreciated the academic's insight into the commodification of Black trauma present on ghost tours.
Read
October 22, 2019Tiya Miles brings us into the stories of souls preyed upon by white supremacy, even after death. While we look into the historical experience of African Americans in the south, we find in this book that we might be the ones doing the haunting. This book is a page turner- Miles deftly cuts into the heart of our ideas about the gothic south with vivid and honest re-tellings of our past.
- Celeste Holcomb, ZSR Library Staff
- Celeste Holcomb, ZSR Library Staff
March 3, 2023
I’m traveling to New Orleans for the first time for a work trip and our group booked a ghost tour. I felt icky about it but I didn’t want to miss out on the group activity. This book was able to articulate the ick I felt in a succinct and approachable way. The discomfort of going on a ghost tour is still there, but at least now I can take the tour with a more informed opinion and historical/ cultural context I lacked before reading.
August 18, 2020
As a tour guide in New Orleans, who has always tried to be respectful and honest - yes, even in ghost tours - this book has given me so much more history, and theory, to the incorporate into my work as it begins to open up again.
Would recommend to anyone interested in dark tourism or ghost stories, and would consider it required reading for anyone in our profession.
Would recommend to anyone interested in dark tourism or ghost stories, and would consider it required reading for anyone in our profession.
September 23, 2024
It may turn out that this book inspires my graduate thesis. I loved the idea of investigating popular themes in tourism and how deeply she analyzed and critiqued these tours. She also wrote in a very engaging way, embedding the vignettes and contrasting the tour stories with her thorough historical research.
December 5, 2022
ghost tours are such an interesting topic. this book spoke to me in a number of ways. i maybe wouldve preferred less super-detailed personal testimonial and more theory/analysis. the conclusion was really good, i'd start there.
January 11, 2023
Absolutely amazing. I read this book because it was mentioned a lot in "A Haunted History of Invisible Women" and I am so glad I did. Has changed the way I think about ghost tourism in the South forever.
March 22, 2023
Fascinating delve into the motivations for and repercussions of ghost stories. An indictment of a branch of the tourism industry that thrives on the legacy of slavery for the entertainment and voyeurism of predominantly white audiences.
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