Ghost Excavator

Ghost Excavator
Author: John G Sabol Jr.
Publisher: AuthorHouse
Total Pages: 192
Release: 2007-05-22
Genre: Education
ISBN: 1467083895

This book is a ghost story, meant to be read on cold, dark, windy, and snow-covered wintry nights. These are not traditional tales of haunted houses, but rather are personal narratives of cultural hauntings of long forgotten histories of ethnic struggles, and Native American beliefs. It is an image of a landscape (and its people) that goes far deeper than the mere surface manifestations of ruined and abandoned structures, and the bits and pieces of broken dreams and aspirations. This is a different kind of embedded narrative. It is an excavation that penetrates to the very heart of ghostly drama. Experiences, conceptualized as a form of haunting, provide a framework for the recall of various incidents of personal memory and emotional resonance at specific places. This serves two purposes: It creates a personal landscape characterized by elements of spookiness (once dense forests, abandoned structures and mineshafts, coal patches); uncertainities that result in episodic haunting dramas (the socioeconomic impact of ethnic migrations); and ghostly presences (interpretations of these ethnic groups as a response to their physical surroundings); It provides a framework (in the 2nd part) for the analysis of other similiar haunted landscapes. A methodology is used that incorporates techniques derived from archaeology, ethnography, and performance studies. In doing so, it introduces a new multidisciplinary research methodology called Ethnoarchaeoghostology. This book is a dedicatory salute, however humble, to the achievements and daily struggles of those who came before to inhabit this Mahanoy Area. These hauntings fill-in the blank spaces between the words in historical narratives, and thus gives the reader a different image of events in local and regional social histories. In doing so, they show that greatness is not measured by the content of what we do, but how, on a daily basis, we do it.

Ghost Culture

Ghost Culture
Author: John G. Sabol Jr.
Publisher: AuthorHouse
Total Pages: 180
Release: 2007-06-21
Genre: Science
ISBN: 1467087882

This book is part of a series of ethnographic studies in cultural hauntings and ghostly landscapes. The first book, Ghost Excavator: Unearthing the Drama in the Mine Fields, was a personal excavation of the haunted Mahanoy Area. In this second book, a theory of cultural hauntings is presented that serves as a framework for investigative fieldwork. Specific techniques are introduced as a means of scientific practices to evaluate the data observed and recorded at haunted locations. This book is meant to form the infrastructure of a developing ghost science, one built from the "bottom-up". The integrated symmetrical approach of theory and scientific practice that is outlined here is a beginning point for the continuing evolution of the ghost science of the future. This search and analysis of haunting phenomena is seen as an approach that can be participated in by the many and who, through their continuing efforts, will help fill-in the "blanks" of a "ghost map" of what Shakespeare has called the "undiscover'd country".

Digging-Deep

Digging-Deep
Author: John G. Sabol Jr.
Publisher: AuthorHouse
Total Pages: 256
Release: 2009-09-25
Genre: Biography & Autobiography
ISBN: 1449024823

"Digging-Deep" is an excavation of the archaeological site called "John Sabol". It is an unearthing of the author's memory of experiences ofpast presences that cuts across space, time, and culture. Water, mining operations, dust and dirt, dogs and wolves, and ghosts are seen as important features that are re-covered from these memory excavations. Some of the re-called practices that are unearthed include an alternative remembrance of "trick or treat", the multiple symmetrical worlds of history, myth, and ghosts in Winchester, England, the haunting nature of archaeological excavations and field surveys, the actor's encounters with more than a filmed "death scene", and a search for a legendary monster in Arkansas. All of these memories are perceived as symetrically-interrelated though they originate in different places. They are viewed as a form of "theatrical ghosting", a resonating element that unfolds time, as events and activities are framed by their contemporary significance in the author's life. In this process of excavation, a re-curring haunting drama manifests in the life of this archaeologist, who also happens to be a cultural anthropologist, actor, and "ghost excavator".

Phantom Gettysburg

Phantom Gettysburg
Author: John G. Sabol Jr.
Publisher: AuthorHouse
Total Pages: 196
Release: 2009-06-24
Genre: History
ISBN: 1467845051

Phantom Gettysburg discusses the contemporary alternative version of a perceived haunted battlefield. In order to understand this alternative perception, contemporary anomalous phenomena must be affixed to and analyzed within their exact historical setting and social context. An ethnographic model of mid-19thc. American culture is used as the basis for this analysis. Specifically, the cultural beliefs relative to the concepts of death and the afterlife, as it was envisioned by these soldiers, is the basis for this model. This historical ethnographic analysis serves two purposes. First, it is a means to legitimize the methodology and fieldwork practices of ghost research. Second, it is meant to analyze the Gettysburg experience and its haunting uncertainty in its historical and sociocultural environment. The conclusion that is drawn from this comparative approach alters the reality and representation of an interactive ghostly battlefield presence. A Gettysburg haunted by Civil War soldiers is considered, for the most part, a phantom experience.

The Politics of Presence

The Politics of Presence
Author: John G. Sabol Jr.
Publisher: AuthorHouse
Total Pages: 204
Release: 2008-08-27
Genre: Science
ISBN: 146346777X

A major focus of ghost excavation, as opposed to ghost "hunting", is an archaeology of experience. The emergence of this experience is unearthed through the investigative engagement of haunted space. One aspect of this engagement is performance, which requires a specific sociocultural and historical context of understanding. This context of understanding must be understood in terms of layers of meaning. Gettysburg is used as a specific example of the use of performative and dramatical activity. Each of these activities performed at Gettysburg predisposes a genre,a set of beliefs, practices, social relations, manifestations, and locations which together define categorically what it is that is manifesting on the battlefield, and what interpretations are being used to understand these performative cultural practices. The genres of performative action at Gettysburg are important because they are located at places on the battlefield where belief systems become mobilized into actual practice. This book will explore various haunting uncertainties and cultural situations associated with ghostly activity, and the implications of these performances as they are enacted by ghost hunters, Civil War re-enactors, the tourism industry, and the "ghosts" themselves.

Bodies of Substance, Fragments of Memories

Bodies of Substance, Fragments of Memories
Author: John G. Sabol Jr.
Publisher: AuthorHouse
Total Pages: 232
Release: 2009-03-27
Genre: Education
ISBN: 1467850446

Ghost Research is archaeological work that requires specific field practices. This book introduces the investigative techniques of a "ghost archaeology". This is defined as a scientific discipline of the "ordinary", a search for the repetitive patterns of cultural behavior that can be unearthed during an field investigation. Six case studies of cultural hauntings are presented which illustrate the usefulness of archaeological methodology and techniques in field research. The investigation of ghostly presence at Gettysburg, in the anthracite coal region, at Eastern State Penitentiary in Philadelphia, and a Civil War haunting in Petersburg, Virginia are cited. These investigations show how potential evidential data can be uncovered, if only the investigators would maintain an archaeological sensibility in their fieldwork operations.

Haunted America & Other Paranormal Travels

Haunted America & Other Paranormal Travels
Author: Sherri Granato
Publisher: LifeRich Publishing
Total Pages: 487
Release: 2015-04-09
Genre: Body, Mind & Spirit
ISBN: 1489704299

Haunted America & Other Paranormal Travels allows the reader to discover haunted venues in every state in America and even some abroad. Creepy tales from celebrities, ghost-riddled trains and highways, eerie phenomena, and unexplained anomalies. Its all here if you dare.

The Haunted Actor

The Haunted Actor
Author: Alex Matsuo
Publisher: AuthorHouse
Total Pages: 203
Release: 2014-01-23
Genre: Performing Arts
ISBN: 1491849800

With the paranormal becoming so mainstream in the last decade between television, books, and movies, is the craze actually brand new? Before there was the entertainment industry that we know of today, plays and musicals were one of the primary forms of expression and reflections of societys beliefs of their time. This book will cover an analysis of the belief in the supernatural throughout the course of humanitys existence and showing that in a way, the paranormal has always been normal. Using elements of theatre as the research vehicle, as well as establishing the relationship between acting and the unknown, this book examines the rich relationship between theatre and the paranormal. Finally, this book will challenge the reader to consider the possibility of using theatre as a method for researching and investigating the paranormal. Readers will be asked to consider what would happen if investigators and ghost hunters took on the role of an actor and the haunted location becomes a performance space, thus welcoming communication and activity from the other side.

The Anthracite Coal Region

The Anthracite Coal Region
Author: John G. Sabol Jr
Publisher: AuthorHouse
Total Pages: 176
Release: 2008-03-24
Genre: Education
ISBN: 1468521349

This book is an archaeological excavation of anomalous phenomena that still lingers to haunt various locations in the anthracite coal region of Northeastern Pennsylvania. The unearthing of this haunting presence is both a metaphorical excavation (the bringing "into the light" of various dramas, events, and experiences of an individual and collective nature), and a physical engagement (the emergence of ghostly presence through investigative field performances). This anthracite coal region drama is viewed through the use of a "deep map" of short, but compendious, "ghost" narratives. This "deep map" consists of autobiographical events, symmetrical archaeological practices, memories of local places, ethnic folklore, haunting traces and manifestations, natural history, the use of ascientific fieldmethodology, and a sincere, and profound,sensitivity to the land. These "ghost" narratives are a subtle, multi-layered and "deep mining" of a small regional landscape that has long been neglected, and been perceived as "insignificant" social history. This book is meant to change that perceptionthrough a sensualunearthing of its haunting uncertainties.

Gettysburg Unearthed:

Gettysburg Unearthed:
Author: John G. Sabol Jr.
Publisher: AuthorHouse
Total Pages: 236
Release: 2007-09-27
Genre: Science
ISBN: 1467827924

This book is the third in a series of anthropological studies which analyze ghosts and haunting phenomena in their cultural context. A history of visitations to the Gettysburg landscape is linked to the presence or absence of anomalous sensory manifestations. The preliminary analysis of the data suggests that the hauntings at Gettysburg may be a product of sociocultural factors, in part related to the growth of heritage tourism, rather than any ghostly manifestations by civil war soldiers. Since this is a preliminary analysis, a research design is proposed to further excavate the Gettysburg landscape. This approach is based on the use of ethnographic context, spatial symmetry, cultural relativity, and performance-based investigative practices. The author proposes that through this methodology, acontrolled excavation of the landscape can be made, thus unearthing a more scientific analysis and evaluation of Gettysburg as a haunted cultural place.