Haunted States - by Miranda Corcoran Paperback

About the Book

"A fusion of travel literature and cultural criticism investigating the dark history of the US and exploring how past horrors -- from witch trials to slavery and genocide -- continue to haunt the national consciousness. Haunted States is a unique guidebook that explores the dark, often horrifying, history of the US. Based on the author's journey across the United States in summer 2022, it explores locations connected to Gothic fiction and film, tracking the relationship between the American landscapes and the various forms of fictional horror the nation has produced over the centuries. Part cultural history and part travelogue, Haunted States traces how the American Gothic draws inspiration from the natural and built environments, with the astounding geographical variation of the landscape influencing the distinctive forms of horror produced across its many diverse regions. The book also investigates how the horrors of the American Gothic have their roots in the nation's dark history of colonialism, slavery, violence and oppression -- past sins that continue to haunt the national consciousness to this day. Taking horror (in literature, film and the visual arts) as its starting point, Haunted States investigates the landscapes, places and cultures that produced it. Incorporating first-person travel narrative, historical context and supplementary interviews, Haunted States journeys across the USA to learn about its eclectic, regional forms of horror."--

Book Synopsis

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

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

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

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

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

Review Quotes

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

"Spook show, cautionary tale and homage to the quirky, spiced with a pinch of Freud and Derrida - a witness to the other America, whose swampy soul remains captive to the unquietly dead."
- Fortean Times

About the Author

Miranda Corcoran is a lecturer in twenty-first-century literature at University College Cork. Her first monograph, Witchcraft and Adolescence in American Popular Culture: Teen Witches, was published in June 2022 by the University of Wales Press. Her next book, a study of the 1996 film The Craft, will be published by Auteur/Liverpool University Press in summer 2023. She has published in numerous academic journals and regularly provides DVD audio-commentaries and video essays for horror releases.