From essays about the Salem witch trials to literary uses of ghosts by Twain, Wharton, and Bierce to the cinematic blockbuster The Sixth Sense, this book is the first to survey the importance of ghosts and hauntings in American culture across time. From the Puritans' conviction that a thousand preternatural beings appear every day before our eyes, to today's resurgence of spirits in fiction and film, the culture of the United States has been obsessed with ghosts. In each generation, these phantoms in popular culture reflect human anxieties about religion, science, politics, and social issues.
- ISBN13 9780299199548
- Publish Date 29 June 2004 (first published 25 September 2000)
- Publish Status Active
- Publish Country US
- Imprint University of Wisconsin Press
- Format Paperback
- Pages 280
- Language English