Colin Dickey
Author of Ghostland: An American History in Haunted Places
About the Author
Colin Dickey is the co-editor (with Nicole Antebi and Robby Herbst) of Failure! Experiments in Aesthetic and Social Practices. His fiction and nonfiction have appeared in Lapham's Quarterly, Cabinet, TriQuarterly, and The Santa Monica Review. A native of the San Francisco Bay Area, he now lives in show more Los Angeles. show less
Works by Colin Dickey
The Unidentified: Mythical Monsters, Alien Encounters, and Our Obsession with the Unexplained (2020) 224 copies, 7 reviews
Under the Eye of Power: How Fear of Secret Societies Shapes American Democracy (2023) 98 copies, 3 reviews
Associated Works
The Public Domain Review: Selected Essays, The First Three Years, 2011-2013 (2014) — Contributor — 33 copies, 2 reviews
Tagged
Common Knowledge
- Birthdate
- 1977-09-03
- Gender
- male
- Agent
- Anna Sproul-Latimer (Neon Literary)
- Nationality
- USA
- Places of residence
- California, USA
- Associated Place (for map)
- California, USA
Members
Reviews
America is a haunted country. Through the 300+ year history of European settlement on this continent, we have amassed an army of restless spirits. Certainly more than can be contained in a 300 page book. Fortunately, Dickey isn’t looking so much at the individual ghosts. Rather, he is looking at our ghostly archetypes, and what our national ghosts can tell us about our evolving history.
Dickey takes us to haunted houses, businesses, cemeteries, prisons, asylums, and towns. We march over show more familiar ground such as The House of Seven Gables in Salem, and the Winchester Mystery House in San Jose. But Dickey shines light in the hidden corners of our collective psyche. Perhaps the Winchester House isn’t a labyrinth to entrap vengeful spirits, but rather the overblown publicity paid to a fiercely independent woman who felt no desire to conform to society’s mores.
Dickey brings this fresh approach to the Moundsville Penitentiary, and to the Mustang Ranch. To the antebellum ghosts of Richmond, Virginia (why, with a notorious slave market in town, are all the ghosts white?), and to the city of Detroit, where “ruin porn” has turned the city itself into a sort of ghost.
Ghost stories are common, and the most famous legends have been repeated time and again. Dickey spins us away from the well-trod path, and into the darkened forest of our own history and collective psyche. And, as it turns out, that might be all we need for a scary story.
Ghostland is currently available for purchase. show less
Dickey takes us to haunted houses, businesses, cemeteries, prisons, asylums, and towns. We march over show more familiar ground such as The House of Seven Gables in Salem, and the Winchester Mystery House in San Jose. But Dickey shines light in the hidden corners of our collective psyche. Perhaps the Winchester House isn’t a labyrinth to entrap vengeful spirits, but rather the overblown publicity paid to a fiercely independent woman who felt no desire to conform to society’s mores.
Dickey brings this fresh approach to the Moundsville Penitentiary, and to the Mustang Ranch. To the antebellum ghosts of Richmond, Virginia (why, with a notorious slave market in town, are all the ghosts white?), and to the city of Detroit, where “ruin porn” has turned the city itself into a sort of ghost.
Ghost stories are common, and the most famous legends have been repeated time and again. Dickey spins us away from the well-trod path, and into the darkened forest of our own history and collective psyche. And, as it turns out, that might be all we need for a scary story.
Ghostland is currently available for purchase. show less
I read this for the "Haunted Houses" square. "Ghostland: An American History in Haunted Places" by Colin Dickey.
I don't know what to say. This was a really well researched and thought out book by Colin Dickey. He provides enough information that made me want to do my own digging and research into some of the homes and other locations he mentions in this book. What I really do enjoy that there is something of an anthropologist/historian in Dickey's work that I really enjoyed. Besides looking show more at the supposed hauntings, he goes into backstories that would have led to a person or persons to believe a haunting was occurring.
This book goes into what I would call typical hauntings of homes, to hauntings of cemeteries, hotels, brothels (Mustang Ranch), cities, battlefields, and even a bridge. And the book wraps things up about how our next form of being haunted can be via social media. I personally remember being surprised one day when Facebook popped up with a memory of me with a friend who had passed away. I remember flinching and just feeling sad and hurt all over again about her passing away. It didn't even occur to me that one day, I too could be a ghost of sorts, haunting my friends and family via social media.
He also mixes in popular culture (American Horror Story) along with horror books that reference some of the hauntings that he provides more details on for readers.
I already said that I loved Dickey's look into the Salem Witch Trials by looking further at the "House of Seven Gables". I also loved his foray into Richmond, VA and it's ugly history of selling slaves. Heck, I loved Dickey for calling out the fact that it's weird in locations with a huge minority population or slaves, most of the ghosts were white. And or most of the hauntings surrounding women who were slaves, made them the aggressors (stealing a white man who was married) from the poor unsuspecting wife.
Dickey writes a book that is unflinching about what was, what is, and what could be our future as a country when it comes to how we all will be portrayed after our deaths.
He also turns a cynical eye towards so called ghost hunters who have morphed from an eclectic group of people who were interested in the history of a place, to people who are trying to gain some fame through reality television. And I loved that Dickey also debunked some of the hauntings in the book. show less
I don't know what to say. This was a really well researched and thought out book by Colin Dickey. He provides enough information that made me want to do my own digging and research into some of the homes and other locations he mentions in this book. What I really do enjoy that there is something of an anthropologist/historian in Dickey's work that I really enjoyed. Besides looking show more at the supposed hauntings, he goes into backstories that would have led to a person or persons to believe a haunting was occurring.
This book goes into what I would call typical hauntings of homes, to hauntings of cemeteries, hotels, brothels (Mustang Ranch), cities, battlefields, and even a bridge. And the book wraps things up about how our next form of being haunted can be via social media. I personally remember being surprised one day when Facebook popped up with a memory of me with a friend who had passed away. I remember flinching and just feeling sad and hurt all over again about her passing away. It didn't even occur to me that one day, I too could be a ghost of sorts, haunting my friends and family via social media.
He also mixes in popular culture (American Horror Story) along with horror books that reference some of the hauntings that he provides more details on for readers.
I already said that I loved Dickey's look into the Salem Witch Trials by looking further at the "House of Seven Gables". I also loved his foray into Richmond, VA and it's ugly history of selling slaves. Heck, I loved Dickey for calling out the fact that it's weird in locations with a huge minority population or slaves, most of the ghosts were white. And or most of the hauntings surrounding women who were slaves, made them the aggressors (stealing a white man who was married) from the poor unsuspecting wife.
Dickey writes a book that is unflinching about what was, what is, and what could be our future as a country when it comes to how we all will be portrayed after our deaths.
He also turns a cynical eye towards so called ghost hunters who have morphed from an eclectic group of people who were interested in the history of a place, to people who are trying to gain some fame through reality television. And I loved that Dickey also debunked some of the hauntings in the book. show less
The Unidentified: Mythical Monsters, Alien Encounters, and Our Obsession with the Unexplained by Colin Dickey
I admit it. I’m one of those people who are charmed or intrigued by the thought that Yetis or Sasquatches exist, that there really are sea serpents, or that aliens really do visit our planet in spaceships. Why?
I think Colin Dickey is onto the right direction for answering the question. Our world has become ordinary by being understood. We don’t understand everything, but we are assured that whatever there is out there at least CAN be understood, given time, resources, and smart show more scientists. Dickey recalls Max Weber’s term, “disenchantment,” to characterize this attitude.
The Sasquatches, Yetis, sea serpents, and aliens don’t fit that world. That’s what’s attractive about them. They represent the possibility that, no, we don’t understand, and maybe we can’t and never will understand everything. They are the unknown, maybe the unknowable in the midst of the mundane, what Dickey calls “the unidentifiable.”
There’s a sweet spot for these kinds of things. A sweet spot for maintaining curiosity and charisma. It seems to lie in the valley between what can be definitively confirmed and what can be definitively disconfirmed. The tantalizing “evidence” — the grainy pictures of UFOs or ghosts, the repressed memories recovered under hypnosis, the footprint captured in the snow or the forest — it all gives us enough to believe, not enough to confirm, and nothing that would provide a true critical test. A good “unidentifiable” has to live in that gray zone.
It’s a delicate balance that can easily be upset unless the thing is just right. Things that don’t meet the criteria get selected out and lose their intrigue.
Sasquatch is a good candidate. We have tantalizing evidence — first hand accounts of encounters, footprints, indecisive photographs. And there’s a kind of intuitive appeal. Why should humans be the only surviving line that branched away from the apes? Couldn’t others still exist in remote environments? These are things to hang belief on.
Maybe best of all, it’s pretty hard to prove they don’t exist. We haven’t looked everywhere, and they could be just the types of creatures that are very good at avoiding contact.
A perfect balance. We can believe what evidence we have, or we can turn skepticism into dogmatic rejection, or we can find our balance in the gray zone. Dickey quotes anthropologist Don Abbot speaking about the existing video purporting to show a creature like Sasquatch or Bigfoot — “It is about as hard to believe the film is faked as it is to admit such a creature really lives.” Perfect.
It may take some work, though, to keep a candidate in the gray zone. And things might get ugly. Factual claims, e.g., that a saucer-like spaceship with aliens aboard crashed near Roswell, New Mexico, and that its remains are kept in a secret government facility, are subject to at least some degree of empirical scrutiny. But if the government opens its hands to show them empty or issues a report, that’s just more evidence that they are hiding something. The “unidentified” phenomenon broadens into a conspiracy. And belief in it doesn’t diminish, it hardens.
That merger of anti-government conspiracy with UFO (and other) beliefs is a rough one — now the government is hiding something from us, an agenda we need to know about.
Things did take an ugly turn here. We went from strange lights in the sky and the intriguing possibility that they just might be visitors from elsewhere to an oppressive government conspiracy to hide the truth and pursue some nefarious agenda. And the scope of that agenda grew out of control. Its scope-creep wouldn’t stop. It’s not just the aliens, like reptilian alien creatures that control the US government — if such things were true, why not also believe that the New World Order is using a pizza restaurant as a front for child pornography or sexual slavery. Only the naive think that a pizza restaurant is just a pizza restaurant.
When the going gets ugly, the ugly turn pro.
That’s more than unfortunate, because I think there’s a good side to the “unidentifiable" that is worth preserving, for the sake of our humility. Maybe the gray zone should have some permanent inhabitants, or a permanent in-flow of new inhabitants to replace the ones that get outed.
In fact I think it would be unfortunate if we were to definitively resolve the status of Sasquatch, the Yetis, the sea serpents, and the aliens in their spaceships, to remove them from the gray zone and either confirm them as real or explain definitively that they aren’t and why people have been mistaken about them. When they live in the gray zone, they may be at their best, reminding us to be humble.
One thing I have to add by way of criticism about the book is its lack of pictures or illustrations of any kind. When talking about so many instances of blurry or grainy photos, old newspaper accounts, heroes of the popular culture of UFOs, etc., it would be nice to see what they look like. In some cases, maybe there are problems with rights, say to photographs published elsewhere. Still that would have added to the experience Dickey gives us, as good as I think it is as it stands. show less
I think Colin Dickey is onto the right direction for answering the question. Our world has become ordinary by being understood. We don’t understand everything, but we are assured that whatever there is out there at least CAN be understood, given time, resources, and smart show more scientists. Dickey recalls Max Weber’s term, “disenchantment,” to characterize this attitude.
The Sasquatches, Yetis, sea serpents, and aliens don’t fit that world. That’s what’s attractive about them. They represent the possibility that, no, we don’t understand, and maybe we can’t and never will understand everything. They are the unknown, maybe the unknowable in the midst of the mundane, what Dickey calls “the unidentifiable.”
There’s a sweet spot for these kinds of things. A sweet spot for maintaining curiosity and charisma. It seems to lie in the valley between what can be definitively confirmed and what can be definitively disconfirmed. The tantalizing “evidence” — the grainy pictures of UFOs or ghosts, the repressed memories recovered under hypnosis, the footprint captured in the snow or the forest — it all gives us enough to believe, not enough to confirm, and nothing that would provide a true critical test. A good “unidentifiable” has to live in that gray zone.
It’s a delicate balance that can easily be upset unless the thing is just right. Things that don’t meet the criteria get selected out and lose their intrigue.
Sasquatch is a good candidate. We have tantalizing evidence — first hand accounts of encounters, footprints, indecisive photographs. And there’s a kind of intuitive appeal. Why should humans be the only surviving line that branched away from the apes? Couldn’t others still exist in remote environments? These are things to hang belief on.
Maybe best of all, it’s pretty hard to prove they don’t exist. We haven’t looked everywhere, and they could be just the types of creatures that are very good at avoiding contact.
A perfect balance. We can believe what evidence we have, or we can turn skepticism into dogmatic rejection, or we can find our balance in the gray zone. Dickey quotes anthropologist Don Abbot speaking about the existing video purporting to show a creature like Sasquatch or Bigfoot — “It is about as hard to believe the film is faked as it is to admit such a creature really lives.” Perfect.
It may take some work, though, to keep a candidate in the gray zone. And things might get ugly. Factual claims, e.g., that a saucer-like spaceship with aliens aboard crashed near Roswell, New Mexico, and that its remains are kept in a secret government facility, are subject to at least some degree of empirical scrutiny. But if the government opens its hands to show them empty or issues a report, that’s just more evidence that they are hiding something. The “unidentified” phenomenon broadens into a conspiracy. And belief in it doesn’t diminish, it hardens.
That merger of anti-government conspiracy with UFO (and other) beliefs is a rough one — now the government is hiding something from us, an agenda we need to know about.
Things did take an ugly turn here. We went from strange lights in the sky and the intriguing possibility that they just might be visitors from elsewhere to an oppressive government conspiracy to hide the truth and pursue some nefarious agenda. And the scope of that agenda grew out of control. Its scope-creep wouldn’t stop. It’s not just the aliens, like reptilian alien creatures that control the US government — if such things were true, why not also believe that the New World Order is using a pizza restaurant as a front for child pornography or sexual slavery. Only the naive think that a pizza restaurant is just a pizza restaurant.
When the going gets ugly, the ugly turn pro.
That’s more than unfortunate, because I think there’s a good side to the “unidentifiable" that is worth preserving, for the sake of our humility. Maybe the gray zone should have some permanent inhabitants, or a permanent in-flow of new inhabitants to replace the ones that get outed.
In fact I think it would be unfortunate if we were to definitively resolve the status of Sasquatch, the Yetis, the sea serpents, and the aliens in their spaceships, to remove them from the gray zone and either confirm them as real or explain definitively that they aren’t and why people have been mistaken about them. When they live in the gray zone, they may be at their best, reminding us to be humble.
One thing I have to add by way of criticism about the book is its lack of pictures or illustrations of any kind. When talking about so many instances of blurry or grainy photos, old newspaper accounts, heroes of the popular culture of UFOs, etc., it would be nice to see what they look like. In some cases, maybe there are problems with rights, say to photographs published elsewhere. Still that would have added to the experience Dickey gives us, as good as I think it is as it stands. show less
This book is a travelogue of haunted places in the United States, but it's not the anthology of creepy stories you may expect. While the author is skeptical of ghosts and hauntings, this is also not a work of debunking. Instead it's a deeper analysis of the stories as folklore that explain the hidden parts of the human psyche as well as how Americans deal with the past (or more commonly, how we hide from it).
Stops on his tour include places known for traumatic events and exploitation, such show more as brothels, prisons, ayslums, and even hotels. Dickey visits several cities that have made an industry of monetizing their traumatic history as ghost stories for tourists, including Salem, Savannah, and New Orleans. These stories can sanitize past tragedies while clearing us of wrongdoing. Then there's the message of the ruin porn of Detroit where the message is that someone's hubris is definitely to blame, although that may also be a deferral.
In short, one may open a book of ghost stories and find oneself reading a social justice critique of the United States instead. And a good one at that.
Favorite Passages:
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Stops on his tour include places known for traumatic events and exploitation, such show more as brothels, prisons, ayslums, and even hotels. Dickey visits several cities that have made an industry of monetizing their traumatic history as ghost stories for tourists, including Salem, Savannah, and New Orleans. These stories can sanitize past tragedies while clearing us of wrongdoing. Then there's the message of the ruin porn of Detroit where the message is that someone's hubris is definitely to blame, although that may also be a deferral.
In short, one may open a book of ghost stories and find oneself reading a social justice critique of the United States instead. And a good one at that.
Favorite Passages:
"... all of these stories, in one way or another, respond to history. Ghost stories like this are a way for us to revel in the open wounds of the past while any question of responsibility for that past blurs, then fades away." - p. 48
"If the Kirkbride asylums are haunted, they are haunted by the difference between how history is conceived and how it plays out." - p. 185
"Surely ghosts will follow wherever there is bad record keeping.” - p. 200
"Ghosts stories, for good or ill, are how cities make sense of themselves: how they narrate the tragedies of their past, weave cautionary tales for the future. " - p. 248
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- Works
- 6
- Also by
- 4
- Members
- 1,591
- Popularity
- #16,217
- Rating
- 3.7
- Reviews
- 76
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