This time of year, many dark themes become entertainment. Rather than join the revelry, Dr. Betsy Gaines Quammen wrote “This Haunted Land,” which digs into ghost stories and hauntings to examine some of America’s unsavory past. NWPB’s Connor Henricksen spoke with her.
Connor Henricksen: Dr. Betsy Gaines Quammen, thanks for joining me.
Dr. Betsy Gaines Quammen: Connor, thank you for having me.
Henricksen: We're in a season where ghosts and hauntings and things, they're treated as curiosity. A little bit of spooky fun. Your book treats them with more reverence, something consequential. How did you come around to this way of thinking?
Gaines Quammen: I love ghost stories. I have been collecting them since I was a little girl. And I realized that when I started writing this book, ghost stories became far more than just glimmers out of the corner of your eye or shadows.
Actually, the ghost stories had very heavy backstories. And I began to think about how ghost stories and hauntings are really reflections of America's unsettled past.
So these ghost stories began to really feel like ways to examine our unsettled and sometimes dark chapters. Chapters that right now, our current administration are actively trying to erase. So ghost stories and listening to ghosts became ever more important.
Henricksen: And you go beyond ghost stories. You talk about hauntings as being more than just that ghostly apparition, but a haunting being. Something that happens to the land or exists in a place. Can you explain that approach a little bit?
Gaines Quammen: Sure. I do have some good ghost stories. I've had a couple happen to me. I definitely believe in ghosts.
But I also think that things haunt our country in ways that we haven't yet come to terms with.
And I look at things like Indian boarding schools. I look at the years of slavery in this country and how that continues to haunt our nation. And I also talk about dam building and water, and what it's done to the salmon population, and what it's done to the availability of water. Mark Reisner explained in his book “Cadillac Desert” that the future of the West was haunted by water, but I really see it being haunted now.
Henricksen: Can you talk a bit about your experience heading up the Columbia River to the Grand Coulee Dam?
Gaines Quammen: Well, not only was it a beautiful drive, the dam is absolutely jaw-droppingly impressive. And I was able to talk to a man who had grown up in the area, and his father had been an engineer. He told me the ghost stories about the men buried in concrete. He believed that there was an underground lab, and he thought that maybe extraterrestrials were kept under there.
It was just interesting to hear about the imaginings of the community. That was an amazing couple of days that I spent there, considering how different cultures viewed the dam.
It was a heartbreak for the tribes to lose the salmon, to lose their culture, to lose their ritual, to lose the sacred nature of this place. It was dramatically changed with the dam that for white culture offered jobs. This was a new hope, a new opportunity to really reaffirm the idea of American exceptionalism.
Henricksen: Your first two books are focused on extremism in the Western U.S. This book is a pivot.
Gaines Quammen: Well, I'll tell you something, Connor. I wrote my first two books about Christian nationalism, about white supremacism, about extremism, about how the roots of Western rebellion found their way to Washington, D.C. on Jan. 6.
So I wanted to write about something a little less scary, and I chose ghosts.
Henricksen: And yet, you still find your way around to the traumatic histories of the U.S. and the things we do to our nation.
Gaines Quammen: I can't help myself, and I think it's really important for us to know it, especially at a time when this administration is actively removing signs from national parks, from national monuments. They're pushing the Smithsonian to whitewash uncomfortable history, and I think it's really, really incumbent upon us to listen to our ghosts so that we can face our history.
In fact, I think that's one of the most patriotic things we can do.
Henricksen: Betsy, thank you so much for your time.
Gaines Quammen: Oh my gosh, Connor, thank you so much for having me.
That was NWPB’s Connor Henricksen with Dr. Betsy Gaines Quammen. Her book, “This Haunted Land,” is out now through Torrey House Press.
This transcript has been edited for length and clarity.
