S06E02 👻 Haunted by Memory: Ghost Stories of the American Civil War

Blake and Karen welcome historian Dr. Amy Laurel Fluker of Youngstown State University to discuss Haunted by Memory, an annotated anthology of ghost stories drawn from the newspapers, veterans' papers, and periodicals of the Civil War generation. The project began with her late mentor, Dr. John R. Neff, who stumbled onto his first Civil War ghost story while reading veterans' obituaries. When Neff died in 2020, his family asked Fluker to carry his work to the finish line.

These aren't the ghost lights and phantom hitchhikers of modern battlefield tours. They're stories that ran alongside battle reports and stock prices, told by the people who lived through the war. What did these ghosts want? Why did a Union veterans' newspaper print a tale of soldiers burying their enemy? And how did ghost lore become a weapon after the war ended?

Extended notes at Monstertalk.org

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