It was a dark and chilling night in 2006 when Michele Hanks, a Case Western Reserve University anthropologist and SAGES Fellow, waited for a ghost to appear.
She sat, knees to her chin, with a half-dozen people in the lightless upstairs room of the haunted Golden Fleece, a pub in York, England, on alert for the appearance of a spirit.
The Golden Fleece is among the many old castles, historic buildings, pubs and homes that have given York the distinction of being the most haunted city in the United Kingdom.
In time for Halloween 2014, Hanks’ new book, Haunted Heritage: The Cultural Politics of Ghost Tourism, Populism and the Past (Left Coast Press, 2014), provides an overview of sites like the Golden Fleece that are popular tourist attractions for visitors hoping for a chance encounter with a ghost.
Leaning against a bed in the room with strangers at the Golden Fleece, Hanks was nervous and unsure about what was ahead for her.
“I admit I was scared. I didn’t know who these people were,” said Hanks, who accompanied one of the 1,200 ghost hunter clubs in the U.K. for that site visit.
She had never seen a ghost, although her aunt had talked about seeing her grandfather on his birthday after he died.
Though she was hopeful a ghost would appear, her main purpose was to observe and record how ghost hunters or the paranormal investigators-scientists capture what they take to be credible information about sightings.
She noted what they did throughout the night with their digital recorders and cameras, along with technology to read environmental changes to the room’s temperature—an indication that a spirit was among them.
Hanks spent about two summers (2006 and 2007) and 18 months of long-term fieldwork (2008-2009) making similar observations and gathering core research information for her dissertation, “Between Belief and Science: Paranormal Investigators and the Production of Ghostly Knowledge in Contemporary England.” And she was so inspired by the public’s fascination with visiting haunted places that it became the subject of her new book.
The number of ghost hunter clubs in England prompted Hanks’ curiosity about the topic. She also wondered why so many people believe they have seen ghosts in their homes or places like Golden Fleece.
A 2003 poll by the market research firm Ipsos reported that 38 percent of Britons believed in ghosts. Likewise, a 2009 Pew Research report found that 18 percent of Americans say they have seen or encountered a ghost, and 29 percent report being in touch with the spirit of someone who has died.
Hanks neither believes nor denies the existence of ghosts, but is fascinated by those who are believers.
After waiting hours in the dark in the Golden Fleece and other haunted sites, she has yet to see a real ghost—but she still gets nervous thinking one might appear.
Learn more about Hanks’ research when she explores the social anthropology of “ghost tourism” with WCPN’s Sound of Applause host Dee Perry at 2 p.m. today.