Transcripts For CSPAN2 Colin Dickey Ghostland 20171029

Bear with me. Number one, please silence cell phones obviously unless you are looking for a haubted one haunted one and have no control. After this event, this is the last event. Finally, chance for questions and we really, really ask you to use the microphone we have right here because cspan is here recording and our videographer is recording. Its a whole new development, it looks amazing, really cool, so go down there and check us out. If you live in southwest and you can prove it in anyway, show your id to one of bookstores and youll get a sixmonth trial membership which is really, really convenient because the present giving time is coming up and you can check website for information. We have events there starting next week, so finally im very excited to introduce colin dicky. This is not obviously his first into strange and unusual things, hes written two books and he also has short essays in the new republic, quarterly and contributes to la review books. How many of we here on thursday for caitlin . Okay. Well, colin is a member of good death which is a collective creative types and people who deal with death professionally and they are trying to change the way we think about death and deal with it, if you dont know who they are look them up because they did really, really good work. I picked up ghostland and what i didnt expect is to be quite hit me quite of hard as in an emotional level. Service as much about the living than the dead and colin is really good at adding layers of social and historical commentary to think about why we make both stories, both myths and what that says about our mind set, history and who we are and im not going to say much more about it. Im just going to say pick up a copy and also beautiful book which you can use as halloween decoration, please join me in welcoming colin dickey. [applause] thanks, everybody, for coming out and thanks for politics and prose for hosting me, this is your fourth and fifth event. You really packed it in today, so thank you for bearing with me. You mentioned friday the 13th, i didnt actually prepare anything so i cant give you the full story but yall should look into the history of friday the 13th, for many years the number 13 was superstitious and friday was superstitious and the two were combined in 1906 viral marketing campaign. Im doing for memory, double check the year. A guy who had a pump and dump stock market scheme and wrote a book to tie into it and in order to drive up book sales he created the whole myth around friday the 13th, thats why friday the 13th became a thing, so thats a fun thing. Thats not what we are here to talk about tonight. So i will talk generally and maybe read and maybe chitchat and take turns sitting in the haunted chair. So i did this isnt in the book but i want to talk about why we are here now in october because i think this is just one of those cool things that we dont think too much about. I have, of course, want to talk about ghost and haunted stuff all year round but for most of American Culture october is the month and this is the thing that has not always been the case and i was thinking about how relevant, the holiday associated with telling ghost stories and haunted stuff is of course, Christmas Eve. Its not halloween. And, in fact, of course, if you think about the most famous like christmas story that we have is, of course, a ghost story, christmas carroll, conversely the most famous ghost story is a christmas story. That for many years Christmas Eve was when we gathered as a culture and gathered around the fireplace and told ghost stories and i will read a couple of paragraphs from this humorous page who put together a collection of ghost stories in 1880s and talks a little bit about Christmas Eve that i just love. Why on Christmas Eve of all nights in the year i could never myself understand, it is one of the nights to be out there, cold, muddy and wet, at christmas time everybody has quite enough to put up in the way of a household of living relations without wanting the ghost of any dead ones mooning about the place. There must be something ghostly in the air of christmas, something about the close muggy atmosphere that draws up the ghost like the dampness of the summer rains that brings out frogs and snails, but whenever five or six englishspeaking people meet around a fire on Christmas Eve, they start telling each other ghost stories, nothing satisfies us on Christmas Eve but to tell anecdotes about specters, Festive Season and we love to muis upon graves and dead bodies and murderers and blood. Thats jarome. Irish and scottish immigrants, that starting in the second half of 19th century they bring halloween which is sort of catholic holiday. It comes through irish and scottish and so you see advertisements in 1860 in philadelphia for advertisements and you can hear dreamy tales, the idea that halloween is when you would hear folk tale and goblins from scotland and ireland. One of the things thats fascinating, scottish immigrant associations and cultural associations by the end of the 19th century they are trying to divest halloween from its sort of superstitious and they want to make it they want to sort trying to force it into the idea that halloween would be kind of Scottish Cultural holiday where we celebrate scottish culture and what i find really fascinating the way that sort of backfires, we dont lose the superstitious aspect of halloween, we lose the cultural specificity. That sort of nonceltic immigrants, the rest of americans try to say, we dont want this holiday as commemoration of ireland and scotland, we want it for ourselves so becomes sort of a universal sort of spooky holiday. And so you know, every every halloween, you know, i think again about our current discourse about immigrant culture and assimilation and without obviously minimizing the discrimination that Muslim Americans or, you know, mexican immigrants are facing right now. The history of halloween suggests pretty strongly that 100 years from now americans are going to be celebrating dia de los muertos and we will think nothing of it. So i think of halloween as a time it sort of representative in the way in which we have successfully imgreated an imgraint culture into the fabric of america and how thats pretty cool. So anyway, thats the win, right, thats why we are talking about it now. But as i said, this book can be enjoyed year round. Dont restrict yourself in the next couple of weeks. Great for st. Patricks day, fourth of july holiday. Anybody know the Winchester Mystery House . A couple of people. I grew up down the street of winchester house, the most Haunted House in america. Sarah winchester, i guess theres a movie coming out in february about her. Was the daughterinlaw that founded the Winchester Company and her child died in infancy and husband tied of tuberculosis. She moved out from new heaven, connecticut to california and turned it into this sprawling 161 room victorian and if you have taken the tour, it takes two hours to walkthrough the house and the story that you got on the tour and she became convinced that her family was cursed by anyone who had ever been killed by winchester rifle and that she was building the house to keep the spirits at bay and as i did the research, i found out that the last little bit i told you, the reason for the house is actually not doesnt track well in historical record, the historical record suggests something quite different and that this idea of a woman live ago loan and being haunted of spirits of people who had been killed by the winchester rifle, the gun that won the west was, in fact, more of a invention and projection and i start today think about the way in which that story, while maybe not historically accurate reflects sort of fundamental myths and stories about america that have been brought together in this figure, this one woman, a woman who lives alone and never remarries and discomfort that our mailoriented culture has about woman live ago loan, has about woman who are not sort of pegged to husbandfather, children, whatever. That her presence at spencer creates uns unease and people look for explanations for that. The story of a gun that was instrumental in the displacement an genocide of American Cultures and sort of way in which Sarah Winchester has come to be the kind of collective mourner for that, she sort of exists for some people to bear the burden of that historical stain that most of us like people just sort of take for granted. So shes sort of becomes the figure and the house becomes this this way for all the sort of folk tale to express anxieties that, you know, different kinds of americans have about our culture and thats what really sort of drove the book, the idea of what i wanted to do is look at these ghost stories, less with the question of do i personally believe that ghosts do or do not exists which is kind of a like theres a no win, no way to win that conversation, you know, theres nothing you can tell a believer that would disabuse them of the notion that exists and theres nothing you can tell a skeptic that will prove to them. So im going to sidestep that entirely. Rather the stories that we tell about ghosts and what are the buildings that we see as haunted, what did those then tell us about ourselves, i guess, is one way to put it. Thats what the book became and what it is today and what youll walk out of here tonight holding for the low price of 17 plus tax. So so, okay, thats the main thing and i try to go around the country, i try to visit different kinds of places. I went to a haunted hotels, i went to haunted prisons, asylums, a haunted brothel, not as customer, but i tried to see as many places and gather up as many stories and throughout the country and i did not make it to dc unfortunately, so i have for you tonight no stories of haunted dc which im kind of bumped about but ive got a close second in richmond, virginia, im not going to be able to read the whole thing because we will be here all night so i will just kind of move around a little bit and hopefully if i have done my Due Diligence itll be interesting. This is about richmond, virginia. Hopefully itll be about ten minutes. We will see. Lets have some water first. [laughter] thats the ticket. There are ghosts everywhere in the neighborhood of richmond, virginia, the upscale restaurants thought to be haunted in gun smith apprentice named daniel, his boss shot over disagreement while climbing the stairs, the staircases was later convert intoed a storage closet but employees report hearing hee thump of a body falling down the stairs falling from time to time. The cantina is now closed but in hay day it was home to bikini contest, in the spirit of fishmonger. At the train station, they have heard footsteps and next door pub is haunted by several ghosts, another a man often seen in the kitchen and similarly unknown. Over on east carri street, the street is supposedly built on the side of a bratel that dates lack to early 1800s, on the upper floors, dresses wander and staff are known to hear their names called only to turn and find no one there. Its hard to find a building that doesnt have a ghost story attached to it. Which makes sense so long as we all agree that by settlements we really mean settlements of european, the kinds of ghost you look for and the kinds of ghosts you see depend on your frame of reference. For when i begin to tally the super natural record of the area of the heart of richmond, a simple fact emerged, the ghost are overwhelmingly white. This is curious because if you walk away from the haunted bars and shops down by the freeway, the devils, for decades black men and children were brought here imprisoned and tortured while they waited to be sold to planters and speculators, dozen of slave traders had offices here and men came from all over the south to make fortunes on the backs of those enslaved. Tens of thousands of members and women changed hands here in the years leading up to the civil war. All the activity on wall street, today wall street has gone replaced, the rest of the area remains mostly and while its difficult how many people lost their lives in the bottom, hundreds of sets of humans remain have been found in this slave burial ground. Terrible injustice, nothing but a white ghost. For once you start looking for ghost that is arent white, they are easy to find, maybe not in shock bottom itself but tony morrison, not a house in the country that aint packed with death negros grief, workers under the Work Progress Administration began collecting stories of former sleighs, everything from recollections of daytoday lives, questions about clothing, medicine and firsthand accounts of slave mistreatment. Stories compiled from 17 states from indiana to florida accelerated with urgency once it became clear that the firsthand accounts were quickly disappearing, for more than twothirds of respondents were in their 80s from 1936 to 1938. Americas understanding of slavery had been with nostalgia, involving slaves and owners that emphasized life by harris uncle folk tale which became the song for disney song of the south. Narrative collected by the wepa thought a more neutral approach, allow today speak in voices, those interviewed offered a version of the landscape. Interviewers were given a list of questions to ask and one of them, number 13, asked specifically about ghosts. Respondents remembered the songs had she learned about raw head and bloody bones and he personally seen any ghosts, answers to the questions, whites intimidating them aster asp terrifying things. Jane of North Carolina told worker john may, beaten to death by two white men bill stone and oliver may. After his death, she reported, john may came back and worried both of them. He kept them awake, hollering and got so bad because of the ghost of john worried them so bad. George spoke of haunted benton hill in missouri. He we wanted to stop and see what it was but i said, no you dont, drive on. You dont know what that might be. Cautionary tales, a woman recalled that she and peers would see a wagon in tallahassee in secluded spot, might have been attempted to approach wag wagon, who didnt like children. Wagon was in fact, owned by slave hunters, her parents and others had invented the ghost as means of protecting them. A man named thomas lewis of indiana once described a place where theres a high sense that was haunted. He says, if someone gets near, he can hear the cries of black people that were beaten to death, its kept secret so people dont find out. Such places are always fenced to keep them secret. Two men were out haunting and their dog began chasing something, running through the fence after as one of the men started to follow, his friend said, what are you going to do, other replied, i want to see, you better stay out of there. That place is haunted of black people that were beaten to death. One haunted tobacco factory that no slave would go near after night fall. You could hear the lever all night long and voices, again and again these ghost stories revolve around threatened connection to the past, ghosts emerge and one woman in tennessee saw a ghost of a woman appear before her while she was giving birth, she called out, who are you, the ghost replied, dont forget the old folks and vanished. She realized it was the ghost of her own mother. A man identified of uncle lewis spoke of ghosts, ghosts he claimed are sociable and want to stay near living people. When folks get scared it hurts the haunt ceilings, if slave owners thought then ghosts like the one uncle lewis saw made themselves their own path. Folk, fast distinction between ghost stories told by whites and the black community. There are stories of black ghosts that serve the same function as white ghosts, marking the location, explaining the unexplainable and commemorating event. What is clear that history is not just written by the victims but the literate, had immediate purpose of denying agency and keeping them under control. In the long run it also meant that the stories, lives and opinions of americans were lost at time. Ghost stories theoretically should be antidote to this based on oral tradition and handed out for the years outside of purview and does act as alternative history, record of the oppressed and the marginalized. Showed that this is isnt always the case, precisely because ghost sitings are so vague, they can easily be attached to the dominant narrative and only that narrative. Once one of the main economic engines of the south, now feels real commerce. Far from the universities it doesnt attract much in the way of nightlife field, not for lack of trying. Half a dozen bars, pizza, a couple of baked shop, a few nightclubs. So its not to say to revitalize the area. Downtown adjacent to the devils half acre, meant to drive a new life in town, the plants succeeding from preservationists and massive construction project would obliterate after project was announced, team funded by commission, set out to understood cover once and for all through careful study of maps they located where complex one stood beneath freeway. In december 2018, excavation work by the James River Institute for archaeology, while the team didnt find implements torture, whipping rings, iron chains what they did find unexpected hints of live, table ware, china, reminiscence of a porcelain doll. How does the city balance commerce with remembrance. They had a festive petina to bars and restaurants, mystery and glamor, they invite you to spend the evening just out of reach to add small wonder to average night out. What they dont do is speak to a past whose legacy can still traumatize, they dont ask the patrons of night life to consider a complicated history and white citizens to face difficult facts. The citys ghost lord makes it easy turning our attention to murdered gun smith and prostitutes, thats not to say that they are other ghosts present. The chairwoman of slave commission, i started weeping and i couldnt find when porcelain were discovered. I felt a bond. A heaviness that i felt over and over again. I will stop there. [applause] but if you want to ask questions and sit in the chair or see if we can levitate books across the room. You mentioned halloween at the beginning and how it grew in this country, why doesnt taken off the same way since everyone looks they start selling halloween stuff in august, you would think they would look for another holiday like that . Yeah, you think although, as i was saying before, christmas used to double as holiday and once halloween became ubiquitous and came to be about santa and parens, stuff like that. I sometimes wonder, i dont know that i have a hard and fast answer for you because its hard to say for sure, i sometimes wonder as much as we need like one holiday about ghosts and goblins, that we as a culture at least the mainstream nonweirdos, you know, only they only need one, theres not that same sort of need for a bunch of different holidays that halloween is sort of like stocked up all the feeling into one. I guess thats the short answer and even shorter answer, i dont know how mark. You know, its a weird thing, but, yeah, its odd that some things will catch on and then become sort of kind of cultural does it seem like maybe and im just winging here, its too dangerous, too close, maybe something to do with that . Could be. I mean, you know, has anybody seen meet me in st. Louis, my grandmother would make us watch all of the time because you guys know my grandmother . Its from the 1940s but 1904 and theres a great scene in halloween where the little girl, she has to go murder somebody and murdering somebody showing up at the door of your neighbor knocking on the door and they open you say i hate you mrs. Johnson and you throw flour in their face and you say i murdered mrs. Johnson, the cultural change through time and we didnt always have candy. It does sort of evolve through the years, i guess, so what is your favorite ghost story that did not make it into the book . One of the stories that i really liked that i really wish i could have gotten in the book is a haunted drivein honolulu, hawaii, which has been substance subsequently torn down and drivein in hawaii. I wanted to be able to go to hawaii on my publishers dime, the story is that there was a bathroom in this drivein, the womans bathroom where you would go in and there would be a woman who was washing her hands at the sink, right, with long, long black hair and then at some point she would turn around to face you and she had like no face, right, it was like white, pure skin, right. So that was the hawaiian drivein bathroom ghost and if you know anything about Japanese Culture and films, if you have seen spirited away, thats actually very common ghost in japan, the noface ghost, its something thats like a longstanding part of japanese tradition. That makes a lot of sense of hawaii because so much culture comes from japan and asia so it would make sense that all of all the places in the United States that would have a japanese ghost, it would be in the place sort of straddled in the middle of Pacific Ocean that straddled the u. S. And asia. I love the story because its a clear reflection of the way that ghosts tend to be sort of cultural specific that in japan a very normal ghost and you dont find it anywhere except in hawaii, so that i just kind of ran out of time and space and money so that one didnt get in the book u i kind of wish it was, so you mentioned that you traveled across the country looking for ghostrelated areas. Is there an area that surprised you was how large of a ghost culture there was in terms of understanding the local history . Yeah, i mean, one of my default assumptions and assumption that a lot of us make, the older city, new orleans is going to have a lot of ghosts. Vegas wont have as many ghosts, la wont have many ghosts. This turns out not to be true. I lived to la for 14 years. I knew Ghost Hunters and i knew a lot of the locations but i loved how rich a place like la is with ghosts even though its quarter isnt as old as richmond and new orleans. In la, you are going to find wild west ghosts, youre going to find halloween starlets, marilyn monroe, and so the ghost stories had a city will tell really do become a part of how that city tells its own history, so that, you know, whereas in vegas, of course, all the ghosts are in casinos. Its very much about the architecture of the casino which is unique to vegas and thus vegas sort of creates a very different category of costs than las ghosts or, you know, new yorks ghosts or Something Like that. Thats kind of what i found on that score. I know you just talked about japan, such a unique concept, actually talk about culture in terms of ghost stories, have you ever put any thought into ghost stories outside of American Culture like anything from like europe, africa . Yeah, and the thing that you get a lot of people to call my editor and tell her that they need to fund a Worldwide Travel and like probably three or four books. No, i mean, in some ways im joking, at some point i had to cut it off or else this would be an endless project. The United States was one way of being able to say, so much of this is culture and this is about the ghost of the United States felt very natural to me whereas with japanese ghosts i know something about it because ive studied in research but it would be a different approach because it would be clearly an outsider and so i would love to, its just ran out of space and stuff like that. You spoke about the idea of culture and the differences. Do you find besides being dead, do you find commonality that whe they emerge everywhere or submerge under regional differences . Yeah, i definitely found commonalities. Architecture itself and why some buildings feel haunted and others dont, you know, and why do victorian houses feel haunted whereas like architecture doesnt feel haunted. Like one of the things i found was that there is a commonality in the way that certain buildings like work on us in a way, you know, i mentioned before the Winchester Mystery House because it feels elaborate and disoriented and you have been in so many houses, thousands of houses, so you know when you walk into a house, you know where the kitchen is even though you have never been there before. We build houses in the same way, when you walk into a house and the kitchen is in some weird place, right, the bathroom is oddly space, you know, youll figure it out where theres a moment where thats weird and, again, in addition, one of the things that fostered this book when my wife and i were looking for a house in la and western looking at newly built house that was oddly constructed so you would walk in the living room and the window out in the the backyard or another room behind it and youre like, why is there a window from one room, so i really got to think about the way in which unsettling architecture sort of tends breed goes and thats a commonality that i found throughout the country and, you know, like whenever youre in house that feels a little bit odd, the odd ghost stories attached to it are pretty high. Followup, you dealt with a lot of communities in your book which i had a chance to read in hard back so i have to buy it tonight. Thank you. [laughter] the idea of it, have you followed up have any particular site from that Book Increased . I mean, it amazes me how much money there is in ghosts, washington has it, very well done, so i wondered if anybody that had gotten back to you and knew anything . If they did i would ask for a cut. Thats probably why. Its a multilevel marketed scheme, i get it. Yeah. Hello. Hi. I cently took a ghost town of georgetown and big house there that made mentioned the when i know winchester house. What did you find as terms of what was the real story . You know, i try and kind of keep that a little close to the vest so that people go out and buy the book, but i like you guys, fun audience, youre hanging out. One of the fascinating things about the winchester story is we talked to historians, historians know a lot about rich people because rich people write letters, they keep dairies, they have stuff, the stuff gets passed down, its nicely made, they have large houses, the houses get preserved and rich people leave behind a legacy and in a lot of cases historians struggle with poor people because poor people move around a lot and theyre maybe not literate and one of the weird things about Sarah Winchester was that she was so fabulously rich yet we know much less about her than like historians would expect an upperclass woman like that. We have some letters and we have some document we have a lot of letters between her and her lawyer. We have some letters between her and her sisterinlaw which are really give you a glimpse. Its painful and you get so much in the letter. Only we have more. And i have my theories as to why we dont have more, but what we do know that she she was not in anyway crazy or, you know, roaming around the house mourning in black, we know that no none of her employees which he she had many, never told she was crazy, so we have no positive evidence of any of that and considering the fact when you think about the people who worked with her, if she was really doing all these saiances, what we do know she was not a professional architect because they werent allowed to go to school until 1890s, earliest. , we know that she was a selftaught architect. For me, i see her as many folk artists, be they working and working who just sort of take it upon themselves to develop a craft and craft as architect, i see that whereas some people make these elaborate quotes and theyve never been to art school and she had the means to just play around in making a house and so the way that she describes building the house is shell say, you know, i had this hallway and out of this room and blocked out all the skylights and they are tripping down the hallway because its dark, i have to redo that. She tried something out and then it would have all unintended consequences that would lead to other things. So thats kind of the best i can i can give and i understand its extremely unsexy compared to the haunted widows chasing ghosts but the flip side of this is thats a really cool art practice that doesnt get recognized as such. Shes pathological and crazy and doing weird stuff, then the house is a manifestation of psychosis, a selftaught artist, the house is manifestation of craft and her work. I think thats a cooler story in some ways even if it doesnt tell sell as many tickets. Yeah, exactly. Yeah. So thanks so much for your talk tonight and i was wondering about what you think the future of ghost stories looks like . You have the oldtimey vibe with technology, with more way to verify things and history and everything, what do you think the future looks like . Is it good or bad . I ended the book talking about a friend of mine whose father was a really influential product manager of computers, he was on the forefront of the mini computer revolution of late 80s and early 80s, he was a technological kind of innovator and his house which he sort of built in the sort of early to mid2000s was an early example of what we are now referring to as the internet of things, so he had the light switch is automated, they were set up to follow his rhythms and stuff like that, he had elaborate Computer System controlling temperature and the water and all this stuff. So after he died, in, i think, 2010, his two daughters sort of inherited the house and again, as you can imagine, the Computer Systems from like 2007 are already like obsolete. So the two women had difficulty figuring out how to shut things on and turn things on and the house continue today live in the rhythms of its departed owner. So tom west had taught himself to go to bed at 10 00 because if it was not good for himself to stay up late. At 10 00 oclock all the lights just go out and the computer that control it is lights is buried in a wall behind drywall with no easy access and written in the computer code that is totally bugged out and doesnt work, so now if you live in the house, you go to bed at 10 00. [laughter] you know, this is the problem that they had, they could not overcome the houses inertia. Thats one of the ways in which i see the future of ghosts is running through the technological systems that are increasingly going to run our lives, the ghosts are a function of in some ways the memory out of control and that is very much how internet works. Its how media works. I got a notification from facebook, facebook didnt understand that. So theres tall ways in which the ideas that sort of drive the future and continue to have ghosts that way. I wanted you to talk about many ghosts have to do with mental hospitals or architecture or stigma that Mental Illness is left in our culture . A little bit of both. I was interested in the architecture so and i was driving here, ive been driving across country researching another book and i was driving through West Virginia and middle of the night and im just going to stop at the asylum because who doesnt . I roll in at 10 00 oclock at night. Expecting it to be creepy and abandoned and theres like 40 people there because theres a midnight flashlight tour which is even sort of creepier than had been nobody there. So those asylums were built were welcoming and were meant to sort of look like a victorian home and because you paid to have your Family Member treated there and you wanted to feel as they were getting good treatment, right. And as those asylums decade over the years they got overcrowded. Treatment methods changed. So much became about what used to be welcoming and became a representative of aspects of how we create Mental Health issues in ways that people dont want to function and i guess thats maybe kind of shorthand version of what i talked about a lot in the book and its about the architecture, the way the buildings were built and how our intentions get coded into architecture in a way that last much longer than the intentions themselves, that we change our attitudes and culture attitudes much faster than our buildings actually fall down and so thats thats a legacy, same thing with victorian homes, same thing with fortress like prisons, that idea becomes hauned. Okay, you just answered part of my question because you focused on architecture, which means you did not do cemeteries. I did do cemeteries. I spent sometime in kansas, a mouth to hell, they say, devil appears to take the form of many drunk college kids and empty beer cans. The people of kansas are busy exercising themselves of who against than did you go to gray ghost . I dont know that im familiar with that. Whats the gray ghost . In the beach community, okay, i will tell you afterwards. All right. Awesome. Rich story. Im surprised you didnt i love it already. That saved a family during the hurricane. Okay. Cool. How were you defining ghosts, you know, in terms of separating from unsettled spirits from other dimensions . Loosely i was defining ghosts because, again, i was not interested in proving their existence or disproving their existence and when i was interviewing august hunters in la i would ask them what they thought and i got really varied explanations and they all believed in ghosts and had meters and stuff and what they claimed to be experiencing was wildly different and the one that really struck me is this one guy who told me that they are worm holds, that they are hes using cuttingedge astro physics to explain whats happening when you see a ghost is a temporary warm hole through time back to 1930 or whenever, momentarily opening when you get whatever. Its not that i believe or disbelief that but what made me sort of think about it in terms of the book, i didnt want to foreclose the possibility, i didnt want to verify it, i just wanted to say what im referring to as ghosts are whatever anybody wants to call a ghost, you know, however anybody wants to define it, again, i was more interested in the stories that got told about it and the place that is got associated than i was in a kind of on logical or lack thereof. Thats how i tried to because, again, we would be here all night if we were if we are going prove and disprove ghosts once and for all. This is a way of having the conversation without having to get into a loop of unanswerability. Thank you. I will close up. Im going to be the last person so that we are not here all night. Politics prose burned down 30 years ago. [laughter] it is actually haunted, so if you oh, cool. If you do do something on dc, come back. Okay. But you said so the most sort of haunted feeling you ever got, i think, was in the Mustang Ranch or Something Like that. Yeah. Sort of tied to psychological experience. My question is probably unanswerable, sort of a question of making up of ghost stories and what ghosts do you think we are going to make in this time, like where everything stops and we all kind of yeah, just some back story for those who will be reading the book [laughter] tomorrow, so i was sent by magazine to profile the owner of Mustang Ranch which i feel is important to say that i was not there as a client [laughter] so i was doing completely writing job when the women who worked said its totally haunted and one of the things they told me and saw firsthand is that the job of working at a brothel is emotionally and psychologically really you know, how much of your job is physical labor, i said 90 , they said its 100 . The women and thus the psychological exhaustion is quite high and very difficult job for many people and they dont have a lot of turnover because, i think, theyve gotten very good at picking good, you know, good people who will fit the job well but they did describe at length how its a very difficult job and not one for everybody. Thats where i was, that would make sense that people would see ghosts as expression of just emotional and psychological exhaustion, right, its like when you youre vulnerable, when you are sort of strung out and you have a really tough time, then you see something and youre more likely and kind of almost like a 19th century hysteria, more likely to sort of things and that was my hypothesis, but that was also where the only place in all the places i went where somebody did videos of things and i was like im looking at the video and im clearly not emotional attach today sex work, that was the background to that question. So, yeah, i guess to answer your question partly is that i dont i dont know that i believe the hypothesis. I dont necessarily it didnt bear out that people who were sort of at their most sort of extreme emotional were more likely to believe in or see ghosts than people who were more recharged. But as i was saying before, i mean, i think that one of the main drivers for ghost stories is really this idea of sort of memory out of control. When i think of this year, i think of how fast everything has happened and how quickly we have all been processing information and how how many things which take just time to work through are just being filed away because we dont have time, you know what i mean. I was watching cnn and a woman who had been in vegas, had been at the concert in vegas had survived, flown back home to her house in santa rosa which is now gone. You know, which has burned to the ground. And the cnn anchor was like have you processed this and she was like, no, thankfully right now theres just things to do. Now im just trying to do things and im not looking forward to that time when i actually have to process everything thats happened and i think i think that thats where the ghosts are the ghosts are going to come from Hurricane Harvey and Hurricane Irma and Hurricane Maria and the Northern California fire. They are going to come from all the things that are traumatic incidents that we as a culture havent dealt with because theres no time, its already on to the next thing. I think thats so thats also the future of american ghosts, i think, so thank you so much and just give colin a hand and thank you very much. I know its a saturday night. You could be out, thank you for coming. Fold up your chairs if you can and lean them against something and we will start the line at the left. [inaudible conversations] here is a look at upcoming book fairs and festivals happening around the country and next week at two state capitals look for us at wisconsin book festival and live at texas book festival in austin. The following week we will be at the National Press Club Book Fair and author night in washington, d. C. Then on november 15th, its the National Book awards in new york city and live from Miamidade College for the Miami Book Fair on november 18th and 19th featuring senator al frank en and many others, for more information and to watch previous festival coverage, click the book fairs tab on our website, booktv. Org. What do you think he would say . [laughter] [applause] thats a good question. Early on he went down to springfield to see if he might find a position in the union army and he wrote his father, he said, i will never participate in the kind of trading and ambition that these military officers are, thats not who i am. When he wrote to sherman after being elected president , i was force intoed it in spite of myself. We need more humility and more modesty and we need the ability to say i was wrong, i made a mistake, im willing to change and thats the vision for American Leadership that i think grant helps us to see. Being a career teacher specially in history and grant in terms of our worst president , like you said, probably because of second term. My question is, in terms of the reconstruction policy during his two terms u what kind of successes and failures did he have in terms, you know, if you place it in context of the whole reconstruction period and specially in terms of how he tried to help empower the free black men who were trying to basically restore, you know, some order in the south after civil war and, of course, some of the whites were not having that. Yes, thank you. Well, grant is actually rising, i participated for the first time in the cspan 2017 president ial survey, it was the third survey of the 21st century and each of the three surveys grant is rising as people recognize this and ten different categories by which you rank a president and the highest category for grant is social justice. He was ranked number 10 of all the american president s and thats because of his standing for the rights of african americans. So grant comes in to reconstruction with a very differential position, but then recognizes unsadly under Andrew Jackson he cant take that position, he cant cooperate with johnson, so he begins to be more politically astute to participate with republicans in congress to stand with them on the 13th, 14th and 15th amendments but then as they retreat, he wont retreat and the republicans will even say, let the south handle this. No, no, we have to deal with this. Thats one of the finest moments of grant when he steps forward to defend the rights of the free men. You can watch this and other programs online at booktv. Org. S next on booktvs after words former fox news host Gretchen Carlson discusses Sexual Harassment in the workplace. Shes. Shes interviewed by sally quinn, Washington Post columnist and on faith founding editor. Host so its good that we t