Gender, Heroes, and the Social Dynamics of Ghost Hunting

It is hard to ignore all these ghosts. There are the enormously popular ghost hunting television shows Ghost Hunters, Most Haunted, Medium, The Ghost Whisperer, and other very popular shows documenting and portraying hauntings and all manner of ghostly phenomena. Every state now has organized ghost hunting groups galore, and most tourist destinations and cities now offer ghost tours and walks. Bookstore shelves are packed with books about ghosts, mediumship, ghost hunting, and kitschy, free 'ghost detectors' are now available for cell phones.

Ghost hunting has become a full blown pop culture craze-and there is an entire industry built around it. But it's not necessarily all steeped in novelty or all in 'fun.' Those ideas and a notion of unbiased investigation sometimes become lost and self-proclaimed experts and authorities (i.e., demonologists) can take the ghost hunt into the realm of fanaticism, psychology or religion with their rigid belief systems and dubious constructs. What's going on? To find out, it may be helpful to take a look at its earliest American origins.

The year 1848 saw the United States in deep transit. It was a time & place of cultural and economic reform; generally of movement and change. Elizabeth Cady Stanton's Women's Rights Convention in Seneca Falls, New York convened to address the limitations upon women, largely brought into focus by involvement with the anti-slavery movement. Indeed, Cady's friend, former slave Frederick Douglass spoke at the convention of over 300 people. The boiling issue of slavery was about to literally rip the country in two.

1848 was also the year of discovery of gold at Sutter's Mill. Soon this same year, President James Polk confirmed rumors of that discovery in California and the hysterical movement to the Far West began. Americans were actively and literally searching for their various symbolic philosopher's stone: gold, women's rights, abolition, education and prison reform, rights of the mentally ill.

The enigma of Spiritualism would be born of women in this poignant and festering upheaval. Spiritualism begins with and continuously deals out mystery, awe, and contradiction. It is a religion that finds meaning in of a somewhat exhaustive search for proof of life after death, by means of a medium, or mediumistic methods.

So--how does our contemporary climate of war, terrorism, sharp political criticisms and divisions, and impending ecological disaster compare with that other century's inner conflict, insofar that we would be drawn to those same aspects of Spiritualism today, as greatly evidenced in superstar mediums like John Edwards, Sylvia Browne, James Van Praggh? And of course, our current pop cultural obsession with angels, Elecronic Voice Phenomena, and ghost hunting? What is it the dead really offer, and how may our particular habits of seeking them reflect and shape larger social dynamics?

Early on, mediumship itself was largely a feminine occupation which provided the formerly powerless and unseen population a forum with an audience of power. Even Abraham Lincoln and other leaders of the time were attracted to and quite involved with Spiritualism. Raymond Buckland, in his Buckland's Book of Spirit Communication recounts a story in which a normally shy, 16 year old female medium while in trance, boldy asserts the importance of ending slavery to Mr. Lincoln, and then, upon coming out of trance, is mortified to realize the manner in which she has spoken to him. Mediumship obviously afforded women an opportunity to speak and be heard.

But it didn't come without a struggle. During spiritualism's golden age, the investigation of mediums became as important and innate a dynamic as the séances and mediumistic offerings themselves. That the investigators were elite, educated men-academics, MDs, psychiatrists, philosophers, scientists, writers-- is not a surprise. And, given that the most famous, fantastic, and investigated mediums were mostly from (or portrayed as such) two extreme female camps-meek, unassuming housewives or outrageous, slutty wild women-it is hard to ignore the Madonna/whore portrayal of archetype by the mediums.

The investigative methods were long-term, profoundly mentally and emotionally exhaustive, and often even physically abusive for the willing mediums. During seances or 'sittings', the mediums' hands and feet were tied to chairs and/or held tightly by investigators, special restrictive garments fashioned, and eyes, ears, and mouths bound and sometimes covered by hoods. Some investigators even insisted that the mediums be naked during the investigations. Although the most restrictive measures were imposed to keep the mediums from faking their effects, even fraudulent mediums somehow managed to produce startling phenomena, and provide messages from the dead.

Whether the phenomena produced were faked (much obviously was) or not is entirely beside the point. Symbolically, the idea of society's most educated men objectifying, exposing, controlling, questioning, and binding women so that they may not speak, or manifest amazing things falls quite in line with the festering feminist grievances and notions of the time. That the women succeeded nevertheless may be the most striking bit of fortune-telling of all.

Obviously and finally now, some goals of the early feminist struggle seem to have been generally attained. We now have for the first time, a serious female presidential contender, and aside from the insipid and trite ranting about her giggling, her main criticisms aren't about her gender. Chasms of inequality still exist in pay scales, and 'tradition', but generally, it would be difficult to argue that in contemporary American culture, the female presence and voice is not well represented and at the forefront.

If early spiritualism and contact with the dead was mingled with the politics of gender, how may they be playing out now? Let me preface by stating that I in no way mean to discount the many women involved in the discipline. But it seems the ghost hunting phenomenon itself seems to have found a masculine tone-if not an orange hunting jacket.

Take the terminology seriously-ghost hunting-and it seems to fit. Traditionally, men are hunters, and women gatherers. The early days of spirit contact was more a gathering, decidedly more female. People literally gathered around tables and the ghosts manifested. Now, ghosts are stalked and sought out like prey in battlefields, cemeteries, houses, abandoned prisons, asylums, etc.

At the Most Haunted site within Discovery Channel's website, the ad for their ghost detector reads 'Track your own haunts.' There is an undeniable military/masculine narrative and aesthetic attached. To objectively watch a ghost hunt in action can look like a special ops takedown--men (mostly) in dark clothing decked out with headgear and whatnot, holding all manner of top-secret scanning devices, seeking their target.

And there is oftentimes a great deal of aggressive drama involved within ghost hunting. During Most Haunted, the investigation team often challenges the spirits much in the same manner one would challenge a drunken, hostile bloke in an impending barfight-"Ya coward! Show your face if ya dare, ya bloody, no-good, yellow-bellied..." There have also been fights and scuffles between the male team members; during Most Haunted Live! at the Eastern State Penitentiary venue, a team member actually gets thrown over a railing by an apparently possessed or otherwise spirit-affected Karl, the show's producer and lead team member.

Whether it is set-up or not hardly seems to matter here-the ghost hunt is used as a forum for males to interact and often to take out their aggression or anger rather safely and in a socially acceptable way, or to 'work out their stuff', perhaps much in the same way it earlier allowed women the same convenience without full personal responsibility. There is a sense of dissociation of the self here, as there was for the early mediums.

But why? Is it just another form of fantasy football, simple male bonding efforts, or even just the media capitalizing on something random or sensational? I don't think so. It would be a huge mistake to overlook the authentic interest (even obsession) in the paranormal and the mystery of the otherworld that is held by the men and women involved in ghost hunting. Its contemporary association with the masculine realm of aesthetics and language and its majority of participants certainly must 'mean' something.

The masculine-centered search for spiritual knowledge/experience is not something new. Ghost hunting can be read as a live-action, interactive Hero Journey. Upon examination, there are many similarities. A very general description of the Hero Journey is described by Joseph Campbell in his book, The Hero With a Thousand Faces: "A hero ventures forth from the world of common day into a region of supernatural wonder: fabulous forces are there encountered and a decisive victory is won: the hero comes back from this mysterious adventure with the power to bestow boons on his fellow man."

So generally, it seems to make sense, but it also does in more specific ways. At the different phases and checkpoints of the Hero Journey, various specific encounters and dynamics take place, and they are mirrored within the ghost hunt. For example, in the myth, before the actual journey begins, the Hero is given supernatural tools and amulets. The ghost hunt usually requires all manner of such metaphorical devices: recorders, infrared and night-vision cameras, electromagnetic field meters, geiger counters, negative ion meters, lights, thermometers, walkie-talkies, and the like. Mediums and clairvoyants offer the ghost hunters protective barriers of white-light, angelic cover, and other tokens of power and protection. The encountered 'dream landscapes' found in the Hero's Journey can be represented in ghost hunting as vortexes, portals, the astral world, and even by some of the visual phenomena often reported-orbs, apparitions, and forays into the past.

The central idea of crossing into a magical, mysterious dimension to aquire personal mystical, transformative knowledge and bring it back for humanity's benefit is the gist of the Hero's Journey, and I would argue, the general purpose of ghost hunting in general. If this is true,--if ghost hunting is somehow a highly accessible playing out of the monomyth -- perhaps a move beyond passively watching the Hero's Journey unfold in Star Wars, Lord of the Rings, or Harry Potter, is a small sign we are ready for tangible knowledge of the otherworld and everything that could represent.

Or, perhaps more importantly, what goes along with it all within the Hero mythos--preparing for another positive cultural and spiritual upheaval. Ghost hunting, like Spiritualism over a century ago, may be a product of brewing movement and change in a society of impending deep transit and transformation.