We must respect the ruin and its presences for what they were. As we enter someone's familiar space, we must not bring an unfamiliarity to our exploration and expectations. Once inside that landscape, we are crossing perhaps multiple temporal and social boundaries. Space and time, as two fragmented walls, can inhibit our interactions with someone else's experiences and memories of that place. This is Centralia, as it was, and as its remains are visualized today.

All battlefields are haunted by the memory of what occurred there. Some, however, are haunted by more than remembrance, memorialization, and heritage events. There are American Civil War battlefields that remain "active" with the ongoing manifestations of past military behaviors. A theory of American Civil War battlefield hauntings is presented here, tied to mid-19th c. concepts of (and belief in) a "good death" and the importance of home and family. Fieldwork exploring these ideas shows, in many battlefield manifestations, a direct relationship between these concepts and battlefield interactive hauntings.

It is proposed that the habits learned in pre-battle drill of the "culture of war," and the cultural patterns that were followed of the "culture of death" of mid-19th c. American Society became future manifesting possibilities (with purpose) on Civil War battlefields today. They form part of a habitual, culturally-patterned "normal" world that we can "unearth" in a "ghost excavation." This makes that world predictable and representative of continuing "signs" of forms of life on these battlefields. In this sense, haunting manifestations are habits about habits, and a "ghost soldier" is an emergence of a form of life that connects us today with their past beliefs and practices.

Robert Lewis Stevenson once remarked that some landscapes cry out for a story. Centralia is one such landscape. These are the stories that were inspired by what happened there and the lack of presence in the landscape today. These are fictional accounts of Centralia's history that serve as a counter-current to the real dangers of anthracite coal mining. There are fictional accounts of vampires, dragons, and other supernatural beings that lurk in the abandoned mine shafts beneath the town of Centralia. They form in the imagination of various authors and represent a different version of the Centralia landscape.

Our contemporary world is not centered on what is perceived as reality in the West. That is too ethnocentric. Similarly, the definition of (and distinction between) life and death are not solely based on Western scientific realities. That is very egocentric. There is so much more to the world, reality, and the concept of "life" than what we read, hear about, view, and learn from various mediated forms. Out there, beyond the "box" constructed by a materialist science, there is an entirely different social realm. This is an "other" culture. It is a "ghost culture," but it too exists today. It is a culture that is grounded in thousands of years of experienced situational encounters. This quite sensible and perceivable world is an old way of looking at the world, and sensing "who" is still there amongst us. That journey back to the old continues in the "ghost excavations" in this book.

This book is a history lesson. It is about "ghost excavations" at four haunted sites and what we learned from the experience. The objective is pure and simple. It is to show how, by questioning basic tenets of a "ghost hunting" paradigm, we can go beyond the contemporary reality of a field that is entertainment, and entertaining, and arrive at an investigative position of constructive research. In the process of this "excavation," we learn what it was (is) to be and remain human.

The production of space is a view of landscape as a process of creating and negotiating social interactions within particular spaces. What remains of past productions are the traces and vestiges, as cultural expressions or "signs" of these productions. A "ghost excavation" works with what remains of these past productions. This is achieved through an analysis of the structure and process of past social construction. Fieldwork involves the recovery of an "afterlife semiotic system" (or "haunting") of what remains from those past productions. The "ghost excavation" is an alternative, non-paranormal, analysis of haunted space.

July 2013 marks the 150th anniversary of the Battle of Gettysburg. This battle is the experience most people associate with Gettysburg, as if the history of Gettysburg remains unwritten what came before the battle and what happened afterwards. Today, Gettysburg is perceived as a haunted location inhabited by the presence of ghosts who fought there 150 years ago and continue to enact that Civil War struggle today. This book is an evaluation of that perceived experience, suggesting that Gettysburg is much more than a haunted Civil War battleground.

Phantom Gettysburg discusses the contemporary alternative version of a perceived haunted battlefield. In order to understand this alternative perception, contemporary anomalous phenomena must be affixed to and analyzed within their exact historical setting and social context. An ethnographic model of mid-19thc. American culture is used as the basis for this analysis. Specifically, the cultural beliefs relative to the concepts of death and the afterlife, as it was envisioned by these soldiers, is the basis for this model. This historical ethnographic analysis serves two purposes. First, it is a means to legitimize the methodology and fieldwork practices of ghost research. Second, it is meant to analyze the Gettysburg experience and its haunting uncertainty in its historical and sociocultural environment. The conclusion that is drawn from this comparative approach alters the reality and representation of an interactive ghostly battlefield presence. A Gettysburg haunted by Civil War soldiers is considered, for the most part, a phantom experience.

A major focus of ghost excavation, as opposed to ghost "hunting," is an archaeology of experience. The emergence of this experience is unearthed through the investigative engagement of haunted space. One aspect of this engagement is performance, which requires a specific sociocultural and historical context of understanding. This context of understanding must be understood in terms of layers of meaning. Gettysburg is used as a specific example of the use of performative and dramatical activity. Each of these activities performed at Gettysburg predisposes a genre, a set of beliefs, practices, social relations, manifestations, and locations which together define categorically what it is that is manifesting on the battlefield, and what interpretations are being used to understand these performative cultural practices. The genres of performative action at Gettysburg are important because they are located at places on the battlefield where belief systems become mobilized into actual practice. This book will explore various haunting uncertainties and cultural situations associated with ghostly activity, and the implications of these performances as they are enacted by ghost hunters, Civil War re-enactors, the tourism industry, and the "ghosts" themselves.

"Digging-Deep" is an excavation of the archaeological site called "John Sabol." It is an unearthing of the author's memory of experiences of past presences that cuts across space, time, and culture. Water, mining operations, dust and dirt, dogs and wolves, and ghosts are seen as important features that are re-covered from these memory excavations. Some of the re-called practices that are unearthed include an alternative remembrance of "trick or treat," the multiple symmetrical worlds of history, myth, and ghosts in Winchester, England, the haunting nature of archaeological excavations and field surveys, the actor's encounters with more than a filmed "death scene," and a search for a legendary monster in Arkansas. All of these memories are perceived as symetrically-interrelated though they originate in different places. They are viewed as a form of "theatrical ghosting," a resonating element that unfolds time, as events and activities are framed by their contemporary significance in the author's life. In this process of excavation, a re-curring haunting drama manifests in the life of this archaeologist, who also happens to be a cultural anthropologist, actor, and "ghost excavator."

Ghost Research is archaeological work that requires specific field practices. This book introduces the investigative techniques of a "ghost archaeology." This is defined as a scientific discipline of the "ordinary," a search for the repetitive patterns of cultural behavior that can be unearthed during an field investigation. Six case studies of cultural hauntings are presented which illustrate the usefulness of archaeological methodology and techniques in field research. The investigation of ghostly presence at Gettysburg, in the anthracite coal region, at Eastern State Penitentiary in Philadelphia, and a Civil War haunting in Petersburg, Virginia are cited. These investigations show how potential evidential data can be uncovered, if only the investigators would maintain an archaeological sensibility in their fieldwork operations.

This book is a "ghost story," meant to be read on cold, dark, windy, and snow-covered wintry nights. These are not "traditional" tales of haunted houses, but rather are personal narratives of "cultural hauntings" of long forgotten histories of ethnic struggles, and Native American beliefs. It is an image of a landscape (and its people) that goes far deeper than the mere surface manifestations of ruined and abandoned structures, and the "bits and pieces" of broken dreams and aspirations. This is a different kind of embedded narrative. It is an excavation that penetrates to the very "heart" of ghostly drama. Experiences, conceptualized as a form of haunting, provide a framework for the recall of various incidents of personal memory and emotional resonance at specific places. This serves two purposes: It creates a "personal" landscape characterized by elements of "spookiness" (once dense forests, abandoned structures and mineshafts, "coal patches"); uncertainities that result in episodic "haunting dramas" (the socioeconomic impact of ethnic migrations); and "ghostly presences" (interpretations of these ethnic groups as a response to their physical surroundings); It provides a framework (in the 2nd part) for the analysis of other similiar haunted landscapes. A methodology is used that incorporates techniques derived from archaeology, ethnography, and performance studies. In doing so, it introduces a new multidisciplinary research methodology called "Ethnoarchaeoghostology." This book is a dedicatory salute, however humble, to the achievements and daily struggles of those who came before to inhabit this Mahanoy Area. These hauntings "fill-in" the blank spaces between the words in historical narratives, and thus gives the reader a different image of events in local and regional social histories. In doing so, they show that "greatness" is not measured by the content of what we do, but how, on a daily basis, we do it.

This book is an archaeological excavation of anomalous phenomena that still lingers to haunt various locations in the anthracite coal region of Northeastern Pennsylvania. The unearthing of this haunting presence is both a metaphorical excavation (the bringing "into the light" of various dramas, events, and experiences of an individual and collective nature), and a physical engagement (the emergence of ghostly presence through investigative field performances). This anthracite coal region drama is viewed through the use of a "deep map" of short, but compendious, "ghost" narratives. This "deep map" consists of autobiographical events, symmetrical archaeological practices, memories of local places, ethnic folklore, haunting traces and manifestations, natural history, the use of a scientific field methodology, and a sincere, and profound, sensitivity to the land. These "ghost" narratives are a subtle, multi-layered and "deep mining" of a small regional landscape that has long been neglected, and been perceived as "insignificant" social history. This book is meant to change that perception through a sensual unearthing of its haunting uncertainties.