It was, indeed, a massive shock to the American psyche. There was a new threat to people’s lives and while part of that threat came from beyond our borders, the most dangerous and frightening part came from within. The hijackers had lived and worked, smiled and mingled, shopped and worshipped among us, blending with the very people they intended to slay. It was not necessarily the outside world that caused unease, but rather, the world within our borders; our house was haunted by malicious spirits that plotted against us and meant to unravel our very lives.
Naturally, this was not the first time the United States faced a threat, but the reaction with regard to the paranormal was different than would have otherwise been expected. The flying saucer invasion was spurred by a threat from Communist Russia. The threat of nuclear attack from the sky was an ever-present reality and thus people were looking to the skies and the notion of invaders from another planet, alien to our way of life, resonated with the public. But why would exploring haunted houses at night looking for signs of ghosts resonate with the public in the aftermath of 9/11?
Firstly, there was the gothic nature of the terrorists themselves; men who were leading double lives with dark intentions and plotting in their minds, an obsession with death and an addiction to blind faith that bordered on insanity. But there was also the nature of the attacks themselves. These devastating attacks were not from a foreign country. Military personnel did not pilot weapons of mass destruction with rising suns adorning their wings, as in the Pearl Harbor attack. The weapons were not missiles fired from thousands of miles away and altogether foreign-looking to the American public, nor were they bombers streaking overhead at 50,000 feet, as we feared during the Cold War. Rather, the weapons used were American Airline jets filled with unsuspecting, innocent civilians. On any given day, an American can look up into the sky and catch sight of the vapor trail left in the wake of a commercial airliner traveling from city to city across this nation, each one filled with our own people, representatives of our own way of life and our culture. It was those very things that were used against us. Our own citizenry, our friends and neighbors, were used as a weapon to kill more than three thousand people that morning who were participating in the daily grind of American life. The familiar sight of jetliners was suddenly rendered unfamiliar; they were not safe and stable transports anymore, but weapons turned against us. The fact that the terrorists were able to simultaneously hijack four different flights spurred fears that there could be more in the skies overhead. Jet fighters were scrambled by the air force with orders to shoot down any plane that would not comply with orders to identify themselves and land. The American skies were shut down for a week as the United States and the government tried to recover and determine what had occurred and who had perpetrated such an act. The effects were disorienting—familiar things were no longer familiar; the skies were patrolled by our own air force with orders to kill; more than three thousand families were suddenly torn apart, broken and mourning. Stephen King said that horror is the sense that things are in the unmaking—surely this was a time of horror across the United States.
Secondly, as the initial shock began to wane and the march to war began, there were factions of our society that questioned the role of the United States in the attacks, questioning whether or not American foreign policy and even our lifestyle and culture were to blame for fueling the attacks. Peter Bergen offered an organized overview of the many theorized causes of 9/11 in Prospect magazine, citing that some of the political rhetoric in the 9/11 aftermath placed blame on American culture that was flawed. Among them are the beliefs that the attacks were spurred by American occupation in Arab countries, by the CIA intervention in Afghanistan’s battle against the Communist invaders, and—an idea propagated by George W. Bush in the time leading up to two wars—that “They hate us because of the freedom-loving people we are.”11 During the massive political battles that took shape over the next decade, both sides of the political aisle used these ideas, and each, in their own way, blamed the United States for the attacks. The liberal left cited American foreign policy and Arab poverty, while the conservative right cited a Middle Eastern culture that hated Western freedom. While Bergen points to flaws in each argument, the political weight of these arguments were enough to warrant their general acceptance among the public.
Thus, we were, at least according to the political rhetoric at the time, somewhat to blame for the horror of the 9/11 attacks. Either our freedom-loving lifestyle or American world dominance was the root cause of the most physically and psychologically damaging attack on the United States in history. Also, there was the undercurrent of the religious clash; the United States, a powerful country founded and dominated by Christianity, was suddenly in a clash with radicalized Islam. There exists a long history of violence between the two religions, and Christianity now had to defend its beliefs to reaffirm American values and traditions in the homeland, while the military avenged the attacks over seas. Part of that defense, however, involved demonizing other religious beliefs and peoples as “evil.”
It is important to note that this was not a conscious decision or action on the part of the church or the American people; rather, it was an emotional reaction to a trauma. No one person or organization set forth to affirm national traditions and beliefs in the wake of 9/11, although there were surely cries from the pulpit that echoed such sentiment; there was simply a stirring in the subconscious of the collective American psyche that made the ghost hunter age not only possible but necessary in an effort to heal. It was in the years following 9/11 that we saw the spike in television programming about the paranormal. The most popular paranormal television series, the ones that have come to represent the ghost hunter age, were developed during this time. Most Haunted began in 2001, Ghost Hunters and The UFO Files in 2004, A Haunting in 2005, Paranormal State in 2006, and MonsterQuest in 2007. All of them follow a similar reality television format and are popular programs for their respective broadcast companies. While there was renewed interest in the paranormal in general, including cryptozoology and UFOs, the main point of interest was ghosts and other spirit phenomena. In these programs camera crews follow paranormal investigators during nighttime investigations and employ an array of technical devices in hopes of communicating with the spirits in the house or to offer some kind of evidence of the world beyond. Why the sudden and dramatic interest in the pursuit of ghosts?
Ghost hunting, as it is portrayed on these television programs, involves contact and communication with spiritual entities. It is Spiritualism updated for the modern era. There are no traditional séances with tables moving and candlelights flickering, but efforts are made to communicate with the dead; spiritual mediums are used regularly and the investigators ask questions in empty rooms hoping to record answers on digital voice recorders in a phenomenon known as EVP—electromagnetic voice phenomenon. Some investigators even employ Ouija boards to communicate with the spirits.
As the nation reeled in the wake of the 9/11 attacks, the United States was forced to look inward, rather than outward, and explore the thing that haunted its proverbial house. But this investigation into the world of ghosts and spirits may have been both a search for meaning and a reaffirmation of the nation’s traditional belief system. Bill Ellis writes,
[B]oth activities [deliverance and Ouija] are alike in their goals—to allow participants to participate in the Christian myth directly. In most denominations believers are passive, with acts of power—prayer, healing, the consecration of the Eucharist—reserved for priests and other institutionally designated specialists. Bible reading and reflection on doctrinal issues may satisfy many believers, but others seek a more direct experience of the divine. Deliverance and Ouija are parallel paths to this close encounter with the world of angels and demons.12
Thus, as American traditions and values were being challenged, both from abroad and from within the country itself, many people sought out the paranormal as evidence to reaffirm their belief system in the wake of trag
edy and chaos. Hence, the sudden popularity in programs which affirm life after death and the traditional Christian notions of spirituality; the image or idea of a ghost reaffirms the belief that a human being is a spiritual being and that life does not end after death—a comforting thought after watching the death of three thousand people on live television.
There is also something distinctly modern and similar between the reality television programs depicting ghost hunters and the military aftermath of 9/11. The U.S. government was now on a mission to hunt down both the terrorists living among us and those living abroad. Two wars, Iraq and Afghanistan, were waged in the aftermath of the 9/11 attacks, but they were not wars against nations; they were wars against individuals who secreted themselves among populations of innocents, who blended in and were nearly invisible—in effect, they were ghosts. The depiction of the war on television had a strangely similar effect as did the depiction of the ghost hunters on the various programs. U.S. citizens were able to watch the wars unfold as if they were part of a reality television series; the night vision cameras were right there filming the action as it happened—as the military personnel hunted down an adversary that was nearly invisible. Our technology was able to overcome, and our American spirit was not daunted; these military operations were patriotic reaffirmations of the national tradition, and the look was oddly similar to the look of Ghost Hunters.
In essence, the search for ghosts at home reflected the search for ghosts abroad, and both had similar goals—to reaffirm our American way of life and our belief tradition, and to bolster our mettle against those who challenged that belief system. The post-9/11 world was a world of mechanized warfare, but it was also a world of spiritual warfare, one belief system trying to destroy another, a clash of radicalized Islam and the Christian West. “In the many discussions of the ‘root causes’ of Islamist terrorism, Islam itself is rarely mentioned. But if you were to ask Bin Laden, he would say that his war is about defense of Islam. We need not believe him but we should nevertheless listen to what our enemy is saying. Bin Laden bases justification of his war on a corpus of Muslim beliefs and he finds ammunition in the Koran to give his war Islamic legitimacy.”13 Following 9/11 the popularity of paranormal-based television programs served to reaffirm American religious traditions and values, and reflected the idea that we had to look inward for the cause of this tragedy rather than outward. As we questioned our very way of life and our history, we looked to the paranormal to give us evidence of the unknown—a basis for our faith. The programs reflected the modern age of television and warfare, of spirituality and the American gothic tradition.
The ghost hunter age, like the paranormal ages before it, was spurred and defined by advances in technology and science that altered the way in which the world was experienced and questioned traditional values and belief systems. In the case of the ghost hunter age, the social tumult and upheaval caused by the 9/11 attacks also served to question traditional American belief systems. These times of paranormal focus and interest reflect changes in our society and, during these times of change, the gothic nature of the American culture becomes loudly evident; it is what we fall back on when our world is awash in chaos.
On May 1, 2011, President Obama announced that Osama Bin Laden, the mastermind of the 9/11 attacks, had been found and killed during a nighttime raid in Pakistan. The entire might of the United States armed forces in conjunction with the combined efforts of many other nations were not able to find Bin Laden for 10 years; it was thought by many that he may have died due to his failing health or that he was possibly buried under the rubble of a missile strike. Some people, including myself, had given up hope of ever finding him. He was, for all intents and purposes, a ghost. And then, suddenly and without warning, the ghost was found and killed. It had been made real again; it was flesh and bone and blood. As strange as it may sound, this could also be a signifier of the end of the ghost hunter age. A collective tension was relieved when that announcement was made, and a feeling of closure seemed to occupy conversations the following day. It was certainly not the end of the battle with terrorism, but it seemed that, at least temporarily, a sense of peace had come upon the collective American house. Our ghosts had been silenced and our demons had been exorcised … for now.
CHAPTER 15
Shirley Jackson’s America
Shirley Jackson’s 1959 novel, The Haunting of Hill House, has become the quintessential haunted house story and, oddly enough, has come to represent the gothic structure and haunting fear that defines the modern ghost hunter age. In the novel, Dr. Montague, an academic interested in the paranormal, invites 20 people to spend the summer with him at Hill House, a Gothic manor with a checkered past of suicide, insanity, family betrayal, and local rumor, in an effort to conduct a “scientific” study of psychic phenomena. He chooses people whom he thinks may, unknowingly, possess psychic gifts. Of the twenty that he invites, only two, Eleanor and Theodora, respond and agree to stay at the home and aid with the study. A fourth character, Luke, who stands to inherit the house from his aunt, is also invited as a representative of the family. Together, the four characters spend several days in Hill House and record the phenomena they witness. They are eventually joined by Montague’s wife—a self-appointed medium blowhard and her assistant, an obnoxious private school teacher named Arthur. While the book begins with Dr. Montague, it is Eleanor who is the protagonist, and it is through her point of view that Hill House is explored.
At its most obvious and superficial, the story reflects the current structure of paranormal investigators in the ghost hunter age; a group of people enter a place with a dark history, which is the subject of local rumor and legend, in an effort to confirm once and for all the existence of the paranormal. Some of the group members, such as Eleanor and Theodora, are believed to have mediumistic gifts that make them more susceptible to spirit manifestations; Dr. Montague is there to prove the existence of the paranormal through scientific means; and Luke, playboy that he is, accompanies them for the fun of it. This is the basic structure of paranormal research groups: mediums to aid in communicating with the spirits, “scientists” to use technology to try to find evidence, and those who are merely along for the ride, to explore their world in all its mystery. Together, they enter the Gothic castles of the United States and they try to confer with the spirits and prove that life continues after death and that there exists a force outside the known limits of science. These are the ghost hunters. They are on television and on the Internet. They are small groups and large, sometimes famous and sometimes operating in the peripheries of our society; but either way, they exist and are living and working and striving to find something more than what is already known.
Dr. Montague represents our current reliance on technology and science. In an effort to find proof of the paranormal, investigators use modern technology and conduct what they believe to be scientific research and experiments on something that, by its very definition, defies those boundaries. But still they are searching. “Dr. John Montague was a doctor of philosophy; he had taken his degree in anthropology, feeling obscurely that in this field he might come closest to his true vocation, the analysis of supernatural manifestations. He was scrupulous about the use of his title because, his investigations being so utterly unscientific, he hoped to borrow an air of respectability, even scholarly authority, from his education.”1 Science and technology have come to define our reality. They are meant to represent the solid, unmovable, and unshakeable base of our existence. Thus, in an effort to give credence and legitimacy to their search for the paranormal, investigators turn to science and technology, believing that it may hold the key to defining the paranormal world once and for all. But, as Dr. Montague states somewhat contradictorily, “People … are always so anxious to get things out into the open where they can put a name to them, even a meaningless name, so long as it has something of a scientific ring.”2 The defining of the world through science and technology may simply be a veneer over a mysterious and
undefined reality. As we scramble for an explanation, for a truth to believe in that will structure our world, we seek out science and technology to form that truth. However, in the modern ghost hunter age, that very science and technology that we seek has led us to more ambiguity and less definition. But still, as Dr. Montague points out, we try to give it a name with a scientific ring so that we can sleep comfortably at night, even if it really isn’t science, but, rather, faith.
But the heart of Jackson’s story isn’t about science, just as the heart of the ghost hunter age is not about science and technology, but about something deeper and more psychological. While world-changing developments in the sciences and technology may have acted as a catalyst for the ghost hunter age, it is the search inward for an identity that truly defines the era. The search for identity is more than defining something by name or assigning it scientific significance, as we try to do during our various ghost hunts. The ghost hunt is a reflection of our search for the human identity—the human soul—that will truly define our mysterious existence.
Likewise, Eleanor, the main character of The Haunting of Hill House, has lived her entire life without definition, without identity. Isolated from her neighbors throughout her childhood due to her mother’s paranoia, and then forced to devote her life to caring for her elderly mother as an adult, Eleanor has never had the opportunity to define herself. She has lived in perpetual isolation, physically and emotionally, and therefore does not have an identity outside the one provided by her mother. It is only upon her mother’s death that Eleanor ventures out into the world, and her first trip toward identity is to Dr. Montague’s haunted, Gothic castle set at the base of some dark brooding hills. Jackson’s opening line of the novel establishes that “No live organism can continue for long to exist sanely under conditions of absolute reality; even larks and katydids are supposed, by some, to dream. Hill House, not sane, stood by itself against its hills, holding darkness within…”3 Jackson establishes that Hill House has existed under conditions of absolute reality and is, therefore, not sane. It also establishes that Hill House is a living entity, which Eleanor is about to explore to define her life; but she is defining herself within something that has existed in absolute reality and is thus not sane. That insanity is a darkness, which the house holds within its walls.
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