Poster #229 - "These Dead Shall Not Have Died In Vain”: Exploring the Romanticism of Civil War Ghost Stories

• In Event: ASC Poster Session I

Abstract

Ghost stories serve as cultural touchstones, reflecting collective memory, trauma, and societal narratives. Mark Nesbitt’s eight-volume Ghosts of Gettysburg series, offers a unique lens into how the spectral past is remembered, reconstructed, and, romanticized. This study conducts a content analysis of the series, critically examining its portrayals of race, structural violence, and the romanticism of the Confederacy through the theoretical framework of ghost criminology—a perspective that explores how ghosts, hauntings, and spectral narratives interact with crime, power, and historical injustices as they haunt the past, present, and future. By analyzing ghosts of the battlefield, such as of Confederate soldiers, this research investigates how Nesbitt’s ghost lore reinforces Lost Cause mythology and systemic racial erasure. Additionally, the study examines how the violence of slavery, war, and racial terror are either obscured or acknowledged within ghost tourism, as it interrogates the ways in which ghost narratives shape perceptions of justice and historical accountability. By applying ghost criminology, this study contributes to the growing discourse on how spectral storytelling interacts with criminological concerns, historical memory, and cultural representations of justice.

Authors

• Serena Goodridge, Arcadia University

• Favian Martín, Arcadia University

• Kevin Revier, SUNY Cortland