Tales from the Haunted South

I really love this book because I have been known to go on a “haunted” history tour now and again and I love a good ghost story. However, I realize that sometimes the true stories from our past are more scary than the fantastic ones.

This book particularly hit home because it covers quite a few ghost stories from New Orleans that I am very familiar with. However, those “spooky” ghost stories become truly frightening when contextualized by Miles. 

What does it mean that tourists are attracted to sites of historical enslavement? And why are ghost tours, especially tours focused on horrific stories of the abuse suffered by female slaves, so popular? Miles uses the seemingly frivolous subject of ghost tourism to explore serious issues of American memory and historical sites. Injecting herself into the story—she visits house museums and historical districts in Savannah, New Orleans, and Louisiana’s Mississippi River plantation district to explore the nation’s pathological attraction to a sordid past—she gracefully restored humanity to history’s victims with her gentle empathy.