The study of supernatural beliefs has been a major field in anthropology throughout its history. The study of paranormal experiences as such, however, has been largely left for folklorists to handle. This paper is an attempt to study the genesis, structure and interpretative schemes of narratives of paranormal experiences, specifically ghosts and hauntings, so that through the figure of the ghost (our perception of it, the ways in which we interact with it, how we read it and then talk about it) core experiences that turn non-believers into believers and believers into collectivities can become visible. Because experience is, for those who are said to have had paranormal encounters, what turns beliefs (or disbelief) into certainties, I have focused on theories that set experience and individual constructions of reality at the center of the actor-structure relation. My main purpose is to explore people’s narratives of alleged paranormal occurrences as they develop from individual experiences to cultural systems of legitimized meanings, in order to understand the processes that dynamically link micro and macro levels. I contend that a deeper understanding of all elements involved in the production of the personal-collective will further the development of better analytical tools to study the broad spectrum of cultural matter that escapes formal inquiry due to an old-yet-still-predominant divide between the objective and subjective, concrete and abstract, material and immaterial, public and private -dichotomies that lie at the very core of social and cultural theory. Through compelling analyses of ethnographic accounts on ghosts and the haunted I seek to reformulate the premises on which we understand this dilemma.

Based on a series of attempts to capture, focus and preserve memories and what has been lost, A Body of Ghosts evokes what moves in the destructive, towards oblivion or forgetfulness. Before I forget, I want to tell you about the loss of a close friend and about a time that changed us fundamentally. I want you to see the struggles that take place on the periphery of society. I want to talk about the transition, both physical and invisible, from boy to woman. This work is a construction containing our stories, Meril’s and mine, wherein memories and collected objects meet and reconfigure, the everyday and the suggestive intertwine. I find myself in the gap between dream and reality, a process that has led me to an obscure place where a distortion occurs; a place where time uncovers fragments from then and now. Emotions, situations and events have been loaded into these objects: an H&M jacket I wore when I got dumped at the age of 24, and after which I never felt the same kind of youthful, burning love. Casts of a vaginal dilator, at 5, 6, 7, 8, inches, to be used after gender reassignment surgery and forever more.  Thus objects undergo transitions into sculptures. Sculptures become symbols of crucial memories, repetitions and imitations of the original. Time has been left in the material, something non-physical placed in the physical.  My life mirrors Meril, but something remains out of reach. Screens of latex and metal shield my ambivalence towards this revelation of self. The camera inhibiting the act of remembering, keeping me from a long-lost friend. Photosensitive, only to be kept in the dark. Here, the works are partially concealed; the visitor must enter behind architectural partitions or into a hidden room in order to receive the whole story. The visitor is a voyeur outside the work but once inside it, becomes the observed. Behind each layer is a new fragment of the whole and thus the story unfolds. A Body of Ghosts in the void.

This thesis explores French philosopher Jacques Derrida’s ’hauntology’ through the lens of digital monsters and feminist theory. Hauntology – a pun on ‘ontology’ and ‘haunting’ – offers an ethics based on responsibility towards that which cannot be said to fully exist, yet has an effect on our everyday lives nonetheless. Like the figure of the ghost, such undecidable existences are neither absent nor present, here nor gone, of the past or the future. In other words: they haunt. By engaging with hauntology through contemporary stories of digital monsters – such as The Curious Case of Smile.jpg, Welcome to Night Vale and Mushroom Land TV - the thesis discusses how such troubling hauntings might be imagined, and what it means to think an ethics based on responsibility towards the undecidable. In this way, the thesis brings together hauntology and digital media, arguing that thinking with and through the figure of the ghost as well as the digital monster may lead to different and critical ways of imagining both the world and ethics. In short, drawing upon feminist theory and creative writing, the thesis maps out a relational ethics of hauntings and internet story-telling. / Denna avhandling utforskar den franske filosofen Jacques Derridas ’hauntologi’ genom digitala monster och feministisk teori. Hauntologi - en ordlek på ontology och haunting - erbjuder en etik som bygger på ansvar gentemot det som inte kan sägas helt existera, men ändå har en effekt på vårt dagliga liv. Liksom figuren ’spöket’ är sådana obestämbara existenser varken frånvarande eller närvarande, här eller borta, i det förflutna eller framtiden. Med andra ord: de hemsöker. Genom analyser av samtida berättelser om digitala monster - som The Curious Case of Smile.jpg, Welcome to Night Vale och Mushroom Land TV - diskuterar avhandlingen hur sådan oroande hemsökelser kan bli föreställda, och vad det innebär att tänka en etik baserad på ansvar gentemot det obestämbara. På detta sätt sammanför avhandlingen hauntologi och digitala medier ihop för att argumentera att akten att tänka med och genom spöket som figur och det digitala monstret kan leda till annorlunda och kritiska sätt att föreställa sig både världen och etik på. Avhandlingen bygger på feministisk teori och kreativt skrivande för att utforska en relationell etik baserad på hemsökelser och internet-berättelser.