The 'haunted home' has enjoyed a long-standing position as a motif within society, crossing a span of narratives, from anecdotal local stories shared informally between family and friendship networks, to the established Gothic traditions of literature and film. This project uniquely examines the ways in which people who believe their homes to be haunted negotiate the experience of co-habiting with ghosts. It is a qualitative study which has applied a mix of creative methodologies to a number of in-depth case studies in England and Wales. Geographers and researchers in related disciplines have recently expressed interest in the idea of ghosts or haunting, but have tended to focus upon public metropolitan spaces, and to employ the ghost as a metaphor or social figure. In contrast, this project contributes to a growing literature on the material and immaterial geographies of the home, the intangible and affective aspects of everyday life within the particular context of the domestic interior. The project explores the insights uncanny events experienced within this space reveal about people's embodied, emotional, spatial and temporal relationships with 'home' as both physical place and as a set of ideals. It studies the way in which people negotiate experiences which appear to lack rational or natural explanation, and the interpretative narratives employed to explain them. It suggests ways in which different forms of belief influence interpretations of uncanny events. It also suggests ways in which inhabitants of haunted homes negotiate the co-habitation with ghosts through a number of strategies which reinforce their own subjectivity in the face of potential encroachment into their private space.
| Identifer | oai:union.ndltd.org:bl.uk/oai:ethos.bl.uk:510894 |
| Date | January 2008 |
| Creators | Lipman, Caron W. |
| Publisher | Queen Mary, University of London |
| Source Sets | Ethos UK |
| Detected Language | English |
| Type | Electronic Thesis or Dissertation |
| Source | http://qmro.qmul.ac.uk/xmlui/handle/123456789/28168 |
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