This Haunted Land
Reckoning with Ghosts and the Stories that Shape America

Why do humans need ghosts? And what do our ghosts have to teach us?
This Haunted Land investigates some of America’s most enduring legends and uncovers how ghost stories can illuminate some of the most unsettling parts of history. With curiosity, a touch of skepticism, and an open-hearted willingness to learn from the living and the dead, Betsy Gaines Quammen takes readers on a journey into haunted towns, forgotten lives, and abandoned places. From a once-booming uranium mining community in Colorado to a fort on the coast of Florida that predates the United States itself, this riveting exploration of memory, mourning, folklore, and social anxiety shows that politicized efforts to rewrite history can only be defeated by bearing witness to the specters of the past.