The Politics of Presence: Haunting Performances on the Gettysburg Battlefield

By John G. Sabol Jr.

A major focus of ghost excavation, as opposed to ghost "hunting", is an archaeology of experience. The emergence of this experience is unearthed through the investigative engagement of haunted space. One aspect of this engagement is performance, which requires a specific sociocultural and historical context of understanding. This context of understanding must be understood in terms of layers of meaning.

Gettysburg is used as a specific example of the use of performative and dramatical activity. Each of these activities performed at Gettysburg predisposes a genre,a set of beliefs, practices, social relations, manifestations, and locations which together define categorically what it is that is manifesting on the battlefield, and what interpretations are being used to understand these performative cultural practices.

The genres of performative action at Gettysburg are important because they are located at places on the battlefield where belief systems become mobilized into actual practice.

This book will explore various haunting uncertainties and cultural situations associated with ghostly activity, and the implications of these performances as they are enacted by ghost hunters, Civil War re-enactors, the tourism industry, and the "ghosts" themselves.

• Language: English
• Publisher: AuthorHouse
• Release date: Aug 27, 2008
• ISBN: 9781463467777

John G. Sabol Jr.

John Sabol is a cultural anthropologist, archaeologist, actor, and "ghost excavator". He has extensive fieldwork experience in all of these areas. This includes ethnographic fieldwork in Mexico, and archaeological excavations and surveys in England, Mexico, Tennessee, and South Dakota. He has appeared in more than 35 films, TV shows, "soaps", and commercials. He has done post-production film work in "Dune" (1984), and "Conan the Destroyer" (1984). He has conducted "ghost excavations" at Gettysburg, in the anthracite coal region of Northeastern Pennsylvania, at Eastern State Penitentiary and Ft. Mifflin in Philadelphia, and at various other sites in Pennsylvania, Virginia, West Virginia, and New York. He has recently appeared in two episodes of the A&E series, "Paranormal State". He taught Anthropology, Sociology, Tourist Planning and Development, and English for 11 years in Mexico. This is his 9th book. His other books include "Ghost Excavator" (2007), "Ghost Culture" (2007), "Gettysburg Unearthed" (2007), "Battlefield Hauntscape" (2008), Anthracite Coal Region" (2008), "Politics of Presence" (2008), "Bodies of Substance, Fragments of Memories" (2009), and "Phantom Gettysburg" (2009). He has a MA in Anthropology/Archaeology from the University of Tennessee, and a B.A. in Sociology from Bloomsburg University. For more information on his books and investigations please see his websites: www.theghostexcavator.com,www.myspace/ghostexcavator.com, and http://mysite.verizon.net/vzeoqapc/ghostexcavator. You can contact the author at [e-mail].

Book preview

© 2009 John G. Sabol Jr.. All rights reserved.

No part of this book may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted by any means without the written permission of the author.

First published by AuthorHouse 3/3/2009

ISBN: 978-1-4389-0039-1 (sc)

ISBN: 978-1-4634-6777-7 (ebk)

Printed in the United States of America

Bloomington, Indiana

Opening Act

SKU-000251277_Text.pdf

A. A Prefatory Ghosting: Contemporary

Cultural Performance as Past Presence

Gettysburg did not emerge as a shrine simply by popular will…. Rather, a commercial web often intertwined with ritualistic activity packaged it for a consuming public and continually repackaged it for new generations.

Jim Weeks (2003:7)

"If one looks at Gettysburg will the invisible, with long enough exposure, resolve its invisibility? Could all distance so resolve, one mode into another?

Kent Gramm (1994:173)

These staged cultural performances, and their effect on the manifestations of ghostly appearances on the battlefield, form the central liminal frame for a series of essays about the perceived haunting certainties of Gettysburg. Through the continual re-application of theatrical ghosting performances, the Gettysburg haunted package is a resonating contemporary performance, with antecedents from past cultural manifestations that have occurred there.

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An example of the current Gettysburg packaging:

The Gettysburg Souvenirs and Gifts Shop Steinwehr Avenue

All visitors to Gettysburg, including historic and contemporary tourists, as willing and captive audiences, find satisfaction and meaning in the things they buy here, even when they buy into the hype (and use the ritualistic re-enacted performances and stories in their own search for that special encounter with a ghostly presence) of a very marketable, and perceived, haunted battlefield.

Gettysburg owes its special (and mythic) status, as THE most haunted battlefield, to the commercial outreach and success stories of ghost hunters, and their influential internet sites, that market this ghostly (and haunting) presence. Ghost tours, and tour/investigation packages, also promote this haunting idea, even when the ghostly performances are visually weak, phantom-like in their appearance, and quite fleeting. But, that is why these tours (and the ghosts they promote) are so attractive and appealing to many. One never knows when a particular storytelling performance (either oral or in narrative form) may (later) lead to a perceived encounter with a Gettysburg ghost!

This book will examine these cultural performative packages. More importantly, it will, itself, also promote a new theory of encountering ghostly presence. This is accomplished, I propose, through the use of particular investigative performances which may increase the normal uncertainty of this presence, its frequency, and timing.

I call this change in investigative focus and practice the politics of presence. I believe this politics can lead to a more certain expectation of presence (if it actually exists on the battlefield), which is usually hidden behind the façade of staged cultural tourist performances.

The investigative performance that is advocated here is more than a deceptive outward appearance of re-enacted cultural (ghosting) practices (more on ghosting will be presented below). These investigative cultural performances are a real ethnography of particular cultural and contextual resonating elements. In this sense, they are ghosting techniques of the present, and not the phantom practices of a re-enacted past.

B. The Deep Map: Coming to Our Senses

Concerning Haunting Phenomena

The use of a deep map is an effective strategy in ghost field investigations because it incorporates the multiple fields of landscape perception, one that provides various spheres of discourse. In the deep map, the politics of vision, though present, is not a privileged investigative tool. Deep mapping offers an alternative approach towards a holistic perception of a haunted landscape setting. A deep map approach uses autobiographical events (as well as mundane activities and cultural habits), symmetrical archaeological practices, the presence of haunting traces and manifestations, memories of local places, ethnic folklore, natural history, ethnographic insights, scientific methodology, intuition, and landscape sensitivity.

An example of a deep map in archaeological research is the explorations of the spirit of place on Monte Altare, Italy (De Nardi 2007). In this investigation, various different, and overlapping, meanings and perception of the Monte Altare landscape perception is presented. These symmetrical multiple fields of the Monte Altare landscape capture the multiple faces of the setting, and evoke meanings, not as the ghost(s) of places buried and forgotten, but as the living, thriving experience of ‘being there’ (De Nardi 2007).

An effective application of a deep map in the field uses two symmetrically-related perspectives in a ghost investigation:

• Subjectivity and engagement: A field investigator has to believe that a particular methodology will deliver the data when engaging and recording anomalies in the field. This is a participatory approach, one in which the investigator becomes intimately involved with the haunted location, its mundane, habitual patterns, and the eventful experiences and memories of individual haunt dramas. These engagements involve the use of investigative performances. These performances sensually engage a particular ghost culture (Sabol 2007b) in its socio-historical context. The preliminary data-gathering involves the utilization of an audio-video peripatetic survey, and psychic sweep to detect the presence of cultural sensory anomalies. In the peripatetic recording, we potentially walk the line between the past and the present because both visions are recorded simultaneously. In this recording, the human perception of, and experience in, a particular landscape (hauntscape) is a base-lined recording. This phenomenological perspective emphasizes the embodied field experience as an integral part of the methodology; and

• Objectivity and detachment: Subsequently, the investigator records and measures the haunted mise-en-scene in which the investigative performance is executed. A peripatetic audio-video overlay is used to record the original playback of the survey walk, and the investigative performance simultaneously. The application of GIS procedures is used as a means of modeling this landscape experience. This GIS derived model of the landscape can be a useful tool to enhance the field-based observations, and the peripatetic audio-video positional survey. This is investigative documentation.

A deep map is a cultural, historical, and habitual use of our experiences and memories. In our normal routine of life, our experiences are narrowly framed because our perception of the environment is restricted by the range our sensory organs provide. Our actions and activities are also subject to spatial and temporal boundaries. Within this vision, the past and the future are not viewed as available for direct experience.

But, the use of a deep map allows us to access other types of perceptual experiences. These are transpersonal experiences. These transpersonal experiences can be grouped into three general categories (following Grof 1990:24):

• Experiences in which linear time appears to be transcended. An example of this would be accounts of past-life regressions of Civil War re-enactors (Lane 1996);

• Experiences characterized mainly by an apparent transcendence of ordinary spatial boundaries. An example of this would be cases of possession (Fiore 1988). This would include cases of an individual, or one’s personal boundaries, being compromised. This would involve assuming another’s personal identity (personality or character). Other examples would include a psychic reading of a location’s haunting dramas, or the psychometric reading of a material object; and

• Exploration of domains in Western culture that are not considered to be part of objective reality. This would include, among other phenomena, the perception of deceased persons, or ghosts.

The C.A.S.P.E.R. Research Center practices forms of transpersonal field methods, ones that combine archaeological, ethnographic, and theatrical elements in its investigative philosophy. These field practices work well within the politics of a deeply-mapped haunted landscape. For example:

• We use symmetrical archaeological theory. Here, there is the concept of an unfolding time frame in which material remains from the past co-occur in contemporary settings. This unfolding nature is best exemplified through the excavation process, when the material objects from the past are exposed to contemporary contexts. In ghost field investigative applications, the use of cultural performances unearths the haunting fields of drama at a location;

• We use ethnographic fieldwork techniques to analyze certain anomalous patterns that may occur at a location, and that cut across spatial boundaries (they occur in settings that are not contextual to their cultural elements). Some of these ethnographic patterns we have investigated include combat behavior and military strategy (to detect fields of ghostly presence on battlefields, see Sabol 2007c/d), and ethnic behavior of the anthracite coal region miner, see Sabol 2007a). These field techniques are based on the concepts of memory, remembrance, and recall (as past activity or event); and, finally

• We use theatrical performances, and the concept of ghosting (Carlson 2001), a repeating of past performances of sometimes physically-dead actors. The use of past performance in fieldwork recalls a particular role or character from history in a specific contextual (and physical) setting.

A deep map also utilizes the concept of morphogenetic fields, as developed by Rupert Sheldrake (cf. 1990). These morphogenetic fields connect similar things across space and time (Ibid:117). Are ghostly manifestations (as residuals and interactive presences) morphogenetic fields of transpersonal experience? Can we recall or summon ghosts through a process of morphic resonance (Sheldrake 1990) of these morphogenetic fields?

We believe that the politics of presence (or morphic resonance) is a by-product of investigative cultural performances (through ghosting) at sites that contain haunting morphogenetic fields. These morphogenetic fields are nodes of cultural anomalies located in a hauntscape setting. Deep mapping excavations are a vital tool in the unearthing of these transpersonal morphogenetic fields of past socio-historical drama.

Morphic resonance and the concept of haunting morphogenetic fields echo similarly to the law of continuation, as proposed by Edgar Cayce. This is the tendency for our actions, choices, traits (including cultural values) to continue from one lifetime to another. Could this continuum include a resonance from an investigator to an interactive ghost, and visa-versa? We believe so.

What this means for ghost research is that deep mapping, applied to the analysis of haunted morphogenetic fields (using the concept of resonance), provide a multi-vocal approach to the politics of detecting ghostly presence. This deep map, and the excavation process, is highly theatrical, such that a hauntscape can be conceived of as incorporating various theatres of perceived phenomena. These theatres (both perceptual and investigative) are the basis for identifying the politics of ghostly presence, as part of the multiple fields of cultural production of haunting uncertainties on the symmetrical Gettysburg battlefield. These multiple fields create an unfolding time (through their resonating elements) of past-present memory and remembrances.

According to our hypothesis of cultural hauntings, morphogenetic fields, as habitual and mundane cultural habits, and memories of particular (personal) past events, such as battlefield engagements, may be directly stimulated by morphic resonance (cultural performances of a ghost script, and the use of resonating target objects/activities, aimed at particular nodal locations on the battlefield, and located by K.O.C.O.A. strategy (see Sabol 2007d)) from the individual soldier’s own past.

These memories may be recorded (and interacted with), even though they are dead memories, and, according to Sheldrake, these memories need not be stored inside the brain (1990:118). What this means is that both the self and its memories could survive the death of the body (Ibid: 120). This suggests that it may be possible, through cultural performances using resonating elements, in a form of theatrical ghosting, to tune-in to the experience of particular people in the past who are now dead (Sheldrake 1990:120).

This book examines this possibility, and provides a series of essays and a working model of ghostly presence that aims at viewing human beings (visitors to a battlefield, re-enactors, ghost hunting enthusiasts, ghost tourism promoters, ghost investigators and their equipment, and the ghosts themselves) as mixtures of social and material phenomena that are symmetrically-intertwined at Gettysburg in what can be called ghost investigative practices and manifestational markers.

The