Page 32 - ARUBA TODAY

A32 FEATURE
Monday 30 october 2017

What haunted houses tell us about ourselves and our past

By BETH J. HARPAZ heavy plates of food.
AP Travel Editor But the Merchant’s House
NEW YORK (AP) — Haunted also advertises haunted
houses tell us a lot of stories. tours.
But those stories are not just The theme is especially
about ghosts. popular during the Hallow-
Colin Dickey, the author of een season. Through Oct.
“Ghostland: An American 30, the site hosts an exhibi-
History in Haunted Places,” tion called “Truly We Live in
went around the country a Dying World: A 19th Cen-
visiting haunted houses to tury Home in Mourning”
see if they “could tell us with displays of mourning
something about who we clothes, a coffin covered
are as a country, or as a with lilies and a mannequin
people, or how we under- of Seabury Tredwell laid out
stand the past.” on his deathbed. You can
In an interview for the even take a selfie in a cof-
AP Travel podcast “Get fin.
Outta Here,” Dickey said For decades, Merchant’s
ghost stories help us “talk House staff members were
about things in the past we warned against repeating
might not otherwise have ghost stories, according to
confronted.” It might be spokeswoman Emily Hill-
a place with a violent or In this Sept. 27, 2013, file photo, Eastern State Penitentiary in Philadelphia is shown. The penitentiary Wright. But in the last 10 or
brutal history like a prison took in its first inmate in 1829, closed in 1971 and reopened as a museum in 1994. 15 years, the museum has
or asylum, or a just an old Associated Press embraced the opportu-
building with creaky stairs history is complicated.” growing up, is a good ex- on East Fourth Street in nity to use ghost stories as
and dark hallways where WINCHESTER MYSTERY ample. Sarah Winchester’s Manhattan. The 1830s row “a wonderful way to bring
someone’s life took a tragic HOUSE: MYTH OF THE LONE- father-in-law developed house was home to the in new audiences. People
turn due to the death of a LY WOMAN the Winchester rifle, so she
child or an unrequited love. Dickey also noticed that and her husband were
PLACES WITH A DISTURBING haunted stories sometimes wealthy heirs. Their only
PAST revolve around women child died in infancy, and
Examples of places with who never married or who Sarah’s husband died soon
a disturbing past that bill were widowed young. after. Dickey says stories
often paint her as having
lived out her life in perpet-
ual grief, haunted by the
ghosts of everyone who’d
ever been killed by a Win-
chester rifle, and “building
this labyrinth to keep them
at bay,” Dickey said.
But Dickey says the truth
differs from the legend.
“She got on with her life as
a widow, but all things con-
sidered, a relatively happy
widow,” he said. The ghost The Merchant’s House Museum is seen in New York, Tuesday,
stories came about, he Oct. 10, 2017. The museum is located in an 1832 house where
This May 5, 2017, file photo, shows an exterior view of the speculates, because “a the Tredwell family lived for nearly 100 years. Currently they are
hosting a special exhibition called “Truly We Live in a Dying
Winchester Mystery House in San Jose, Calif. woman living alone hap- World: A 19th Century Home in Mourning.” The museum also
Associated Press pily just doesn’t fit in our hosts ghost tours.
culture.” Associated Press
themselves as haunted at- Sometimes these women MERCHANT’S HOUSE MUSE-
tractions include the LaLau- were viewed as having UM: USING GHOST STORIES family of Seabury Tredwell. will come in because they
rie Mansion in New Orleans, been frozen in time, living TO ENGAGE Five of the eight Tredwell hear that we’re haunted.
where slaves were treated out their lives in a decaying Dickey also points out that children never married. Once we get them inside,
with extraordinary brutal- house. the haunted house indus- Seven people died in the they realize what a special
ity, or Philadelphia’s East- But he says the facts often try has become important house, the last of them Ger- place this is.”
ern State Penitentiary , an tell a different story, sug- as a way to raise money trude Tredwell in the 1930s. She said the museum has
abandoned prison. Dickey gesting that these individu- to preserve old buildings. Regular tours of the Mer- no qualms about using
describes Eastern State as als may have been viewed Many historic sites have chant’s House carefully “the interest in ghosts and
“a broken-down castle with as odd or even spooky be- embraced haunted tours stick to the facts, telling visi- morbid things in order to
stone crenellated towers” cause their lives as single as a fun way to engage vis- tors only what is known from educate the public. It’s not
where “it’s easy to imag- women didn’t fit cultural itors who will gladly pay for Census records and other just that we’re raising mon-
ine” a history of “atrocities norms for marriage and a ghost tour, but who might research about who lived ey because of ghosts and
and violence.” childrearing. not sign up to learn about in the house and when, or having fun with that.
“Ghost stories in many The Winchester Mystery 19th century customs or an- what can be gleaned from There is an education-
ways are a way for us to House , a 161-room man- tiques. physical evidence, like al component. We do
approach our own history,” sion in San Jose, California, Take for example the Mer- dents left in the floor by fur- feel we’re fulfilling our
Dickey said, “and our own which Dickey visited often chant’s House Museum niture routinely laden with mission.”q