New history course to explore ghosts, witches and the supernatural
Dr. Tamara Hunt
A plaque on the office wall reads "Ghost stories told here," and Dr. Tamara Hunt, professor of history plans on doing just that for the Spring 2016 semester. Strange knocks, people hurled through the air by unknown forces, levitating tables, witchy enchantments and other mysterious phenomena will be investigated in the new history course: "Ghosts, Witches and Belief Systems in Britain and America since 1600."
The supernatural has been a personal interest of Hunt's, and she has collected nearly 500 volumes of literary and "true" ghost stories from around the world. "That's the great thing about being a historian; you can investigate anything in the past, because the skills and understanding can be applied to any topic," said Hunt. "This course is not about whether you believe in ghosts or witches or not. It's about what the people throughout time believed and how it shaped what they thought or how they behaved. . We'll be exploring the changes in the way that people interpreted ghosts and witches in Britain and America since 1600."
Historically, Hunt explained, belief systems about the supernatural have changed according to society's needs. During the 16th and 17th centuries, ghosts were thought to be a sign of God, but changes under Puritan beliefs to be a sign of evil. During the Enlightenment, the notion of ghosts was dismissed, because "rational people don't believe in those things."
Beginning in the 19th century, society changed once again to a belief in the supernatural, but as something to be studied in a rational manner, thus the formation of the Society for Psychical Research (SPR) and investigative ghost hunting. Hunt says this institution was formed largely based on the accounts of the Fox Sisters, three sisters from New York who conjured spirits, and were considered the founders of Spiritualism. The sisters confessed to being frauds, but later retracted this statement. "The SPR said 'we have to investigate this and look at people who claim to be mediums, because if we don't they could be robbing people who are grief-stricken," said Hunt.
Hunt's favorite era of ghost stories is those from the 19th and 20th century, which she describes as "the golden age of literary ghost stories." While Americans typically tell these stories around Halloween, in Britain, ghoulish legends are shared during Christmas time, which explains a very famous ghost story, Charles Dickens' A Christmas Carol. Her favorite English author of ghost stories is Montague Rhodes (M.R.) James. "I love his stories because the protagonist in many of these is either an academic or an amateur researcher," she said. "One of the great things about his stories is half the time you don't know what the creature or entity is; he doesn't ever describe it - he'll give you some idea of what it looks like, but he has you fill in the blanks."
Hunt says she used to live in a "haunted house" herself, and has experienced other incidents of strange phenomena. Once while heading home from the county fair as a teenager, she noticed a bright light hovering over a corn field. "It wasn't harvest time; it wasn't a harvester. There was no sound, but suddenly there's this intense, brilliantly bold, white light shining right into the car," she said. "I didn't tell my parents until about 25 years later, because I thought they'd think I was nuts." Her father, however, unfazed, said "Oh yeah. People talk about that happening all the time there."
To get into the "spirit" of Halloween, here are a few of the supernatural stories her class can look forward to studying: