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John Sabol

University of Tennessee Knoxville, Anthropology, Alumnus

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John Sabol is an archaeologist, cultural anthropologist, actor, and author. As an archaeologist, he has unearthed past material remains in excavations and site surveys in England, Mexico, and at various sites in the United States (including Eastern South Dakota, the Tennessee River Valleys, and in Pennsylvania). His anthropological fieldwork includes the studies of “spirits” in the religious beliefs of the afterlife among various cultural groups in Mexico (Mixtec, Zapotec, Lacandon, Nahuatl, and Otomi). His acting career includes “ghosting” performances of various characters and scenarios in more than 35 movies, TV shows, and documentaries.

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Noel B. Salazar

KU Leuven

Nerissa Russell

Cornell University

University of British Columbia

Princeton University

Mónica Lucía Espinosa Arango

Universidad de los Andes (Colombia)

Perdita Phillips

Independent Researcher

Central European University

Alejandra B Osorio

Wellesley College

University of Oxford

Fabio Camilletti

University of Warwick

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Papers by John Sabol

The 'Exploitation' of the Contemporary 'Haunted House/Building' Motif In Pop Culture and Social Media

Today, the haunted house/building exists in a state of ruination. This consists of fragmented nar... more Today, the haunted house/building exists in a state of ruination. This consists of fragmented narrative devices that miss the possibility of the real presence of the past in the present. Most contemporary exploratory, investigative, touristic, and cinematic penetrations of these pop culture dwellings reach into merely the obvious surface atmospheres of their potential haunted character.

Whose Haunting is it Anyway? Cultural Resource Management at a Haunted Location

January 2025 Are contemporary social media-driven explorations and investigations of haunted loca... more January 2025 Are contemporary social media-driven explorations and investigations of haunted locations becoming more and more a problem in identity disjunction: a non-recognition of whose memories are the point of interaction and the articulation of meaning at these locations? Is the true reality of difference at the haunted site missed because of the assignment of importance towards contemporary 'presence', one related to the investigative team rather than the possibility of the presence of the past in the present?

'Excavating' Vulnerabilities: Archaeology as Destruction/ Performance as Re-Construction

January 2025 So, I begin in shadows, amid stratification and ruin. I am not referring to the arch... more January 2025 So, I begin in shadows, amid stratification and ruin. I am not referring to the archaeological site itself, be it in ruin and abandoned, but to the basis of the archaeological record by archaeologists that will be finalized, as destruction in summary. As Michael Shanks (2012) has said, "herein lies an archaeological anxiety, that in order to know the past, we dig, we intervene, and destroy" (2012: 91).

Humanity at a Haunted Site as an Archaeology of Us

Can Ontology Reveal Real Presence at a Haunted Site

The Library of Mysteries

This is an auto-archaeological analysis of my library as a future archaeological structure, and t... more

Performative Ontology at Contemporary Haunted Locations

The past is past, yet it may leave 'signature traces' beyond the vistas of material memory. What ... more The past is past, yet it may leave 'signature traces' beyond the vistas of material memory. What else may remain in fields of memory? Indigenous peoples around the world believe in the existence of a past and present 'lived' and conserved continuum. Such an idea collapses the distinction between the past and the present, between presence and absence, and the surface and sub-surface remains of that presence. Is that sub-surface presence still 'active, becoming a hidden dimension of what becomes present on the surface of those sites considered 'haunted'?

The Re-Situated Architectural Setting and Performative Context of Haunting Presence at Contemporary Locations in Ruin and 'Abandoned'

Any knowledge production of place, including a 'haunted' site, is a gathering of engagements whic... more

Fragmentation in the Contemporary Haunted Ruin

Does a 'fragmentation premise' exist at contemporary sites in ruin and abandonment that can accou... more

The Philosophy of a 'Performance Excavation' At Contemporary Sites in Ruin

July 2024 "Can remnants of past societies-ruins…artifacts-'speak' in active ways for the historie... more July 2024 "Can remnants of past societies-ruins…artifacts-'speak' in active ways for the histories they represent? And can we include the dead, or apparitions of the dead, in this agency?" (Thrush 2011: 54) As an archaeologist, I had always focused on dead sites and landscapes. My training, both in the classroom and in the field, had always centered on specific material memory and how to map its context and associations. Yet, I had frequently felt a dis-enchantment to what should have been the opening toward the real sense of a past in the present, not just (and simply) fragmented and trace material presence. I am not the first archaeologist to experience this uncertainty about fieldwork: "What we perform as archaeologists…is an operation that has not been properly appraised in all its consequences" (Gonzalez-Ruibal 2014). After years of doing archaeological fieldwork, I had come to realize that the archaeological record is not a recording of what life was in the past. But it may not be simply a still photograph of material presence that represents the site as it was abandoned.

An Emotional Turn at Haunted Locations: Research and Fieldwork with Empathy, Care, Humility, and Heart

Do contemporary 'ghosts', as experienced in many contemporary explorations of haunted places lack... more Do contemporary 'ghosts', as experienced in many contemporary explorations of haunted places lack social existence? If so, then they might as well remain dead and gone, for without a context of contact, as past cultural experience and social memories in materializations, they remain invisible: simply objects, rather than subjects, and fluctuating environmental surface conditions.

A Performative Turn In Researching and Investigating Haunted Sites: An 'Excavating' Paradigm Shift

'Dividual'/'Distributed' Personhood: Signature Traces of a Haunting Itinerary As a Archaeology in and of the Present

This paper outlines a paradigm shift for the investigation of haunted spaces/places situated in p... more This paper outlines a paradigm shift for the investigation of haunted spaces/places situated in performance-based research. It also suggests, based on a concept of haunting itineraries, that some haunting presences may be 'dividual-distributed personhood' who may haunt several different locations. It is also suggested that this type of haunting is a form of intangible cultural heritage.

The Invisible Dig: An Early Memory of Ruins

February 2024 "A biography is always constructed from ruins, but as any archaeologist will tell y... more

The 'Ownership' of 'Haunted' Space: Ethics and Empathy in 'Dead' Places

Public narratives of the past exist in multiple formats and in various disciplines, some of which... more Public narratives of the past exist in multiple formats and in various disciplines, some of which are limited in narrative themes (History), while others are misinformed (Pseudo-archaeology). These limiting and misinformed narratives are frequently associated with particular contemporary social, economic, and political/paranormal motives. And there is also the ethnographic interpretation of a site, its archaeological remains in the present, and its different archives of embedded/attached memories that are associated with the location.

The Uncanny Beneath the Ruin: A Caution to the Curious

A simple archaeological cautionary tale, as a warning and advise to those who investigate contemp... more

Materiality 'Speaks' to Performance and Order In 'Memory Activism' and 'Memory Activation'

Those mute objects and structures surveyed and unearthed during archaeological fieldwork do 'spea... more Those mute objects and structures surveyed and unearthed during archaeological fieldwork do 'speak' stories of practices, setting, and social order, sometimes even 'disorder' amid ritual performance, related to the handling, production, and distribution of objects and beliefs through time and space.

Experimental Archaeological Heritage Work

The Archaeological 'Why Not' Question in 'Paranormal' Investigation: 'Perspectivism' in Fieldwork

Do Haunted Locations Remember? Towards an Ethics of 'Haunt Encounters' and Their Analysis

Are places actors in the biographical history of intra-site presence? What effect would that have... more Are places actors in the biographical history of intra-site presence? What effect would that have on an investigative immersion and practices enacted at these locations, particularly in places designated as 'parasites' on social media? How does this affect the 'media archaeology' (Parikka 2013) of 'haunted' sites? All places are physically 'haunted' by a reciprocal process of performance and animation. Places come 'alive', expressing the meanings of its human occupations, manifesting as material culture. All places have spaces that 'remember' those performances and materiality, animated by individuals who encounter and unearth them, such as archaeologists, who, through 'excavating' observations and analysis, document context-specific spatial meanings. If a haunted location includes a series of 'fixed' and 'unfixed' spaces (not all a location's spaces are 'active' and/or 'actively' haunting), can investigators approach the location as 'embodied' with memories of past sociotemporal orders (Zerubavel 1981), a manifestation of a particular (past) social rhythm of life, within various layers of cultural occupation? Unfortunately, many, if not most, paranormal investigative fieldwork is content (and tech-specific) with disproving a haunting through scientific tools that measure ambient atmospheres which does not address the

The 'Exploitation' of the Contemporary 'Haunted House/Building' Motif In Pop Culture and Social Media

Today, the haunted house/building exists in a state of ruination. This consists of fragmented nar... more Today, the haunted house/building exists in a state of ruination. This consists of fragmented narrative devices that miss the possibility of the real presence of the past in the present. Most contemporary exploratory, investigative, touristic, and cinematic penetrations of these pop culture dwellings reach into merely the obvious surface atmospheres of their potential haunted character.

Whose Haunting is it Anyway? Cultural Resource Management at a Haunted Location

January 2025 Are contemporary social media-driven explorations and investigations of haunted loca... more January 2025 Are contemporary social media-driven explorations and investigations of haunted locations becoming more and more a problem in identity disjunction: a non-recognition of whose memories are the point of interaction and the articulation of meaning at these locations? Is the true reality of difference at the haunted site missed because of the assignment of importance towards contemporary 'presence', one related to the investigative team rather than the possibility of the presence of the past in the present?

'Excavating' Vulnerabilities: Archaeology as Destruction/ Performance as Re-Construction

January 2025 So, I begin in shadows, amid stratification and ruin. I am not referring to the arch... more January 2025 So, I begin in shadows, amid stratification and ruin. I am not referring to the archaeological site itself, be it in ruin and abandoned, but to the basis of the archaeological record by archaeologists that will be finalized, as destruction in summary. As Michael Shanks (2012) has said, "herein lies an archaeological anxiety, that in order to know the past, we dig, we intervene, and destroy" (2012: 91).

Humanity at a Haunted Site as an Archaeology of Us

Can Ontology Reveal Real Presence at a Haunted Site

The Library of Mysteries

This is an auto-archaeological analysis of my library as a future archaeological structure, and t... more

Performative Ontology at Contemporary Haunted Locations

The past is past, yet it may leave 'signature traces' beyond the vistas of material memory. What ... more The past is past, yet it may leave 'signature traces' beyond the vistas of material memory. What else may remain in fields of memory? Indigenous peoples around the world believe in the existence of a past and present 'lived' and conserved continuum. Such an idea collapses the distinction between the past and the present, between presence and absence, and the surface and sub-surface remains of that presence. Is that sub-surface presence still 'active, becoming a hidden dimension of what becomes present on the surface of those sites considered 'haunted'?

The Re-Situated Architectural Setting and Performative Context of Haunting Presence at Contemporary Locations in Ruin and 'Abandoned'

Any knowledge production of place, including a 'haunted' site, is a gathering of engagements whic... more

Fragmentation in the Contemporary Haunted Ruin

Does a 'fragmentation premise' exist at contemporary sites in ruin and abandonment that can accou... more

The Philosophy of a 'Performance Excavation' At Contemporary Sites in Ruin

July 2024 "Can remnants of past societies-ruins…artifacts-'speak' in active ways for the historie... more July 2024 "Can remnants of past societies-ruins…artifacts-'speak' in active ways for the histories they represent? And can we include the dead, or apparitions of the dead, in this agency?" (Thrush 2011: 54) As an archaeologist, I had always focused on dead sites and landscapes. My training, both in the classroom and in the field, had always centered on specific material memory and how to map its context and associations. Yet, I had frequently felt a dis-enchantment to what should have been the opening toward the real sense of a past in the present, not just (and simply) fragmented and trace material presence. I am not the first archaeologist to experience this uncertainty about fieldwork: "What we perform as archaeologists…is an operation that has not been properly appraised in all its consequences" (Gonzalez-Ruibal 2014). After years of doing archaeological fieldwork, I had come to realize that the archaeological record is not a recording of what life was in the past. But it may not be simply a still photograph of material presence that represents the site as it was abandoned.

An Emotional Turn at Haunted Locations: Research and Fieldwork with Empathy, Care, Humility, and Heart

Do contemporary 'ghosts', as experienced in many contemporary explorations of haunted places lack... more Do contemporary 'ghosts', as experienced in many contemporary explorations of haunted places lack social existence? If so, then they might as well remain dead and gone, for without a context of contact, as past cultural experience and social memories in materializations, they remain invisible: simply objects, rather than subjects, and fluctuating environmental surface conditions.

A Performative Turn In Researching and Investigating Haunted Sites: An 'Excavating' Paradigm Shift

'Dividual'/'Distributed' Personhood: Signature Traces of a Haunting Itinerary As a Archaeology in and of the Present

This paper outlines a paradigm shift for the investigation of haunted spaces/places situated in p... more This paper outlines a paradigm shift for the investigation of haunted spaces/places situated in performance-based research. It also suggests, based on a concept of haunting itineraries, that some haunting presences may be 'dividual-distributed personhood' who may haunt several different locations. It is also suggested that this type of haunting is a form of intangible cultural heritage.

The Invisible Dig: An Early Memory of Ruins

February 2024 "A biography is always constructed from ruins, but as any archaeologist will tell y... more

The 'Ownership' of 'Haunted' Space: Ethics and Empathy in 'Dead' Places

Public narratives of the past exist in multiple formats and in various disciplines, some of which... more Public narratives of the past exist in multiple formats and in various disciplines, some of which are limited in narrative themes (History), while others are misinformed (Pseudo-archaeology). These limiting and misinformed narratives are frequently associated with particular contemporary social, economic, and political/paranormal motives. And there is also the ethnographic interpretation of a site, its archaeological remains in the present, and its different archives of embedded/attached memories that are associated with the location.

The Uncanny Beneath the Ruin: A Caution to the Curious

A simple archaeological cautionary tale, as a warning and advise to those who investigate contemp... more

Materiality 'Speaks' to Performance and Order In 'Memory Activism' and 'Memory Activation'

Those mute objects and structures surveyed and unearthed during archaeological fieldwork do 'spea... more Those mute objects and structures surveyed and unearthed during archaeological fieldwork do 'speak' stories of practices, setting, and social order, sometimes even 'disorder' amid ritual performance, related to the handling, production, and distribution of objects and beliefs through time and space.

Experimental Archaeological Heritage Work

The Archaeological 'Why Not' Question in 'Paranormal' Investigation: 'Perspectivism' in Fieldwork

Do Haunted Locations Remember? Towards an Ethics of 'Haunt Encounters' and Their Analysis

Are places actors in the biographical history of intra-site presence? What effect would that have... more Are places actors in the biographical history of intra-site presence? What effect would that have on an investigative immersion and practices enacted at these locations, particularly in places designated as 'parasites' on social media? How does this affect the 'media archaeology' (Parikka 2013) of 'haunted' sites? All places are physically 'haunted' by a reciprocal process of performance and animation. Places come 'alive', expressing the meanings of its human occupations, manifesting as material culture. All places have spaces that 'remember' those performances and materiality, animated by individuals who encounter and unearth them, such as archaeologists, who, through 'excavating' observations and analysis, document context-specific spatial meanings. If a haunted location includes a series of 'fixed' and 'unfixed' spaces (not all a location's spaces are 'active' and/or 'actively' haunting), can investigators approach the location as 'embodied' with memories of past sociotemporal orders (Zerubavel 1981), a manifestation of a particular (past) social rhythm of life, within various layers of cultural occupation? Unfortunately, many, if not most, paranormal investigative fieldwork is content (and tech-specific) with disproving a haunting through scientific tools that measure ambient atmospheres which does not address the

The 'Staging Afterlife' Project: The Haunting of a Modern, Luxurious Hotel/Spa Complex

The ‘Staging Afterlife’ Project

 From 'evidence' of a haunting to socio-cultural 'information' that 'makes a difference' and is ... more  From 'evidence' of a haunting to socio-cultural 'information' that 'makes a difference' and is 'sensible' to particular 'orders' of past occupation at a location;  From asking questions ("Is anyone here…"), making demands ("Can you…), and recording EVP through ghost tech devices toward 'Ethnographies of Communication' (EOC) during ethnographic participant-observation as practiced-based, designed scenography;  From a measured, scanned, and monitored ('vigil') surface probe to a 'deep mapping' that attempts to 'unearths' various layers of 'sociotemporal order' (as an 'anthropology of time'); ATTITUDE  From 'edutainment' to practice-based fieldwork within localized, 'micro-histories' of this 'sociotemporal order' through the haunting of 'dividual' ghosts (with specific experiences and memories of the site under investigation) 'returning' as 'revenants';  From 'haunted location' to 'Host-Ghost Landscapes;  From 'untimely death' as 'entrapment' to 'return' as 'memory activism'; and  From 'ghost tech activation' to the concept of 'patina' and context-specific 'vibrant' materiality' that may afford 'presence' as a simulation of past 'memory fields'.

To Begin Anew: A Change in 'Attitude' and 'Latitude' at Haunted Sites Paper Prepared for Hanover Tavern Para-Con (Virginia) January 21-22, 2022

This paper is about exploring another world, involving a deep intervention between memory and rit... more

The Fleetwood Church Para-Conference: An Historical Architectural Preservation Event Part 1

Time, Social Compass, and the Return: Relevant Revenants as Intangible Cultural Heritage

Winchester Wolvesey Wolves PRESENTATION.docx

To think a reality beyond our thinking is not nonsense, but obligatory"

The Scene, Unseen and the Non-sense(d)- 'Excavating' Victorians at the Bedford Springs Resort and Spa 'Ghost Excavation' Conference " We share their weight of memory…especially the unique attraction of Bedford Springs for many Victorian Women "

• This is to treat archaeology as theater, and ghost research as archaeological theater. It becom... more • This is to treat archaeology as theater, and ghost research as archaeological theater. It becomes a 'digging' tool to excavate and unearth these not so distant memories. • As Michael Shanks, archaeologist (Stanford University) has said: " We revive fragments of the past as real time event/performance… our intervention revives and animates fragments of the past ". In a 'ghost excavation', we go beyobd " interpretation at the trowel's edge " to meaning at the manifestation of the memory. " Its…memories, a story of identity, distant screams for recognition frozen in time, then fleetingly glanced before they are 'finally' confined to history. Shit like this isn't everyone's cup of tea but for those of us that give a fuck, this is our archaeology. This is our fucking history " WD Drax, 2014 Scattered Pictures.

The Strange 'Nightlife' of an (Otherwise) Serious Archaeologist: An Emotional 'Excavation' of Serious Strange Experiences

Centralia-What Lies Beneath: The " Afterlife " of a Landscape of Destruction

• Robert Lewis Stevenson once said that there are places that cry out for a story. The anthracite... more

Exploring the Extraordinary Lecture

Seriously Strange Conference.docx

RGS - POWERPOINT.pptx

A Haunting Hunting We Will Go

The Excavation of Contemporary Ghost H(a)unting.pdf

Cemetrails: A Relational 'Meshwork' of Place, Performance, and Presence

The post-modern conception of the cemetery, as a landscape setting, is viewed as a polysemic, mul... more The post-modern conception of the cemetery, as a landscape setting, is viewed as a polysemic, multi-vocal entanglement of various performance trails that invoke historical antecedents identified with the rural cemetery movement of the 19 th century. This movement has no semblance to the recent popular tropes of ghost hunting or ghost tours. Various examples of these " cemetrails " will be presented.

The St. Nicholas Coal Breaker: A Bolder Vision of Ruin and Archaeological Intervention, University of Colorado, Boulder, Co. - TAG 2016

Sensual Archaeologies-The ‘Second Reality’ of an Historic ‘Warscape’ Setting, University of Colorado, Boulder, CO - TAG 2016

Ruins & Rubbish -The Relational Routes of a “Scarscape”: Rummaging through the Ruins of Things Left Behind, University of Colorado, Boulder, CO - TAG 2016

Dark Peripatetic Entanglements: An Ambulation Through Experience and Memory in a Landscape of Destruction

Dark Peripatetic Entanglements: An Ambulation Through Experience and Memory in a Landscape of Destruction

 "As place is sensed, senses are placed; as places make sense, senses make place".  (Feld 1996:91)

Haunted Sites: Beneath the Surface of ‘Para-Normality’

This book calls for paradigm shift into the investigation of contemporary buildings and landscape... more This book calls for paradigm shift into the investigation of contemporary buildings and landscapes in ruin, many of which are locations for paranormal investigations, a public 'ghost hunt', and/or 'dark tourism'. In this 'ontological turn', a change in investigative practices from 'paranormality' towards 'ontological continuity'.

Staging Afterlife Project: The Presence of the Past in a Contemporary Hotel Setting

private collection; indoor pool images, permission of Herman Stevenson; and, public domain. The r... more private collection; indoor pool images, permission of Herman Stevenson; and, public domain. The right of John G. Sabol to be identified as the author of the text concepts has been asserted in accordance with section 77 and 78 of the Copyright, Design & Patent Act 1988. Warning, the text herein is fully protected by U.S. Federal copyright laws. Federal copyright laws will be vigorously enforced and infringement will be prosecuted to the fullest extent of the law, which can include damages and lawyer's fees to be paid by the infringer of copyright. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording or by any information storage and retrieval system without written permission from the publisher.

The Battle for Presence on Contemporary American Civil War Battlefields

Bluffing in the Paranormal: Perceptions, Consequences, and Solutions

Bluffing in the Paranormal: Perceptions, Consequences, and Solutions, 2022

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Haunting as Cultural Behavior: The Ritual Entrapment

The argument throughout this book is that some of the more meaningful and significant communicati... more The argument throughout this book is that some of the more meaningful and significant communication with the ongoing presence of the past, in the form of haunting phenomena, is dependent upon the recognition of ‘ritual entrapment’, the ghost as a ‘social figure,’ vulnerable and remaining in a liminal position between physical death and afterlife.

The 'Real' Haunted Landscape Beyond the 'Bluff' Excerpt from: "Bluffing in the Paranormal: Perceptions, Consequences, and Solutions" (to be published February 2022)

Playing (to) the Ghost: Actor and Performance in Haunted Space

Do paranormal investigations, by introducing new ideas, behaviors, and technologies “play the gho... more Do paranormal investigations, by introducing new ideas, behaviors, and technologies “play the ghost”, rather than “play to the ghost”. Performances must be about context-specific scenarios relative to a particular layer of past experience and memory. This book will “excavate” that possibility by revealing the consequences of these non-site-specific investigations that must differ from one haunted location to another. The use of the “Stanislavsky Method” during performance practices at haunted locations is introduced that may help to ‘unearth’ context-specific haunting phenomena.

Archaeology Matters at Haunted Locations

, private collection. The right of John G. Sabol to be identified as the author of the text conce... more , private collection. The right of John G. Sabol to be identified as the author of the text concepts has been asserted in accordance with section 77 and 78 of the Copyright, Design & Patent Act 1988. Warning, the text herein is fully protected by U.S. Federal copyright laws. Federal copyright laws will be vigorously enforced and infringement will be prosecuted to the fullest extent of the law, which can include damages and lawyer's fees to be paid by the infringer of copyright. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording or by any information storage and retrieval system without written permission from the publisher.

The Winchester Mystery: High Strangeness in an Archaeological Context

Ghost Excavation Books, Inc., 2021

Do archaeological excavations unearth a form of ‘boundary thinness’ between past and present that... more Do archaeological excavations unearth a form of ‘boundary thinness’ between past and present that creates ‘high strangeness’ in the landscape? Winchester, England, with a history dating back thousands of years, extensive archaeological excavations there spanning several decades, and a storied place seeped in legendary deeds, emotional histories, and often tragic events, is one such landscape of ‘high strangeness’. Personal experiences of that ‘high strangeness’ will be recounted.

Following in the Dusty Footsteps of Dracula’s Shadow: A Media Archaeological Excavation

by Mary Becker and John Sabol

The vampire is an enduring figure in literature and Bram Stoker’s Dracula (1897), as a particular... more The vampire is an enduring figure in literature and Bram Stoker’s Dracula (1897), as a particular performance of a vampire, has never been out of print; yet, there is no single, universal definition of a vampire. Each culture, and each author, has added (or deleted) vampire traits and behaviors, modifying Stoker’s version of Dracula as a vampire. This book is about a personal perspective on Stoker’s vampire and how that perspective has been altered through time, through peripatetic walks and explorations of landscape in England and Scotland that inspired and inspirited Bram Stoker’s literary geographical background of Dracula as a particular vampiric character. Please Note: The reference source for the quote on Page XV should be Raymond T. McNally 2002 ("Bram Stoker and Irish Gothic"), not Sabol 2021.

Following in the Dusty Footsteps of Dracula’s Shadow: A Media Archaeological Excavation

The vampire is an enduring figure in literature and Bram Stoker’s Dracula (1897), as a particular... more The vampire is an enduring figure in literature and Bram Stoker’s Dracula (1897), as a particular performance of a vampire, has never been out of print; yet, there is no single, universal definition of a vampire. Each culture, and each author, has added (or deleted) vampire traits and behaviors, modifying Stoker’s version of Dracula as a vampire. This book is about a personal perspective on Stoker’s vampire and how that perspective has been altered through time, through peripatetic walks and explorations of landscape in England and Scotland that inspired and inspirited Bram Stoker’s literary geographical background of Dracula as a particular vampiric character.
Please Note: The reference source on Page XV should be Raymond T. McNally 2002 ("Bram Stoker and the Irish Gothic"), not Sabol 2021.

The Theatrics of Time: Re-Visiting Performance in Haunting Fields of Archaeological Discourse

to be identified as the author of the text concepts has been asserted in accordance with section ... more to be identified as the author of the text concepts has been asserted in accordance with section 77 and 78 of the Copyright, Design & Patent Act 1988. Warning, the text herein is fully protected by U.S. Federal copyright laws. Federal copyright laws will be vigorously enforced and infringement will be prosecuted to the fullest extent of the law, which can include damages and lawyer's fees to be paid by the infringer of copyright. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording or by any information storage and retrieval system without written permission from the publisher.

The Archaeological Eerie

The Haunted Ruin: A Performance Excavation and Geophysical Mapping

Altered States: Making the Extraordinary Ordinary Again (Full text)

There is a need for character emplacement as as a socially, interactional entanglement with past... more There is a need for character emplacement as as a socially, interactional entanglement with past fields of memory and social behavior. A new type of fieldwork, called 'ghost excavation', focuses on the human past as continuing performance practices. This research stance requires an altered state of mind, one that crosses borders of research and disciplines, to 'jump the fence' that has long restricted our vision of contemporary reality.

The Production of Haunted Space: It's Meaning and Excavation (Full Text)

The production of space is a view of landscape as a process of creating and negotiating social in... more The production of space is a view of landscape as a process of creating and negotiating social interactions within particular spaces. What remains of past productions are the traces and vestiges, as cultural expressions or 'signs' of these productions. A 'performance excavation' works with what remains of these past productions. Fieldwork involves a recovery of what remains as sensorial materializations of these past productions. This becomes an analysis of archaeological 'haunted' space.

THE SENSORY TURN IN HUMAN-GHOST INTERACTIONS: AN ARCHAEOLOGICAL PERSPECTIVE

Mapping Space/ Re-Mapping Haunted Place: An Excavation

Space-Specific Performance and Archaeological Excavation

Space-Specific Performance and Archaeological Excavation, 2020

Media Archaeology and Ghost Hunting

Ghost Excavator: Unearthing the Drama in the Mine Fields

Ghost Culture: Theories, Context and Scientific Practice

Ghost Culture: Theories, Context, and Scientific Practice

The Acoustemology of a Haunted Battlefield

Practice-Based Fieldwork at Haunted Locations Center for Paranormal Research and Investigation (CPRI) Webinar Supplement: 'Performance Excavations'

"Every new beginning comes from some other beginning's end".

The 'Excavation' of Relational, Context-Specific Hauntings: An Alternative To 'Paranormal Investigation' The Association for the Scientific Study of Anomalous Phenomena (ASSAP) Webinar

The Vulnerable Ghost: Research that Matters

Hanover Tavern (Va.)- 'Animating' the Historical Landscape: Principles of Social Interaction with Architecture and its Attached Ghosts through a Site-Specific Performance Excavation

Death and The “Excavation” of Remains on a Civil War Battlefield

This is not so much a new form of paranormal investigation, as it is a contemporary type of archa... more

The Gettysburg “Memoryscapes” of War: Layers of Spiritualist Absence and Ghostly Presence In the Heterotopia of a “Haunted Battlefield”

The Acoustemology of American Civil War Battlefields

The Art and Science of Ghost Research: “Excavating” Not “Hunting” A Haunting

The Ghosts of Place: The Acoustemology of Situated Past Presence

A Ghost Town Without A Town: Multiple entanglements In The Centralia Landscape

Transductive Archaeologies: Transforming the Medium, Expanding the Message

As archaeology continues to be defined by the medium of survey and 'digging' for things, have oth... more As archaeology continues to be defined by the medium of survey and 'digging' for things, have other forms of presence been precluded? Why is there an obsession with absence, when other fields of presence have not been fully explored? In the routine 'taskscape' of fieldwork, how is the past kept 'alive' as some sense of reality? If, as Kittler (1999) has said, that the "realm of the dead is as large as the storage and transmission capabilities of a given culture" (1999:13), how do we bridge those past storages of presence with a process of immersion that does not only depend on the trope of survey and excavation? Can archaeology illuminate its present condition through engagements in which there is continuing transforming temporal affinities? Such an approach alters the "time of things" (Gonzalez-Ruibal 2016), expanding it to a co-eval time of a presence of 'humanness' (Barrett 2016). Rather than seeing from a traditional archaeological POV, we might sense-(ably) focus on field performance that allows for resonance, echo, and a sense of some form becoming present. The medium of fieldwork becomes a model of archaeology as transduction in entangled movements of social relations. It is a medium of attention that asks how subjects, objects, and field emerge in sensual relations . It is an understanding of the archaeological record as the presence (not absence) of some sense of emergent humanness. Fieldwork becomes a 'sensescape' of context-specific ruptures This opens the field to better reflect expanding emergences of situations and events, to what Ranciere (2004) has called "the distribution of the sensible": the actualization of distinctive, entangled mediums of time and senses of presence. Such different lines of sensual data can be used to triangulate a social terrain, producing an expanded multi-tiered map of sensory and material assemblages. This transduction works across the very present it is calling into being. This is not just about spatial distribution, but an entanglement between different genres of execution, experience, transmission, and data. The emergence of forms of life, based on the signatures of their alteration in archaeological space, becomes a different sense of the archaeological record. Papers that deal with alternative types of transforming mediums that engage the contemporary archaeological record are encouraged.

Conference Session:
TAG (Theoretical Archaeology Group) Conference
May 18-20 Toronto, Canada

An Archaeology of 'Beginnings': Performance, 'Excavation' and the Memories of a Childhood Landscape

I was born into a landscape well-situated in time and ruin for archaeological exploration and 'ex... more I was born into a landscape well-situated in time and ruin for archaeological exploration and 'excavation': the 'bust' of the anthracite coal 'boom' in Northeastern Pennsylvania (USA). It was a time, unlike that of today's youth with their eyes and ears focused on their technological marvels, of performance, sensory awareness, and imaginative role-playing, within an atmosphere of abandoned coal breakers, collieries, and mines. This immersive process, rather than a cell phone, was the mise-en-scene of our childhood landscape setting. Here and there, within that environment, with significant exposure of material strata and locales in various stages of ruination, in spaces surrounding the coal towns and 'coal patches', we enacted our playful and varied re-enacted 'historical scenarios'. These were not ghostly or haunted places to us. They formed part of our expanded playground that extended us, both physically and perceptually, away from family and the familiar. In that 'excavating' process, we created other times, other places, other experiences, as our performances insured another haunting layer of presence amid the surface ruin.