Alena Pirok, "The Spirit of Colonial Williamsburg: Ghosts and Interpreting the Recreated Past" (U Massachusetts Press, 2022)

New Books in American Studies · Oct 12, 2022 · 1h 13m

On any given night, hundreds of guests walk the darkened streets of Colonial Williamsburg looking for ghosts. Since the early 2000s, both the museum and private companies have facilitated these hunts, offering year-round ghost tours. Critics have called these excursions a cash grab, but in truth, ghosts and hauntings have long been at the center of the Colonial Williamsburg project. The Spirit of Colonial Williamsburg: Ghosts and Interpreting the Recreated Past (U Massachusetts Press, 2022) examines how the past comes alive at this living-history museum. In the early twentieth century, local…