America’s Most Gothic
Haunted History Stranger than Fiction
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4.0 • 1 Rating
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- $14.99
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- $14.99
Publisher Description
Instant USA Today Bestseller
From the Bram Stoker nominated author team who penned A Haunted History of Invisible Women, the first book of its kind to investigate gothic tropes that define American lore. Here is the hidden, dark history of what frightens us—and why.
The Gothic. Brooding, atmospheric, chilling, and not always the outpouring of a feverish imagination. Reality can be even stranger as borne out in this lush and ghostly look at real people who lived--and died—amidst the trappings of the Gothic.
Fog clinging to an isolated mansion. A dangerous patriarch or an overbearing matron. Locked doors and forbidden rooms. Whispers of murder and madness. And a woman shadowed by omnipresent threats. You’ve guessed it. You’ve stumbled into a Gothic tale, and it will haunt you like a ghost.
We often think of the enduring tropes of the Gothic in terms of fiction and film—breath-catching escapes that tap into our fears, anxieties, forbidden desires, and unsettling dreams. But what if some of these chilly vibes are rooted in the experiences of real and tragic people who danced a macabre waltz with love and death? That’s why we’re here. Take the case of teenage Mercy Brown, victim—or was it predator?—of Rhode Island’s vampire hysteria of the 1890s. Marguerite de la Roque, a French noblewoman condemned for “sexual crimes” to Canada’s long-lost Isle of Demons. What happened to her and the barren landscape itself is the stuff of legend. And “Mad Lucy” Ludwell, the decidedly peculiar eighteenth-century high-society hauteur driven mad in the Virginia estate she prowls to this day. President Helen Peabody’s spirit still stringently watches over her Women’s College, now part of Ohio’s Miami University. Ghosts of workers lost in horrific conditions while building the Hoosac Tunnel warn of imminent danger. Settle in. There are more.
Welcome to the phantom ships, haunted academic halls, menacing landscapes, and family curses of America’s Most Gothic—a tour of true spectral sightings and disordered minds. But beware: it’s sure to get under your skin. The haunted—and haunting—figures herein want it that way.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
New York ghost tour guides Hieber and Janes (coauthors of Haunted History of Invisible Women) separate fact from fiction in this spine-tingling investigation of ghostly mayhem and gory deeds. Intent on exploring the real-life stories behind the "gothic tropes" that define North American folklore, they begin by examining cases of abandoned and abused women, starting with Marguerite de la Rocque de Roberval, a French noblewoman traveling to Canada in 1542. The hapless Marquerite, as punishment for a dalliance with a fellow passenger, was discarded on an isolated island in the Gulf of Saint Lawrence, which her ghost has been roaming ever since. Other stories of luckless ladies involve brides who expired unexpectedly on their wedding days, and whose spectral figures now drift endlessly through hotels across the continent (and are frequently hyped by the hotels' owners, leading the authors to conclude that many such stories belong in the realm of "fakelore" rather than folklore). The authors also visit haunted mental health facilities—"a staple of American ghost lore"—as well as investigate vampire stories (which were linked to tuberculosis), stories of "cursed" families like the legendarily dysfunctional Lemp brewing family of St. Louis (plagued by suicide, murder, and phenomenally bad judgment), and one truly appalling real-life case of 1930s necrophilia. It's a satisfying combination of well-sourced fact-checking, thoughtful literary analysis, and creepy chills.
