What does it mean to be haunted? Why do certain places give us a sense of the uncanny? And should we run from the things that haunt us, or embrace them? In his late thirties, the ghost story writer Edward Parnell found himself without a family. His parents had died in quick succession in his teens, before his beloved brother succumbed to the same disease years later. In his grief, he turned to his bookshelves. In Ghostland, Parnell goes in search of the ̀sequestered places' of the British Isles, our lonely moors, our moss-covered cemeteries, our barren shores and our mysterious and ancient woodlands. At the same time he explores how these places conjured and shaped a kaleidoscopic spectrum of our literature and cinema, from the ghost stories of MR James, Arthur Machen and Algernon Blackwood to Alan Garner and Susan Cooper's fantasies, from WG Sebald's The Rings of Saturn and Graham Swift's Waterland to Robin Hardy's ̀folk horror' film The Wicker Man. Ghostland is an evocative and moving exploration of what haunted these writers and artists, and what is it that is haunting him. It is a unique meditation on grief, memory and longing, and the magical power of stories and nature.
This resource is supported by the Institute of Museum and Library Services under the provisions of the Library Services and Technology Act as administered by State Library of Iowa.