Review of America’s Most Gothic: Haunted History Stranger Than Fiction

Can Gothic literary tropes help us better understand real life? Leanna Renee Hieber and Andrea Janes certainly think so! These two queens of ghostlore who brought us A Haunted History of Invisible Women: True Stories of America’s Ghosts are back again with another nonfiction book analyzing recurring motifs in America’s ghostly folklore and urban legends. America’s Most Gothic: Haunted History Stranger than Fiction came out last week and is the perfect read to start off your spooky season!

In the introduction to this volume, Leanna and Andrea strive to explain to the reader exactly what the Gothic genre is—no easy feat in just a handful of pages. Leanna lays out three core tenets of the Gothic that I would easily agree with: 1) Dread as the engine of the story, 2) Psychological focus at the forefront, and 3) Setting that functions as a character. The ghost stories explored throughout the book are related back to these core tenets as we explore them through a Gothic lens. The introduction also muses on why interest in the Gothic seems to surge during times of upheaval—and why the authors felt the time was ripe for a book like this. The rest of the book is organized into seven parts labeled with a common Gothic trope or overarching theme. These are: “A Wild and Foreboding Landscape,” “A Woman on a Journey,” “The Haunted House,” “The Hidden Chamber,” “A Mysterious Omen,” “An Open Crypt,” and “A Family Cursed.” As I learned at the launch party for this book, these sections are intentionally structured like a Gothic narrative, following an imagined protagonist out from the wild landscape and along the journey to their strange new home and the secrets that lie within… Each part is introduced with a relevant quote from the master of the American Gothic, Edgar Allan Poe. And within each section are two to four chapters that examine different ghost stories from around the country in relation to the theme. At the center of the book is a photo section with black and white images of the people and places discussed. And at the very end, the authors have provided an excellent “Further Reading” section with suggestions of modern Gothic texts and related nonfiction.

Several of my favorite chapters were in the “Women on a Journey” section, which most closely continues the project of analyzing female ghost stories and their sociological implications begun in A Haunted History of Invisible Women. In this section is a fascinating chapter on ghost brides and how they reflect women’s reasonable anxieties about marriage in a patriarchal society, but also how this popular trope is often exploited by the dark tourism industry. Other chapters in this section involve deep dives into specific women and their hauntings. There’s Marian “Clover” Adams, a society lady and pioneering photographer whose story has been largely overwritten by her husband and her suicide sensationalized, and Helen Peabody, a strong-willed headmistress who continues to watch over female students from beyond the grave. But most intriguing to me was the story of queer actress Charlotte Cushman, who blurs the lines between gendered tropes. Known for playing both male and female roles on the stage, Cushman was passionate, messy, and at times overbearing in her romantic relationships with women, leading Leanna to characterize her as “a nineteenth-century rake, a Byronesque, Gothic antihero.” The Gothic holds space for female figures of all kinds, whether hero or villain, victim or vengeful spirit. 

This book also expands beyond the traditional ghost story to consider other types of literal or metaphorical afterlives. The section “An Open Crypt” juxtaposes chapters on the New England vampire panic and Spiritualists who may have been buried alive while in death-like trances with the tragic story of a woman named Elena Hoyos whose body was stolen, preserved, and abused by an obsessive doctor. Then there are chapters like “Swamp Goth: Southern Gothic in the Sunshine State” and “The Octagon, Washington, DC” which examines spaces that are not truly haunted by literal ghosts but instead are imprinted with the dark legacy of racism and slavery. 

Lastly, I just want to appreciate how personal the authors get in this volume, opening up a bit more than in Invisible Women to share their own emotionally charged paranormal encounters and why they relate so closely to particular ghosts. Leanna relates a touching story of playful spirits from her early days as a ghost tour guide in Prohibition-era speakeasy caves as well as a terrifying experience she had as a young woman chasing a local urban legend about a motorcycle ghost. Meanwhile, Andrea mingles her own family’s immigration story with that of a German brewing family in one of the chapters on curses.

You don’t need to believe in ghosts to enjoy this fascinating collection of ghostly tales and the historical, societal, and literary context around them! But you might just start believing by the end of this book—if not in the literal presence of ghosts themselves than at least in the significance of the stories we tell ourselves about them. Oh, and if you pick up the physical hardcover of the book, take a look at the back cover—you might see a familiar name. That’s right, I had the honor of blurbing this book before publication! And I stand by my statement that it is “both entertaining and enlightening; a must-read for all ghost-lovers, Gothic literature enthusiasts, and anyone looking to get into the Halloween spirit.” You can find America’s Most Gothic on shelves now at your favorite local retailer or purchase a copy online and support The Gothic Library in the process using this Bookshop.org affiliate link. Once you’ve read it, let me know in the comments which chapters were your favorites!