TY - JOUR
T1 - Spectral Nation
T2 - Characterizing British Haunted Landscapes through the Lens of the 1970s ‘Ghost Gazetteer’ and a Folk Horror Perspective
AU - Finneran, Niall
AU - Darby, Paul
N1 - Publisher Copyright:
© 2022 The Folklore Society.
PY - 2022/8/31
Y1 - 2022/8/31
N2 - Within the wider context of popular occult publishing in the United Kingdom, a distinctive subgenre can be defined. The ‘ghost gazetteer’ combines the function of a road guide with additional information on supernatural happenings, all tied to specific locales within Great Britain. Taking four popular and important examples of the genre dating from the 1970s, this article analyses the content and context of the books in terms of branding, selection of sites, use of imagery, and geographical and historical content, and shows how this content reflects perceptions of identity and nationhood during a period of profound social and cultural flux. The article argues that in emphasizing an attachment to place and rurality, these works essentially belong within the continuum of the recently defined concept of folk horror, albeit expressed in a more populist tone.
AB - Within the wider context of popular occult publishing in the United Kingdom, a distinctive subgenre can be defined. The ‘ghost gazetteer’ combines the function of a road guide with additional information on supernatural happenings, all tied to specific locales within Great Britain. Taking four popular and important examples of the genre dating from the 1970s, this article analyses the content and context of the books in terms of branding, selection of sites, use of imagery, and geographical and historical content, and shows how this content reflects perceptions of identity and nationhood during a period of profound social and cultural flux. The article argues that in emphasizing an attachment to place and rurality, these works essentially belong within the continuum of the recently defined concept of folk horror, albeit expressed in a more populist tone.
UR - http://www.scopus.com/inward/record.url?scp=85137746440&partnerID=8YFLogxK
UR - https://www.mendeley.com/catalogue/65849b23-006a-3a3d-be69-77ca8c7899be/
U2 - 10.1080/0015587x.2021.2000174
DO - 10.1080/0015587x.2021.2000174
M3 - Article
VL - 133
SP - 311
EP - 333
JO - Folklore
JF - Folklore
SN - 0015-587X
IS - 3
ER -