All Things Haunted

There are two types of people in the world; the people who deny the existence of dark forces in our world, and those who are either secretly or openly fascinated by the thought of said evil; maybe even obsessed with it. As American citizens, the idea is thrust upon us time and time again by scary TV shows, horror movies, supernatural documentaries, books upon books of encounters of the mysterious and unknown, and even the feeling you get when you walk past a neon "PSYCHIC" sign in the window of a less than well maintained building. I think it's safe to say that the majority of the American population can be described as the latter of the two options.

But why? Why especially Americans? What does this say about our culture?

Well there is the easily explained theory that us McDonalds lovin' Americans love to poke our noses in places where we really shouldn't be, but hey. This would be a really short blog post.

To see where this infatuation with dark forces, occults, hauntings, and all of the rest of that good stuff comes from, let's take a look at our roots. Think back to American colonization; one of the first significant (and quite dark) events in American history was the Salem Witch trials which were the result of the crazed paranoia of several quite religious protestants. And bingo. Religion. America has been a country full of religious influence since the beginning; but what people fail to recognize about religion is that with the presence of a god figure, representing all that is good and just and holy, we also entertain the idea of the devil, who stands for exactly the opposite.

And thus, the creepy, the weird, and the paranormal wriggle their way into past and present pop culture. There are shows like American Horror Story which nod towards the continuing tradition of scary story telling through the images that plague our television screens every October. There are the chilling bed and breakfasts spread across the southern states which tourists flock to in hope of seeing a ghost who was once a soldier in the civil war, there are the numerous books on the shelves of American libraries on topics such as witchcraft and occults for the brave and curious.

So don't be ashamed to express that interest that you have always had in whatever mystical occult that you read about in the third grade but were always kind of scared would pop up if you googled it. We are the offspring of a culture that is ever so curious and obsessive.