Tales from the Haunted South: Dark Tourism and Memories of Slavery from the Civil War Era by Tiya Miles (review)

Based on her 2015 Steven and Janice Brose Lectures, Tiya Miles’s Tales from the Haunted South is a vivid, timely exploration of how Americans can engage with—rather than hide from—the ugliest moments of our nation’s past. Owing to the region’s well-documented and violent record of Indian removal and plantation slavery, along with a bloody civil war, the South serves as Miles’s main proving ground. And just as the title suggests, she provides a detailed, first-person travelogue of her treks to many of Dixie’s most harrowing, ghost-infested locales.

Site by site, or perhaps ghost by ghost, Miles pieces together a fascinating analysis of the rise of “dark tourism” and its deeper implications in the South. At the Sorrel-Weed House in Savannah, readers are introduced to Molly, a slave girl allegedly involved in an affair with her master (who was himself Haitian but secretly passing as white) and the suspicious death of her mistress. In New Orleans, Miles encounters the macabre—and quite graphic—tale of Delphine Lalaurie, a beautiful Creole mistress so cruel to her slaves that one eventually burned down the house of horrors (while chained inside!) to draw the attention of authorities. And at the famed Myrtles Plantation of Louisiana, we meet two slave girls: a house servant named Chloe, who poisoned her mistress because she desired her white master; and Cleo, a “Voodoo priestess” hanged on the property for failing to save the life of a white child with her exotic spells and potions.

Miles contends that the phenomenon of ghost tourism—jump-started to a great extent by John Berendt’s Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil (1994)—is double-edged for southern history, especially when dealing with African Americans and women. On one hand, ghost tours are immensely popular; they can dramatically increase foot traffic and trigger spikes in revenue for otherwise struggling historic venues. On the other hand, this new attention often comes at great cost to the depth and quality of the history presented. Miles drives this point home with stunning effectiveness when readers learn that Molly and Chloe—both nationally renowned spirit celebrities, featured in numerous books and television programs about haunting and ghost hunting—are complete fabrications.

Most troubling, however, is the exploitative relationship between ghost tourism and historical memories of slavery that Miles blueprints over the course of the book. Rather than a means of attracting attention to the genuine horrors and history of the institution, the ghost tour has become a way for contemporary, generally well-meaning tourists to momentarily acknowledge the existence of slavery—but only to the extent that it can be done in a fun, mysterious, thrilling, and ultimately low-stakes way. This is of course fundamentally problematic because the institution was anything but fun, thrilling, or low-stakes for its enslaved victims. As Miles puts it, “Historic sites that feature stories of black ghosts in bondage seek to engage and yet also avoid the troubling memory of slavery” (17). Then again, all hope is not lost in Miles’s view. Ghost tours could be put to work for a greater historical purpose, but “it would take a concerted effort on the part of guides as well as tourists to integrate critical analyses of the past.” Ultimately, Miles correctly notes, it would also “take the courage of us all not to hide from history’s ghosts” (114).

On the surface, this is a book about the American South. In reality, it is about coming to more realistic terms with the American experience. As such, the book should appeal to scholars of all stripes. And, because of its subject matter, compact length, and compelling narrative, Miles’s work is also highly recommended for classroom use. (A paperback version would be even more recommendable for undergraduate...