A Haunted House Christmas

In our season 3 finally, we pay homage to the great tradition of Christmas Ghost stories by looking into the haunted house. Jumping off from classic gothic literature and the wave of supernatural horror movies at the dawn of neoliberalism, we dive into the popularity of haunted house stories in modern reality television. We discuss the frightening undercurrents of domestic violence, the re-entrenchment of “traditional” gender roles, and the horrors of unstable housing markets.

Bonus: Some LEGO facts, possessed bowels, Cedric Jameson

Sources for our most reference heavy episode yet (sorry):

Avery Gordon: Ghostly Matters: Haunting and the Sociological Imagination

Julia Leyda, “Demon Debt: PARANORMAL ACTIVITY as Recessionary Post-Cinematic Allegory" in Post-Cinema: Theorizing 21st-Century Film

Diane Goldstein, Sylvia Ann Grider, Jeannie B Thomas, Haunting Experiences: Ghosts in Contemporary Folklore

Dale Bailey: American Nightmares: The Haunted House Formula in American Popular Fiction

Annette Hill, Paranormal Media: Audience, Spirits and Magic in Popular Culture

Drew Beard, Horror Begins at Home: Family Trauma in Paranormal Reality TV

Karen E Macfarlane, “If You Have Ghosts: Haunting Neoliberal Real Estate in Paranormal Reality Series” from PopMec.com panel “The Ghosts of Capitalism: Neoliberalism and the State”

Owen Davies: The Haunted: A Social History of Ghosts

Colin Dickey: Ghostland: An American History in Haunted Places

Douglas Kellner, "Poltergeists, Gender, and Class. Horror Film in the Age of Reagan," Cinema and the Question of Class

Amy Lawrence, Paranormal Survivors: Validating the Struggling Middle Class

James Houran,V. K. Kumar,Michael A. Thalbourne &Nicole E. Lavertue, “ Haunted by somatic tendencies: Spirit infestation as psychogenic illness” in Mental Health, Religion & Culture 

Frederic Jameson, Historicism in “The Shining”