Haunted by Memory

"Editors John R. Neff and Amy Laurel Fluker have expertly selected, introduced, and annotated one of the most novel collections of Civil War era documents to appear in generations. Quarrying the period's popular press for Civil War ghost stories written by veterans, minor literary figures, and newspaper editors, they recover vitally important yet heretofore overlooked texts of Civil War memory. Imaginative and thought-provoking—brought to fruition by one of the field's very best young historians—this superb collection is a worthy tribute to John Neff's marvelous but much too short career."—Brian Matthew Jordan, author of Marching Home: Union Veterans and Their Unending Civil War

"Every story is in its way an epitaph—a message from the dead or future departed. In Haunted By Memory, John R. Neff and Amy Laurel Fluker assemble nineteenth- and early twentieth-century 'headstones' into a marvelous graveyard of narrative and invite us to summon spirits. The result is a rich repository of memory as past hauntings of national trauma emerge into the reader's present and compel us to listen."—Jeffrey Andrew Weinstock, co-author of The Routledge Introduction to the American Ghost Story

"By turns fascinating, illuminating, and sad, Haunted by Memory makes a compelling case for taking ghosts seriously. Whether ghosts exist or not, ghost stories remain a cultural map to our unfinished business and our collective trauma. As ghost tours become a forty-billion-dollar industry, rich collections like this one resurrect the aspects of our past that won't stay buried. Haunted by Memory is an essential read for those who seek to explore all that lurks in the shadows of the Civil War Era."—Stephen Berry, author of Count the Dead: Quantification and the Birth of Death as We Know It