Carrington Curphy’s Reviews > A Haunted History of Invisible Women: True Stories of America's Ghosts > Status Update

The Katie King act chapter covers:
Spiritualism and Quakers; illusions and “trickery” from the era; people seeking comfort when their loved ones died from the Civil War and natural yet now preventable deaths; Harry Houdini a skeptic and debunker; women getting a voice and a platform as a Spiritualist

“And many of them [skeptics of the past] would laugh right back at us if they saw an episode of Ghost Adventures.” Why is GA catching strays!

“Ghosts are mirrors of the times. They reflect our preoccupations…”

(I think this is a quote from another author)

“Her story resonates with so many tropes of classic ghost stories: the mourning widow, the fierce protectiveness of her living space, the over-identification of the woman with the house in classic Gothic style.”

“Modern society would rather not see the homeless, rendering them invisible, ghosts among us, even though in housed populations are only growing… those with mental illness are especially displaced and forced even further into the margins. Would Luce face pity, welcome, or a place by the fire today?“

“Luce’s tale combines many loaded feminine tropes of maiden, spinster, mad woman and crone, but she herself has seemed to glide through these archetypes unfazed.”

“she is a very strong symbol of the kind of guilt that makes us most uncomfortable; not the dramatic, obvious guilt of the assassin, which is reserved for Booth himself, but the icky, awkward guilt of everyone who ever stood by when something morally reprehensible was going on and did little to stop it—in fact, may even have aided its course in some self-serving, material way, even as they knew it was wrong.“

The Lady of the House is a somewhat rare and true ghost story in this collection. Ghost hunting and flickering lights with questions, cold presences, and reverence for the lady of the house!