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Chapel Hill: The University of North Carolina Press, 2015, 176 pp., $24.95 (hardcover), ISBN-13: 978-1469626338.
Tiya Miles’ new book Tales from the Haunted South, Dark Tourism and Memories of Slavery from the Civil War combines ghost stories and history. Miles does the difficult work of fact checking the wildly popular “historical” ghost tours in Savannah, New Orleans, and a rural plantation in the historical River Road plantations of Louisiana. Initially, she finds herself wondering at the accuracy of the tales, but wonders if they offer us something more, a historical accounting of the horrors of slavery that intrigues millions of travelers each year. In chapter one, she visits Savannah, Georgia and follows the inspiration for this book, Molly of the SorrelWeed House. Chapter two is situated in the popular tourist destination, New Orleans, Louisiana, focusing on Madame Delphine Lalaurie, who was notorious for her brutality and torture of her slaves. In chapter three at a bed and breakfast in River Road, she encounters Chloe and Cleo who embody the Jezebel and Mammy archetypes of black women. She concludes by putting all of these stories in the context of historical accounts from slave narratives, an informal black focus group and a black-owned tour company in Savannah.
Miles’ interest was piqued in the supernatural and the characters found within them when she heard the story of Molly. Molly’s story is the central theme to chapter one. She is a black Haitian servant girl who has an “affair” with the patriarch, Francis Sorrell. The wife discovers the dark secret and commits suicide. Molly is murdered— hanged, presumably at the hands of Sorrell. Her restless spirit haunts the home. Complicating the story is the insinuation that Francis was possibly passing as white. His illicit affair is layered with his own struggle of racial identity further enamoring patrons with this tale. It is in her quest of unearthing the history of these events and the bodies portrayed in it that she weaves the complicated nature of a resurgence in the fascination with the supernatural, and in particular dark tourism. This turn toward the outrageous tales create a separate economy while also again exploiting and othering black bodies. Miles defines dark tourism as the exploitation of death, disaster, and suffering through travel. It is a way of attracting new visitors, and more importantly, revenue, to cities looking to boost their economies. As one of her tour guides notes, “We no longer allow violent treatment of oppressed people. We’re PC and accepting. So the violent desires get shifted into ghost stories” (7). But, which parts of our tragic histories are capable of being communicated through theatrical, comedic, and voyeuristic tales? Miles notes that there are no ghost tours of the site of the twin towers. This retelling in flamboyant and theatrical style cannot be done for some histories; they are too sacred.
Miles points out that the fascination with ghost stories can be seen as a way of romanticizing the history of the antebellum south. These stories fulfill the lust of mostly white folks looking to hear tales of common African American tropes, and in particular black women. In the stories, an enslaved person, usually a woman, takes a prominent role and the plot normally utilizes a sexualized fetishization of her body. Many of the characters are described as light skinned and beautiful, an incarnation of the Jezebel, or with dark skin and square faces, conjuring images of the mammy. In fact, one restaurant close to the haunted bed and breakfasts in River Road, Louisiana, is a giant mammy figure where patrons enter under her skirt to maximize the colonial dining experience.
Chapter two introduces the reader to Madame Delphine Lalaurie. Her slaves were found to be badly tortured, experimented on with nightmarish procedures. Once news spread, people gathered to exercise vigilante justice on Lalaurie. She escaped just in time. Like the other stories, Miles could find no historical proof of the horrors described on the ghost tours. She found references to Lalaurie being known as a cruel woman, but nothing to the extent of the narratives told. Many of the villains in these stories are women; women who emasculate their feeble husbands. It is through this story that Miles highlights the complicated notion of gender that is also taught in these stories. The mob that calls for justice, and the numerous references to slave owners being “kind” to their slaves in New Orleans, all serve as reproductions to describe a docile, happy slave. It is this story that does the work to create an outlier, a rare event of horrific violence, that somehow does not categorize the majority of experiences during slavery. This story works to ease the minds of those troubled by slavery, to hope that it was not that bad and somehow, slave owners still had moral limits, and an ability to humanize the people they worked like chattel.
In chapter three, she finds herself at a “haunted” bed and breakfast and being led on a tour by a queer, black man in the deep south. She notes that his retelling of history offers something different, a way of troubling the notions of slavery and the relationship of enslaved women with the plantation owners. Yet, it seems as if Miles is wanting to find a liberatory aspect to something that is inherently a capitalistic endeavor at the expense of black bodies. While he is a queer black man, who may make his audience think differently of relationships and slavery, someone leaving his tour still owns the black Chloe doll or buys the Sambo book on the shelf. He is still telling, at worst, an invented history, or, at best, a tale that weaves together few historical facts with flourish and artistic license, that displays flat, less dimensional black characters. Here, Miles tries to offer a redemption, something to reclaim from these tours, but ultimately, everyone loves this tour guide. He says himself he has no problems about his race or sexuality, he is protected.
Throughout the book, Miles wrestles with the commodification of the violence of slavery. From the “authentic slave dolls” to the voodoo trinkets, each piece of the violent history of slavery is packaged and sold for $18.50 with a story that makes it easier to stomach the histories being heard. It is her hope to be able to offer a reclaiming of these ghost tours, to create something that maintains the integrity of the people used as props, to know their actual histories. Miles’ book complicates the way that we think about history and even the creation of false histories tied to romance, humor, and outlandish tales all with the undercurrent of an actual tremendous violence. While she does have one tour guide in Savannah who utilizes black voices, stories, and actual history, he himself scoffs at the idea of ghost tours. This example does not support her quest, but instead creates more evidence that these tours cannot be reclaimed into something productive. It is the fascination with death, with the torture of black bodies, the “exotic” religions, and sexual exploits that lure people to these tours. Without that level of sensationalizing, they would be just history tours. And as noted, people are demanding more “spice.” But, to Miles’ credit she is only suggesting the possibility. She has given us two examples of people working within the context of their lives to shift the narratives of these experiences. These guides are just like everyone else, worried about income, trying to make ends meet, and likely not the larger “overseers” of the mega tourism industry. They are just small parts in a much larger machine.
In her final section, she offers us fascinating slave narratives, which could be analyzed and used as an entirely separate project. This is the section I felt myself wanting more. I wanted to hear more of these stories and how they could be woven together with the modern “history” being presented to paying customers. It was through these narratives that there was a much clearer picture of why the violence, the religion, and people of these embellished stories should have their stories told in a way that preserves the lives and voices of those who had been so unimaginably exploited. It was here that Miles showed that the stories stood on their own, with no need for embellishment to show a more full, richer version of history that humanized it. It is necessary to fill these moments with emotion, to create a more developed understanding of the complexity of relationships, power, and history.
Miles does the important work of forcing us to ask ourselves the question of what we allow to act as cultural work? Miles’ project shows an application to the way that we currently view racial tensions or injustice. The need for society to view crimes against people of color as exceptions, committed by deviants, or to blame the victim themselves. The display, the spectacle of black bodies, is still doing a type of cultural work that many refuse to acknowledge.
At the end, Miles is hoping to reimagine the use of ghosts, to place them into a position of power, of connection. In one moment, she finds her earring missing, a sign she has encountered the spirit of a slave, a black woman, central to her stay in River Road. She feels hopeful that this woman from so long ago could communicate with her, symbolizing her power and strength both during her enslavement and now in the way that we look back at history. She asks her readers, “How would the people held as slaves represent their own experiences if they could commune with us now?” (132). She is hoping that these ghosts can offer us something, a way to understand and respect history. In the slave narratives, many people learned to respect their ancestors through the acknowledgment of their spirits. It was a reverence, something to take seriously and to remember what they had experienced. Miles says it best: “Let our ghosts carry the integrity of our ancestors” (132). It is not without its complications, but Miles’ historical review and insightful analysis is troubling an accepted practice, but also creating the possibility of agency. The hope is that a critically examined presentation of history is possible, stories that do justice for those featured, rather than making them tropes and characters in a romanticized colonial landscape.
