Haunted Mississippi: Ghosts, Identity, and Collective Identity

This thesis wrestles with the duality of the terms “haunting” and “ghosts” in relation to Mississippi and its collective identity and narrative. Ghostlore and haunted tourism provide insight into shared cultural constructs and indicate an absence of certain perspectives from more generally held ideas of identity. Analyses of ghost stories from around the state explore these hauntings of history and ghosted narratives, so it is ghosts v. ghosted and hauntings v. haunted. I use ghost stories from Natchez, MS to explore postsouthern spaces and performances of “southernness” and the narratives around female apparitions to study the role of southern womanhood in collective identity, while the apparitions of the University Greys and the University of Mississippi serve the examination of Lost Cause mythology. This investigation into the effects of these deletions and selected stories are told through the lens of a reflective, lifelong Mississippian as I wonder: What haunts Mississippi