We don’t quite hunt ghosts the way we hunt, say, a deer or a duck, but the word “hunt” (so close to “haunt”) gets at the sharp edge of our determination to make the spirits around us visible, audible, knowable. 

In “Advice for the Apparitionally Challenged: A Ghost (Hunter) Story,” a chapter in anthropologist Misty L. Bastian’s book, she attempts to engage a suspected haunt in her own home in an ethnographic interview. Along the way, she has to confront the ethics of pushing for answers from those who might not want to give them. Is our curiosity enough to justify the intrusion?  

Text: Misty L. Bastian’s “Advice for the Apparitionally Challenged: A Ghost (Hunter) Story” (2023)

Date: Wednesday, October 21 at 6:30pm Central

Location: South City with Chris and Michelle

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