It's time to end the popular "ghost hunting" trope of exploring haunted space. This popular movement has too long been characterized by contemporary entanglements between cultural myths, "legend-tripping", New Age philosophies, and mysticism in the form of a "paranormal world". Ghost hunting has become a form of "object animation" tied to electronic devices, calling the entanglement a scientific approach. There is a need for character emplacement as social interactional entanglements with past fields of memory and social behaviors. Promoting a type of fieldwork called "ghost excavations", we focus on the human past, not a "para-history". What remains (and manifests) at these haunted sites is, in many instances, human culture, and not paranormal in nature. This intent and research stance requires an altered state of mind and behavior, one that crosses borders. It "jumps the fence" that has long restricted our vision of contemporary reality.
About the Author: John Sabol is an archaeologist, cultural anthropologist, actor, and author. As an archaeologist, he has unearthed past material remains in excavations and site surveys in England, Mexico, and at various sites in the United States (including Eastern South Dakota, the Tennessee River Valleys, and in Pennsylvania). His anthropological fieldwork includes the studies of "spirits" in the religious beliefs of the afterlife among various cultural groups in Mexico (Mixtec, Zapotec, Lacandon, Nahuatl, and Otomi). His acting career includes "ghosting" performances of various characters and scenarios in more than 35 movies, TV shows, and documentaries. He has appeared in the A&E TV series, Paranormal State as an investigative consultant. His recent speaking engagements include the T.A.G. (Theoretical Archaeology Group) Conference at the University of California, Berkeley, at the Space and Place Conference in Prague, Czech Republic, the TAG Conference at the University in Buffalo, New York, Exploring the Extraordinary Conference in York, England, the C.H.A.T. archaeological conference also in York, and the GHost Conference at the University of London, London, England. His investigative reports have been published in such diverse venues as Haunted Times Magazine, Tennessee Anthropologist, and the online journal, ParaAnthropology. He has been a frequent guest on numerous radio and internet talk shows, among them, Beyond the Edge Radio, The Paranormal View, Para X Radio, Blog Talk Radio, The Grand Dark Conspiracy, and Rusty O'Nhiall's "Mysterious and Unexplained" on PsiFM (Australia). He was a university professor in Mexico for 11 years, teaching both undergraduate and graduate courses on the anthropology of tourism. He has also been featured on public educational TV for U.S. and foreign markets, and has worked on international educational documentaries (in Spain). He has a M.A. in Anthropology/Archaeology (University of Tennessee), and a B.A. in Sociology/Anthropology (Bloomsburg University). He has also attended Penn State University, the University of Pittsburgh, the University of the Americas (Cholula, Puebla, Mexico), and has studied theatre and method acting in Mexico City. He can be reached via email at cuicospirit@hotmail.com. His website is: www.ghostexcavation.com and he can be found on Facebook ("Ghost Excavations with John Sabol").