America’s Real Hauntings, Part Two | Grave Talks CLASSIC

The Grave Talks | Haunted, Paranormal & Supernatural

Ghost Stores, Haunted, Paranormal & Supernatural Stories

Science, Religion & Spirituality, Society & Culture, Personal Journals, Spirituality, Natural Sciences

4.6 • 2.2K Ratings

🗓️ 6 June 2025

⏱️ 17 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

This is a Grave Talks CLASSIC EPISODE!

Are America’s most infamous haunted locations truly as the legends claim—or are the real stories buried beneath something far darker? When author and cultural historian Colin Dickey set out to uncover the truth behind America’s most chilling ghost stories, he expected eerie folklore and spooky tales. What he found instead were disturbing truths, twisted histories, and forgotten traumas hiding beneath the ghostly surface. From haunted prisons to sinister asylums, this episode explores how the stories we think we know often conceal even more terrifying realities. Prepare to question everything you’ve heard about America’s most haunted sites. This is Part Two of our conversation.

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Transcript

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0:00.0	Welcome to part two of our conversation with Colin Dickey, author of the book, Ghostland,
0:05.9	in American History in Haunted Places. When you're out there and you're looking for these
0:11.3	locations, are there certain locations that seem to have more lore around them than others?
0:22.1	Of course.
0:22.5	I mean, you know, and one of, one of my initial questions for the book was, you know,
0:26.2	what, what makes a building sort of more or less likely to have these kind of stories?
0:31.6	So, you know, why our haunted house was always Victorian mansions and never, you know,
0:37.0	mid-century modern tract homes? Sure.ions and never, you know, mid-century modern
0:38.0	tracked homes. You know, why does every, when you picture a haunted asan asylum, why do you
0:44.0	picture a clock tower in the front of the building, you know, with a kind of wings spreading
0:49.1	out to either side, you know, like, and that, that's that kind of thing, you know, drew me to a lot of these, you know, the places that became chapters in books are sort of trying to answer these questions.
0:59.6	I mean, you know, I was looking, I think I was just casting a broad net for haunted downtowns because I was like, what does that mean to have a haunted downtown?
1:09.0	And, you know, one of the places that I came
1:11.8	upon was Richmond Virginia and I thought okay you know cool I don't know much about
1:15.8	Richmond let's find out why it's haunted and I you know started just reading all of
1:20.7	these stories about haunted Richmond and you know just something in the back of my
1:24.1	head triggered at some point and I thought you know this was the this was the
1:27.4	capital of the Confederacy this This was, you know, the second most heavily trafficked slave
1:33.6	trading market in the South. How come all of these ghost stories are about white people? You know,
1:39.0	and again, it was just sort of like, well, you know, why these stories and not other stories, you know? And so, so,
1:45.3	you know, in many ways, I think most of the chapters, the book started from a place of, you know,
1:51.8	why this building and not this other building. Why, why this place and not some other place?
	...

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