A haunting is a space of textured communicating geography. Traces and fragments of "this happened here" remain as a reading onto what remains of past acts, situations, and events. Many haunting locations are associated with spaces of trauma (P.A.S.T.). This book is about research in these spaces, as a form of archaeological fieldwork. Here, what remains becomes a reading from contemporary performance practices by investigators. This is Interpretative Performance Excavations (I.P.E.). This is fieldwork in liminal spaces, betwixt and between the closure of what happened and the disclosure of what remains. Here interpretations of "what" and "who" remain begins at the moment of performance. These performances are based on past communicative practices within specific settings of social rules, spatial arrangements, resources, and temporal horizons. Fieldwork is a form of Forensic Archaeological Recovery (FAR) of memory fields that remain embedded in these spaces. Various interpretive models are outlined of why specific locations are haunted. These models are tested through I.P.E.
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. He has written over twenty-four books. 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").