My semester-long research project will be an ethnography of ghost-storytelling culture in Charleston, South Carolina, and the surrounding areas (namely, Georgetown and Pawleys Island). The fieldsite will include the major cultural vehicles through which ghost stories are conveyed. The popular tourist-targeting ghost walks or tours will be one significant site, where I will get a sense of how a historic cultural staple has evolved to fit the cultural needs of today’s Charlestonian (or tourist). For an account of the traditional oral accounts of ghost stories, my fieldsite will encompass encounters with members of the older generations of the lowcountry. Interviews with these important informants will, I hope, enable me to gain a sense of how ghost stories were told, heard, understood, and thought about generations ago. These two main components of my fieldsite should enable me to view the evolution of ghost storytelling culture in the area, and give me multiple perspectives on the social relevance of the tradition.

Ghost storytelling is a well-known tradition in the American South, especially in the Charleston area. In fact, the city of Georgetown, about an hour from Charleston, is known as the most haunted city in America. Despite this enormous cultural presence, the tradition has not been thoroughly examined academically within this particular context – that is, the history of the Charleston.

Charleston is a city which has been on the “front lines” of trade, cultural change, and political upheaval in America. Most of the African slaves traded into the early American economy passed through the port of Charleston. Ghost storytelling is in many ways one of the legacies of this historical reality. Therefore, my research will aim to identify the relationship between today’s ghost story culture and the historical cultural influences of a huge African presence in South Carolina hundreds of years ago. This research I will apply to my observations (through library research, interviews, and participant observation in the field) on modern race relations in Charleston, as seen through ghost storytelling. I think that this social subject is extremely worthy of examination, and I think to do it through the medium of such an intimate, personal tradition of storytelling will be particularly effective and illuminating.

The fieldsite should be accessible for my needs. Ghost tours occur weekly, and in some cases, daily. Employees of these businesses should be available for interviews as well. I expect a friend of my family, “Doc” Lachicotte, of Pawleys Island, to be my most valuable older-generation informant. Doc has lived in Pawleys his whole life, and as the area’s most successful realtor, he has a lot of clout in the community, and a lot of contacts who will be helpful in my research. He has generously agreed to help me, and will be a very important gatekeeper for my research.

I expect to use video and audio recording, as well as still photography, in my research. Storytelling is a performance, and I expect to gain a lot of insight into the field from the body language of my informants. The ghost tours should be especially visually stimulating. I will also be able to engage in participant observation during tours, as I will be a paying customer of the tour-giver. I look forward to observing the tour-giver/storytelling as well as the other individuals on the tour (hopefully, with these tour participants’ agreement, I will be able to distribute questionnaires after the tour which participants will mail back to me, with some of their responses and reactions to the ghost tour they just experienced).

An additional resource which I believe will be very illustrative of ghost storytelling’s historical trends and characteristics is the voluminous collections of ghost story anthologies from the region. These publications are most often authored by non-academic individuals, and can be fascinating subjective snapshots of the most popular stories and the social perspectives that inform them.

I expect this project to really dissect the ghost story of Charleston, and identify some of the historical social realities that informed them, and led them to their prominent position in southern culture today. Please see the attached for a working list of sources that will inform this research.

I propose my field site to be in a broad sense, the lowcountry of Charleston, and perhaps further out, to St. Helena, where I will hopefully conduct interviews and research among Gullah cooks. I would like to focus my research project on Gullah cuisine from around the coast of South Carolina and how this type of food, locally known as lowcountry cuisine, has shaped the Charleston community. I would also like to explore how this specific kind of food has come to represent Charleston as predominately as we see today.
I know there has been a lot of research done on the Gullah Geeche people, focused mainly on the basket weaving techniques they are so famously known for. I would like to shift that focus to food and pay it the attention I believe it deserves, mainly because Gullah influence is just as prevalent in food as it is in baskets around Charleston, South Carolina. Not only do I want to tell a back story I think deserves to be shared, but I am also very interested in the actual ingredients, recipes and preparation of the meals. These elements are intriguing because I personally love to cook, watch other people cook, and taste the finished product, so I would enjoy seeing, first hand, how this art is created.
This project will be challenging for a few reasons, the first I believe will be access to such history. There might be a bit of hesitation to share special traditions and family recipes that are traditionally passed down family lines with a total stranger. Entrée will prove to be an obstacle. Also, the St. Helena location might be a little difficult because I won’t have many weekends to spend out there for hours at a time. The fact that it is not in the immediate Charleston area is tough too. This just means I will have to be prepared when I do actually visit (if I’m allowed to interview) and be ready to collect as much information as I can while I’m there!
One of the best aspects of this subject is opportunity during the presentation at the end of class to creatively share my research. I may cook something I have learned to make through my time with my resources, or try in some other way to physically share some of the food most important to the Gullah people and the region around Charleston. This would be an excellent testament to what I learned, and while we ate, I would discuss what the meal meant to the Gullah groups and to us now, as modern Charlestonians.
I hope this will be a surprising and thought provoking project on a group and their heritage which unknowingly affects everyone and everything around us. I am excited to begin researching and collecting data.