Is capitalism scary?
Maybe, but it’s interesting enough for me to note that the “spookiest” places in a recent article are all places that relate to greed. Let me explain:
The top places were Salem, MA, Charleston, SC, Savannah, GA, New Orleans, and Mankato, MN.
Only New Orleans on that list is a place where something terrible didn’t happen in the name of the government/state/authority/church for an incident. The rest are notorious for slave trades, massacres, and mass executions.
Now…I’m not an expert, there are plenty of places that we consider “haunted”, but are places of mass death a light in those areas of hauntings? Is suffering the catalyst that entices the haunting? Why would ghosts haunt people that probably have nothing to do with those locations and atrocities? And then, why don’t we honor those incidents with more respect than entertainment? Is it honoring those locations to visit and know more about them?
Also, most of those locations profited upon death. The slave trade was particularly brutal, and the Minnesota location was the execution of Native Americans after they started a war when the US government didn’t honor their treaties and failed to provide payments and food. After being quelled, they executed 38 Natives. Even in Salem people profited from the deaths and property was seized after controlling the fervor. I’d like to think it was something more than that, but I highly doubt it.
In all actuality, we likely do honor those locations, but it’s probably beyond macabre to think that we can visit on those terms. When I visited a concentration camp in Germany, it didn’t feel haunted. It had a hallow and incredibly sad feeling, respectful and somber. I can’t say I’ve visited these locations other than Salem since it’s close, but I can tell you that many people there are pretty much there for the gimmick of the thing. And Salem knows it as well. The graves themselves might be respectful, but the shop behind them selling haunts and Chinese made trinkets is definitely not respectful.
I enjoy Halloween. It’s fun to be scared and eat candy. People are fascinated with true crime and murderers. People also like to think of things as being haunted, and at the same time, there’s something so weird about celebrating mass death in a location. I’m not sure how to truly reconcile the 2, because when it’s serious, you need to realize that there are consequences to this life. You also need to enjoy it because it’s absurd pretty much 99% of the time. It’s hard to know when which is witch.