A spooky apparition, a cry in the night, a sudden chill — you don’t have to believe in ghosts to know that every town everywhere has at least a handful of ghost stories.
On this episode of Talk of Iowa, host Charity Nebbe joins Lauren Riensche on a ghost tour of downtown Cedar Falls.
Then author Carmen Maria Machado joins the program to discuss what we can learn from ghost stories and why they’re so popular.
"There's a reason that different sorts of places, different regions have different kinds of ghost stories. And there's actually this really great book that I love, called Ghostland by Colin Dickey, and he talks about how if you really want to get to know place, you should ignore the local history, like ignore everything else, and just look at the ghost stories. And that's going to give you a sense of not only what has happened in a certain place, but also how people conceive of their own history."Carmen Maria Machado
Guests:
- Lauren Riensche, tour guide of the Cedar Falls ghost tour
- Carmen Maria Machado, author
