I have a deep love for things that go bump in the night and the gothic stories that explore them. I am especially trash for supernatural sleuths, occult detectives, ghostbusters, monster hunters…you name it. If it involves the study of spooky stuff, I’m in! What few people know is that the idea of ghostbusters or other supernatural “scientists” actually predates the monster-of-the-week TV shows like Buffy the Vampire Salyer and Supernatural, two shows that most people associate with the paranormal investigator archetype in pop culture. In fact, much of the genre originated in the Victorian era with iconic occult figures such as Algernon Blackwood’s John Silence (my favorite, I name my familiar, Smoke, after one of his cats), Thomas Carnaki, the Ghost Finder, and others.
I grew up reading Blackwood and fell deeply in love with the urban fantasy take on the supernatural sleuth first watching the short-lived SyFy channel show, The Dresden Files, which got me reading Jim Butcher’s series, on which the show was based. I spent my grad school years in a deep and devoted study to all things monster hunters, as I devoured a variety of urban fantasy series, old ghost stories, and monster-of-the-week TV shows. Read: I consumed all of these stories about people on the fringe of society kicking ass against the forces of darkness to cope with the stresses of graduate school. My actual studies were in 18th-century literature, specifically courtship novels. Still, I like to think that I got a second doctorate in the gothic after my personal studies in this monster hunter genre.
Still, as any scholar can tell you, the more you study a genre, the more you realize how little you know. For example, Tim Prasil, one of the most well-known historians of ghost stories and early occult detectives, just published a book on ghost hunting before the Victorians, which tracks the early explorations of the unknown long before the Spiritualism movement. I’m also learning about the groundbreaking L.A. Banks, who, in the early 2000s, put BIPOC stories front and center in a still relatively white genre of urban fantasy. See? There’s still so much to explore in this genre that has shaped me as a professor, write, and, yes, bruja, which is part of the joy of studying it.
Last year, I was pleased to present a lecture on the legacy of the occult detective for Romancing the Gothic where I outlined the basics of the genre from the Victorian Spiritualists to the modern monster-of-the-week TV shows that the genre is now synonymous with. Although it was one of my first lectures in a VERY LONG TIME and there was some pandemic brain involved (lots of “ums” and “likes,” ek!), it offers a comprehensive, if incomplete, overview of the genre, where it has been, and where it can go, including how the historical and social contexts of the times shape the way we talk about the other, the unknown, and what is truly terrifying. Enjoy!
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