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Ghosts make us reflect on the nature of otherness, incomprehensibility, and assumptions of subjective mastery. American ghost stories as a genre struggle to reconcile with the atrocities of American history. The stories and ideas of settlers and their descendants have given a distinct undertone of colonial guilt and collective trauma within the American tradition of ghost stories. Many of the most sensationalized hauntings hinge upon the injustices and violence of settler-colonialism. Perhaps in an attempt to exorcize settler-anxieties and to reappropriate the past through present action, Ghost Hunters seek to rectify or acknowledge past hurts or, alternatively, vilify and mysticize figures to justify the effects of settler-colonialism and alleviate guilt. There is a simultaneous eagerness and avoidance surrounding topics of genocide, enslavement, and settlerism. Themes of land ownership, vengeance, and the othering of nonwhite cultural practices and symbols as satanic or otherworldly betray the enduring anxieties of White Settlers. There is a certain voyeurism of tragedy within ghost hunting, a grim fascination with the atrocities and traumas of the past. Ghost stories retell the failures of the past and, perhaps most profoundly, recall the obligation of the living to the dead. 

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