Phantasmagoria 101
Teaching and Learning Haunted History Beyond the Classroom
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.33043/TH.48.1.84-90Keywords:
critical thinking, educational theater, Experiential Learning, ghost stories, local history, public engagementAbstract
A recently-formed undergraduate organization, interested in the paranormal, envisioned promoting themselves by hosting a new university event: a haunted tour of their campus. To realize this production, they learned how to identify, examine, and evaluate primary source materials in order to compile cohesive narratives out of facts recovered from both oral histories and archival records. Those efforts, while impressive in their own right, are made even more so considering they were extracurricular and student-led. Paranormal-themed scholarship empowered this undergraduate organization to engage their local community, raise their budget thirty-fold, and increase their membership a hundred-fold. This is their story…
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