How ghosts make room for love

Keywords: Love, rooms, ghosts, Jacques Lacan, paranormal investigations
Abstract Type: Paper Abstract

Abstract

This paper explores how ghost investigations are animated by the spatial practices of love. I draw on several years of participant observation of ghost investigations in and around Vancouver, Canada, as well as Jacques Lacan’s conceptualizations of love in Seminars XI and XX. Focusing on the psychical and material framings of rooms, I argue that ghosts make room for love via the unions, hunts, and exchanges between lovers and beloveds (both dead and alive) in the following three ways: first, out of the irruptions of unusual ghostly activity, which are often libidinally charged, that gather strangers around living and kitchen room tables in search of Oneness, that is, trust, hospitality, and peace of mind. Second, searches for a perpetually aloof entity that’s in a room but more than a room, which risk falling into mutilative forms of questioning. And finally, in post-investigation debriefings or “reveals” where investigators reflect on the unconscious residues of rooms and giving clients something that can never be possessed. I conclude, by suggesting that a ghost can be understood not so much as a spooky entity that floats around in a room, but rather, like love, a spooky curvature of the room itself.