Betsy Gaines Quammen: This Haunted Land

This Haunted Land investigates some of America’s most enduring legends and uncovers how ghost stories can illuminate some of the most unsettling parts of history. With curiosity, a touch of skepticism, and an open-hearted willingness to learn from the living and the dead, Betsy Gaines Quammen takes readers on a journey into haunted towns, forgotten lives, and abandoned places. From a once-booming uranium mining community in Colorado to a fort on the coast of Florida that predates the United States itself, this riveting exploration of memory, mourning, folklore, and social anxiety shows that politicized efforts to rewrite history can only be defeated by bearing witness to the specters of the past. BETSY GAINES QUAMMEN is the author of American Zion and True West, which won the 2024 Reading the West Book Award. She examines the intersections of extremism, public lands, wildlife, and western communities, and her writing has appeared in The New York Times, New York Daily News, and History News Network. She received a PhD in history from Montana State University, a MS in environmental studies from University of Montana, and a BA in English from Colorado College. She lives in Bozeman, Montana, with her spouse, writer David Quammen.