Prague ghostlore of the late 19th century. Suburban ghosts between moral panic and vernacular spectacle

Abstract


 
 
 
 In the mid-1870s, a wave of popular urban hauntings in public spaces swept across Europe. These included sightings of the Park Ghost in Sheffield in 1873 and the Westminster Christ Church Ghost in London in 1874. In early December 1874, probably the most famous Czech ghost, the Podskalí Apparition (Podskalské strašidlo), was born. This haunting was followed by that of similar but less popular ghosts that appeared in industrial, working-class Prague neighborhoods in 1876 and 1907, respectively. This paper analyzes newspaper articles from this period about these apparitions and their later depictions in Czech popular culture, and interprets these phenomena as local variants of the so-called “prowling ghosts”, a particular type of suburban phantom documented by current historiographical research on 19th-century ghostlore in England. The paper then describes how these Prague ghosts were utilized socially by two completely different cultural practices. On one hand, these hauntings were used by working-class people as vernacular spectacles and improvised festivities related to pranks, the symbolic occupation of public space, and Czech nationalism. For the middle classes and period newspapers loyal to the Austro-Hungarian Empire, on the other hand, unruly mobs converging on the sites of supposed hauntings were a threat to established social norms and triggered both moral panics and public scorn of these “ghost hunters”. However, this attitude changed quickly when these events entered popular culture in the form of popular songs and, later, memoirs and literature. Between the Belle Époque at the First World War, these famous Prague hauntings were the staple for nostalgic longing in the last few decades of the Austro-Hungarian Empire.