The stories we tell: uncanny encounters in Mr Straw’s House

Abstract

During my first visit to Mr Straw’s House, a National Trust Property in the North of England, I was intrigued by the discrepancies between the narrative framework provided by the National Trust – its exclusions, silences and invisibilities – and the far more complex stories the house seemed to tantalisingly hint at. As a scholar I am drawn to certain sites and affectively engage with them and yet I usually keep silent about my investment which informs not only my interest but also how I read these heritage sites. My aim here is not primarily to interrogate my own investment, but to ask how productive it is, what it enables me to see and to describe and where its limits are. This case study explores a particular tourist attraction from the perspective of storytelling and asks what narratives can be constructed around, and generated through, the spatial-emotional dimensions of this heritage site. I am interested in the hold sites have over people, why and how they provoke imaginative and empathic investment that generates a network of stories and triggers processes of unravelling which have the potential to transform silences and unmetabolised affect into empathy and emotional thought.