Tappan Square: A Ghost Story
Location
PANEL: Intersections in Art, Philosophy, and Place
Mudd 113
Moderator: Kipp Colvin
Document Type
Presentation - Open Access
Start Date
5-1-2026 3:30 PM
End Date
5-1-2026 4:30 PM
Abstract
The purpose of this research is twofold: producing a genre critique of paranormal investigation literature and critically engaging further with its rhetorical strategies through a case study of the ghosts of Tappan Square. The genre is established in a survey of texts from varying disciplines and degrees of veracity, ranging from literary journalism to American Gothic fiction to parapsychology. These disparate works are linked by their dual disenchantment and re-enchantment of reality in the act of both locating ghosts and working to understand them. From their spiritual language emerges an experiential grammar; the personal, obsessively dot-connecting narration of such ghost stories are integral to their meaning, a nebulous sort of truth that is constantly and cooperatively being re-defined. Turning then to Tappan Square, the 13-acre greenspace at the heart of Oberlin, Ohio, becomes a site of paranormal absence, haunted by the pattern of buildings, trees, people, and understandings of place lost in the succession of campus plans yielding the park’s present, superficially unhaunted state. In the spirit of paranormal investigation, archival research is augmented by personal encounters with and paranormal re-readings of local texts and histories. This ghost story seeks to make the immaterial material, activating the otherwise materially inaccessible histories of the living, dying, and haunting foundation of Oberlin College.
Keywords:
Oberlin history, Genre criticism, Paranormal, Humanities
Recommended Citation
Thorp, Camille, "Tappan Square: A Ghost Story" (2026). Research Symposium. 41.
https://digitalcommons.oberlin.edu/researchsymp/2026/presentations/41
Major
English; Studio Art
Project Mentor(s)
Jeff Pence, English
2026
Tappan Square: A Ghost Story
PANEL: Intersections in Art, Philosophy, and Place
Mudd 113
Moderator: Kipp Colvin
The purpose of this research is twofold: producing a genre critique of paranormal investigation literature and critically engaging further with its rhetorical strategies through a case study of the ghosts of Tappan Square. The genre is established in a survey of texts from varying disciplines and degrees of veracity, ranging from literary journalism to American Gothic fiction to parapsychology. These disparate works are linked by their dual disenchantment and re-enchantment of reality in the act of both locating ghosts and working to understand them. From their spiritual language emerges an experiential grammar; the personal, obsessively dot-connecting narration of such ghost stories are integral to their meaning, a nebulous sort of truth that is constantly and cooperatively being re-defined. Turning then to Tappan Square, the 13-acre greenspace at the heart of Oberlin, Ohio, becomes a site of paranormal absence, haunted by the pattern of buildings, trees, people, and understandings of place lost in the succession of campus plans yielding the park’s present, superficially unhaunted state. In the spirit of paranormal investigation, archival research is augmented by personal encounters with and paranormal re-readings of local texts and histories. This ghost story seeks to make the immaterial material, activating the otherwise materially inaccessible histories of the living, dying, and haunting foundation of Oberlin College.
