Happy Halloween from MSU Media Preservation!
Who knew that media could be so haunted? From “Flesh Eating Film Reels” (1975) to The Ring (2002), media technology has long been portrayed as a site of otherworldly possession.
Sound and image without material substance, the electronically mediated forms of telecommunications often evoke the supernatural by creating virtual worlds that appear to have no physical form. By bringing this spectral world into the home, the TV set in particular can take on the appearance of a haunted apparatus
Jeffrey Sconce, Haunted Media
Craving more scholarship on portrayals of haunted media for spooky season? Want to beef up your knowledge of digital technology in horror? Of course you do. Check out the books and articles below from the MSU Library Catalog:
- Haunted Media: Electronic Presence from Telegraphy to Television, Jeffrey Sconce
- “Monstrous and Haunted Media: H.P. Lovecraft and Early 20th-Century Communications Technology,” James Kneale (article in Historical Geography)
- Killer Tapes and Shattered Screens: Video Spectatorship from VHS to File Sharing, Caetlin Benson-Allott
- Paranormal Media: Audiences, Spirits, and Magic in Popular Culture, Annette Hill
- “What Hides Behind the Stream: Post-Cinematic Hauntings of the Digital.” Chapter from Affective Intensities and Evolving Horror Forms: From Found Footage to Virtual Reality, by Adam Daniel.
