Series
BackStory
Episode
American Spirit: A History of the Supernatural
Producing Organization
BackStory
Contributing Organization
BackStory (Charlottesville, Virginia)
AAPB ID
cpb-aacip/532-z60bv7cd1s
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Description
Episode Description
On this Halloween special, the History Guys explore Americans' relationship with ghosts, spirits, and witches throughout our nation's history. Why were colonists so fearful of New England "witches"? How is it that progressive social reformers found a home in the Spiritualist movement of the 19th century? Why do new media technologies always conjure talk of the undead? Can social upheaval help explain our history with the ineffable?
Broadcast Date
2011-00-00
Asset type
Episode
Rights
Copyright Virginia Foundation for the Humanities and Public Policy. With the exception of third party-owned material that may be contained within this program, this content islicensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial 4.0 InternationalLicense (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/).
Media type
Sound
Duration
00:02:13
Embed Code
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Credits
Producing Organization: BackStory
AAPB Contributor Holdings
BackStory
Identifier: American-Spirit_A_History_of_the_Supernatural (BackStory)
Format: Hard Drive

Identifier: cpb-aacip-532-z60bv7cd1s.mp3 (mediainfo)
Format: audio/mpeg
Generation: Proxy
Duration: 00:02:13
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Citations
Chicago: “BackStory; American Spirit: A History of the Supernatural,” 2011-00-00, BackStory, American Archive of Public Broadcasting (GBH and the Library of Congress), Boston, MA and Washington, DC, accessed October 18, 2025, http://americanarchive.org/catalog/cpb-aacip-532-z60bv7cd1s.
MLA: “BackStory; American Spirit: A History of the Supernatural.” 2011-00-00. BackStory, American Archive of Public Broadcasting (GBH and the Library of Congress), Boston, MA and Washington, DC. Web. October 18, 2025. <http://americanarchive.org/catalog/cpb-aacip-532-z60bv7cd1s>.
APA: BackStory; American Spirit: A History of the Supernatural. Boston, MA: BackStory, American Archive of Public Broadcasting (GBH and the Library of Congress), Boston, MA and Washington, DC. Retrieved from http://americanarchive.org/catalog/cpb-aacip-532-z60bv7cd1s