kimberley lynne.

Dredging the Choptank

Humanity likes being safely scared. Americans love the secure thrill of the roller coaster and a good ghost story. In spring 2003, the Dorchester County Arts Center commissioned me to write a ghost walking tour for High Street in Cambridge, Maryland. In collecting local folklore, I maintained a diary that evolved into this supernatural thriller about a writer investigating ghost legend. The writer protagonist, Maryland, discovers a Native American Indian burial ground under the High Street jail and that fable, in which water is the enemy, eventually engulfs and transforms her.

Yet the book is more than a supernatural thriller; it's a layman's guide to the spectral folklore of Dorchester County. The protagonist's ghost story frames a collection of Dorchester County legend, the phantom experiences of my friends and my personal ghost stories. Like a parable with a little bit of dangerous truth, except for the final chapter, the stories are true.

Dredging the Choptank does not presume to propose one metaphysical solution to the question of phantoms but instead promotes the consideration of many possibilities and acknowledges that America as a culture is on the brink of a new paradigm that necessitates a shift in belief systems. Every plot of American earth could be an unknown burial ground and every American town sustains its own ghost folklore. Inside all of us is a ghost, just dying to get out.