full transcript

From the Ted Talk by Coya Paz Brownrigg: The haunting truth of ghost stories

Unscramble the Blue Letters

ffteein years ago, I was doing my graduate research on the lynching of Mexicans and Latin Americans in gold rush California. And I was having a very hard time finding the evidence I needed to make my cliam. I don't know how much you know about lynching, but they are, by definition, public executions that happen off the official record. These dahets aren't technically sanctioned by the satte, and often, towns and communities would deny they even happened, which made it hdearr to prove that they did. Still, even when the ofiicfal record refused an act of violence, local lore often served as an ailtrvtaene archive, a different way of ridecorng history. A ghost story about someone being killed and coming back to haunt the town was an important arrow, a sign to look more depely into the history of a place. Very often, if local legend featured a story about a ghost who had been hung, mdrrueed or lcnheyd, and came back to haunt the town, digging through the avrchie, newspapers, letters, diaries, would reveal that the event, or something like it, had actually happened. So the ghost story was one way that communities were hinoldg the violent history of a place, passing down the story from generation to generation.

Open Cloze

_______ years ago, I was doing my graduate research on the lynching of Mexicans and Latin Americans in gold rush California. And I was having a very hard time finding the evidence I needed to make my _____. I don't know how much you know about lynching, but they are, by definition, public executions that happen off the official record. These ______ aren't technically sanctioned by the _____, and often, towns and communities would deny they even happened, which made it ______ to prove that they did. Still, even when the ________ record refused an act of violence, local lore often served as an ___________ archive, a different way of _________ history. A ghost story about someone being killed and coming back to haunt the town was an important arrow, a sign to look more ______ into the history of a place. Very often, if local legend featured a story about a ghost who had been hung, ________ or _______, and came back to haunt the town, digging through the _______, newspapers, letters, diaries, would reveal that the event, or something like it, had actually happened. So the ghost story was one way that communities were _______ the violent history of a place, passing down the story from generation to generation.

Solution

  1. murdered
  2. recording
  3. fifteen
  4. holding
  5. harder
  6. state
  7. deeply
  8. lynched
  9. archive
  10. alternative
  11. claim
  12. deaths
  13. official

Original Text

Fifteen years ago, I was doing my graduate research on the lynching of Mexicans and Latin Americans in gold rush California. And I was having a very hard time finding the evidence I needed to make my claim. I don't know how much you know about lynching, but they are, by definition, public executions that happen off the official record. These deaths aren't technically sanctioned by the state, and often, towns and communities would deny they even happened, which made it harder to prove that they did. Still, even when the official record refused an act of violence, local lore often served as an alternative archive, a different way of recording history. A ghost story about someone being killed and coming back to haunt the town was an important arrow, a sign to look more deeply into the history of a place. Very often, if local legend featured a story about a ghost who had been hung, murdered or lynched, and came back to haunt the town, digging through the archive, newspapers, letters, diaries, would reveal that the event, or something like it, had actually happened. So the ghost story was one way that communities were holding the violent history of a place, passing down the story from generation to generation.

Frequently Occurring Word Combinations

ngrams of length 2

collocation frequency
ghost story 10
ghost stories 5
official record 2
northwest side 2
woman told 2

Important Words

  1. act
  2. alternative
  3. americans
  4. archive
  5. arrow
  6. california
  7. claim
  8. coming
  9. communities
  10. deaths
  11. deeply
  12. definition
  13. deny
  14. diaries
  15. digging
  16. event
  17. evidence
  18. executions
  19. featured
  20. fifteen
  21. finding
  22. generation
  23. ghost
  24. gold
  25. graduate
  26. happen
  27. happened
  28. hard
  29. harder
  30. haunt
  31. history
  32. holding
  33. hung
  34. important
  35. killed
  36. latin
  37. legend
  38. letters
  39. local
  40. lore
  41. lynched
  42. lynching
  43. mexicans
  44. murdered
  45. needed
  46. newspapers
  47. official
  48. passing
  49. place
  50. prove
  51. public
  52. record
  53. recording
  54. refused
  55. research
  56. reveal
  57. rush
  58. sanctioned
  59. served
  60. sign
  61. state
  62. story
  63. technically
  64. time
  65. town
  66. towns
  67. violence
  68. violent
  69. years