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
- murdered
- recording
- fifteen
- holding
- harder
- state
- deeply
- lynched
- archive
- alternative
- claim
- deaths
- 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
- act
- alternative
- americans
- archive
- arrow
- california
- claim
- coming
- communities
- deaths
- deeply
- definition
- deny
- diaries
- digging
- event
- evidence
- executions
- featured
- fifteen
- finding
- generation
- ghost
- gold
- graduate
- happen
- happened
- hard
- harder
- haunt
- history
- holding
- hung
- important
- killed
- latin
- legend
- letters
- local
- lore
- lynched
- lynching
- mexicans
- murdered
- needed
- newspapers
- official
- passing
- place
- prove
- public
- record
- recording
- refused
- research
- reveal
- rush
- sanctioned
- served
- sign
- state
- story
- technically
- time
- town
- towns
- violence
- violent
- years