Betsy Gaines Quammen, PhD
Historian & Writer
Author of This Haunted Land, American Zion, and True West, Betsy Gaines Quammen collects stories of haunted histories and wild landscapes to make sense of a place shaped by colonization, extraction, rebellion, myth, beauty, and land
Coming September 1, 2026
This Haunted Land
Coming September 2026
In This Haunted Land, Betsy Gaines Quammen investigates some of America's most enduring ghost stories and uncovers how they can help us come to terms with our unsettled past. With curiosity and an open-hearted willingness to learn from the living and the dead, Gaines Quammen takes readers on a riveting, sometimes spooky journey into the haunted towns, lands, waters, and parts of history that we too often ignore. From a once-booming uranium mine community now entombed in Colorado’s Mesa County, to America’s oldest fort on the east coast of Florida, to the forests of Arkansas where the ivory-billed woodpecker once took flight, This Haunted Land interweaves memory, mourning, folklore, and social anxiety—and shows that politicized efforts to rewrite history can be defeated by listening to the spectres of the past.
What People Are Saying
“Gaines Quammen is a fabulous tour guide—smart, curious, open-minded and possessing more than a little of the ‘spunky charm’ she attributes to one of the haunted mining towns she visits. This Haunted Land is filled with not just spooky chills, but a profound message: ghosts remind us of the troubled past we work so hard to forget.”
—DAVID GESSNER, A Traveler’s Guide to the End of the World
“An expert assessment of how America’s hauntings exist alongside its most harrowing histories. This Haunted Land shows how this country tells ghost stories and campfire tales to avoid confronting the terrors at the heart of our culture. What leaves a reader with chills is not the fearsome details, but the deep well of empathy that motivates Gaines Quammen to advocate for the dead and her ability to look history straight in the eye.”
—LEAH SOTTILE, Blazing Eye Sees All
“A compelling and fascinating way to examine US history! Having never given much stock to stories of haunting and ghost sightings, I now find myself eager to hear those stories and ask questions about the lands I live on and travel to, desperate to uncover what’s been hidden and honor what came before.”
—SALLY MERCEDES, Magic City Books
“Jump in the truck with Gaines Quammen as she turns over the darkest corners of our nation. From a Colorado nuclear town that’s been buried alive to the silencing of Kettle Falls, a sacred salmon fishing site behind Grand Coulee Dam, this historian’s latest book is a riveting and haunting cross-country ride.”
—ANNA KING, Ghost Herd Podcast
“This Haunted Land and its adventures along the road of America's dark tourism industry remind us that ghost stories are a necessary corrective to our complicated and too-often-forgotten shared past.”
—KIRK ELLIS, writer/producer of HBO's John Adams and Apple TV's Franklin
“You will gobble up this spooky folklore like handfuls of candy corn. Betsy Gaines Quammen deftly guides us through the house of horrors that is America’s colonial past. The true gift of this book is that it not only encourages America’s settler descendants to remember the dark truths about our nation’s history, but also enables us to reconcile with these hungry ghosts so that they no longer haunt the present.”
—ANNETTE MCGIVNEY, Pure Land and Plastic Shaman
“This Haunted Land proves that our landscapes—from abandoned mines to stolen plains—hold the echoes of our greatest transgressions. No one can tell a ghost story, or a story about the soul of America, better than Gaines Quammen.”
—CMARIE FUHRMAN, Salmon Weather
“Through personal narrative and historic reflection, Gaines Quammen turns the term ‘haunted’ on its head, delving into the environmental impacts of extinction, the pursuit of radioactive material, the legacy of slavery, and how these horrible histories affect us as all.”
—ARVIN RAM, Townie Books
“To make sense of this land's historical trauma, Gaines Quammen meets every ghost with a willingness to sit and listen. The result is a breathtaking American ghost history that must be read to be believed.”
—XANDER DANENHAUER, The Country Bookshelf
“Gaines Quammen redefines spectral hauntings, reminding us that the things that go bump in the night might not always be malevolent beings, but unreconciled histories waiting for accountability and acknowledgement.”
—STACIE SHANNON DENETSOSIE, The Missing Morningstar
“In Gaines Quammen's characteristically captivating style, she once again takes us on an epic American adventure.”
—CHARLIE J. STEPHENS, A Wounded Deer Leaps Highest
What People Are Saying
“In telling the stories that comprise True West, Betsy Gaines Quammen reminds us that in order to keep this fractured country together we must meet our fellow Americans where they are, on their own terms.”
—Beto O’Rourke, author of We’ve Got to Try
“People think they ‘know’ the West but they’re usually wrong. That’s because there’s no region of our country more steeped in fallacy, fake news, and fable. Betsy Gaines Quammen, a wry and wise observer, takes us on a ride across the modern West—and along the way, disentangles reality from centuries of myth and mystique.”
—Hampton Sides, New York Times bestselling author of Blood and Thunder
What People Are Saying
“Betsy Gaines Quammen has taken a deep, fascinating dive into a uniquely American brand of religious zealotry that poses a grave threat to our national parks, wilderness areas, wildlife sanctuaries, and other public lands. American Zion provides essential background for anyone concerned about the future of open space in the western United States. It also happens to be a delight to read.”
—Jon Krakauer, author of Under the Banner of Heaven
"A magnificent portrait of complexity, interrogating the collision between frontier thinking and the rising consciousness toward the climate crisis on public lands. Brilliant and electrifying…Gaines Quammen's voice is bright, engaging, and smart. She listens. She is fair. But she is not seduced by cowboy mythology. Her vision calls for an ecological wisdom that can govern our communities, both human and wild, with reverence and respect."
—Terry Tempest Williams, author of Erosion
On Regulations of Public Lands
Betsy Gaines Quammen, was The Community Library’s Jack Grove Writer-In-Residence in November 2021 in Ketchum, ID, working at the historic Ernest and Mary Hemingway House and Preserve. She gave a lecture at The Ketchum Community Library during her stay.