Camping with Ghosts: Experiential Learning, Mnemohistory and the Haunted Landscapes of Outdoor Education

Peng, Lance ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0003-1825-6146 (2026) Camping with Ghosts: Experiential Learning, Mnemohistory and the Haunted Landscapes of Outdoor Education. SCHOLE: A Journal of Leisure Studies and Recreation Education, n/a. pp. 1-8. ISSN 2162-4097

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Abstract / Summary

This learning activity introduces a creative, critical, and place-based pedagogy designed to help students explore how landscapes used in outdoor education are haunted by erased Indigenous, racialized, and queer histories. Drawing from Jan Assmann’s concept of mnemohistory and Avery Gordon’s hauntology, the activity reframes experiential learning (Kolb; Dewey) as a practice of ethical attunement to absence, memory, power. Students engage in “Ghost mapping,” a field-based exercise that asks them to identify physical features of a site and also points of absence, affective responses, and speculative narratives. By layering official narratives with contested, forgotten, invisible histories, students collaboratively create “Haunted trail interpretive guides” that synthesize reflection, historical research, and imaginative speculation. Assessment focuses on reflexivity and theoretical integration rather than factual recall, and the activity is adaptable to urban, indoor, virtual contexts. This approach promotes historical consciousness, critical empathy, and more inclusive understandings of land and leisure, offering a replicable model for educators in outdoor education, recreation, cultural geography, and beyond.

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