Qualitative hauntings and reflexivity

The stories that stay with us…

In our Reflexive Thematic Analysis Bootcamp this week, the group discussion turned to how we interpret the same qualitative dataset differently when we revisit it at different points in time. How do we see our qualitative data if we return to it months, or years, later? Do time and reflexivity change our engagement with data, accounts and narratives? Should we account for qualitative hauntings?

So, down the rabbit hole I went, into the literature on hauntings, ghosts, reflexivity and qualitative research. I’ve previously written about hauntings in autoethnographic work: about how as academics and researchers, we are haunted by what was, what is, and what could be (see Lumsden 2023).

However, qualitative researchers have at least one ‘haunting’:

• An interview you still think about months, or even years, later.
• A pause before a participant answers an interview question.
• An emotion you can still hear in a participant’s voice.
• A question you didn’t ask during an interview or focus group.
• A story told by a participant that followed you home.

As Halloween approaches, I want to think about the ghosts of qualitative research, and why being haunted is part of the reflexive process and experience.

Photo credit: Karen Lumsden, 2026

Sociological hauntings

I started by revisiting Avery Gordon’s (2008) Ghostly Matters: Haunting and the Sociological Imagination. For Gordon, haunting is not about the supernatural. Instead, it is a way of paying attention to what has been made invisible, silenced or pushed out of view, but still makes itself felt in the present. And the ghost is a sign that something is missing. As Gordon notes, haunting is:

…the domain of turmoil and trouble, that moment (of however long duration) when things are not in their assigned places, when the cracks and rigging are exposed … when disturbed feelings cannot be put away. (2008: xvi).

As qualitative researchers, much of our work involves listening for what lies beneath the surface: the hidden meanings, the unspoken, the uncompleted sentences, and the histories and experiences that shape people’s lives.

Haunted reflexivity

More recently, Jenna Hanchey and Kaylee Mulholland (2025) have written about ‘haunted reflexivity’. They argue that reflexivity is too often treated as a one-off disclosure, such as a positionality statement listing who we are. Instead, they see it as a relational and continual practice that shapes every stage of research, from design and fieldwork to analysis and writing (see also Lumsden 2019).

A few of their points stood out:

• Reflexivity is never finished. It begins before the formal research starts and does not end when the project does. As they explain: ‘There is no getting it right.’
• We are formed through our relations with others, including the living and the dead, and within wider structures of power and inequality.
• Our research is haunted by structural violence: the ghosts of colonialism, racism and sexism, as well as personal ghosts.
• Witnessing is more than observing. It involves recognising what others have experienced and what we might miss, while accepting that we can never fully grasp it.
• ‘Positionality’ can suggest a fixed identity. Reflexivity asks us to keep questioning the terms we use and the process.
• Discomfort and failure are sources of learning, rather than weaknesses or hidden secrets.

This is similar to how I think about reflexivity. It is fluid, iterative and ongoing (Lumsden 2019).

Echoes and ghosts in interpretive phenomenological analysis (IPA)

Ghostly metaphors also appear in writing on interpretative phenomenological analysis (IPA). For example, Goldspink and Engward (2019) suggest that researchers attend to the ‘echoes’ in their research: moments when the participant’s words and experiences resonate with the researcher’s own. Rather than trying to bracket these resonances out, they encourage researchers to notice them, record them in a reflexive journal, and make them visible as part of the analysis.

However, as the title of their paper suggests, some echoes are ‘booming clangs’, loud and hard to ignore. Others are ‘whispering ghosts’, quieter and easily missed. Both shape how we make sense of participants’ sense-making. This makes the hermeneutic process in IPA more transparent, and reminds us that interpretation always involves the researcher as well as the participant.

So… what might hauntings look like in our own research?

1. The participants who stay with us

It’s important to recognise that qualitative research is emotion work (Dickson-Swift et al. 2009). For example, we listen closely, often to experiences of loss, harm or struggle, and we carry some of that with us. It is not unusual to recall or replay interviews later on – wondering whether we asked the right question, what that silence or pause meant, or whether I supported my participants as best as I could?

Ask yourself: which stories have stayed with you? And why those ones?

2. Absent presences in the data

Some ghosts are things that are not there – absent presences or silences. For example, the silence after a difficult question. Or the topic that focus group participants avoid or tip-toe around, but don’t delve into. Perhaps it’s the participants missing in your sample. Following Gordon, and work on silence in qualitative research (Mazzei 2007), paying attention to absence can be just as revealing as analysing what is said.

Ask yourself: what, or who, is missing from your data? And what topics did they not discuss?

3. Ghosts in the analysis

Reflexive thematic analysis is iterative (Braun and Clarke 2021). For instance, we develop candidate themes, revise them, merge them and sometimes let them go. But, our earlier interpretation and decisions don’t disappear. The discarded theme or code, and prior drafts of thematic maps, still shape how we see the data. And they also hint at the interpretations or stories not told.

Ask yourself: which earlier interpretations are still influencing your analysis? And which echoes are you noticing in your data?

4. The ghosts of time

This takes us back to the bootcamp discussion. When we return to data later on, we are not the same researcher who collected it. Our lives, our theoretical lens, and the wider research context may have all moved on. We learn as we research. For example, Mauthner, Parry and Backett-Milburn (1998) argue that revisiting our own qualitative data years later can produce different readings, than the original research. Our earlier selves haunt the data, and our present selves read it anew.

Ask yourself: how has time changed your interpretation of your data and its meanings?

5. Our own ghosts

We bring our own life histories into our research: our experiences, our positionality and the reasons we chose the research topic in the first place. These shape what we notice, what moves us, and what we might overlook. Reflexivity is about recognising our own ghosts too. Reflexivity IS haunting.

Ask yourself: what have you brought into your research? What are you haunted by?

Photo credit: Jonny Gios on Unsplash

Laying ghosts to rest

Importantly, being haunted by our research is a sign of care and close engagement. It shows that we have listened to and taken participants’ stories seriously and treated them with empathy and care. But how can we put this into practice?:

• Write a short reflexive note after each interview and return to these notes over time
• Talk things through in supervision or with a research colleague
• Build space and recovery time between interviews
• Recognise when you need support yourself

However, we don’t need to banish every ghost. Some stay with us because they matter – they are ‘ghostly matters’ (Gordon 2008).

What do you think?

• How does time change your interpretation of qualitative data and meanings?
• What are you haunted by in your analysis journey?
• What other meanings can ‘hauntings’ have in qualitative research?

I would love to read your thoughts in the comments.

To find out more about training on qualitative research, reflexive thematic analysis, and reflexivity, check out our training pages on the website: https://qualitativetraining.com/training/

References

Braun, V. and Clarke, V. (2021) Thematic Analysis: A Practical Guide. London: Sage.

Dickson-Swift, V., James, E.L., Kippen, S. and Liamputtong, P. (2009) ‘Researching sensitive topics: qualitative research as emotion work’, Qualitative Research, 9(1): 61-79. https://doi.org/10.1177/1468794108098031

Goldspink, S. and Engward, H. (2019) ‘Booming clangs and whispering ghosts: attending to the reflexive echoes in IPA research’, Qualitative Research in Psychology, 16(2): 291-304. https://doi.org/10.1080/14780887.2018.1543111

Gordon, A.F. (1997) Ghostly Matters: Haunting and the Sociological Imagination. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press. (New edition 2008.)

Hanchey, J.N. and Mulholland, K. (2025) ‘Witnessing (to) ghosts: relational approaches to reflexivity through haunting’, SAGE Research Methods Cases. https://doi.org/10.4135/9781036209155

Lumsden, K. (2019) Reflexivity: Theory, Method, and Practice. London: Routledge.

Lumsden, K. (2023) ‘Reflections and confessions on the making of a performative autoethnography: University professional development reviews and the academic self’. In J. Goode, K. Lumsden and J. Bradford (Eds.), Crafting Autoethnography: Process and Practices of Making Self and Culture. London: Routledge (Chapter 9).

Mauthner, N.S., Parry, O. and Backett-Milburn, K. (1998) ‘The data are out there, or are they? Implications for archiving and revisiting qualitative data’, Sociology, 32(4): 733-745. https://doi.org/10.1177/0038038598032004006

Mazzei, L.A. (2007) Inhabited Silence in Qualitative Research: Putting Poststructural Theory to Work. New York: Peter Lang.