Are ghosts unAmerican?

Who knew Frank Norris would be in "Fantastic American Tales" (Library of America)? Isn't he the muckracker who wrote The Octopus and McTeague? Started reading his "fantastic tale" last night, strangely it's set in Iceland of all places, about a guy who hires a shepherd, a big burly man who frightens others in the village because he has no faith. One winter night - during a storm, I think - the shepherd disappears. An expedition follows the footprints through the snow, up a mountain, following some kind of inhuman tracks. They find the frozen corpse of the shepherd, with the inhuman tracks leading farther up the mountain. When they come back for the corpse later, it's gone. Then the ghost of the shepherd appears in the window one night! Ghost stories - the heart and soul of the fantastic, but in a sense they're more imbued in the European (and Asian?) tradition, we don't see as many among the American writers. Not sure why that is. And even this ghost story is placed in a northern-European setting. Are ghosts unAmerican? Do you need to be part of a long tradition of religious faith for ghosts completely to resonate? I know that there are exceptions, that no doubt there are plenty of American ghost stories, but it seems from the selection in this anthology that Americans are more drawn to stories of madness, of haunted places, of curses, of visions - and less so to visitations. Will finish the story (rather long) tonight I hope (also, opening day against the Yankees, plus Easter...) - wondering if I will finish the anthology. Though you can learn a lot about reading through an entire seletion, it also feels, at times, like the Twilight Zone marathon weekend, in which the uncanny gradually becomes "canny" and less affecting.