Episode 29: Ghost Stories Throughout Time, and Around the World with Dr. Tok Thomspon

What ghost story has haunted you since you heard it? This spooky show with Tok Thompson, professor at University of Southern California, is part of our Halloween/ October series- all about ghosts and ghost stories and why they haunt us. Dr. Thompson teaches folklore and mythology, including a course called Ghost Stories: Throughout Time and […]

The post Episode 29: Ghost Stories Throughout Time, and Around the World with Dr. Tok Thomspon appeared first on Fabric of Folklore.

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Transcript

0:03
[Music]
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welcome folksy folks welcome to fabric of folklore I'm your Hostess Vanessa y Rogers and this is the podcast where we
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unravel the mysteries of folklore folklore is folklore isn't just fairy
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tales or folktales it's so much more is proverbs mythology Legends it's whether
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we greet each other with a hug a handshake a bow or a curtsy it is an exploration of Dee rooted cultural
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Behavior take the the tooth fairy for instance a tradition that is widely practiced around the world and one that
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I practice with my children H but did you know that it is believed to be traced back to the Vikings in the
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earliest recorded writings of North and northern European Traditions adults would pay children a fee for their first
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tooth teeth were made into protective necklaces for battles and thought to bring good luck so folklore is
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fascinating but is also informative about who we are where we came from
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understanding folklore helps to connect us it helps to ground us so if that sounds like a podcast that you are
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interested in listening to make sure you hit that subscribe button whether you're watching on YouTube or you're listening
1:18
on a podcasting platform so that you don't miss every Tuesday new podcasts
1:25
drop so make sure you're hitting that subscribe button and today we have a fantastic show It's a Spooky show part
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of our Halloween series all about ghosts and ghost stories and why they haunt us
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I'm particularly excited for this show because I was raised on Are You Afraid of the Dark as a kid ghosts have played
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a large role in storytelling around the world appearing as Central character characters in much of folklore
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literature and pop culture ghost stories invite discussions of the soul and the afterlife and appear in different forms
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and various cultures throughout time and around our world Our Guest Dr to Thompson is a graduate of Harvard
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College and University of California Berkeley with degrees in folklore and anthropology he has recently published
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two books one of his own research entitled posthuman folklore in 2019 and
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another co-authored with Gregory shrimp a textbook on world mythology entitled
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the truth of myth that was in 2020 he's a professor at University of Southern California where he teaches on folklore
2:27
and mythology including a course called ghost stories throughout time and around
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the world so thank you so much for joining us today oh it's my pleasure my pleasure to
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be here always enjoy sharing the world of fol with folks and so can you tell us a little bit about your journey into
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teaching this course on ghost stories why ghost stories and why are they important do you
2:52
think um sure sure um you know this is uh I'm an anthropologist as well as a
2:57
folklore so I kind of have a foot in both worlds and um I have a ba in anthropology my PhD is in anthropology
3:04
my master's degrees is in folklore uh and I I I'm in an anthropology department teaching folklore courses so
3:10
um as an anthropologist I'm really interested in um the diversity of cultures around the world uh and um and
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then as a folor I'm interested in their folklore so uh when I came to um USC
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some 18 years ago uh I was asked to prepare um a a a uh general education
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seminar for fresh and they wanted something that would uh um that would be um uh uh you know freshmen from all over
3:35
the world and from all sorts of different disciplines are going to get you know put into these um seminars and so they wanted something that could help
3:41
you know Foster conversations and and and um so I thought well you know ghost stories right people all these different
3:47
cultures around the world almost all of them have some sort of ghost stories uh but they're not the same and so you know
3:53
people come from their own ghost stories and they can share them and that can uh work well as a course so that was really
3:58
why I started it as of course um I'm interested in Ghost and I've done some research on ghost but in terms of making
4:04
a good course out of it that that was sort of the um philosophy behind it and it seemed to work because again you get
4:10
people coming from all over the world they may not feel like they have a lot of commonalities with other people and
4:15
yet you're in a small room and you're sharing you know ghost stories which can at times be very personal and very
4:21
private and um and so uh it's a really a nice way to get people talking about and
4:27
making connections across different cult background and even across different religious backgrounds right I mean you know you might think oh it's a different
4:34
religion they don't believe the same as me and yet then you're both talking about a ghost story right so as an anthropologist and
4:42
a folklorist how do you differentiate the two different studies uh well historically they're
4:49
they're they're built very different they're very different disciplines on the other hand they study a lot of the same stuff and that's why I've kind of
4:54
studied both of them uh to kind of get a fot Both Worlds uh so um the the anthrop
4:59
ology sort of arose out of the Empire so the um the old Imperial Powers that's
5:05
where you find Anthropology so the UK France America and so anthropology was
5:10
about you know how do we understand to better sort of control our conquered peop that was where it got started out
5:16
as it's moved on along along from there but it's a different sort of uh history
5:21
folklore um started off in different countries folklore started off in Europe in the countries that were not Empires
5:27
that were trying to become these new nations States former uh uh Imperial States or colonies even like Ireland or
5:34
Finland or you know so how do they build this sense of having their own Nation um through folklore you know Ireland's
5:41
first president after the Revolution was a folklorist not even a politician uh so that has a lot to do very often in a lot
5:48
of the world it's about um you know your own nation's folklore or your own people's folklore uh and so if you go to
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the bookstore and you look up folklore very often it'll be divided by Nations like you know German folklore is here
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you know Norwegian folklore is here and what that misses that a lot of this is shared right a lot of what Norwegian
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folklore is what a lot of German folk is shared and in fact all these you know even a lot of the fairy tales think
6:11
German fairy tales well they're also French fairy tales and Italian fairy tales and some of them you can trace
6:17
right across the silk route and back to China and you know so these things um you know the there's a different
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disciplinary history one arose out of the nation building folklore anthropology arose out of colonialism
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now both of these disciplines have moved on from just sort of being agents of the Empire but that that produces a
6:36
different sort of focus most folk work in one country their home country most
6:41
anthropologists work in a local that they don't come from right so there's this idea are you g to be a foreigner or
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and for me I kind of like the anthropological idea of sort of being a foreigner although I've done some work on you know where I come from but uh
6:54
mostly I like studying other people and studying other groups and learning other language is that sort of thing so that
7:01
kind of pushes me to the anthropology camp and yet what do I study when I go when I study these people I study their jokes their Proverbs or folklor or ghost
7:08
stories or mythology right so that puts me in the folklore Camp so I like using both you know have you learned anything
7:14
about yourself as you're studying these things oh yeah you know to be an
7:20
anthropologist um and to study other cultures and uh you know one of the first lessons I think you learn from
7:26
that is you you you learn how your home up formed who you are yeah right and
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it's a little bit like going through Psychotherapy or something to become a psychotherapist you you sort of break yourself down and then you have to
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understand like oh wow this is I thought this was me and it was just happened to be about where I was brought up and what
7:45
sort of things I was exposed to when I was being brought up I always like to think if I'm trying to understand
7:50
another culture like you know what if I had been born here what would it be like if I had been growing up there um so
7:56
there's there's there's there's um you learn a lot about yourself right when you learn about other people if you learn a new language especially a
8:03
radically different one from a different language family you learn a lot about your own language yeah oh wow I never noticed how English does that before
8:10
right so of course it's a process of discovery and um you know for some people they don't want to do that it's
8:16
scary right you're gonna uh uh see to be become conscious of all of this but I
8:21
for me becoming conscious of of how you have been created it gives you power
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right if you're unconscious about it then you're still subjected to it but if you become conscious of it U then you can pick and choose you can say wow you
8:33
know I like the way that I was brought up to think about these things but on the other hand I really like the way that these people can you know think
8:39
about this and I'm gonna I'm gonna try to use that for my own life yeah so um you know it gives you a potential
8:46
richness to choose from if after you become exposed to more it doesn't mean you have to give up on your former self
8:51
or anything but you know it does give you options it does give you a choice I remember when I taught English in Chile
8:59
one of I was learning Spanish as I was there I had the rudimentary level but extrano was a word for um strange but
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then the uh the word for uh stranger was just a root word off of that and I and I
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was thinking of it in my own language and I was like we have the same thing strange stranger a stranger is someone
9:20
who is strange and I had never you know I had never connected the two words together as someone who was what that
9:26
old the door song right people are strange when you're were a stranger yes yeah exactly but it just had never
9:33
clicked for me and so like I I agree when you're learning another language then you like have to look back through your own language and and things start
9:40
to to make sense that you know Spanish and English are very Spanish and English are very closely related right they're
9:46
they're they Indo-European languages heavily influenced by Latin both of them you know Spanish is the romance language
9:52
so and then you're talking about you know completely different language families um like say Native Americans or
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languages and you're like like wow this world is put together in a completely different way right there there's
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there's one whole language family uh Native American language family the soltion they they have no nouns like
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thingss do not exist wow and it's like wow what kind of what kind of world is that to inhabit mentally where there are
10:16
no things everything it's just verbs everything is happening and how does it change your mindset how does it change
10:21
your mind right right yeah exactly and so you know I probably will never get the opportunity to learn a Solan
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language but man I'd love to because I would love to know you know how that works so why do you think people are so
10:36
interested in in Ghost Stories why are they drawn to them oh yeah that's a good question so
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one thing I think to establish is that ghost stories are fun because there it's found in a lot of cultures around the
10:47
world with a lot of people around the world but not everybody and not every culture so you do have some cultures
10:53
that don't have anything that we could say as a ghost and then in a lot of cultures what we might translate is a
10:59
ghost it's going to come out a little differently is it really a ghost or is it a zombie or is it a you know is it is
11:04
it a a premonition or an omen so you know sometimes it's a little hard if you
11:10
so I like to try to Define ghost as like a spirit of a dead person that is encountered by the living um but that is
11:17
that's that's a pretty wide latitude right so for example in um ghosts are huge in in East Asia uh Japan you know
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Taiwan huge right Philippines uh but there are the ghost tend to be uh Corporal in other words you can shake
11:31
hands with them oh right they don't they don't whisk through walls they open the door and walk through uh so ghosts are
11:37
corpal they can sort of immediately disappear at points or something but you can you again you can shake their hands
11:42
you can give them a hug you can kiss them you can have sex with them you can get impregnated by them and have ghost
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babies so all of a sudden this is coming to much much sort of broader level than
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we would have sort of with wispy ghost of of the American tradition um so you know they work out differently
12:01
in different cultures and seeing how they work out differently is very interesting so why ghost you know so let
12:06
me get back to that question uh number one again not all people believe in ghosts even in America but but most
12:12
people do right so that's interesting uh even in the United States ghost belief
12:17
is well over 60% most Americans believe that ghosts are real so I find that fascinating because science has never
12:24
really asserted that ghost are real science kind of says don't believe it and even our major religion uh groups tend to say look don't believe
12:31
in ghosts right in Christian tradition you're not supposed to really come back as a ghost you're supposed to either go
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to heaven or to hell or wait till the anyway it's not ghosts aren't supposed to be there and yet most Americans
12:43
believe in them right so here you have an example most people think oh what do people believe it's either science or
12:48
religion well here's an example when both science and religion are saying don't believe in this and yet people are believing in it right so just that you
12:55
know that's the power of folklore right so there is this thing out there that that that uh so and then again going
13:00
back to your question why ghost well I think that's a really rich question there's a lot to it um but for one thing
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you know what happens when you die right this is I think as soon as people were
13:12
able to put language together this is probably one of their first philosophical questions you know gee
13:18
throg you know Zog over there died you know what
13:23
happens when you die this had to be one of our first philosophical questions so this might be behind a lot of world
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religions it might be behind a lot of um you know ethical systems uh but it's also in everybody's mind to some degree
13:37
you know um and um so ghosts are interesting because you know they're
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parts of the past uh usually that have failed to resolve right so ghosts usually appear for a reason right
13:48
they're haunting us because something was done bad to them so this is like you know there there's been an ethical lapse
13:56
one might say and people believe that we are not through it yet and that's why we keep being haunted so if you look at
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like who tends to form haunting goes right look at America you you go to the South where do you where are the best
14:08
ghost stories oh plantations slavery right ghost of Ghost of of of slaves why
14:14
because of all the ethical lapses right of all the horrible things that happened that were never resolved during these
14:20
people's lives uh so there's this idea that that that you were haunted like at even on a personal level that a society
14:26
is haunted by his ethical abs yeah or like you know what's the classic one Native American Building on top of
14:32
Native American secred burial grounds right this is like a classic ghost Motif and it's true right I mean a lot of
14:39
America is literally and figuratively uh built on Native American take barial grounds right we don't tend to recognize
14:46
the the genocides and the displacements and all everything all of again all the
14:51
ethical lapses that were inflicted on Native Americans so um you know if you look at what a person is haunted by it's
14:58
usually something that they have done wrong or somebody they have done wrong right the murderer being haunted by the
15:03
victim on a societal level that's what the society has done wrong you might say
15:09
um and so it's a lot about ethics it's a lot about um feeling that that that you know if you didn't get it resolved in
15:15
life maybe we can get it resolved somehow in the spiritual realm yeah that's what these ghosts represent so um
15:20
you know it's a great way of looking at what people are are haunted by you know the idea of the the female ghost who is
15:27
jilted the altar right it's never the male groom jilted a so that says something right about you know ethical
15:34
lapse of of treatment of women in terms of you know this or that so again this is um it it'll tell you a lot of what
15:41
went wrong but the nice thing about ghost stories very often there's a transfer Redemption right there's a chance to appease the ghost to make
15:48
things right to help their Spirits move on to the other world or what have uh so this is true in most you know Traditions
15:55
that I've seen around the world that these sort of um these allow for uh you know really a belief in
16:00
transcendental ethics that ethics isn't just about what you can get away with but it's going to sort of Follow You
16:05
into the spiritual realm or something um and so even if people don't necessarily believe in say a particular religion or
16:12
not even a particular afterlife if you do believe in ghost you kind of believe in a soul right I mean that's kind of
16:18
what ghosts are and so they are hopeful in the sense that maybe there is something after we di right there there
16:24
there's sort of a hopeful uh projection in that as well that maybe there is more than just you know just what we got and
16:30
then we die and there's nothing more so ghosts allow us to sort of assert in our daily lives very often because people
16:36
see ghost in their daily lives and so you're kind of touching the Divine realm spiritual realm right you're not talking
16:42
not going into you know not necessarily going to a cathedral or anything it could just be the creepy addict but they you're still touching into the realm of
16:48
spirit which is to say you know the spiritual realm so this this is the this is the closest a lot of people get you
16:55
might say to the spiritual realm encountering ghosts do you find I also like to divide ghost into two types if I
17:01
could two types of ghosts um Wanted ghost and unwanted so you think about
17:06
the ones that are haunting people those are The Unwanted ones right why are they haunting me why are they haunting our
17:11
society but the most prevalent ghost that people experience are actually wanted ghosts um ghosts of ancestors
17:18
ghosts of dead spouses ghosts of uh loved ones that have passed on uh the
17:23
the the most common ghaster in America is you know somebody who whose spouse or
17:29
parent or grandparent has passed down about two weeks after their funeral all of a sudden a person appears in front of
17:34
them says something like you know great to see you don't worry I'm in a much better place and then disappears right
17:40
that is so common ask around your friends and family and see if you can find any because I can almost guarantee you will it's that common so we don't
17:47
tend to focus on those but those are ghost stories too right that people encountered
17:52
us yeah among my students right one of the things we do in my class is a little extra credit assignment at one point
17:58
after you get done with a lot of the readings from all these different societies around the world and stuff uh we have a ghost story uh telling session
18:04
and and those who tell the best get the get tell the best stories get extra credit for it's a lot of fun and yeah a
18:12
lot of fun and but you know and then again you're competing first to credit points and so a lot of students actually
18:17
bring in ghost stories from their own lives or you know from their own family's lives and some of these stories
18:23
are just really you know compelling especially when they're delivered in person and things so you know it's kind of an unusual for a college course I
18:29
guess you might say but I find it very very informative very very um there's just a lot of data you know I'm not
18:35
there to prove If ghosts are real or not yeah but what is real what is real data are those stories those stories are
18:42
being told how many kids are in your class or people uh well these courses yeah yeah well these courses are kept
18:48
pretty small the ghost stories class is a freshman seminar so it's kept to 19 and only for freshmen I teach large
18:54
lecture courses on other topics but I like this I like to keep this one small because uh it's kind of you know it's
19:00
kind of intimate right telling ghost stories and sharing these and sharing your beliefs about ghost it's it's
19:05
pretty you know personal subject I was going to say yeah and it would work probably better less in like a lecture
19:11
hall and More in like a circle where everyone can see each other's faces and see each other's reactions I would
19:17
imagine kind of like it can get a little it can get a little bit yeah it can get a little bit tense at times I had one
19:23
student and all the time I've been teaching that actually had to drop out due to psychological issues he had a you
19:28
came from a deeply Catholic Family had an uncle who just committed suicide Catholic faith this means you don't get into the big house and so and so he was
19:35
he's like look I I have to I'm really sorry but I'm like yeah I totally get it so you know it can be uh uh you know can
19:43
be can be very personal and very moving at times right so um you you mentioned
19:48
that not everybody believes in ghosts and it it struck me do Buddhist believe in ghost since their soul enters another
19:55
form directly after yeah there's uh oh yeah well again there this is veryy
20:01
right so different countries have different beliefs uh Britain is a believe a little bit lower than the US last survey I looked at but not as low
20:07
as like France uh France is is definitely lower but check this out what France does tend to believe in because they're a Catholic country is Saints so
20:14
they see a lot of dead Saints Maran Apparition or Saint Apparition so what are Saints well there are people who have died and people are seeing their
20:21
Spirits so are Saints ghost I mean kind of if you use my liberal definition of
20:27
what a ghost is right so you know some people and some people you know most
20:32
people don't either believe or disbelieve belief is very much on a Continuum and and and it's contextual
20:38
right I mean if I ask students in a well-lit classroom under Neon Lights how many believe in ghosts maybe not many
20:43
will raise your hand but for out somewhere midnight with a full moon in the graveyard and a wolf starts howling
20:51
and we're in La so what you know where did that wolf hell come from you know then you know then the belief kind of
20:56
might go up a little bit or another way belief goes up is when you share stories right so somebody says look I don't know
21:01
if it's a ghost or not but here's what happened to me so very often even the person that's telling the stories is not saying I absolutely believe right but
21:08
they're saying look here's what happened to me I was alone in the hotel room the floor started creaking the door went open you know what do you think right
21:15
and so belief is very often built as sort of a social process we tend to believe what our peers believe what our
21:21
friends who's you know opinions and Minds mindsets we value what they believe so uh and this is how we build
21:27
our belief what to Mo most people again maybe they believe maybe they don't uh surveys tend to indicate pretty high
21:33
belief in the US and again this will vary you know a little bit country by country I think like Taiwan has the
21:39
highest you know uh rated ghost belief from like 95% which is to say you're really kind of weird if you don't
21:45
believe the ghost in Taiwan they have a whole month for ghost right we're supposed to celebrate the ghost during
21:50
ghost month and we things closed the stores closed down banks closed down
21:55
everybody's supposed to go home and honor the ancestral ghost so if you don't you're sort of like you're really
22:01
sort of in the minority there right kind of weird not to believe in ghost um and
22:06
other societies it's much much less so and and it changes over a person's lifetime sometimes yeah you know
22:12
interesting fact from the United States uh if you look at colleges um they've
22:18
done surveys seniors tend to believe in ghosts more than freshmen ghost belief goes up over over
22:25
students times in college and why do they think that is yeah I don't know great question right
22:31
so um for one thing you know freshman come in and they usually come in and right from their home so they're very
22:36
influenced by their parents worldviews and whatnot and in college you know you're in a different place you're away from home you're sort of relying more on
22:42
your peer group to establish your beliefs and also you're sort of opening yourself up to new possibilities right in college you know and and and with all
22:49
the different classes and things or maybe people have suggested maybe that's because college is sort of a spooky
22:55
place right these all these old big buildings and creaky libraries that you're in in the middle of the night or
23:00
maybe because it's got a lot of ghost stories already attached to it you know some of these colleges were built on sacred Native American B grounds or
23:07
using slave labor and right so this is uh colleges are maybe um some of the
23:12
sites of of G so there can be a lot of different things but again it's kind of fun to think that you think you know
23:18
kids going to college and come out more educated yes and they believe in goes more that's so funny I and I and I
23:25
wonder how it changes it's changed throughout centuries I had a go a guest
23:30
come on oh hugely John Cru and he was talking about how people believed in fairies it was basically you know
23:36
everybody believed in fairies at one point and then throughout time it evolves and now very few people believe
23:43
in actual fairies yeah although if you actually go back to you know fies usually this is sort of a mistranslation
23:48
of like the Celtic sort of Realm like the irishi folk or whatnot and what of the Irish she folk like the Banshee is
23:54
one of the Prime examples right this is a you know Banshee screaming like a banshee this ghost woman who cries
24:00
before someone in your family's about to die so if you if you really go back to what fairies really are going back to
24:06
Ireland or Scotland or something they are also spirits of the dead right so um
24:12
um they um they're not just every sort of everyday ghost a sort of Royal ghost you might say they host the dead but
24:18
they're also they are also ghosts themselves um and then you yes history
24:23
of ghost belief it goes up and down the history of the history of Christianity ghost belief is a fascinating one
24:29
Christianity started off in large part in opposition to ghost belief this was this whole formation uh every before
24:36
that everybody the Romans oh man they love their ghost and they had their ghost day and whatnot and so the
24:41
Christian faith was founded around the idea that no ghost don't exist when you die you either go to heaven or hell or
24:46
in sort of suspended animation until the day of judgment this is sort of borrowing from ancient Egyptian stuff which also had the suspended animation
24:52
until the day of judgment in heav or hell so um so at first Christianity was that it was formed an absolute
24:59
opposition uh but that gradually started getting uh worn down and then it gradually goost belief became okayed as
25:07
especially as Christianity was trying to get into northern Europe and into the Germanic tribes and convert them all
25:13
these guys completely believed in ghost so even if you convert somebody they're still going to see their ghosts right
25:18
that it doesn't end um and so gradually the church said well okay if you see a ghost it's because um somebody's in
25:26
purgatory right and so if you see a ghost of one of your relatives your relatives are in purgatory and if you see a relative of yours in purgatory
25:32
what what he's doing is he's saying you need to get a priest to pray for me because this will lift me up towards
25:38
heaven and to do so you have to pay the priest yeah right so this is the pain of
25:44
indulgences so this whole pain of indulgences that led to the downfall of the Catholic church was all about ghost
25:49
it was supported by the by these ghost stories um so ghost belief then became an integral part of the Catholic
25:56
money-making machine because people saw ghost and then they had to pay money to the priest this is what Martin Luther
26:01
objected to and Martin Luther really really hated ghost and hated ghost belief and he kept saying no you know
26:07
these things are false they must be you know images sent by the devil but they can't actually be
26:12
ghosts right so this a lot of the Protestant Reformation was built on the idea that ghosts aren't real so so the
26:19
idea of Exorcist was basically only in the Catholic church right because they're the only ones that sort of believe that ghost could be you know
26:25
still around and for the Pro this was all sort of you know um sort of Catholic Superstition and all this sort of thing
26:32
and so it was supposed to be on science and ghosts were supposed to be but there was one problem and that was that people
26:38
kept seeing ghosts right so now we're all supposed to be scientific and now the church doesn't believe it ghost but
26:44
people still do yeah and so then you had sort of the rise of this sort of society
26:50
for psychical research and this quickly became what we what we think of as
26:56
spiritualism which is sort of of saying that yes the ghost word is real and we can prove it by science and contact it
27:02
via science right so photographs we're going to have you know Spirit photographs and we're going to have uh
27:07
all of this sort of thing so um spiritualism which was almost like a religion in fact I think in some place it is considered a religion it was huge
27:14
Ouija boards seances contacting the other world you know Sears and robot used to St a Ouija board in their
27:21
catalog um Abraham Lincoln used to hold seances in the white house to help determine the the course of the Cil War
27:28
I mean this is how mainstream spiritualism was wow uhhuh yeah so everybody sort of believed
27:34
like oh yeah you can contact the real of the Dead there's these spiritualist workers and it's somehow scientific right you don't go to the church anymore
27:40
it's like you know then you have these weird sort of Oriental mediums and there was this Eastern influence right of the
27:45
like maybe the maybe people from India know how it works or maybe the people from you know China know how this works
27:51
India India in particular had a lot of influence in this coming into the colonial world so it's this weird blend
27:56
of sort of uh uh foreign ideas about the soul especially like from India and
28:01
betic traditions uh and and Science and that created spiritualism that's still with us a little bit like Ghost Hunters
28:07
to go out and try to prove If ghosts exist they're using science to try to right tap into the to the spiritual
28:12
world without great success I might add but that it has a long history and so
28:18
that was a really really dominant thing in America until uh what's called the third Great Awakening which is the big
28:24
sort of uh that's when America became you know um sort of religiously fundamentalist
28:30
right all all those American new American fundamentalist religions were popping up in the late 1800s early 1900s
28:37
very American Born ones and these definitely asserted that ghosts were not real that these were the work of the
28:43
devil that the devil was real and the devil's out there and the devil's out to get you uh and so that also um sort of
28:49
spelled the end of of of spiritualism as a practice in religion so the fundamentalists tend to look really and
28:55
still look down on things like Ouija Bo like no this is horrible you shouldn't do this right so you don't find that say
29:02
in England so much this is sort of the American fundamentalist so you know one thing you
29:08
find out as soon as you start talking about ghosts you're you're talking about religions and religious beliefs but you're not really you're not addressing
29:15
it directly right I'm not I you know you know you're not going through the front door you might say right ghost beliefs
29:20
are sort of how people experience the spiritual realm not necessarily how their institutions
29:25
do exactly wow I so that original question was um
29:31
so how is how has ghost belief changed throughout time so that's um so then after Puritans wind did so I guess
29:41
America didn't believe in ghost very much because it was so ruled by purism or did it well that was very Puritans
29:48
didn't last very long you know by the time the USA the Puritans were long gone um so it was really spiritualism was
29:54
huge in America it was the dominant regime and it was brought down by two opposing forces one of them being the
30:00
new religious fundamentalist groups American Baptists and these sort of people Pentecostals all right and these
30:06
people really said like ghosts are not real but the devil is and so people see a ghost they're seeing work of the devil
30:12
basically echoing the Catholic Church's earlier uh take on up but in a sort of a fresh context the other main objection
30:19
to spiritualism which came with a lot of like you know ESP studies and uh with
30:24
psychology you know Freud hated uh uh spiritual M he thought it was all sort of loopy goopy you know Hocus Pocus
30:30
stuff so you know he was inspired by the hyst friends Mesmer but he was like look we have to have a science of the mind
30:36
right so we're not going to call it a spirit we're not going to call it a soul we're going to call it and he had to come up with a new word he came up with
30:42
the word psyche right so um but but it's the same thing you know what is a soul what is a spirit what is a psyche what
30:48
is a mind by the way you know we kind of think that minds are real and soul maybe but what's the difference there's no you
30:54
know we get our word soul and mind mind how we use him from Renee dekart right I
31:00
think therefore I am uh but he used the words soul and mind interchangeably that's why only
31:06
humans had a mind and animals didn't because only humans had a soul and animals didn't um and so that became the
31:12
prevailing sort of Reign even in in in in studies even went to college the idea that animal couldn't think they didn't
31:17
have an agency they didn't have a mind because they didn't have a soul right so people talk about the mind is real but
31:23
I'm not sure it is you know what is it it's not the brain is real sure M but what is the mind right we can't see it
31:30
you can't weigh it you can't feel it so it's not a thing yeah I I mean I guess we talk
31:36
about it I'm losing my mind right you talk about as if it's a thing but it's not a thing well when I when I think
31:42
about Soul versus mind I feel like soul is more connected to my Center do you
31:47
know what I mean like when I when I'm visualizing it in my head that's where that's where I visualize the soul rather
31:55
than in the mind but that's probably just you know how our language has
32:00
divised my psychology around mind and and soul yeah early psychologists were using
32:06
words like Spirit like a person's Spirit can be formed by these right so you still can but Freud was like no no we
32:13
have to get rid of that word because it has all these sort of you know Hocus Pocus connections we have to have a
32:18
science and so you know we have to use this word mind but it can't be connected to the soul anymore and so I'm going to
32:23
invent something called the psyche well you know all these these really go into we've never seen a psyche we've never
32:29
seen a soul you know science has never seen a ghost and you know we've never seen a mind so all of these words are
32:36
are pretty closely entwined um so I had a guest one of my
32:41
very first guests that I had come on Michelle isore she wrote a
32:47
nonfiction histor it was a historical sorry it was not non-fiction historical
32:53
fiction based on actual historical records of the first first recorded
32:58
ghost story in America and that was in in Maine and um so when I was
33:04
considering having her on the show I had to consider whether or not folk ghost stories were included in folklore and
33:12
and eventually I decided that yes I would include ghost stories and so I just wanted to have kind of your explanation about why ghost stories are
33:20
considered folklore well I guess you know in my class I try to include several things
33:27
number one folklore which is the stories that we tell each other and share with each other but also I mean look at literature you know there's a lot of
33:32
ghost stories that form the backbone of some of our great literature um this goes way way back to some of our very
33:38
very first examples uh movies uh video games right go so that you know video games are not folklore necessarily but
33:45
they borrow a lot from folklore literature is not folklore but it borrows a lot from folklore so you know
33:50
the the at the core is is you know a bunch of friends sitting up in a dorm late at night telling about something
33:56
weird that happened to him that's you know kind of at the core um and then you get the pop culture that kind of comes
34:01
out from that one of them grow up later and write a book about it and it'll become you know and then becomes a movie and then so um so it's always you know
34:09
you have literature versus folkore but for me if you want to look at what people actually believe um you know
34:14
folklore is is right at the core of that another thing you mentioned though you said the first recorded one in America
34:20
um I have to say that that's not true I mean you can look for example of the um
34:25
of the indigenous groups we had you know all the central Americans had a lot of writings and um this was very very
34:33
connected with the other world and the and and the spirits and ghosts and so you I one of the another besides ghost
34:40
stories I I also teach every semester classes on Native American culture I'm always been interested in Native American ghosts uh and there are a lot
34:47
of them some of which were recorded um you know long before uh uh Europeans got
34:52
there okay yes it was the first recorded by the the church I guess official
34:58
official recorded records so by you know the colonizing groups so by Europeans
35:04
yes yeah yeah remember to throw that in there yeah so you know Native American
35:09
ghs are really fun one of the things I really like about those uh and it really brings up something that we've already kind of mentioned is that um what I find
35:17
in in in uh and uh say American Ghost Stories it's almost always simply people
35:24
ghost you hardly have any animal ghost there's a couple of exemptions sometimes a favorite pet or something that shows
35:30
up is reincarnated or you know I've got a couple of these but it's always like a favorite pet it's never like the
35:36
unfavorite ones and it's never like Barnyard animals I have no no you know
35:42
nobody seems haunted by the I don't know the stockyard cows along the freeway they get slaughtered right we don't
35:48
ghostly cattle those don't exist as far as I'm aware so why don't we have animal ghosts because my husb my husband has a
35:56
my hus husband has a a ghost story that he tells about a a lost cow herd which I
36:01
thought was unique because I'd never heard of one oh man I gotta I gotta get that one do you know it or can you tell
36:08
it or I can't remember exactly he always tells it in first person although it didn't actually happen to him he just says he tells it that way because it's a
36:14
better story but I I can't recall what it is I'll I'll have I'll have him
36:20
record it and then we'll we'll add it um because it is a very good one but again you know why don't why
36:27
don't animals tend to have um ghosts are certainly badly treated in some cases that's because we don't tend to believe
36:33
they have souls so how have a ghost um on the other hand Native Americans they do believe that animals have souls um I
36:40
would say that's sort of an absolute truism for basically all Native American religions and therefore if you mistreat
36:46
it um animals can haunt you right their Spirits can haunt you so you have a tremendous amount of like animal ghost
36:52
stories for Native Americans maybe even more than like people ghost stories and almost none for uh you know us or
36:59
American euroamerican stories so you know studying different stories in different cultures we'll tell you a lot about those culture tell you a lot about
37:05
those outlooks and other beliefs in the Native American stories are the are the ghosts usually um benign or are they
37:13
malignant or or what's the word I'm looking for oh well well well well both but yeah I guess you know some of the
37:18
more compelling ones are the the haunting ghost stories I suppose so a lot of these serve as warning signs someone who disrespects an animal kills
37:24
it doesn't use it all or something like that and then haunted by it this is sort of this is just do trade sort of uh you
37:31
know prohibitions and they get those um you know sort of important environmental ecological sustainable message of the
37:37
Cross right you don't waste right this is this is an front even on the spiritual level right this is an ethical
37:43
problem if you waste a life form so uh again it shows you a different way of
37:48
thinking about you know who who gets to who who gets to appeal to those ethical things for us animals don't tend to have
37:56
souls so don't tend to have ghosts don't tend to haunt us no matter no matter how badly we treat them um for Native
38:02
Americans you know this is probably their overarching ghost story so they have both they have benevolent ghosts they have ancestral ghosts sometimes you
38:09
never you know there are other parts of the world where ancestor ghost are much much uh more of a thing say in a lot of
38:16
um East Asia uh China Japan you know ancestor ghost like the obon festival
38:21
which is um kind of the Ghost Festival it's almost like a version of Christmas but everybody gets the days off you're
38:28
supposed to go home have a nice meal but you're also supposed to invite the ancestors to uh share the day with you
38:33
and more traditional families we even make a plate with food and everything for the ancestors so it's a little bit like days of the Dead coming out of the
38:39
Hispanic and Indigenous traditions where it's a day that you invite you know the your wanted ghost to come and spend with
38:45
you and there's whole food for the dead and you know there's all these sort of ways um that this is celebrated so
38:50
different cultures can do this uh differently it can have like special days that the dead are around and then
38:56
and then and then after the festival you have to say okay goodbye right go away and those ceremonies to send the ghost
39:02
away even even if they ancestor ghost you don't want them hanging out forever right you got to tell them when it's time to
39:08
leave so they so they don't eat all your food or they just don't like cause Havoc
39:13
or what what do they think will happen if uh well you know there's the world of the Dead the world of the living and very often it's important to keep those
39:19
two things separate especially in like Japanese Traditions these worlds are not all that far apart so they're dead are
39:25
not way up in as they already have tradition but they just sort of one little Dimension over so there's always
39:31
a worry that that line can get a little slippery and then you know that could lead one to being on the wrong side of
39:37
things what might say so there's a lot of prohibitions in Japan about maintaining that of what you do with a
39:42
with a dead person not what you do with a with a living person so uh there's a lot of of Japanese ritual and stuff that
39:48
is all about ghost and and and maintaining that so part of your course
39:53
is you have the students do ethnographic research is that correct correct yeah and what does that yeah yeah they go out
39:58
and collect ghost stories well for the ghost stories class they go out and get somebody to tell them a good ghost story
40:04
and then we put that in the USD folklore archives um and that becomes data that you know U researchers uh can use so um
40:12
yeah and student kind of a fun assignment right you just got to go find someone to tell you ghost stories I I tell students they can't clock from
40:18
yourself but if you have a good ghost story you can make a deal with another student in class like I'll collect from you you collect from me oh uhuh uh and
40:25
then I also want to go out and outside of the class and interview somebody from outside of the community as well do they
40:31
ever come back like surprised about anything that they've been told oh yeah definitely some of them you
40:38
know found out that they you know ghost stories in the dorm room where they're staying that sort of thing
40:45
right for sure so how does any of your prior work feed into um because I know
40:51
that you you haven't just studied ghost stories uh you have a lot right right
40:57
well yeah sure sure I mean as a folk course I'm interested in all all sorts of things um you know ghost stories are
41:03
usually what I what I call Legends which is to say stories that might be true right you know this is did it really
41:09
happen did it not was it really a ghost uh so those are really popular and they're really popular as a social thing for people to get around and this could
41:15
be you know another really big one these days is like aliens alien belief is really high in the US it's also over 60%
41:21
oh um and so um sometimes you know people will experience something let's
41:27
say a family they're driving along a road at night all of a sudden a white light right appears they hit the brakes
41:32
and they realize they almost went over a cliff because the bridge was out right classic story and then you interview him differently and and like Grandma says I
41:39
saw an angel come down and the other and somebody else you know the kid in the back seat says there was an alien right
41:45
and then and then the dad says it was the Ghost of Grandpa but you know they all have that same experience but they can all interpret it in like right you
41:52
know Angel ghost alien uh ways and so um it's really interesting to look at
41:58
what different people believe and you know certainly for Americans um ghost belief is really high alien belief is
42:05
higher uh I've got colleagues very good colleagues working in Iceland and uh they did a similar sort of survey and um
42:13
Iceland tend to believe in their elves they hidden people that was like 90% or something hu huge percentage believes in their hidden people um a lot of
42:20
icelanders believed in ghost ghost belief was very high in Iceland as well they asked about aliens it was like
42:25
almost like nobody thought that this is remotely plausible this is ridiculous Bel so it says a lot about different
42:33
cultures Americans love our our aliens and our UFOs it's not necessarily shared
42:39
um equally with other other parts so you know of course that begs a question why why Americans doks that that gets into a
42:45
whole another branch which is fascinating uh what I'm trying to point out is that if you look at why people believe something that isn't
42:51
scientifically proven um it'll it can really tell you something about that culture you know whether or not it's
42:57
true or not maybe it is maybe aliens are real maybe ghosts real that I I don't deal with that part of the question I
43:03
look at the stories that people tell on the way that it reflects their communities their concerns their
43:08
psychologies uh this sort of thing yeah absolutely so um when you
43:15
when your students walk in what kind of what do you think um
43:21
what do you hope that your your students will walk away from the class with
43:27
from that class to Ghost Stories class um well it's a few things one of them is uh the power of folklore again you know
43:33
why you know why do people believe in ghosts it's not your religious leaders it's not your scientific institutions it's not your political leaders it's
43:39
something else and that's folklore so I certainly want to use that as as just one demonstration of one tiny little
43:46
genre of folklore and yet how important that can be to people helping them to shape their life experiences um you know
43:52
deal with people's deaths deal with their own thoughts of mortality um and so um you know and very often like I say
44:00
this is a time when you know mortality started to hit home for these young people most teenagers think they're
44:06
Immortal and then they starting to kind of deal with with with with mortality when they get into college and so
44:12
wrestling with these sort of larger Concepts and so it's a really kind of critical point you know you know horror
44:17
movies who are they aimed at like you know teenagers and early 20s right so this is a really sort of appropriate
44:22
time uh one might say for them to build networks to sort of explore their own beliefs and so by drawing in from Ghost
44:30
beliefs from around the world again you know these include people with radically different religions but I never have to use the word religion right I can just
44:36
say look you know here's what here's how their experiences work out and so um it can remind people of their their
44:43
commonalities with other people right they've had all these similar experiences as well as the cultural
44:48
differences right we don't tend to have animal ghosts in in the United States um so um you know again so it's a way of
44:55
trying to you know integrate all these students who are coming in from all over and give them sort of a way to share
45:01
their experiences share their commonality share their diversities and and learn from each other do you have
45:06
any questions or discussions that have questions from students or discussions
45:12
that your students have had that stick out in your mind that were like you know kind of eye openening or just really
45:21
interesting yeah well you know for some students U the some of the go stories would share some of these were kind of
45:27
long held family ghost STS and so it kind of reminded me of that there's that importance too like what you know if you
45:33
have a great story that you like say a great ghost story you like who do you share that with right who else who else knows that story um and for some time
45:40
this could be a really important story for for groups like you know the group of friends that was there in the haunted house when we saw the you know ghost of
45:47
the witch right they're always going to remember this or for some families and so there was these stories that it went down Generations this one family this
45:54
family thought it had been cursed by this ghost due to this event and this was like four generations ago right so
46:01
um sort of the longstanding power of uh some of these stories for some people and some families I think that that was
46:07
really an eyeopener uh uh for me to be sure yeah absolutely so you talked a a
46:14
lot already about this but maybe you can expand on it about how the belief in
46:20
ghost what it says about a a a culture um can you expand on that any more than
46:27
what You' you've said uh well you know one thing it says a lot about what you think about the
46:33
soul what a culture thinks about the soul and also what individuals think about a soul we tend to think of the Soul as like sort of one person one Soul
46:39
it's a very sort of democratic idea of the Soul right each person has um animals in the in according to abrahamic
46:46
theology do not have souls um and uh but that's not how always how it works in
46:52
other societies and so you know what what you know for some societies you kind of share your soul with your family
47:00
uh Native Americans this idea of soul is kind of a morphous it's not like a singular thing so people can grow in
47:05
Soul or lose Soul um and all animals tap into this as well to some degree um
47:12
people tend to have more Soul than most most animals because we tend to think more but that's not an absolute right uh
47:20
so that's a very different way uh West African religions such as the um you know the vodan religions to believe that
47:26
people have a bipartite soul so you have um the part that sort of animates you kind of gets you up and moving and then
47:32
the part that contains your personality or sort of the real you and so this idea of of creation of zombies which come
47:38
from zo vodan is this idea that these evil witch doctors go out and animate the one Soul after the other one has
47:44
left and that's why zombies don't really have a personality or a psyche but they can sort of Shuffle around oh um ancient
47:50
Egyptians had the soul five parts to the soul for ancient Egypt so you can get even more complex um so uh you know
47:57
again people have envisioned how this works uh radically differently in different societies and that that says a
48:02
lot too about you know what we think about ghost yeah um and again you know you're always going to see that sort of
48:07
tension between what the officials very often religious officials think you should think and what people actually
48:16
do yeah so you so I was looking at your syllabus before um which is can I throw
48:22
out one little contentious point I'll just while I'm at it I mean so I mean so Christians for a long time we're not
48:28
supposed to believe in ghosts but what is Jesus Christ right what is it the most Central belief that you are
48:34
supposed to believe as a Christian I believe is the resurrection of Christ that Christ died went to the Land of the
48:41
Dead and came back right and and in one of the earliest version in The Book of Mark Mary sees him she says who are you
48:48
in other words she doesn't recognize so we don't quite know what form he came back in but he has to say oh I'm Jesus
48:53
Christ right because she didn't recognize him there was something there she didn't recognize it so Christianity
48:58
is built around a ghost story guy died came back right that's the most Central thing you have to believe as a Christian
49:05
and so you know and then you also have the Holy Spirit or the Holy Ghost right so these things are really built into
49:11
the abrahamic and particularly Christian Traditions uh even more than in the other ones and do they even do they say
49:18
in the Bible if it's a Corporal body that comes back or they don't they do
49:24
not and and presumably it was not because again in the earliest gospel we have the mark Mary sees him and says you
49:31
know who are you right that's her first words to him well obviously she didn't recognize him so you came back in
49:36
Corporal form then that wouldn't have been the case yeah how fascinating is that um so
49:44
in your in your syllabus you talk about several different places in the world
49:49
you have focuses on in different lectures it I wrote down classical World
49:54
England USA Japan Hispanic especially the Day of the Dead and then Native
50:00
American can you talk about why you spoke you chose those specific cultures
50:05
and um sure there's a couple of other examples on there one of my favorite articles to use written by dear
50:11
colleague of mine ulol from Estonia and it's about Estonian ghost and um real
50:16
estate um so that's that's a great article too ghost stories in real estate a fascinating thing by the way you're
50:22
required by law US law if if a house is known to be haunted you as a realtor
50:27
have a professional obligation to tell the client that so ghost stories are actually part of US
50:33
law yeah wow well it can bring down the value right if you buy this house oh looks like a great house and you find
50:38
out nobody wants to buy it it's not really worth what it says because the story is All hold that it's haunted
50:43
right yeah and you could do just do a Google News search like you know haunted
50:48
house Google News yeah and and any day you will find reports of people who like bought a house and are trying to get out
50:54
of it because it's haunted right there's a huge very interesting overlap between ghost and real estate uh and so in
51:01
Estonia this great article about how because um you know it got taken over first by the Germans and it got taken
51:07
over by Russia and then the Soviets took all the property away and collectivized everything and then it got its independence so it tried to uncol and so
51:14
these properties some of these have been ancestral Farms that had been going through generations were suddenly all disrupted and so then like how do you
51:21
know who is the rightful owner or the rightful inhabitant all of these ghosts started showing up right ancestral
51:26
ghosts so um to sort of Chase away the The Intruders or whatnot so you know you
51:32
can even see at a historical moment like why particular ghost stories um emerge
51:37
in terms of the other groups like Native American I something I I studied anyway I study Native American societies Native
51:43
American folklore so I'm very familiar with it uh you know East Asia is a huge part of the world most people in the world live in East Asia and it's also
51:50
has some of the more pronounced ghost stories and ghost belief of anywhere so um those are some of the and then you
51:56
know the classical realm just kind of give a backdrop into European history and then back to Egypt as well back to
52:02
um European history they always try to include a little bit from West African traditions of vodun and whatnot which
52:08
also has a very unique idea about ghosts in the soul how so I could certainly do other areas I just have to sort of you
52:13
know dig up more articles dig up more books but you can research this just about anywhere how is the West African ghost
52:21
stories different well those are the ones that I mentioned they had a a usually a
52:26
bipartite soul oh yes um so your soul comes in two parts also in the vodon you
52:32
have sort of a supreme Creator deity uh and usually on a conort but then you have all these sort of um the loas which
52:38
are essentially Demag Gods right so Papa legba or Lego so it almost analogous to
52:44
the Catholic saint you don't necessarily if there's a problem you don't necessarily you know appeal right to the big guy you have these inter cestar you
52:51
you pray to this is why vodan and Catholicism been sort of productively merged into things like santoria it's
52:59
about the Saints but it's done in a very West African vodun um sort of way so in
53:04
many of these syncretic religions like Sania or kandom blé um you have sort of
53:10
these West African Traditions that are that are sort of fused with Catholic saints what about um Voodoo or hudu do
53:19
they have yeah those are sort of American derivatives of vodan right so vodan is a major world religion and a
53:24
few countries in West Africa it was because of the slave trade was brought over to the Americas and the Caribbean
53:30
particularly uh and so um you know was associated with the African-American slave population and as such of course
53:38
people have tended to demonize it and and not even treat it as a world religion um and so it has very very
53:44
specific uh beliefs and practices that are radically different than abrahamic tradition so this has been a point of
53:50
you know tension for um ever since the beginnings of the slave trade right
53:55
so also in your class you cover a lot of different uh literature is that
54:01
right sure um can you talk to us about some of your favorites and why you chose
54:08
them um yeah well hamet's a great one right it's kind of a classic everybody uh everybody knows Hamlet um and yet you
54:15
know people often think oh Shakespeare wrote Hamlet not really uh Shakespeare just did a version of Hamlet Hamlet was
54:20
a very well-known story and had been for hundreds of years uh this is a bit a very popular ghost story that people had
54:27
passed down so Shakespeare did not come up with Hamlet by any means he he was telling yet another version of of a very
54:33
popular ghost story that basically everybody knew when everybody walked into the Abby theater for the first night they all knew the story already oh
54:39
wow they didn't know Shakespeare's version but they'd already known the story uh so some of these stories were very very widespread very well known and
54:46
have kind of become you know bedrocks of our of of literature think of the gothic literature right this idea of the S of
54:53
the aristocracy and and that was sort of transplanted in the American South the southern goth that follow the southern
55:00
aristocracy right so the aristocracy a lot of ethical lapses right skeletons in the closet and whatnot so again where do
55:07
we see these these ghosts very what is A Haunted House it very often looks like a Gothic Palace that has fallen into
55:13
disrepair right so it attaches itself to architecture it attaches itself to particular social classes and their
55:19
movements such as the fall of the aristocracy and what are you haunted by that um so again these are bedrocks of
55:26
our literature of our um uh uh uh turn of the screw fabulous fabulous work um
55:32
because turn of the screw was written by America's a brother of America's uh first psychologist and so this is the
55:40
time when spirituality and psychology were duking it out so you can read the book it's a masterfully produced it
55:46
reads like a classic ghost story and yet you never quite sure is this is is is is there a ghost or is a person insane oh
55:53
uhhuh right and so which is it is are ghosts real or or is it about psychology
55:58
and Madness right if somebody says they see a ghost do they really or are they nuts and it leaves this open at the end
56:04
it's just a masterful work of literature so different readers will walk away thinking oh I read a ghost story or I read something you know sort of making
56:10
fun of ghost stories you're never sure which how interesting beauti beautiful work of literature another fun topic we
56:16
haven't touched on yet that is Spirit possession okay if you have a soul if you have a spirit sometimes uh you know
56:23
Spirits people believe that a spirit can move somewhere else right ghosts are spirits away from bodies so sometimes
56:30
people can get taken over by ghosts right you can become possessed by the Spirit uh and this is found throughout
56:36
the world in different forms but it very analogous to ghost belief these are essentially ghost stories very often it's the spirit of a dead person that is
56:43
now inhabiting you um so those are also a way that people uh uh very often
56:48
experience sort of of Ghost St and then if you have Spirit possession you have to have Exorcist you have to get rid of
56:53
that Spirit you have to someone other Spirits uh and so um this idea of spirit possession sort of interesting it goes
56:59
with the idea of um uh uh you know like can can can a spirit or a soul attach itself to a
57:05
material object right like a grave perhaps you're not supposed to dance on
57:11
graves right we have this idea that you know you're respectful around Graves you don't know what's down there what about
57:16
a haunted mirror or a haunted sword what about a haunted you know Haunted House a haunted lake a haunted Tombstone or an
57:24
old Stella or something right so this is idea that it can attach perhaps to objects as well so Spirit possession is
57:30
sort of an interesting topic about how how do these Spirits work right yeah absolutely what about the
57:38
Christmas carol I you know I I find the Christmas oh my God don't get me started yeah I you know oh yeah this is huge
57:46
part of literature this is a standard of Western literature Dickens was the most famous English author this is one of the
57:51
most famous and widespread and well-known works of English lure it's all about ghost but it's interesting
57:56
because ghost story telling ghost stories around Christmas used to be a a
58:02
a common uh tradition but I don't it's not any longer here's what happened yes
58:08
it is in in in Germanic areas including England Malica used to celebrate his
58:14
ghost stories at Christmas uh this was the standard thing for all of Northern Europe for a long time and the reason is
58:21
uh the Germanic year uh the calendar year starts with the winter solstice we still do that right so it's the new year
58:28
so this very often there's these Lial moments between this year and the next year is very often when ghost show up
58:33
this has a long long long long standing tradition in in all the Scandinavian areas dramatic areas that Christmas is
58:40
when you see ghost to turn into the new year or the winter solers oh America skip changed because of the Irish
58:48
immigration after the Irish potato family Ireland is not a dramatic country
58:54
it is a Celtic country the Celtic countries their new year started at our current Halloween November
59:00
1 this is you know the the original name for Halloween in in Irish is Sal and it's
59:06
still Sal e Sal is is still Halloween night um in Ireland and so because of
59:13
the Irish immigration all these people coming in from particularly from Ireland some from other Celtic areas but particularly Ireland after the Potato
59:20
Famine uh they brought with them Halloween you know and so that became became quickly the sort of ghosty
59:27
celebration for Americans unlike English so people so Americans watch an English thing like Dickens are like ghost like
59:33
Christmas yeah and by the way you should look at some of other dickens's work he wrote like so many Works about ghost and
59:40
Christmas not just as one one must more ghostly one might say oh really
59:45
Christmas Tale is is about one of about 10 of his works on ghost at Chris oh I had no idea I'll have to look
59:52
into the others are any of them you know worthy of reading are are any of them as
59:58
good do you have aor they're fantastic oh man they're all free online now you
1:00:03
know you can get copyright free online all of Dickens is writing uh so yeah and there was also a point of political
1:00:08
purpose for him one of the things he was trying to say about ghost is that whether or not they're real they're important and for him he was also trying
1:00:15
to say that traditions and the past are important this is a time where everything is going through rapid
1:00:21
industrialization and people who had been on farms are now like you know pelist poppers working in the big cities
1:00:27
uh and they wanted to get rid of all these celebrations they got rid of most of them I don't really celebrate St George's day anymore but the Old Farmers
1:00:33
used to have all these things stays off right and so Dias is like let's save one of them let's save Christmas right we're
1:00:39
gonna we're gonna we're gonna so why do we have winter break today it's because of Dickens and it's because of his use of ghost stories to try to make the
1:00:45
point like look Traditions are important you know whether or not they're rational they're still important yeah emotions
1:00:51
are important whether or not they're rational they're still important so you can read some other dickens's Christmas
1:00:56
work to uh to see the Fuller picture of that but he was very very pointed about what he was trying to accomplish and he
1:01:02
succeeded Charles Dickens is why we still have Christmas that's amazing I
1:01:08
had no idea so is it yeah because it was
1:01:13
Ghost well thank you Charles Dickens I I greatly appreciate you writing Christmas
1:01:19
Carol and saving Christmas yeah absolutely and then you look at Halloween and then you're on
1:01:24
whole another beautiful other track going back to Celtic mythology and this is when the fairy folk come out the she
1:01:30
folk and uh this is is ancient probably even much more ancient than the dramatic T this seem to go all the way back to
1:01:36
the megalithic age the ancient stone circles and things uh we can tell because these things are oriented at
1:01:42
different things for example new Grange is oriented at winter solstice winter solstice happens and this beam of light
1:01:47
goes through this Temple this Temple was built long before the pyramids thousands of years before the pyramids um and some
1:01:54
of these other sites are aligned at um at SOL at Halloween so the light would show up right at Halloween we also know
1:02:00
that people would gather together and have big whatevers big big festivals or big pheros or big gett togethers
1:02:05
probably did a lot of things um at these sites at this time so this idea and some
1:02:11
of these were built around these Halloween sites you might say so Halloween in the Celtic tradition you
1:02:16
you seems to take back several thousand years including a lot of our ideas about it encountering the dead at Halloween
1:02:23
seing into the future witchcraft this is this is really really ancient stuff well and that's
1:02:29
interesting that you bring that up because the the show that I just um just
1:02:35
aired this week is all about Lithuania and one of the um Traditions that they
1:02:42
have in Lithuania is very similar to Day of the Dead and happens almost at the
1:02:47
same time it's on the November 1 November 2nd it you know it has very
1:02:53
strong similarities but there it's evidently more somber um in Lithuanian than it is in in Mexico but I was just
1:02:59
you know trying to look up how is it that they are happening around the same time and do their Roots come from the
1:03:07
same place I mean do you do you know fascina question I I haven't I haven't looked into it enough I wouldn't be at all surprised for one thing you know
1:03:14
this is this is Harvest Time uh this is getting to be Harvest Time for Farmers so if you have a lot of animals this is
1:03:19
when you got to deci side look are we butchering them and having a great big feast or do we try to keep these guys going throughout the
1:03:25
right this is when you harvest a lot of your crops so it's kind of a natural time for a big Feast it also is a natural time for reflecting about death
1:03:31
because this is when you butcher your animals and and clear your crops um but having said that you know it's also an
1:03:37
interc calcul period right between um the uh Equinox so it really is sort of
1:03:42
fixed in the um you know the the the the absolute calendar the actual um Earthly
1:03:48
calendar so these things are calendrical nodes and and and and make sense at these different time periods well and I
1:03:54
so in Texas we don't have a lot of Seasons we have like Hot and Hot and less hot that's basically our Seasons
1:04:00
but in you know Northern areas there there's actually like a beautiful fall but I hate cold weather so for me the I
1:04:09
love the the the beautiful change of leaves but I also consider it like the harbinger of death because that's when
1:04:16
yes the you know all the leaves are turning colors because they are going to fall and die and and then I'm going to
1:04:22
shrivel up in a hole and not come out for six more months because I hate cold
1:04:27
but so I wonder if it also has something to do with that because they're seeing things dying around them you know
1:04:36
right this the time when you have to kill things if you're a farmer like I said this when you kill your crops this when you kill all the animals you're not going to feed over the winter you're
1:04:43
going to probably have a lot of extra meat with not a lot of refrigeration so it's a great time for a big feast and so this is actually you know it makes sense
1:04:50
but it also with a very very longstanding European tradition and dating back to the Neolithic so you know
1:04:56
this is really really ancient stuff that's amazing okay and even the
1:05:01
even the date of Halloween was selected you know the Catholic Church moved their official uh celebration all Hall's day
1:05:08
and all halls and then all Hall's evening to that date uh because the people were celebrating Halloween and
1:05:15
they were trying to talk to the dead and all this sort of stuff and the Catholic church is like look you're going to talk to the dead at least do it on all
1:05:20
Hallow's day we'll give you one day and we'll say that's Halloween right so so that's even that's even why we have that
1:05:26
day the Catholic Church sort of you know created a a Christian holiday for it but
1:05:32
you know today like a lot of a lot of American churches particular again the fundamentalist ones um don't like
1:05:37
Halloween right so it's interesting that Halloween we have a day for celebrating it but it's contested holiday it's a
1:05:44
very very popular holiday but also a contested one you know Christmas is not that contested but Halloween is and
1:05:51
nonetheless and you don't get it's not an official holiday you don't get the day off for Halloween you don't get the even the morning after off of Halloween
1:05:56
right but we still participate Americans love Halloween they spend a lot of money on it they still participate in it so
1:06:03
this is really a folk holiday right you don't you don't get the day off it's not an Institutional one there's even institutional blowback from it yeah
1:06:10
people love it so that's also interesting I know I don't know why schools don't give the next day off because there's I don't think there's
1:06:16
very much learning that happens after the kids have been filled with sugar and they're completely exhausted from staying out way too
1:06:23
late wish schools would give off yeah but it's it's it's it's fascinating too you know it's a day we can be you can
1:06:28
dress up it's a day that we can uh sort of portray dead things particularly and you know Witchcraft and magic and uh you
1:06:35
know things from the Crypt it's also very often for children it's so it's kind of an initiation ritual that they
1:06:41
you know we Shield children from Death in our culture right we Shield them from and then Along Comes Halloween and
1:06:47
that's all they see right so this really interesting ritual inversion where you invert your normal everyday rules and
1:06:53
that makes makes a big impression especially on like kids I mean like think about it we always tell kids like the number one thing is never take candy
1:06:59
from strangers right and then Halloween comes around we're like okay go ask that that witch over there for you know like
1:07:05
that zombie over there for for candy right so the kids are like what is going on right so it just makes a big
1:07:10
impression uhuh absolutely um okay so my last question is about pop culture and
1:07:17
how ghost stories have in infiltrated um pop culture outside of
1:07:22
literature oh sure uh there's so many ways uh you know video games were kind of built many
1:07:29
of them built on ghost stories even even the ones that aren't like when you character dies become The Ghost and you go backwards so they're integrated into
1:07:34
a lot of these video games uh pop culture you have all sorts of things um outside of literature you have so many
1:07:41
websites the whole Creepy Pasta the whole website is dedicated to Spooky Stories you have whole subred you have
1:07:47
whole communities that are interested in this and then you have sort of this uh folklore a lot of it on the line too you
1:07:52
know there's there there's Legends of curse obers and I'm very interest in the sort of uh AI uh ghost stories so um you
1:07:59
know Alexa acting as a spirit medium and all a sudden people hear the voice of their dead father or something this is
1:08:05
the idea of text messages from the Beyond I I recorded several of these so as as you know as a lot of these younger
1:08:12
people lot of my students spend more and more time to their social lives online uh we have a lot more hauntings online
1:08:18
um and so that's kind of fascinating that you know there was a movie I don't know if it was a good movie or not was called unfriended uh and it was about a
1:08:24
girl who who had committed suicide after cyber abuse and then she goes on to sort of her G stalks people online to uh uh
1:08:32
to exact her revenge so of course you know if somebody sort of killed online where are they going to Haun where's
1:08:37
their Community where are those people online right so the internet has become haunted it wasn't when it started out
1:08:43
but now it's a very haunted place you have monsters and like Slender Man and things that that never existed before
1:08:49
the internet and now now we get so the internet has become haunted very very very quickly um and there's also with
1:08:56
the internet you know it's a global thing that's how people are being exposed to I think in America particularly Korean and Japanese pop
1:09:02
culture right for all sorts of reasons but um but you know one thing about
1:09:07
Korean and Japanese pop culture is it goes play a huge role and they tend to be even spookier than American ghosts so
1:09:14
a lot of Americans are seeing this pop culture that they wouldn't have before and becoming I think more and more influenced by that a lot of the video
1:09:20
games are coming out of these countries too I would say so lived in South Korea for a little while I taught English
1:09:26
there and I was kind of Blown Away at their horror I I found that as an
1:09:33
American it was overly disturbing that it was it was hard to stomach I I have a
1:09:40
hard time stomaching American [ __ ] and so like Asian horror was even just went
1:09:46
far beyond yeah yeah it really is it really is but but it's terribly popular
1:09:52
I'll say that so you know we're getting sort of um with Global Communication we're getting these sort of global ghost
1:09:58
stories these Global communities built around them so that that's faster than absolutely well I wanted to give you a
1:10:05
little bit of space to talk about the new books that you um have just published in 19 2019 and um 2020 I
1:10:12
believe is when your last your two books came out yeah well I have two books out um a lot of different articles and
1:10:18
whatnot I'm always working on new stuff um yeah one of these books was the truth of myth U what with theer Professor
1:10:24
Gregory shrimp at IU um and this is kind of a textbook it's an introduction to mythology World mythology it's about how
1:10:31
it's mythology in theory and in everyday life so you know how do the myths that we that we were brought up with by myths
1:10:38
I I tend to mean the creation stories either of the world of the nation or you know how how things came to be and those
1:10:44
are radically radically different in different societies and they produce radically different ways that people think about you know who they are their
1:10:51
role in the universe and the big questions myth answers to Big questions um so that's a really fun book um to go
1:10:58
through if you're interested in mythology and uh at a broader level the other one is uh my own sort of recent
1:11:03
research and that's called posthuman folklore I'm trying to take folklore here into some of the Frontiers uh with
1:11:09
postum a lot of people sort of rethinking what we mean by this word human uh there's two main branches one
1:11:15
is sort of um the animal term right so now we know that animals do have a lot of mentality they do you know craft
1:11:21
tools and make tools they do share culture do have language I mean Dolphins give each other names personal names
1:11:27
they remember these personal names for decades um they can learn languages of other animals we have an orc that
1:11:32
learned how to speak dolphin in captivity um you know the list goes on and on I mean so um the line between
1:11:40
human and animal has been severely questioned and so with that is a very
1:11:45
interesting aspect the other interesting aspect is uh the AI and and cyborgs and
1:11:51
this sort of uh thing I ideas that you can sort of you know uplift your your soul to the cloud your mentality to the
1:11:57
cloud with something transhumanism uh and so um both of these are sort of uh
1:12:03
um you know threatening our previous ideas of what it is to be us you know who is this
1:12:08
us right and um it's not so easy anymore it used to be uh but uh you know a lot
1:12:14
of chat Bots I don't even always know if I'm actually talking to a bot or not right and so this is becoming more and
1:12:19
more true people are starting to uh fall in love with with AI and become best friends with AI and AI is starting to
1:12:25
tell jokes and tell stories so they're interest they're entering our community entering our our our our folklore at the
1:12:32
same time they're not us they're not like us they're not you know they don't feel feeling is a biological
1:12:38
process my dog might feel guilt my AI does not right they don't feel because
1:12:44
feeling is is hormones and synapses and and and and things so you're much more like an octopus than you are like Alexa
1:12:51
but you know you probably have an easier time communicating with Alexa so it's a little dangerous we created these simil
1:12:57
Acra that that that people are identify with perhaps a little too easily at the
1:13:02
same time of you know climate Devastation the anthropos scene the the the sixth great Extinction of Life on
1:13:08
planet Earth that's being caused during my Lifetime by us so um you know my own
1:13:15
lifetime 75% over 75% of the world's wild wildlife has been extinguished since I've been born and that trajectory
1:13:21
isn't slowing down so you know what kind of world are we going to leave to our kids or our grandkids um if we're going
1:13:27
to let you know all the other species burn while we perfect our voice assistance I I sincerely think that
1:13:33
might be the wrong way to go uh we're not we're not on a sustainable track on on Earth we can't keep doing what we're
1:13:38
doing we know that it's going to be hard Landing we're already seeing some of that but like I like to say if people
1:13:44
like oh man it's the hottest summer ever oh no this the coolest summer you're going to see yes this we were just discussing before beforehand yes uh I'm
1:13:52
not looking forward to hotter plan ahead so plan ahead accordingly plan ahead accordingly you know what kind of you if
1:13:59
you kill an entire species are we going to be haunted by that um I think that's something to wonder
1:14:05
about are we gonna have ai ghosts can you you beat your Android to death are you goingon to be haunted by that uh you
1:14:11
know Japan fully believes that Androids can have souls we tend not to in abrahamic countryes uh but we are
1:14:17
already starting to get AI ghost and we're going to have um Android ghost very very soon particularly we mistreat
1:14:24
them I think I I've heard you say a couple times third grade and sixth grade
1:14:30
what grading system are you um are you speaking from I'm I'm not
1:14:36
familiar with that uh leveling sorry what was the terms you
1:14:41
you said earlier third grade awakening with the fundamentalist and then ear later you said oh oh the third gr
1:14:48
Awakening yeah yeah the third gr Awakening this is uh what what Christian historians tend to use uh this is a a
1:14:53
move in the late 1800s early 1900s and this is when America became fundamentalist right this is all these
1:14:59
new religions started spouting up Pentecostals Southern Baptist uh and this really changed America from being a
1:15:06
fairly non-religious country to being an extremely religious country it was not
1:15:11
that case in the 1800s it came late and people tend to forget that people tend to think the Puritans arrived were just
1:15:16
religious whole no I mean like Thomas Jefferson he was like a deist and you know he cut out everything into the
1:15:22
Bible that he didn't think was real they left with a very slim Bible you know um all the early leaders were deists or or
1:15:28
Universal unitarians like yeah maybe something else is out there right so this idea of America as a religiously
1:15:34
fundamental country did not occur until the late 1800s early 1900s so this tent
1:15:39
revivals and then all this sort of thing a lot of disaffected former agricultural
1:15:44
people living in cities for the most part but this grading system because you said L later on when you were talking
1:15:50
about the AI you said sixth grade um referring to I don't know what so
1:15:56
third it was not grade awakening it was third Great Awakening sorry third great
1:16:02
oh okay okay I was trying to figure out what that was okay okay that makes that makes sense
1:16:09
all right the first one I think was supposed to be the star of the world the second one was Jesus Christ was born or something I don't know this is a Christian sort of historians term for it
1:16:17
but it's when America became fundamentalist and this is the late 1800s ear 1900 have we Mi have we missed anything
1:16:25
that you think that is important for us to to discuss when referring to I don't
1:16:31
know it's just a you know it's just a ghost stories I love Halloween I know this is going to be a for Halloween show
1:16:36
so um you know I just really enjoy Halloween it's a great um has a lot to it it has something for kids has
1:16:42
something for adults uh but it is a time for us to sort of you know think about the dead and and and and perhaps be
1:16:48
visited by the dead or perhaps even be haunted by the dead if we've done bad things in the past uh but maybe that's
1:16:54
as it should be right I I I tend to think that ghosts Prof provide a valuable function whether they're real
1:16:59
or not uh there was one interesting experiment these uh guy these scientists took these students in and they told
1:17:06
them it was for something else uh they were going to take this test but the thing was that they allowed them to cheat somehow there was this little
1:17:12
thing they could do to cheat like oh yeah try not to look at this you know don't look at this that's cheating code what they found was and in one of the
1:17:17
group they told the students that the um building was haunted well the students who believe the building was haunted were far less
1:17:24
likely to cheat oh so whether ghost are real or not uh
1:17:30
ghost seem to be helpful they seem to keep us perhaps on a good path and and so I think you know we should listen to
1:17:36
them we need to listen to the ghost fig how we can how we can move forward you know ethically and and and try to make
1:17:42
amends for past and and through teaching this class do you feel like your belief
1:17:48
yourself in ghost has changed at all uh you know no I don't know I that's
1:17:54
not a question I really I just um uh uh I have my own beliefs but they're they're very separate from my my
1:18:00
scientific work I guess uh you know again what I study is is is is the stories that people do um and it's it's
1:18:07
just a real Rich field of study and if anybody wants to do it themselves it could be really rewarding just go around and ask people about their favorite
1:18:13
ghost stories sometimes that's not the right word to use you know say ghost some people don't like the word um
1:18:19
sometimes it's best to ask a leading question like just sit around like anything ever strange happen to you and
1:18:24
then allows people to start telling about something strange so uh there you know there's different sort of tricks of the trade as a fol course to get people
1:18:31
to to share their stories with you but that's a big part of it so um you know obviously I'm a big folkore booster I
1:18:37
think it's a great discipline I think it's kind of undervalued maybe because everybody's like wait a minute this isn't real it's like well the data is
1:18:43
real the folklore is real people are telling these stories right they're they're dancing these dances they're sharing this food um and that's a bit a
1:18:50
lot of a richness of our lives so and why do you think uh what value does folklore bring why do you think it's
1:18:56
important for people to study and to understand it's such a big factor of our
1:19:02
lives and um you know again what is Meaningful in one's life what are you what are you going to remember on your
1:19:08
deathbed you you can remember like maybe festivals or celebrations maybe Christmas or Halloween or uh you know
1:19:14
the folklore brings meaning to people's lives we're not we're not we don't just sit and work and try to get more money
1:19:19
in and you know sit and work and try to get more money in no we we we do things we're creative we we're cultural we tell
1:19:25
stories I mean not the essence of human culture is storytelling absolutely well thank you
1:19:31
so much for joining us this was a fascinating topic thanks for having me and thank you
1:19:38
folksy folks for joining us on our ghostly Journey do you have a favorite ghost story where are you on the
1:19:44
spectrum of beliefs and ghosts and how does your cultural culture relate to ghosts we love hearing from our audience
1:19:50
our folksy folks and we have a Facebook community group just for that we want to hear your thoughts and we would love for
1:19:57
you to share uh your thoughts of the show and your ghost story so if you have something you want to share that's the
1:20:03
place to do it it's folklore fabric of folklore a fabric of folklore community
1:20:11
group and and as always we will list all of the links that we talked about during
1:20:17
the show on our website which is www.fabric.com so there's lots of things that we cover
1:20:24
today so I'll definitely be putting up several links from today's show and as
1:20:29
always please like comment share and if you haven't already make sure that you're subscribing to this show and also
1:20:35
consider giving us stars and a review because that really helps a new podcast like ourselves thanks again for
1:20:41
unraveling the mysteries of folklore with me Vanessa y Rogers on fabric of folklore and until next time keep the
1:20:47
folk alive so this story comes from my cousin Chrissy who told it to me when I
1:20:56
was um probably 10 maybe 11 somewhere around there maybe a little younger I
1:21:03
remember being frightened by it so I think probably somewhere around there
1:21:09
nine or 10 and um The Story Goes Like This oh
1:21:14
she told me later that this is not her story when she told it at the time she
1:21:19
told it as though it were her story and I think something similar may have
1:21:25
actually happened but um I don't know the the origins of it
1:21:31
have kind of gotten lost in time um but anyways it goes like this so she said
1:21:39
that she and her friend were walking the property of her dad's ranch
1:21:46
house um long time ago many moons ago and as they were walking they got a
1:21:53
little turned around and they found a ravine um that had dried up there was no
1:22:01
water in it but they started walking up the Ravine and they were just exploring
1:22:06
and playing but they got lost and so um it started getting dark and as
1:22:15
dusk kind of said in they heard cows and they um
1:22:23
the her friend's dad didn't have cows on his property but the neighbor did and so
1:22:28
they thought that the cows had just crossed over onto their land and so um as they were
1:22:36
walking along the Ravine the cows kept getting closer they could hear them off in the distance but
1:22:43
they couldn't see them past the tree line along the bank but eventually they knew that the
1:22:51
Ravine ran behind the house so if they kept walking they would um find their way back to the house but the cows kept
1:22:58
getting closer and as they climbed up
1:23:04
the bank to get out of the Ravine coming out of the tree line they could see a
1:23:12
herd of all white
1:23:18
cows um not very far away from them maybe a 100 yards but they were
1:23:24
incredibly gaunt they had very little meat on their bones and they they looked
1:23:30
very ghostly in the uh in the lowering
1:23:37
light of day and as soon as the cows saw the two of them they immediately turned
1:23:44
and started running towards them and so uh my cousin Chrissy and her friend
1:23:52
scrambled back down into the Ravine and uh started running along the creek bed
1:24:01
towards the house and the cows were following them but not into the Ravine they they never
1:24:07
came through the the tree line but they could hear them um staying very close behind
1:24:14
them and so as they got close to the house they climbed back up out of the
1:24:21
Ravine and when they turned to look all of the cows were gone and the sounds had
1:24:28
stopped immediately and and there was not a cow in sight not a single cow to
1:24:34
be seen so when they got back to the house they were both quite panicked and so they told her
1:24:43
dad what had happened and her dad told them honey our neighbors haven't had
1:24:50
cows for 20 years there's no way that a herd of cows would
1:24:56
be on our property and so she always claimed that that was her one and
1:25:02
only close encounter with ghost cows which I was that was a very
1:25:10
scary um that would be a very scary site to
1:25:16
see a good ghost story where in Texas oh I think it was um
1:25:23
it was out in the Hill Country so I think probably somewhere around um probably Marble Falls area
1:25:31
they had a um trailer that they lived out of out there and I think it was one
1:25:37
of her friends that she had gone to school with out somewhere around that area

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