Haunting Experiences Diane Goldstein, Sylvia Grider, Jeannie Banks Thomas Published by Utah State University Press Goldstein, Diane & Grider, Sylvia & Thomas, Banks. Haunting Experiences: Ghosts in Contemporary Folklore. Logan: Utah State University Press, 2007. Project MUSE., https://muse.jhu.edu/. For additional information about this book https://muse.jhu.edu/book/9397 No institutional affiliation (2 Feb 2019 09:46 GMT) Introduction Old Spirits in New Bottles Bottle Trees and Cell Phones Bright wind chimes composed of enticing, candy-colored, pastel bits of glass are for sale at the Winchester Mystery House gift shop (fi gure 1). Some of the glass is formed into colorful bottles reminiscent of those in the southern supernatural tradition of bottle trees, a custom depicted in movies such as Ray (2004), a biopic about African American musician Ray Charles, or Because of Winn-Dixie (2005), a children’s fi lm about a beloved dog. The famous southern writer Eudora Welty photographed them. A contemporary southern author, Dennis Covington, describes them: “If you happen to have evil spirits, you put bottles on the branches of a [bare] tree in your yard. The more colorful the glass, the better, I suppose. The evil spirits get trapped in the bottles and won’t do you any harm. This is what Southerners in the country do with evil spirits” (1995, xv). Bottle trees are a product of southern African American cul- ture. Jim Martin says that glassblowing and bottle making existed as early as the ninth century in Africa. The practice of hanging objects from trees to ward off evil spirits is also African, and the bottle tree itself is Kongo-derived. He adds that as the wind moves the tree, the spirits in the bottles moan (1988, 495). Martin maintains this type of bottle tree is less common today than in the past. However, certain variants for “upscale neighborhoods” have come into vogue: for example, sculpted metal trees are sold 1 2 Haunting Experiences in nurseries, and rural and urban sophisticates alike place their empties—mainly wine bottles—on them (Marquez 2004). The idea of bottle trees is appealing: they capture spirits that frighten or could harm us while still bravely keeping them in front of us. Right before our own doorsteps the bottles fl ash color and light, and then moan testimony to the uncanniness of both nature and the supernatural at the same time. Bottle trees are arresting, beautiful, and bizarre reminders that unseen forces move in the world. Ghost stories are like these bottle trees. The stories contain spirits; they capture them for us and keep them before our eyes, scaring us but containing that fright in narrative form, which captures our attention and also reminds us of the variegated hues and shapes of the numinous world. Like the spirit-bottle chimes for sale in the Winchester Mystery House gift shop, contempo- rary ghost lore—while rooted in tradition—is also wedded to and embedded in mass culture. Ghost narratives and supernatu- ral beliefs are the ancestors of mass-mediated forms such as the Scooby Doo cartoons (1969–1972) mentioned in chapter 4—but today they are marketed as mass media’s creation, its offspring. However snarled their genealogies, mass culture ghosts and folk ghosts are clearly family and despite generations of rationalism and the infl uence of the enlightenment (Motz 1998), consumers still buy into the supernatural (see chapter 6). Consumption is a hallmark of contemporary American cul- ture, and the other darling of the age is technology. Consider the cell phone, for example. It is a “superartifact” (Ascher 1999, 335), a ubiquitous object indicative of the time and culture from whence it has sprung. It fl aunts its high-tech nature as it brings unseen voices into every space of life. Technology accomplishes what we once thought only the supernatural could. However, the cell phone has an intriguing relationship to the supernatural. A few years ago, a member of the Society for Psychical Research in England asserted that cell phones were to blame for a decrease in ghost sightings. According to Tony Cornell, ghostly visitations have dropped dramatically since the introduction of the cell phone; he maintains, “With the introduction of mobile phones Old Spirits in New Bottles 3 15 years ago, ghost sightings began to decline to the point where now we are receiving none.” His theory is that the “electrical noise” produced by cell phones drowns out ghosts (FarShores ParaNews, 2005a). Even if one were to accept Cornell’s theory, however, one might still have to conclude that the exiled ghosts may beat cell phones by joining them. Now stories about ghostly voices on cell phones—much like earlier narratives about haunted telephones—circulate both orally and on the Internet, and numerous games with ghostly motifs have been developed for cell phones. Other paranormal researchers assert that TV, not the cell phone, is behind the spectral decline. Steve Parsons, of the Parascience Society of Wirral, England, argues that the drop in ghost sightings is due to the decline in the number of supernatu- ral-themed television programs, such as The X-Files (1993–2002). He says, “In the run-up to the year 2000 there was loads of stuff on the telly about the paranormal and that made the public more aware. But now people may have an experience and not realise that it’s of a paranormal nature. And, anyway, we use lots of high-tech equipment in our research and that has no effect. Good, solid, reliable ghosts are there, and they are as hard as ever to catch” (Weaver 2001). Parsons’s assertion demonstrates how the mass media and the supernatural are linked; other stud- ies also argue that television has an impact on belief (Forbes 1997). His comments about the use of high-tech equipment by ghost research societies show that those deeply engaged with the supernatural realm avidly embrace technology. Both the gussied-up spirit bottles and the stories about cell- phone ghosts indicate that rationalism, consumerism, and tech- nology have not exorcised ghosts, in spite of earlier attempts to disprove their existence. For example, in eighteenth-century England, the Royston Dissenting Book Club (whose members included clergymen, lawyers, doctors, and successful tradesmen and their wives) debated the question, “Is there any foundation in fact for the popular belief of ghosts and apparitions?” Fifteen members said yes; twenty-six said no—a fact that prompted nine- teenth-century historian Alfred Kingston to marvel with distaste 4 Haunting Experiences and shock that even fi fteen “educated people” could believe in ghosts (Jones-Baker 1977, 85). Kingston would have been duly horrifi ed had he lived to learn that according to Gallup, three out of four Americans in the early twenty-fi rst century have some sort of paranormal belief, which includes at least one of the fol- lowing: “extra sensory perception (ESP), haunted houses, ghosts, mental telepathy, clairvoyance, astrology, communicating with the dead, witches, reincarnation, and channeling. There are no signifi cant differences in belief by age, gender, education, or region of the country” (Moore 2005; see chapter 6). Of course, the paradox is that no one knows for sure whether any of these things actually exist, but that doesn’t stop us from going on ghost tours, visiting haunted houses, and telling ghost stories. Ghosts, Folklore, and Popular Culture Haunting Experiences focuses on the dynamic relationship in con- temporary society between ghosts in folklore and ghosts in popular culture. While folklore resembles popular culture in that both rely upon conventional content, genres, and styles of communication as well as traditional formulas, folklore is transmitted, intimately, face to face or in small groups, while popular culture tends to be mediated through a channel that provides a greater degree of anonymity between producers on a mass scale and a wider audience. While undeniably linked in contemporary culture, the interaction between folklore and popular culture has historically been less discussed but no less signifi cant. For example, consider the widespread dissemination of broadside ballads in the eigh- teenth and nineteenth centuries, the use of traditional narratives to sell patent medicines within the medicine show tradition, and the historical identifi cation of inter-cultural appropriation and the use of culture brokers throughout history. Mass transmission, responses to new media and new technologies, appropriation, and commodifi cation are part and parcel of contemporary culture but they are not new and neither are they responsible, as critics have so often predicted, for the death of traditional culture. Intricately woven together, popular culture uses folklore continuously to tap Old Spirits in New Bottles 5 into traditional cultural values and to satisfy audience expecta- tions. But just as popular culture appropriates folklore, folklore too appropriates popular culture. Children’s cartoon characters such as Casper the Friendly Ghost,1 movies such as The Shining (1980), and television talk shows such as The Oprah Winfrey Show (1986–2007) all feed themes, motifs, and descriptive details back into the small-group intimate transmission of traditional ghost nar- ratives, modernizing the details and incorporating contemporary issues, language, and concerns (see chapter 4). As Narváez and Laba argue, folklore and popular culture are “related rather than disparate,” best understood as spanning a continuum of artistic communication in “different sized groups in which communica- tions are transmitted via various confi gurations of . technologi- cal media” (Narváez and Laba 1986, 1). The media and the technology associated with popular culture continually create change, but are also responsible for the vigor- ous sustaining of vernacular traditions. As Linda Dégh argues, The phenomenon we identify as folklore permeates all society assisted by mass media; it is not ruled out as folk- lore simply because its bearers manipulate new instru- ments to fi t the needs of modern consumers.