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Legend Tripping
A Contemporary Legend Casebook
Lynne S. McNeill,Elizabeth Tucker
- English
- ePUB (mobile friendly)
- Available on iOS & Android
Legend Tripping
A Contemporary Legend Casebook
Lynne S. McNeill,Elizabeth Tucker
About This Book
Legend Tripping: A Contemporary Legend Casebook explores the practice of legend tripping, wherein individuals or groups travel to a site where a legend is thought to have taken place. Legend tripping is a common informal practice depicted in epics, stories, novels, and film throughout both contemporary and historical vernacular culture. In this collection, contributors show how legend trips can express humanity's interest in the frontier between life and death and the fascination with the possibility of personal contact with the supernatural or spiritual.The volume presents both insightful research and useful pedagogy, making this an invaluable resource in the classroom. Selected major articles on legend tripping, with introductory sections written by the editors, are followed by discussion questions and projects designed to inspire readers to engage critically with legend traditions and customs of legend tripping and to explore possible meanings and symbolics at work. Suggested projects incorporate digital technology as it appears both in legends and in modes of legend tripping. Legend Tripping is appropriate for students, general readers, and folklorists alike. It is the first volume in the International Society for Contemporary Legend Research series, a set of casebooks providing thorough and up-to-date studies that showcase a variety of scholarly approaches to contemporary legends, along with variants of legend texts, discussion questions, and projects for students. Contributors: S. Elizabeth Bird, Bill Ellis, Carl Lindahl, Patricia M. Meley, Tim Prizer
Frequently asked questions
Information
1
Early Studies
Haunted Bridges
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The stories in the bridge legend cluster, as many of the modern legends popular among young people . . . have two distinct parts. The first part recounts a supernatural (or extraordinary) event that occurred in the past and that serves as an explanation of a present phenomenon attributed to it. The scene featured by the tellers is appropriate for the common basis of all stories telling about violent death caused by suicide, murder, execution, car or train accidents. All of them happen in the dark of the night and the narrators suggest that the tragic event is being re-enacted at certain nights, appropriate for the revenants to return. The account of the tragedy is usually brief and sober; it simply states the facts of people meeting their untimely death at the appointed place, without going into details in search of the background of human tragedies. Also, the statement on the haunt is quite matter-of-fact.
Our raconteur . . . is eager to challenge danger and step forward to claim his share in the experience. He expects to be scared by what he is prepared to meet and is most active to induce the apparition to give himself a good scare. The participant narrator is not an accidental visitor to the haunted place; he shows a remarkable familiarity with ghost lore. The scene itself, as described in all variants, suggests the horror to be met. Old and side-road bridges qualify as the site of haunts, like deserted old houses or cemeteries, way out in the country, overgrown with weed, hedges and trees in a deep valley or on a hilltop. A dangerous curve on a dirt road, leading to the bridge sets up the âgeneral scary conditionsâ necessary for the experience. Dark, foggy, moonless nights or nights when the moon is full and moving shadows reflect the windblown trees are equally fitting to the occasion. At this point, reaching the second part of his story, the narrator switches to the first person in his account. However, he is not alone on his dare; what he tells about is the collective experience of a groupâtwo or three carloads of young people. What they want is to sense the chill of fear, and conversely, to prove defiance of fear. In spite of the group solidarity in the endeavor, the challengers break up and have to meet the danger individually. They explore the inside and the environs of the bridge, ready for the scare. They might even play cool in taking written notes on individual experiences or in checking whether the rumors concerning the haunt were true or not.
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All the above implies that the bridge-visitors condition themselves mentally for a vision they desire to have. They also perform a series of designated acts known to be effective to prompt the ghosts to appear. The hour and the weather conditions should be carefully selected; there is an indication that Halloween night might be the appropriate time for an effective visit. (Halloween as the time of haunt is mentioned in Indiana legends; however, the scarce number of references do not yet allow us to assume what seems to be likely: that visits to haunted places belong to Halloween customs). The rituals bridge visitors perform include walking under the bridge, climbing into the chambers, reciting ghost stories, etc. The parked car seems to be an adequate shelter from which the explorers might urge the ghost to appear: they roll up the windows, honk the horn three times or shine the lights three times.In view of the active interest in the supernatural so typical of young people in their teens and early twenties, one is tempted to infer that there is a profound belief that maintains the popularity of the haunt legends. The frank statements of the informants, however, indicate that the quality of belief is immeasurable as a factor in legend maintenance. Almost all respondents said: there might be a grain of truth in the stories but all they saw might have been just an illusion. Many informants noted that haunt stories are favorite subjects of general conversation within their group and what they heard often influenced them in what they have seen. They really were not sure whether they heard or experienced the facts of their version. They probably never considered seriously the question of their own belief and if their mental attitude ere important at this conjecture; routine folklore interviews would certainly not reveal adequate information. The point is: belief or disbelief, the visit to the haunted bridge, is a kind of test, one of the initiation rituals among the many young males have to pass as they leave childhood and make their way toward adulthood. The exploit is not only a dare but also very enjoyable fun. Feeling the chill of a âgood scareâ is definitely welcome to youths in this civilized, comfortable and rather uneventful affluent world. To escape boredom and enjoy adulthood, what could be more exciting than to make use of a brand new operatorâs license and drive out at night to visit the haunts of the region? Although our informants were of both sexes, we believe that the active dare is more a male than a female exploit, whereas the telling of the stories belongs to both boy and girl get-togethers. (DĂ©gh 1969a, 77â81)
House of Blue Lights
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Table of contents
- Cover
- Title Page
- Copyright Page
- Dedication
- Contents
- Acknowledgments
- Introduction
- 1 Early Studies
- 2 Legend Tripping in Ohio: A Behavioral Survey
- 3 Adolescent Legend Trips as Teenage Cultural Response: A Study of Lore in Context
- 4 Legend Trips and Satanism: Adolescentsâ Ostensive Traditions as âCultâ Activity
- 5 Playing with Fear: Interpreting the Adolescent Legend Trip
- 6 âShame Old Roads Canât Talkâ: Narrative, Experience, and Belief in the Framing of Legend Trips as Performance
- 7 Ostensive Healing: Pilgrimage to the San Antonio Ghost Tracks
- 8 Contemporary Ghost Hunting and the Relationship between Proof and Experience
- 9 âThereâs an App for Thatâ: Ghost Hunting with Smartphones
- 10 Living Legends: Reflections on Liminality and Ostension
- Discussion Questions and Projects
- References
- About the Authors
- Index