Contemporary Apparitions: Ghost Stories as Personal Narratives

Abstract

Storytelling, an integral part of the human experience, encompasses a diverse range of narratives, with ghost stories standing out as a near-universal phenomenon. While anthropologists and folklorists have long been interested in these type of stories, little research has looked at the multifaceted motivations behind why we might tell these types of stories. Drawing from scholarship on hauntology, the uncanny, storytelling processes, narrative sensemaking and collective memory, this study aims to answer the question – why in the 21st century, do we continue to tell ghost stories to one another? Through a qualitative analysis of story collection and nine semi-structured interviews with thirteen Nova Scotians from the Halifax region, this study finds that the ghost stories we share are often deeply personal narratives. Remarkably, all thirteen participants shared stories about their own personal paranormal encounters, even when asked for a ghost story in broad, undefined terms. For participants, these stories provided a place for sensemaking, self-discovery, grief processing, and cultural transmission. Furthermore, this study identifies the commonalities in the ghost storytelling process, from establishing truth, navigating, and negotiating belief, and drawing on shared cultural milieu. Therefore, the reason we tell ghost stories is not to merely frighten or entertain. Rather, in the Canadian context, we tell them to make sense of our social worlds, our beliefs, and our own sense of self.