Fialkova, Larisa and Yelenevskaya, Maria (2001) Ghosts in the Cyberworld: An Analysis of Folklore...

64 Larisa Fialkova/Maria N. Yelenevskaya

L a r i s a F i a l k o v a / M a r i a N . Y e l e n e v s k a y a , H a i f a

Ghosts in the Cyber WorldAn Analysis of Folklore Sites on the Internet

Introduction

For many people the virtual reality of computer-mediated communication(CMC) is becoming more real than the reality of everyday life. It supplementsand sometimes substitutes for personal friendships, neighborhood gossip, andoccasionally even for love and sex. Like Frankenstein, or robots populatingscience fiction, virtual reality of the Internet has become too powerful to becontrolled by its creators and has acquired an existence and development of itsown. An unrestricted repertoire of topics not bound by geography, age, ethnicbackground, or worldview has made CMC the cultural Esperanto of the 1990s.

The study of CMC has developed into an interdisciplinary subject. Sincebanking, commerce, advertising, publishing, and other business activities are‘conquering’ electronic frontiers, researchers increasingly focus on legal, se-curity, and organizational issues concerning CMC. But the study of the cyberworld would be incomplete without explorations of cyber culture, which iscapable of reshaping one’s personal time, creating new communities and anew aesthetic, and influencing the language. For millions of its users the Inter-net has become an irresistible source, medium, and vehicle of leisure. Virtualgatherings with their chats, friendly and less than friendly exchanges, flir-tations, and games compete with face-to-face (FtF) communication, and forsome, particularly young people, have become an attractive option.

Our interest in CMC is directed towards folklore on the Internet. Theemergence of folklore sites on the Internet is not accidental, and has alreadyattracted the attention of a number of researchers (see, for example, papers byI. Schneider [1996], H. Bar-Itzhak/L. Fialkova [1996], R. G. Howard [1997];public lectures by B. Kirshenblatt-Gimblet [paper presented in 1995 in Beer-Sheva at the annual folklore conference held in turn by Israeli universities]and B. Dannett [guest lecture at the Department of Hebrew and ComparativeLiterature at the University of Haifa in 1995]).

Folklore is one of the oldest forms of conservation of cultural tradition andpoeticized experience, it is a true reservoir of collective memory. The Internetis gradually assuming the latter role, too. A historian of communication tech-nology, Steven G. Jones, refers to it as “another in a series of projects to exter-nalize memory, to provide another medium to which we can offload and storeexperience” (1997, 31). Another similarity between the two is that neither folk-

Fabula 42. Band (2001) Heft 1/2

Brought to you by | University of HaifaAuthenticated | 132.74.151.11

Download Date | 9/15/13 9:38 AM

Ghosts in the Cyber World 65

lore nor the Internet is a static storage of experience. Folklore is a creative ac-tivity, inconceivable without interested participants who alternatively play theroles of storytellers and listeners. The Internet, likewise, has given a boost tothe creativity of its users by allowing and encouraging exchange of knowledgeand experience, as well as the search for others sharing similar concerns,interests , and hobbies. It is the synergetic effect of the tradition of spontaneousperformance and the openness of the medium which has contributed to thethriving of folklore sites on the Internet.

This paper is devoted to the specifics of a subgenre of contemporary legends,namely ghost stories. Our purpose is threefold: to study the structure andmode of activities of the Internet discussion group alt.folklore.ghost-stories(AFGS); to analyze computer-mediated folklore storytelling and discussion asa type of communication; and to examine textual characteristics of electronicfolklore as compared with its traditional oral counterpart. Within this frame-work focal questions of analysis are:

– What constitutes the activities of an electronic folklore group, and to whatextent are these organized and controlled by mediation?

– What is the demographic profile of the group and what is the members’motivation for participation?

– What features represent evidence that folklore storytelling on the Internet isa hybrid form of oral tradition and literature?

– How do Internet narrators compensate for the lack of extralinguistic meansof communication which are an essential component of oral folklore (per-formance, body language, prosody, etc.)?

– Do the topics of ghost stories on the Internet correlate with oral contem-porary legends?

– What features are characteristic of the narratives under study: theme devel-opment, role relationship, self-reflection, attempts at rational explanation ofthe paranormal?

Material for the study was first collected by Bar-Itzhak and Fialkova in 1993(Bar-Itzhak/Fialkova 1996) and includes messages sent by group members toeach other and questionnaires circulated by Fialkova and filled in by 30 respon-dents (25 % of the total number of participants addressed). The second pool ofmaterial was downloaded from the Net for the present project in 1998–99. Thetime gap between the two pools of messages enabled us to avoid a static ap-proach to the study of the sites and to observe the evolution of the electronicmedium and the analyzed discussion group. We were interested to see whatchanges had occurred over this period as regards the organization of the group,composition of participants, their manner of communication, and style ofwriting. Most importantly, two sizable and chronologically separated pools ofe-messages gave us an opportunity to verify the degree of stability of topicsfavored by the group.




The Change of Mode: From Spontaneous Storytellingto Organized History-Making

Oral folklore tradition is characterized by two alternative modes: spontaneousstorytelling triggered by associative connections and a session of storytellingwhich is part of a festive ritual, or an entertainment accompanying collectiveactivity such as weaving, knitting, embroidering, and other monotonous work.In the latter case folklore sessions – although comparatively long – are limitedby the period of a festival, or by the part of the working day dedicated to onespecific task. The associative character of traditional folklore storytelling ac-counts for gradual and slow development of topics and the absence of thematicdiversity in each session. The genres of modern urban legends, personal nar-ratives and jokes, which have a significant role in joint interpretation of socialexperience and regulation of social relationships (Galindo 1994, 78) haveinherited this feature of spontaneous associative chain storytelling.

The picture which unfolds on the Internet is markedly different. The firstdistinction is the unlimited availability of the Net as regards time: a subscribercan choose the time of his/her storytelling, story reading, and story discuss-ing. Moreover these modes of activity are fragmented and take place on differ-ent sites of the same newsgroup. Each user is free to regulate the time of his/her own participation in the activities of the group. While in traditional oralfolklore individual and collective time are synchronized and equal to eachother, in electronic folklore these are separated and controlled individually. Ifone fails to show up for an oral session, it creates a gap which can be restoredonly indirectly. By contrast, an electronic group subscriber accumulates all theinformation, even when he/she does not go online for some time.

Not limited by the necessity to match time and space, the newsgroupgenerates an avalanche of information, which according to our observationshas considerably increased in the last five years. Subscribers to a mailing list ofthe group receive up to 80 messages daily, though sometimes the traffic sub-sides to 5–10. The daily package includes ‘the story of the day’ and commentson the stories published earlier. Some of these are parts of ‘a thread’ – a dis-cussion triggered by one particular story or comment – and may involvemultiple participants and last for several days. The sheer volume of the ma-terial generated makes it unlikely that group members follow all the threads.One either picks the messages presenting interest by using the header fororientation, or browses through the texts.

As has already been mentioned, an increase of the information load has ledto the branching of the newsgroup into several lists . Subscribers to a mailinglist which is intended for distribution of ghost stories only receive stories andmessages chosen by the group mediator or her assistant. Those who are on thediscussion list have access to a wider variety of paranormal topics. The ex-change between subscribers to a discussion list can be viewed by anybody whocares to access the newsgroup. There is also a ‘guestbook’ reserved for stories




sent by users who are not regulars. Fragmentation of the activities has made itnecessary to catalog available information and introduce cross references. Thegroup has a Web page with links to its resources and an FTP site which in-cludes a FAQ compiled by the group mediator in 1997, a file with an impressivevolume of 61 Kb; an archive of stories copied by the mediator from earlierpostings (1993–98); and a selection of GIFs – picture illustrations to ghoststories.

As in other newsgroups, FAQ is not limited to questions and answers, butserves as a collection of guidelines for posting and using the material of thegroup (Watson 1997, 117). It also includes a list of the most active participantsof the group acknowledged as important contributors to the FAQ file, andreferences which range from other Internet resources, such as sites devotedto paranormal phenomena and folklore, to addresses of societies and orga-nizations investigating paranormal phenomena. FAQ is regularly updated,though less frequently than claimed (apparently the pledge for a monthlyreview proved to be too demanding and unrealistic).

The group mediator, also referred to as listowner and archivist, is L. Krause,better known to group members as [email protected]. The role of themediator is akin to that of the manager and editor. The listowner welcomesnew subscribers and explains the workings of the group. ‘Newbies’ are en-couraged to send their stories, but are notified that not all the stories will beposted, and the interval between ‘submission’ of a story and its presentation tothe group may take up to six months – a response reminiscent of review pro-cedures for conventional publications. There is no official review procedure orediting board yet, but they are in the making, and the first sign of this is thefact that submitted stories can be rejected. The group is also nurturing its ownadministration: the mediator’s assistant, a librarian, and a researcher. In otherwords, we observe a tendency to regulated activity. The ‘anarchy’ of the Inter-net communication, once criticized by its investigators, is being graduallyovercome by the users. Moreover, the emergence of an editor, archivist, re-searcher, and ‘activists’ leads to the strengthening of an analytic element in thediscussion, which in 1993 was present in correspondence but only sporadi-cally.

The group’s FTP archive presents a survey of frequently appearing versionsof the type-tale. Inclusion of stories in the archive has to be authorized by theoriginal posters, and many texts are edited by the mediator. In this case theyare preceded with the following introduction:

“ARCHIVIST’S NOTE: This file has been reformatted and spellchecked. In somecases, content may have been edited slightly to improve readability. However, theoriginal author (listed in the From: line of the header) retains copyright over this

1 The background of the nickname is Obi-Wan Kenobi – a character in “Star Wars”. It isalso familiar to computer users as a slang name for the error “off by one” (Raymond1991, 266sq.).




story. Please be advised that you must obtain permission from the ORIGINALauthor if you wish to reproduce this file in any form, electronically or otherwise.”2

Because a friend of ours became interested in ghosts herself and sent her ownstory to the group, we could see the submission procedure in action. Themessage sent to the discussion group included a version of the Llorona legendand a question to the participants concerning that particular version. Fiveweeks after submission the sender received a reply from the mediator in whichshe referred our friend to the information about La Llorona on her web sitewhich could clarify the issue. Three more weeks passed, and she was ap-proached by the mediator again with a request for permission to include thesubmitted version of the legend in the archive. Permission was willinglygranted; however, in the next two months the file did not appear in the archive.

Respect for copyright is mentioned in FAQ as one of the major norms ofgroup behavior. People willing to use stories of others for profit are advised toobtain the author’s written permission, and/or to pay in some way. A nicedeviation from ‘off-line’ norms of using other people’s intellectual property isa recommendation to send the author of the story to be quoted another storyin return.

The concept of copyright, which is alien to the convention of oral trans-mission of folk stories, naturally involves the concept of an author, which is in-compatible with the role of the traditional storyteller. This has been noted bymany folklore scholars. L. Dégh and A. Vázsonyi wrote that “[…] the legendteller does not claim authorship for his story, like the tale raconteur, but refersto others from whom he received his information” (1976, 102). In the case ofour folklore group we see the mixing up of conventions: folklore text is per-ceived as literary and authored, although, it remains essentially different froma work of literature since it is based on the traditional poetics of a specific folk-lore genre3.

Authorship itself is in most cases a mystification, and adds to the atmosphereof suspense fitting the subject of the group’s discussion. Oral folklore has noauthor, and accordingly doesn’t make use of pen-names. Like any user of theInternet, group members supply their messages with name and address. Butmany of them disguise their identity under assumed names and embellishedsignatures. Anonymity lets participants feel free in sharing emotionally dis-turbing experiences. It is also an element which helps users fantasize a newidentity and enables them to explore versions of the self which seldom if eversurface in real life. The role of the Internet ‘persona’ is an issue of an ongoing

2 All quotations from the posts are reproduced without any changes in grammar, spell-ing, or punctuation.

3 In the last decade, the ethics developed in modern folkloristics requires that research-ers involved in field work, especially when it concerns the genre of personal nar-ratives, should obtain permission of the narrator to publish the story. This hasbecome standard practice in the activities of Israel Folktale Archives (IFA).




discussion among Internet scholars (see, e.g., Byam 1995; Turkle 1995; Wat-son 1997).

Among the nicknames used by the group members, few seem to be ran-domly chosen. Very popular are animal names: Dragonfly, Polar Bear, Pony,Raven, Reptile, as well as compound names including an animal name as acomponent: Angel Fox, Will Wolf, Mystwolf, Moon Jackal, Koala Head, Maxthe Lizard. Other nicknames reflect the spirit of mysticism which attractsmembers of this newsgroup: Red Skeleton, Shadow Taster…., The GreyMaster, Miss Ice Blast, Dreamtker, Dreamsilk, Darkchyld, Shadow Land,Magic Cloud, etc. Occasionally nicknames show their authors’ taste for lan-guage jokes, e.g. Ejucaided Redneck, Ann Nonymous.

The use of pen names is part of a literary tradition, and authors in differentperiods and in different countries have published under assumed names –Mark Twain, George Sand, Lewis Carroll, O. Henry, to mention just a few.For various reasons authors either sign their works with pen-names, or createa narrator, supplying him/her not only with the name but with a biographyand personality which is manifested in speech mannerisms, psychological fea-tures, ideology, etc. As examples of this we can mention Ivan Petrovich Belkinin Pushkin’s novelettes; Rudy Pan’ko, in Gogol’s Ukrainian stories; Koz’maPrutkov, a collaborative creation of four writers: the brothers Alexander,Vladimir, and Alexey Zhemchuzhnikovi and their cousin Alexey Tolstoy. Inliterature the pen-name and the invented narrator do not substitute for the realauthor, but create supplementary ties with him/her.

In electronic folklore attempts to follow literary conventions remain half-baked. Stories posted by the group, though claiming copyright, in fact presentvariations of several type-tales. They lack individual poetics. Whether anony-mous or signed with a real name or a nickname, in most cases, texts don’tenter the category of literature.

Group Participants

Folklorists often mention the size and social composition of folklore groups(Dégh 1972; Robe 1984). Only recently they were described as socially homo-geneous, small and intimate. And, indeed, in FtF communications, rumor leg-ends and personal experience stories are frequently told among people whomeet fairly regularly and know each other well, though sometimes it is easierto tell a story to a stranger, be it a taxi driver, a roommate in a hospital, or a fel-low traveler. The storyteller’s familiarity to the listeners has been mentionedby D. Ben-Amos as an inherent feature of folklore: “For the folkloric act tohappen, two social conditions are necessary: both the performers and theaudience have to be in the same situation and be part of the same referencegroup. This implies that folklore communication takes place in a situation inwhich people confront each other FtF and relate to each other directly” (1971,12sq.). The size of a group is perceived by Ben-Amos as a social limitation and




the context of folklore dissemination (12). Yet folklore, and urban legend inparticular, has not turned into a frozen anachronism but remains vibrant due toits ability to adjust to new social and cultural settings and to adapt to the newmedia of transmission.

Migration of folklore groups to the Internet brings together people who havenever met before and most likely never will. Moreover, the number of partici-pants constantly changes and by far exceeds the number of people in a groupgetting together to gossip and tell each other ‘spooky’ stories, be it a slumberparty, a gathering of baby-sitters in the park, or college students chatting in thedorms.

Compared with other Usenet groups, alt.folklore.ghost-stories is a smallorganization: in January/February 1999, 58 members regularly contributedstories and/or participated in their discussion (compare this number withrec.arts .tv.soap which includes several hundred participants [Byam 1995,148]). Not all the subscribers are equally active, some keep silent for weeks,others post almost daily and log on several times a day. It is not rare to seethe same person’s messages on various issues appear three or four times a day.We can assume that there is also a big number of lurkers, those who readmaterials of the group without ever identifying themselves. In fact, accordingto M.L. McLaughlin et al. (1995, 91), most people participating in Usenet arejust lurkers. Some of the contributors admit that they were lurking for quite awhile before daring to offer their own stories or comments for the attention ofthe group4. As a symbol of this change in behavior one participant even chosethe nickname ‘De-lurker’ as an identity marker for communication with thegroup. It is not at all uncommon, though, to become active once and neverreappear again:

“(delurk after several weeks of being entertained and spooked after work 11:30 to3:30 AM) … (Poof!!!! Back to lurking) =)”5.

“None of you knew I was here in the first place, because this is the first time I’mde-lurking, but I was, and I’ve really enjoyed reading the stories here. So … before Igraduate and say goodbye … here are my contributions.”

Judging from the e-mail addresses and indirect information drawn from themessages, the overwhelming majority of participants are from the UnitedStates. A smaller but sizable group of members are from the United Kingdom,

4 Openness of the medium to passive participation in activities of Internet groups maybe a boon for shy personalities. On the other hand, it makes users vulnerable to var-ious types of abuse, particularly when emotions and psychological weaknesses areexposed. I. Schneider (1996, 25) mentioned this as a factor increasing researchers’ re-sponsibility in the process of working with materials downloaded from the Internet.

5 The introduction ends with the emoticon, or smiley (Raymond 1996, 173sq.). Theseare simple combinations of ASCII characters which represent emotions. Once theybecame a visual convention of CMC, they stopped ‘being cool’ and went out of fa-shion among the ‘techies’. Yet rank-and-file users continue inserting them in theire-mail messages.




and only occasionally does one encounter a continental European, an Asian,a New Zealander or an Australian posting a ghost story.

The group includes men and women. Because of the anonymity of com-munication, it is virtually impossible to establish the proportion of female/male posters, though analysis of textual material can partially clarify the issue.A case in point is the persona of the mediator of the group [email protected]. We admit that initially our default assumption was that ‘Obiwan’was a man. The use of a male nickname, confident style of communication,leadership in the management of the site – all these factors mobilized thestereotypes of our perception. Yet gradually, casual remarks in messages cir-culated in the group made it clear that ‘Obiwan’ is a woman, and a mother oftwo small children. The mystification which involves the sex of the Net user isreminiscent of literary tradition rather than oral. For a writer to pose as a manhas always meant more freedom and independence. It is also a challenge to so-cial conventions and an attempt to overcome a stigma – all of which applies,for example, to the French author George Sand (Aurore Dudevant).

Among active participants, those listed as major contributors to the archive,two thirds are men. On the other hand, according to N. Byam, the peacefulnature of the discussion and very low incidence of flaming may testify thatwomen play an active role in the group (1995, 148). Another factor in supportof this statement is that a big number of personal narratives posted in thegroup are family stories describing in detail relations in the family – a featuremore characteristic of female than of male narratives (Holmes 1997, 273).

All the participants are native English speakers or fluent in English. Theyhave access to computers, which requires a certain level of technical skillsand financial resources, or affiliation with institutions providing employeeswith computers. From the articles posted by members of the group and ques-tionnaires circulated by Bar-Itzhak and Fialkova (1996) it appears that manyparticipants hold academic degrees or are college students (this matches ob-servations made by Z. Sardar about the social composition of Internet users(1996, 25).

References to professional occupation are infrequent with the exception ofresponses to occasional questions like this one: “In fact, what does everybodyon this ng [newsgroup] do, when they are not fulfilling their life’s work on thePorch?”6 Other occasions for mentioning one’s profession are when it is rel-evant to the plot of the story, or when professional knowledge is used as ameans of establishing authority in rationalizing about a paranormal event.Marital status is mentioned explicitly only when reference to spouse andchildren is an essential element of the narrative, e.g., a ghost visible to the wifebut not to the husband, the teller’s child scared by the apparition, etc.

6 The porch as a metaphor for leisure is widely used in the group’s discourse. It hasacquired a status of an insider joke and stands for Internet surfing.




While Sardar claims that in the majority Internet users are white, we do nothave any data as to the ethnic and/or race composition of the group. This in-formation was not covered by the questionnaire for ethical reasons, and is notreflected in the message exchange.

The turnover in the group is relatively high. Out of 85 participants who wereactive in April/ June 1998 only twelve were still regularly posting in January–February 1999. Yet some of the members who were active in 1993 and 1994still subscribe to the AFGS. Among those listed as major contributors inKrause’s FAQ summary 1997, three (L. Krause, L. Korneluk, P. Nandy) wereactive in 1993 and the latter two answered Fialkova’s questionnaire in the sameyear. There may be veterans of the group among the lurkers as well: “I hit theNet in early 1994,….And yes, I’m still here. Just reading and watching. ;)”7

Long affiliation with the group sometimes comes up in messages whenmembers praise the AFGS for the friendly atmosphere which allows them toexpress ideas freely and share interests and experiences often referred to as‘weird’ without inhibitions.

“I have been watching this newsgroup (afgs) for about 5 or so years. I have enjoyedthe stories all have posted, whether they are on topic or just ramblings. I will admitthat I don’t read all the posts (mostly because I don’t have the time) but I do enjoythe ones that I do hit. When I had a really old machine…,I would spend hours surf-ing through the endless posts that were made. sometimes it would take half an hourto find a ‘good’ ghost story per-se. Know what, I didn’t care that it took that long.I just enjoyed the fact that I had some place to read other’s experiences and the hopethat some day I would be able to return the favor. …what I’ve seen accumulate hereis unparallelled in any other ng. If we can keep it alive, I know it will be worth it.Even if it moves to a ‘fancy’ web site, score, we are still helping people through try-ing times through advise, compassion, or even just tossing an opinion out for peopleto ponder.”

This excerpt is from a message written at the time when the group was recover-ing after a short but violent flame attack. It partially answers the question wewill discuss in the next section: what attracts Internet users to electronic folk-lore?

Motivation

Many of the participants seem to suffer from the atomism of urban life, whichleaves little opportunity for uninhibited self-expression and verbal interactionin a group. Some of them log-on to the group for entertainment and rest dur-ing long working hours; others admit they are embarrassed to discuss para-normal phenomena in their immediate environment for fear that stories aboutthe supernatural will not be taken seriously and their tellers derided. These

7 The semicolon and a bracket placed at the end of this quotation is an emoticon whichsignifies winking.




suspicions are not groundless, for according to C. Lindahl in the last decadepopularizers of contemporary legends have emphasized the comic elementin these narratives, and the “[…] treatment of legends as false stories thatno well-informed person would believe has reinforced the tendency of folklor-ists and their readers to condescend to those who do believe legend texts”(1996, IV).

Challenging and undermining questions and comments hardly occur in thediscussion of posted stories. On the contrary, correspondents are explicitlysupportive of each other and often make encouraging remarks of the type:“Welcome and thank you for posting this….” – “Charles, that’s an amazingstory! Definitely one of the best I’ve ever read!!” – “This is one of the bestexplanations for the Ever-Turning Wheel I think I’ve ever read. Thank youVince….”

In numerous other messages we find ‘mirroring’, i.e., similar stories. J.Holmes, who looked into this type of reaction to stories, found it to be a wayof expressing connection and empathy (1997, 273). Particularly important inthe case of the analyzed material is that mirroring serves to reassure the story-teller by validating his/her experiences.

Postings frequently contain accounts of events which took place in thetellers’ childhood or adolescence. For some, these were traumatic experiencesassociated with fear, frustration, and first confrontations with death. Narratorsoften mention that it is important for them to recount, and in a way to relive,memorable events in what is perceived as a positive social setting:

“There is something in this newsgroup that is draws us all here. Something hashappen in our pass that makes us feel comfortable in this group. When we post weknow that were not being laugh at…. I feel comfortable here and if that is weird sobe it.”

“People have been sick and dying and other’s terrified or perplexed by ghostly ex-periences! They come here for support and information and sometimes a prayer.God knows we all need that, including me.”

“Hello … As tired as I was tonight, I decided to put into words the way I feelabout the wonderful people I’ve met in this Newsgroup. Like some of you I lurkedhere for a while before posting and mainly I posted just to get some stuff that hadhappened to me off of my chest….”

Many members of the group explicitly refer to it as a community of friends.The sense of solidarity which unites them stems from the fact that the basis foraffiliation is similar interests and similar experience. Even though the de-scribed events are different, there is an understanding that the shared interestin paranormal also involves a shared body of knowledge, and to some extentshared outlook. The language of the messages is rich in linguistic markers ofsolidarity, e.g., the use of inclusive pronouns (we, our, us) referring to thegroup: “Y’all are a GREAT bunch of people here. I love the stories and thesense of ‘togetherness’ that we all share. Great to have you with us, Vince.” –“Are we going to let one troll ruin our once beloved newsgroup?”




Pronouns have an important role in mixed group/dyad communications.They can be a tool of showing power of the group over an individual, or ameans of establishing coalitions. Except for rare occasions of flames, the inter-action of first and second person pronouns (particularly when the latter is re-inforced with the inclusive determiner ‘all’) balances group communicationsand helps mediate conflicts and create alliances.

The use of modal verbs and modal adverbs which are tentative in meaning(e.g., might, could, would; and probably, perhaps, seemingly) also contributesto the peaceful atmosphere of the communication in the group:

“I would love to hear more of your stories. Keep posting. If your worried aboutbreaking any rules you may want to read the faq….” – “Has anyone out there had anexperience with this story, or heard similar legends? …any ideas of personal experi-ence would be incredibly appreciated by me, thank you much!!!!!” – “i too…wouldwonder how an inanimate object could be a ghost . .” – “I seem to recall a tale aboutDr. Faustus (sp.?) Supposedly during the first production of this play there was onetoo many demons during a ‘conjuring’ scene and the cast was terrified. Apparentlythe author (can’t remember who) was into the occult….”

All these examples indicate that participants behave as equals and don’t makeattempts at establishing hegemony, which is characteristic of the discoursein this newsgroup. Additionally, the excerpts point to another characteristicfeature of the group: discussants do not claim that they are privy to specialknowledge or understanding of the supernatural; rather, their aim is to workout reasonable interpretations of paranormal events in a cooperative discourse.

Group participants often use politeness forms in requests for informationand replies to messages:

“…sorry about my response to your mail….” – “Does anyone know of any hauntedplaces in Philadelphia? Please let me know!!” – “Please try to find out more detailsabout haunting in your grandparents house.” – “Thank you very much for this.Could you post more of the events that took place??” – “Thank you for the interestand warm welcome.”

In the absence of social cues, politeness forms, which may be trivial in FtFcommunications, acquire special meaning. They are used to express appreci-ation and encouragement, which are highly valued by the discussants, particu-larly new members.

Language choices are vitally important for AFGS members because theyconstitute an essential component of identity management. Andrew Feenbergstates, “Where self-presentation takes the form of the production of personaltexts, it is possible to reflect on a choice of tone and language in a way that fewcan achieve in speech, dress, and gesture” (1989, 272). Members of the groupmay be creating an illusion for themselves when they refer to the AFGS as ‘ourhome’ and their electronic interlocutors as ‘friends’, but these attitudes shouldnot be dismissed, particularly in view of numerous cases of verbal brawls andreal flame wars raging in many other newsgroups. Notably, the ‘virtual home’




might be the only place where ghostly apparitions are a natural, predictable,hence, not fearsome part of the environment – a catharsis releasing tension andanxiety of real life.

Acknowledgment of the fact that discussion in the news group is a rewardingcommunication is a recurrent theme. We observe a communicative situationfor which J. Walther coined a term ‘hyperpersonal communication’, i.e., inter-action which for users is socially more desirable than FtF communication(1996, 17).

Electronic Folklore: a Hybrid of Oral and Written Communication

For a long time folklore vitality was mainly associated with oral tradition.J. H. Brunvand mentioned it as an indicator of authenticity and the source ofcontinuity: “All true folklore ultimately depends upon continued oral dissemi-nation, usually within fairly homogeneous ‘folk groups’, and upon the reten-tion through time of internal patterns and motifs that become traditional in theoral exchanges” (1981, 3)8. R.M. Dorson viewed it as a distinctive aesthetic, theunity of stability and variation (1962, 79). And D. Braid emphasized anotheraspect of orality in folklore, namely its potential for adapting traditional nar-rative resources to the changing needs of the audience (1993). Consequentlyorality, according to E. Oring, was the touchstone in the study of the legend asit was of all folklore (1990, 165). Yet folklorists could not ignore the growingrole of other media – printed, magnetic, and electronic – for transmission offolklore. As early as 1971 D. Ben-Amos wrote that oral dissemination of folk-lore could no longer be considered the dominant trend (1971, 8sq.). Similarideas on the dissemination of folklore, contemporary legend in particular, canbe found in the studies by I. Schneider (1996), P. Smith (1996), and M. Wilson(1998).

When investigating folklore on the Internet we have to answer the questionas to what realm we enter – the realm of oral or of written culture? Electronicculture, frequently referred to as ‘secondary orality’, presents an intricate mixof the two. Interestingly, the duality of Internet communications is perceivednot only by analysts but by the users themselves, and can be seen in the meta-language describing electronic exchanges. Even though this type of communi-cation consists in reading and writing, it is referred to in terms associated withorality – listen, hear, talk, speak, chat – as frequently as in terms describingwritten communication – read, write, post, scribe. Among the followingexamples of special interest are those in which words from both groups appear:

8 Today Jan H. Brunvand, the author of books containing collections of urban legends(e. g., 1981, 1984), is known to Internet users as the moderator of the electronic folk-lore group alt.folklore.urban.




“I will not speak again on this topic….” – “I believe you are talking aboutshades.” – “In article… Rashid1116… scribed their thoughts in their friendlymanner….” – “I have been reading this group for some time now, but just learnedhow to post this past week, so this is my first time here …. Thanx for listening to mystory.” – “Dear All, Here I am back on form. A new story for you to read. One ofmy corresponders wanted to hear it so I thought I would put it down on pixels foryou.”9

More important evidence that electronic folklore constitutes a juncture inwhich oral and written narratives meet emerges from the analysis of the dis-course of the electronic group.

An oral narrative is an event which cannot be stabilized in form or frozen intime. Even if the narrator repeats the same story, there is always some modi-fication, be it a new twist in the plot, addition/omission of details , or change ofintonation pattern (Braid 1993; Dorson 1962; Oring 1986). A written narrativeis an object, which acquires independence of the sender or receiver (Ong 1996,13) and is reproducible in precisely the same form. While narratives posted onthe Internet can be saved in the original form, they are subject to modificationsby addressees who often re-post the original but cut it, add their comments, orturn the message into a quasi-dialogue, like the one we quote below. One ofthe participants posted a story about a ghost haunting his family. When thefamily moved, the ghost followed, though hauntings in the old house con-tinued when the new owners moved in. The story triggered a discussion. Vari-ous explanations for the hauntings were offered, and advice was given as tohow to establish contact with the spirit in order to stop its subversive activ-ities . The follow-up messages present deconstruction of the initial story andnegotiation of its interpretation. Answering these messages, the narrator alsoincluded parts of his ‘interlocutor’s’ articles. To avoid confusion, the new textin such cases is set off by a dash while quoted excerpts are set off by quotationmarks.

“Hiya James!”– Hi. Er, if anybody else wants to join in the conversation, that’s fine. :-)“Thanks for the suggestion! Worth a try. That one time someone . . . .”“Welcome! Be sure to post here what your results are!”– I will“If you don’t get anything the first few times, don’t get discouraged.”“Your spirit friend may not be ready to talk just yet.”– I’ll try it for a while and see what happens….

The first line of the message (not quoted here) serves as orientation for thereader, and gives the name, time, and address of the main addressee. The mainbut not the only one: the message is also addressed to the group, so it is ac-cessible to anyone who cares to open the file. In the message itself, whenreturning the greeting, the author explicitly invites everybody to join the dis-

9 Note the use of a computer-related metaphor (put down on pixels).




cussion. The verbal part of the invitation is substantiated by the emoticon (:-))which stands for ‘happy’. The poster does not, however, make the topic ofthe ‘conversation’ transparent: the gist of the story has been cut off, and onlysome parts of it appear further. So unless one is familiar with the story whichinitiated the thread, it is difficult to restore the argument in full. This clippedstyle, and manupulations with the ‘edited out’ text are typical features of elec-tronic discourse. One underlying reason for this is the netiquette10 principle ofsaving on bandwidth.

Advances in computer technologies make it feasible that in the future,members of electronic folklore groups will be able to recite their stories, andtransmit them as multimedia files which will be heard and watched by the audi-ence. But these technologized performances will still belong to the class of ob-jects kept for retrieval, and consequently, will provide an option for reproduc-tion of the original or an embellished version. Creation and maintenance of thegroup’s archive can also be regarded as the tendency to objectify electronicstorytelling.

A distinctive feature of the stories posted by the group is a compromisebetween the informality of an oral narrative and formality of the printedtext. Like all language users, Internet storytellers are selective in the choice oflinguistic codes and rhetoric styles. These choices are guided by social factorsrelevant to issues concerned with perspective and ideology (Lee 1992, 12).

It is part of the standard conduct of Internet users (with the exception of in-stitutional exchanges) to shape communication as brief give-and-take, a kindof asynchronous conversation. Linguistically this is manifested in frequentomission of pronoun subject, use of contracted forms, elliptical constructions,abbreviations, and acronyms whenever possible (American Heritage Book1996, 261). Casualness and similarity to conversational stories increase withthe use of colloquialisms and phonetic spelling:

“Hi everyone, This is gonna be long, I apologize in advance. […] One night duringthe first week of June I was on the puter, as I usually am at night, talking to somefriends on the #ghost undernet. It was late, sometime after 11 pm. All 4 kids andhubby were sleeping and there wasnt any radio or Tv on.” – “Kidding aside, howwould a spirit recognize this chant as an invitation? Does have to do with the mindset of the individual doing the chant or what?” – “Hello all, It’s time for me to quitlurking and tell some of my own experiences, . . Just one for tonite tho . .

(I wanna go to sleep later) I duuno, but if any of you all have heard of anything likethis,… let me know.” – “brooms are strong in the world of magic . . witches use theminstead of ferrari’s (not thru choice . . but probly cos we are dumm!)”

But in spite of the colloquial flavor of the posted stories, they share many fea-tures with written narratives. Firstly, they are never created by several partici-pants in a collaborative fashion, and are always solo performances uncorrob-orated by immediate feedback of the audience. In the absence of instant

10 Netiquette is an informal code of conduct guiding the Internet users’ behavior.




reaction of the group members, the narrator has to be explicit and resort todefinitions and explanations, where an oral storyteller does it only if the reac-tion of the audience indicates it is necessary. As A. Feenberg justly remarks,communicators on the Internet are confronted with the dilemma – to live withambiguity of the message or clarify at the expense of brevity (1989, 264). Inmost cases storytellers choose the latter, which accounts for frequent use ofsynonymy and paraphrasing aimed at resolving ambiguity.

Secondly, syntactic organization of posted stories is closer to written ratherthan oral narratives. Embedded clauses, absolute constructions, parallelism,and extensive use of conjunctions – all of these are means of creating a coherentstory without gaps and rich in detail. This is particularly important for a legendwhich is aimed at believability, however incredible the recounted events mightbe. It is worth mentioning that constructions characteristic of oral narrativesare mostly used in the introductory and closing sections of the story, as well asin self-reflectory parts, but not in the parts dealing with the described events.

And finally, alongside with colloquialisms narrators like to insert wordsfrom the lexicon of science and technology and so-called ‘bookish’ words.This tendency has two explanations. One is the educational background ofmost of the Internet users, the other is the narrators’ attempts to rationally ex-plain the supernatural and support argumentation by scientific knowledge.

The intermingling of the formal and the informal is a characteristic feature ofcontemporary discourse in many areas. As N. Fairclough rightly states, “ac-counts of individual genres and discourse types appear to be largely accountsof ideal types, for actual texts are generally to a larger or lesser degree consti-tuted through mixing these types” (1995, 189).

Another distinction between the oral and written narrative is that theformer, even when it is previously planned, retains an element of spontaneity,while the latter enables the author to scrutinize and revise the text. Electronicnarratives in our sample don’t have such imperfections of oral narratives asfalse starts , changes of subject in the middle of the sentence, pause filling andconfusion in the use of personal pronouns – all the features characteristic ofspontaneous, unplanned speech. To the best of their ability, storytellers try tohold attention of the audience by pushing the plot forward, creating an atmo-sphere of suspense, and coloring the story with frightening details . The driveto create a vivid story concerns posters much more than the logical division oftext into paragraphs or the use of punctuation. There are many instances ofcircuitous sentences, and the lack of agreement between subject and predicateis not uncommon: “Anybody know enough about lightning? … the phenom-ena occurs.” Other frequent mistakes are careless use of word forms (hadn’twent, to have happen, had see, have been bless, irregardless); faulty division/linking of morphemes (foot steps, them selves, any way, postoffice); confusionin the use of possessives and neglect of capitalization. But the champion ofthem all is spelling mistakes. These range from misuse of homophones: (there –their, no – know, here – hear) to misspelled borrowed words (clastraphobia,




pnemonia, rinoline dress); from failure to double consonants to wronglydoubling them (sealling, forgeting, personaly). All these and many other simi-lar examples are characteristic of hasty typing and lack of revision. In fact,some spelling mistakes, such as ‘explainations’ or ‘truely’, indicate changes ofmind in the process of storytelling, as do such syntactic phenomena as falsestarts and anacolutha. The quoted mistakes illustrate the point that in elec-tronic postings the difference of time spent on reading and writing is muchsmaller than in other genres involving writing. The effect tends to give thewriter the impression of conducting a spontaneous conversation, when no at-tention is given to minor slips.

But abundance of mistakes hampers understanding, and this is when groupbehavior begins to be regulated. So among other useful data included in theFAQ is a list of frequent spelling mistakes together with corrections. New sub-scribers are requested to punctuate their messages and are notified that ‘ALLCAP MESSAGES’ will not be posted. Moreover, as mentioned earlier, someof the stories entered into the electronic archive are spellchecked and edited.Though participants of the group remain unrestricted in the form of ex-pression, regulatory measures taken by the organization to style the storedmessages can be seen as a sign of transition from oral- to written-style com-munication.

Aesthetic of Electronic Storytelling

When analyzing legends, folklorists point out that there is a radical differencebetween them and literary narratives in that legends are not consciously artfuland lack the aesthetically motivated impulse (Barnes 1996, 2). Because its maingoal is other than the creation of an aesthetically satisfying story, the verbalartistry of the legend is similar to the artistry of conversation, in which it isembedded (Oring 1986, 126).

These observations also apply to legends posted on the Internet. Yet becausethese texts are a source of enjoyment for large and diverse audiences, it wouldbe unfair to say that they are devoid of aesthetic value. While stylistically leg-ends remain unpolished, they can have a strong emotional effect on the audi-ence. The affective focus of the legend is strongest when it comes in the guiseof a personal narrative recounting memorable events of the storyteller’s life.

Ghost stories posted by the members can be viewed as an attempt to capturethe ephemeral perceptual experience in words. Narrators make a point ofdescribing all the visual, audio, and tactile sensations they experienced. Theycarefully depict objects affected by the supernatural forces, the movement ofair accompanying paranormal activities, the sounds which signal ghostly pres-ence, etc. Though abundance of details slows down the narrative development,it has two important functions: it increases believability of the narrative and itbuilds up tension by delaying the resolution of the story. The climax of the de-scription of what the narrator saw, heard, or felt is the constitutedly physio-




logical reactions of the body, which all symbolize the psychological states offright and shock:

“The hair on my arms and back of my neck was reacting […]”. – “Hope you en-joyed. My hair is on end just telling it.” – “I froze in terror […]”. – “There was thiscold air that ‘wooshed’ out of the room and felt as if it went right through our bodies[…].” – “[…] he felt something he described as static electricity wash over his bodyfrom right to left.” – “I woke up sweating.” – “I will never forget this experience aslong as I live. The feeling in the room when we woke up. The chill that went downmy spine as the lights came on.”

Describing their experiences, narrators generously use similies and metaphors.They seldom create original metaphors but prefer metaphorical cliches – cul-tural models used by language communities to conceptualize various statesand emotions. The cliched use of tropes is another manifestation of the factthat legends function as signs of certain situations, beliefs , and conflicts .

In the sample we analyzed, vividness of ghost stories is to a large extent con-nected to the mental imagery involved in rendering perception of the super-natural11. The importance of sensory information is signalled by the high den-sity of words belonging to the relevant semantic fields and their variety.Additionally, narrators often use onomatopoeia to describe different sounds.Here are three examples:

“When I was a teenager, about 14, I was home alone on a Saturday morning lookingover the television paper in my parents room, when all the sudden the horn on thefamily car started honking. At first it was along blast then a ‘honk honk’ before itquit. Startled with heart thumping a bit I peeeeeked out the side door window, andsaw, there in the car, my cat Dusty. The unusual part of this is the fact that all thewindows were rolled up, and I hadn’t seen this cat in about two years. She been longsince replaced by another more ‘momly’ cat.

“also … i was sitting in my lovely chair typing away when i saw a white smokeycloud in front of my closet. hence black closet therefor whiteness sticks out. i’ve seeshadows out of the corner of my eye but this was so so sooooo different. I saw it andmy head like flew in that direction and I got chills that very second. not after i satthere and pondered it but that instant. was an experience.”

“Sometime during the night, I awoke with the start, having heard Somethingheavy being dragged down the hallway just outside the bedroom door. My mind fill-ed in the horrifying image of a body being dragged. Terrified, I couldn’t go back tosleep. I listened to the cuckoo clock in the living room sound every half hour fromthree in the morning until six. My heart hammered so hard I could hardly breathe,and I lay stiffly, scared to death I would here something … or see something …”

Research into mental images shows that the more vivid the image, the more itis like an actual perception (Sparks/Gray 1995, 7). This attention to local de-

11 Our understanding of mental imagery is based on R.A. Finke’s definition: “[…] themental invention or recreation of an experience in at least some respects resemblesthe experience of actually perceiving an object or event, either in conjunction with orin the absence of direct sensory simulation” (1989, 2).




tails , observation of subtle changes in the environment and in the self, may beviewed as a distinctive feature of the analyzed subgenre and its aesthetics. Ifone agrees that the power of art is in the power to remember (Propp 1998, 140),then this is the quintessential part of personal narratives: to revive and re-enactpast events and one’s psychological states caused by them.

Various communication media differ in the repertoire of means available fordramatic representation of events and expressing feelings, emotions, and atti-tudes. In FtF communication these are expressed both verbally and with thehelp of extralinguistic means, such as changes in the pitch and tone of voice,variations in the rhythm of storytelling aimed at increasing the atmosphere ofsuspense, as well as interaction of facial expression and gestures. Users of theelectronic medium have shown ingenuity in using keyboard characters to cre-ate symbolic representations of emotions.

As in other electronic discussion groups, articles posted by AGFS membersare generously punctuated with clusters of exclamation points and questionmarks to show intensity of feelings or incredulity. Indecision and hesitation arerepresented by ellipsis . Contrary to conventional punctuation, the number ofdots is random and ranges from two to seven. Asterisks and capital letters areused for emphasis , and smileys represent various emotions, from happinessto sadness; from winking to making a wry face. In our sample emoticonsare seldom used in stories, but are rather frequent in discussion. Emotionsand reactions are frequently named explicitly, i.e., users insert words such as*shudder*, *grin*, *lol*12, directly into the text and mark them with asterisks.This reminds one of the playwright’s directions inserted into the text to guidethe actors’ performance. The repertoire of emoticons used in the articles islimited, the most frequently repeated ones symbolizing happiness, winking,and shock. On the other hand, ellipsis and highlighting are used equally oftenin the storytelling and discussion.

ASCII characters are also used for personalized signatures (e.g., ˆw ˆRa-ven ˆw ˆ), and ‘pictures’ based on ASCII graphics. Some of the ASCII picturesare purely decorative, others illustrate the stories and represent all kinds ofstrange creatures – the product of their inventors’ fantasy.

The aesthetic of folk narrative culture on the Internet deserves a separate in-vestigation. This is firstly because it involves a semiotic system still in the mak-ing and secondly because it is marked by the two seemingly incompatible fea-tures of electronic communication – elusiveness and retrievability.

The Repertoire of Plots

The FTP archive of the AFGS currently contains over 450 stories, and dozensof new posts appear on the group listing daily. Yet the variety of plots remains

12 The acronym lol stands for laughing out loud.




rather limited, and does not differ much from the repertoire of oral story-tellers. Among the favorite subjects are haunted houses and apartments andhauntings in theaters, hospitals , and hotels . Many narrators recalling theirchildhood tell stories of mysterious toys and apparitions of dead pets. Theoui-ja board excites the imagination of the young participants, though it be-comes clear from the discussions that many of them do not know how it worksand do not understand the meaning of the name. Many of the technically-minded computer users are fascinated and baffled by the often inexplicable be-havior of technologies, hence a large number of stories about telephone, TV,radio, and computer ghosts, as well as about haunted airplanes, trucks, andmotorbikes. Repetitiveness of the plots does not make the stories monotonousdue to the variety of local details , unexpected twists added to the familiar sce-narios, and a new didactic message emerging as a result of social change. Acase in point is a story of La Llorona, which exists in numerous versions. Oneof them adds to the main message an environmentalist motif.

Of special interest are posts about ghosts of famous personalities, such asHenry VIII, Anne Boleyn, Lord Byron, and one rather unexpected in the contextof Anglo-Saxon culture, namely Felix Dzerzhinsky (incidentally, the sinisterghost of the Soviet Commissar Dzerzhinsky was the protagonist in the onlyposting from Russia). To our regret, stories which represent urban folklore ofcontinental Europe, Asia, and Australia appear in the group as rare exceptions.

A web search for the term ‘haunted houses’ which was conducted by SylviaGrider in 1997 registered more than 100,000 entries (Grider 1999, 189). Yet,the specific of these stories in electronic media has not been investigated.Among the listed plots, stories about haunted houses belong to the oldest andmost widespread tale-types. They are highly favored by the participants of thegroup, and for this reason are representative of the electronic narratives. Thisguided our choice of material for the study of the structure and composition ofghost stories on the Internet. Fifty texts were selected and analyzed. The re-sults are presented in the next section.

Composition of Electronic Versions of the Type-Tale ‘Haunted Houses’

In electronic posts a story functions as a separate compositionally completetext even when it is part of a thread. In this it is different from the legend toldorally. It has been mentioned that a legend is part of a larger conversationalcontext (Oring 1986, 126), or a longer autobiographical story (Dégh 1972, 74),so it is not always easy to perceive its boundaries. The functioning of the elec-tronic medium accounts for the discreteness of every narrative, and netiquetteencourages compositional completeness of each message.

Like many analysts we could not resist the temptation to check whetherelectronically posted ghost stories about haunted houses fit the structuralscheme of narratives proposed by W. Labov (1972). And like W.F.H. Nico-laisen, in his investigation of the linguistic structure of legends (1987), we




found that the narratives in our sample can be described within the frameworkof Labov’s six structural elements13, though not all of them are present in allthe narratives, and not necessarily in the order indicated by Labov. The devi-ations from the structural scheme of ‘fully-formed’ narratives can be attributedto the specific characteristics of the genre, a different communication medium,and narrators’ adherence to the evolving style of electronic folklore.

Deviations begin with titles. When legends are transmitted orally, they arerarely given titles by the narrators. In electronic stories, a title per se does notappear either (only 3 stories in the sample are entitled; one of them is “A Visitto the Old Slave House”), but the header of each article contains the line ‘sub-ject’, which often functions as a title. In fact, when one accesses the site, the listof available messages does look like a table of contents, with names of the‘authors’ and ‘titles’ of their articles.

The law of opening and closing formulated by A. Olrik (1909) is observed inmost of the analyzed texts. Only in 9 posts did narrators give no introductionto the story. The introduction seldom contains a summary of the story, or inLabov’s terms an ‘abstract’. Rather it is a preamble which puts the story intocontext. It provides historical or personal background14, explains why thestoryteller considers it worthy of attention, establishes a connection to someother articles posted by group members, and even evaluates its degree of‘craziness’ and ‘weirdness’. The introduction often contains assertions that thestory is true. Notably, truthfulness of narratives is a requirement formulated inthe subscription document: the posted stories have to be true, however strangethey might sound. Fiction is not accepted. Declaration of the story’s truthful-ness is a stable text feature and travels from article to article:

“While I have no proof that this is true, my mother swears to the events and I mustbelieve her because every time I hear this story each detail is always the same.” –“This story comes from several people I know, as well as from my own experience,and while it might be a bit weird I swear every word of it is true.”

In these as well as in many other posts , it is specified whether the story is basedon personal experience, or happened to someone else. In the latter case thesource (primarily oral) is mentioned. The next step is to give time-spaceorientation (observed in 37 texts). Narrators either mention the place and theyear of the event, or provide indirect information indicating the narrator’s age,and the fact that the event occurred in his/her home town, family house,grandparents’ apartment, etc.

13 These six elements are abstract, orientation, complicating action, evaluation, resolu-tion, and coda.

14 Haunted houses are believed to have a previous history of misfortune or grief. Sto-rytellers give historical background which they think can account for the appearanceof ghosts. Sometimes history is known to the narrator before the paranormal events,and sometimes it is learned only after manifestations of a poltergeist, hence this partof the narrative is sometimes told at the end and functions as delayed orientation (Ni-colaisen 1987, 75).




“This happened in 1976–77 while I was living in a two bedroom house in Manhattanbeach, CA with two other friends.” – “In 1972–73 my family and I lived in a houselocated in what is now referred to the ‘Garden District’ here in my home town.” –“When I was 15 we moved from Massachusetes to Prove Utah (Culture Shock!).” –“When I was about 4 or 5, my family (parents, 3 older brothers and 1 older sister)lived in this apartment in Berwin, Illinois.” – “My mother grew up in a small town inKentucky and was a part of a tight knit family. As a child she spent a lot of time in anold house owned by her aunt and uncle.”

The main part of the story is account of the paranormal event. Naturally, it isfound in all the analyzed texts (50). Unlike in narratives studied by Labov, thelinear development of events is often interrupted by digressions and evalua-tion. Evaluation is present in virtually all texts (48), but does not have fixed po-sition in the story. As noted earlier, it is sometimes given in the introduction; itoften suspends the action in the middle; finally, it can appear in the last sectionof the story. Many stories contain a number of evaluative statements eitherexplicitly or implicitly expressed. In most stories evaluation is represented byvalue judgments about participants in the events and their attitude to them(skeptics, believers, courageous, chicken, sensitive, psychic); evaluation ofghostly behavior (humbling power, malevolent presence; (“[…] he [poltergeist]was, and still is , just pain-in-the-ass mischievous”); or reflections about thefeelings and emotions experienced by the narrator and other participants, as il-lustrated by excerpts sent by four participants (“I was feeling very overwhelm-ed at this point…. I was very drained, It never really spooked my mom orbrother…. I immediately had a great fear of this house…. I really felt . . . . . I don’tknow . . . . nervous, scared, apprehensive . . . .”).

Another type of digression is reflections about events that could have trig-gered paranormal activities. In most cases these are either dramatic events inthe life of the family or changes in the daily routine. In the analyzed texts nar-rators associate ghostly activities with: moving to another house, as a rule anold one; renovations in the house; a new acquaintance brought to the house;death of a member of the family; quarrels or separation of the spouses; a newhobby acquired by a member of the family; malicious or subversive behaviorof the characters involved:

“The thing I am starting to notice is that the activity usually picks up when thereis some kind of turmoil or crisis going on among members of my family, over thesummer there was quite a bit of activity but then things seemed to quiet down untilrecently.”

“I grew up in an old farm house, don’t remember anything earriy just normalafraid of the dark and attic door next to my bedroom. But we built a house on thesite of an old house and again nothing eerry, until my little brother became a teen-ager and decided to collect old furniture.”

“The erriness only continued for about two years since boyfriend/turned hubbymoved in. Then Either I got used to it, or it moved on.”

The account of ghostly events often involves speech reporting. Oral storytell-ing is also polyphonic. Representing other persons’ discourse, narrators use




direct reporting. The storyteller enacts monologues and dialogues between theactors as part of a dramatic function. He/she is likely to change the intonationpattern, imitate different voices, and support verbal expression with gestures.The use of direct reporting has another function, which is particularly impor-tant for the accounts of the supernatural: it increases the believability of thenarrative. By reproducing what is supposed to be the original speech event, thenarrator corroborates the claim for truthfulness of the story by pointing toother eyewitnesses and thus precluding its perception as fiction.

In our sample, storytellers often shift among direct, indirect, and unsigneddiscourse. In oral tradition indirect reporting is not used. It is well-known thatdirect reproduction of the dialogue gives an oral narrator an opportunity todisplay his dramatic talents. In literature both direct and indirect reporting arecommonplace. The alternation of direct and indirect reporting in a reproduceddialogue serves in our sample as the demarcation between the two voices:

“I grabbed her hand and asked her what was happening. She just said ‘Oh no. lookat all the blood.’ Now we couldn’t see anything. I been there with her when she hadseen things in the past but nothing like this. So I started asking her questions aboutwhat she was seeing. Kevin was holding my other hand so tight it hurt. I tried to gether to tell me but she just kept saying ‘There is so much blood. So much blood.’”

“As I was arranging them on her bed, we heard a noise that was somewhat similarto a moan that lasted about a minute. We both froze. I said ‘Did you hear that?’ Shesaid she did. ‘What was it?’ She said she didn’t know.”

A difficult question is what to count as a resolution/result of a ghost story.Often narrators only reveal local results , i.e., such outcomes of paranormal ac-tivities as broken or misplaced objects, disappearance of objects, etc. Someother results are much more dramatic ranging from abandonment of the houseto death. Though in most of the stories house ghosts cause trouble and de-struction, there are some others in which people take the upper hand, and as aresult of their competent or humane behavior the house is freed from ghosts.The most rewarding result of the story is the resolution of the mystery; how-ever, this hardly ever happens in the stories about the supernatural, thoughmany narrators are driven by the quest for plausible interpretation.

An important structural element of the stories about haunted houses is an at-tempt to explain the mystery of the supernatural. As we saw earlier, some nar-rators search for the answers in history or in the psyche, yet many others try tomobilize scientific knowledge. Internet storytellers are tormented by twocontradictory trends: on the one hand, their attraction to the supernatural andmysticism is deeply embedded in their minds; on the other, most of them havean educational background rooted in the Western rational tradition. Theydon’t trust human perception to be the sole judge of the paranormal but relymore on sophisticated equipment, which, they hope, can help them measureand document mysterious phenomena:

“As I stated earlier, I studied Electronics, and I brought a couple ‘toys’ along with meto Hickory Hill. I had an infrared heat detector, and a very accurate electronic tem-




perature probe. Understand that I am (at best) an amateur investigator but thethought of finding scientific evidence of the phenomena thrilled me! Being so ‘scien-tific’, unfortunately left me in the wrong frame of mind for my visit to Hickory Hill.I was unprepared for the ghosts that I met and felt. I left felling emotionally drainedand greatly disturbed. There is so much pain… so much anguish… so much bitterhatred… feelings which are overwhelmingly REAL and almost tangible. Please, dearREADERS, I urge you NOT to visit Hickory Hill if you do not feel that you areprepared to handle the emotional impact.”

“One place of high activity as previously mentioned was the attic. One of the re-searchers went up into the attic with a very expensive camera using very high-speedfilm for low light environments and was shooting some shots when he felt a pres-ence behind him. Without turning around, he pointed the camera behind him andpopped off a few shots. He stated the camera was literally ripped from his hands bythe unseen entity.”

“They moved out of the house and paranormal experts went to investigate. Bynow the house is totally empty, they set all kinds of things to register (you know theusual) and also videocameras, one viewing the hall toward the bedrooms, anotherone in one of the bedrooms and another one in the kitchen.”

It is tempting to see frequent search for rational explanation as a feature oftechnically-minded Internet users ; however, it is as widespread among oralstorytellers and can be perceived as a characteristic of the contemporarylegend (Barnes 1996, 2; Fialkova 1998, 35). The strengthening of the analyti-cal component may be the consequence of an ever increasing volume of in-formation available to Internet users . As Walter J. Ong observes , the infor-mation overload creates an urgent need for interpretation or hermeneutics(1996, 11).

The final element of the narrative, according to Labov, is coda, the elementwhich returns the listener/reader to the present (found in 42 texts). Thischanging of the time plane signals the end of the story and is used to communi-cate various ideas. It often echoes the introduction and reasserts the truthful-ness of the story; it appeals to ‘fellow-netters’ to interpret the described para-normal event, or describe similar experiences; and finally, it contains promisesto post more ghost stories in the future. The important point about this sectionis its communicative orientation. The storyteller passes the ball to the groupmembers and encourages them to turn a single story into a thread.

Conclusions

An important tendency of the electronic folklore is its denationalization andinternationalization, the phenomenon conceptualized by H. Bausinger andformulated by Ben-Amos (1990, 6). In the case of Internet folklore discussiongroups this phenomenon finds manifestation in the heterogeneous audience:users represent various ethnic, age, social, religious, and professional groups.Even the unity of language is relative, because English, being the lingua francaof the Internet, is not necessarily the first language of the storytellers and theiraudience. ‘Spatial expansion’ of the world (Bausinger’s term) acquires a new




dimension. The Internet stimulates still faster migration of plots and motifs ,which is known to be an intrinsic feature of folklore. Yet as long as most of theactive participants are Americans and Canadians, folklore becomes still an-other domain where American culture dominates. Though potentially theInternet is open to folklore of other cultures, they are currently underrepre-sented and remain in the receptive mode. We are aware of the growing ten-dency to communicate on the Internet in national languages. The investigationof folklore sites where discussion is conducted in Russian is the next stage ofour project. When this paper was ready, an interesting investigation on RussianInternet appeared (Guseinov 2000), which, of course, should be taken into ac-count.

Electronic folklore presents a new aesthetic. The gradually unfolding story,which occasionally slows down by the change of rhythm, dramatic pauses,rhetorical questions, and comments of the listeners, is replaced by a narrativetargeted at browsing readers who choose among numerous messages onlythose ‘threads’ that interest them.

The analyzed material allows us to conclude that the intermediate positionof electronic folklore between oral and written cultures has a tendency to de-velop in the direction of written communication, which presupposes accept-ance of respective conventions.

The pace of life in modern society has led to the loosening of ties keepingsmall groups together. City dwellers don’t find enough time to listen to eachother. But humans are essentially social beings, and in changing conditionslook for fulfilment of the need to communicate. Internet discussion groups,which seem to be a good alternative, keep users glued to the screen for hours.But virtual communication, being the surrogate of the real, can only give anillusion of friendship, involvement, and belonging. In spite of all the promisesof ‘Cyberia’, the users remain where they were, lonely figures in front of thescreen with the brave new world on the pixels being no more than a ghost. Thisis the only tangible ghost, though it is never discussed by the AFGS sub-scribers.

Bibliography

The American Heritage Book of English Usage. Boston 1996.Bar-Itzhak, Haya/Fialkova, Larisa: Folklor i kompiuter: Postanovka problemy (Folklore

and Computer: Introducing a Problem). In: Iazyk i kultura. ed. S. B. Burago. Kiev1996, 143–152.

Barnes, Daniel R.: Interpreting Urban Legends. In: Contemporary Legend. New Per-spectives in Folklore 4. ed. G. Bennett/P. Smith. New York et al. 1996, 1–16.

Bausinger, Hermann: Folk Culture in a World of Technology. Bloomington/Indianapolis1990.

Ben-Amos, Dan: Toward a Definition of Folklore in Context. In: Journal of AmericanFolklore 84 (1971) 3–15.

id.: Foreword. In: Bausinger 1990, VIII–X.Braid, Donald: The Traveller and the Hare. Meaning, Function, and Form in the Recon-

textualization of Narrative. In: Folklore Forum 26 (1993) 3–29.




Brunvand, Jan Harold: The Vanishing Hitchhiker. American Urban Legends and TheirMeanings. New York 1981.

id.: The Choking Doberman and Other New Urban Legends. New York 1984.Byam, Nancy K.: The Emergence of Community in Computer-mediated Commu-

nication. In: CyberSociety. Computer-Mediated Communication and Community.ed. Steven G. Jones. London 1995, 138–163.

Dégh, Linda: Folk Narrative. In: Folklore and Folklife. An Introduction. ed. Richard M.Dorson. Chicago 1972, 53–83.

ead./Vázsonyi, Andrew: Legend and Belief. In: Folklore Genres. ed. Dan Ben-Amos.Austin 1976, 93–123.

Dorson, Richard M.: Oral Styles of American Folk Narrators. In: Folklore in Action.Essays for Discussion in Honor of MacEdward Leach. ed. H. P. Beck. Philadelphia1962, 77–100.

Fairclough, Norman: Discourse and Text. Linguistic and Intertextual Analysis withinDiscourse Analysis . In: Critical Discourse Analysis . The Critical Study of Language.ed. Christopher N. Candlin. London 1995, 187–218.

Feenberg, Andrew: A User’s Guide to the Pragmatics of Computer Mediated Communi-cation. In: Semiotica 3 (1989) 257–278.

Fialkova, Larisa: “Katakombnyi” folklor Ukrainy (‘Catacomb’ Folklore of the Ukraine).In: Zhivaia starina 2 (1998) 35–37.

Finke, R.A.: Principles of Mental Imagery. Cambridge 1989.Galindo, René: A Genre Study of Written Communication. In: Language in Society 23

(1994) 77–105.Grider, Sylvia: The Haunted House in Literature, Popular Culture, and Tradition: a

Consistent Image. In: Comtemporary Legend 2 (1999) 174–204.Guseinov, Gasan: Zametki k antropologii russkogo interneta: osobennosti iazyka i lite-

ratury setevykh liudei (Remarks on the Anthropology of the Russian Internet: Char-acteristics of Net People’s Language and Literature). In: Novoe literaturnoe obozrenie43 (2000) 289–321.

Holmes, Janet: Story-telling in New Zealand. Women’s and Men’s Talk. In: Gender andDiscourse. ed. R. Wodak. London 1997, 263–293.

Howard, Robert Glenn: Apocalypse in Your In-Box: End-Times Communication on theInternet. In: Western Folklore 56 (1997) 295–315.

Jones, Steven G.: The Internet and Its Social Landscape. In: Virtual Culture. Identityand Communication in Cybersociety. ed. id. London 1997, 7–35.

Labov, William: The Transformation of Experience in Narrative Syntax. In: Language inthe Inner City. Philadelphia 1972, 354–396.

Lee, David: Competing Discourses. Perspective and Ideology in Language. London1992.

Lindahl, Carl: Series Editor’s Preface. In: Contemporary Legend. New Perspectives inFolklore 4. ed. G. Bennett/P. Smith. New York et al.1996, IV–VIII.

McLaughlin, Margaret L./Osborne, Kerry K./Smith, Christine B.: Standards of Con-duct on Usenet. In: CyberSociety. Computer-Mediated Communication and Com-munity. ed. Steven G. Jones. London 1995, 90–110.

Nicolaisen, W. F. H.: The Linguistic Structure of Legends. In: Perspectives on Contem-porary Legend 2. ed. Gillian Bennett/Paul Smith/ J.D.A. Widdowson. Sheffield 1987,61–76.

Olrik, Axel: Epische Gesetze der Volksdichtung. In: Zeitschrift für deutsches Altertumund deutsche Literatur 51 (1909) 1–12 (English version = Epic Laws of Folk Narrative.In: The Study of Folklore. ed. Alan Dundes. Berkeley 1965, 129–141).

Ong, Walter J.: Information and/or Communication: Interactions. In: CommunicationResearch Trends 16,3 (1996) 3–17.

Oring, Elliott: Folk Narratives. In: Folk Groups and Folklore Genres. An Introduction.ed. id. Logan, Utah 1986, 121–145.

id.: Legend, Truth and News. In: Southern Folklore 47 (1990) 163–177.Propp, V.J.: Fol’klor i literatura (Folklore and Literature). In: Poetika fol’klora. Moscow

1998, 140–146.




Raymond, Eric S.: The New Hacker’s Dictionary. Cambridge, Mass. 1991.id.: The New Hacker’s Dictionary. Cambridge, Mass. 31996.Robe, Stanley L.: Legends in a Culturally Complex Border Area. In: Perspectives on

Contemporary Legend. ed. Paul Smith. Sheffield 1984, 193–197.Sardar, Ziauddin: Cyberspace as the Darker Side of theWest. In: Cyberfutures. Culture

and Politics on the Information Superhighway. ed. id. London 1996, 14–41.Schneider, Ingo: Erzählen im Internet. Aspekte kommunikativer Kultur im Zeitalter des

Computers. In: Fabula 37 (1996) 8–27.Smith, Paul: Contemporary legend. A Legendary Genre? In: Contemporary Legend.

New Perspectives in Folklore 4. ed. G. Bennett/id. New York et al. 1996, 103–112.Sparks, Glenn G. and Cheri W./Gray, Kristen: Media Impact on Fright Reactions and

Belief in Ufos. The Potential Role of Mental Imagery. In: Communication Research22,1 (1995) 3–23.

Turkle, Sherry: Life on the Screen. Identity in the Age of the Internet. New York 1995.Walther, Joseph B.: Computer-mediated Communication. Impersonal, Interpersonal,

and Hyperpersonal Interaction. In: Communication Research 23,1 (1996) 3–45.Watson, Nessim: Why We Argue about Virtual Community. A Case Study of the

Phish.net Fan Community. In: Virtual Culture. Identity and Communication in Cy-bersociety. ed. Steven G. Jones. London 1997, 102–132.

Wilson, Michael: Legend and life. “The Boyfriend’s Death” and “The Mad Axeman”. In:Folklore 109 (1998) 89–95.

Abstract

For many of its users, the Internet breaks communication barriers and encourages infor-mal exchange of knowledge and experience as well as search for others sharing similarconcerns, interests and hobbies. This paper is devoted to the specifics of ghost stories as asub-genre of contemporary legends. It analyzes the structure and mode of activities of theInternet discussion group alt.folklore.ghost-stories. We study computer-mediated folk-lore storytelling and discussion as a type of communication and examine the textual char-acteristics of electronic folklore as compared with its traditional counterpart.

Résumé

L’internet étend les limites de la communication, favorise l’échange informel de connais-sances et d’expérience et permet à l’utilisateur de trouver des ‘interlocuteurs’ qui par-tagent ses opinions et intérêts. Notre article se dédie aux récits sur les fantômes en tantque sous-genre de la légende contemporaine. Nous analysons les modes d’activité et lastructure du club alt.folklore.ghost-stories et étudions les particularités communicativeset les caractéristiques textuelles du folklore électronique par rapport au folklore oral con-temporain.

Zusammenfassung

Für viele Benutzer durchbricht das Internet Kommunikationsschranken, fördert den in-formellen Austausch von Wissen und Erfahrung und hilft bei der Suche nach Gleichge-sinnten, die ähnliche Anliegen, Interessen und Hobbys haben. Der vorliegende Aufsatzbefaßt sich mit den Eigenheiten von Geistergeschichten als Untergattung der modernenSagen. Analysiert werden die Strukturen und Modalitäten der Internetaktivitäten in derDiskussionsgruppe alt.folklore.ghost-stories. Dabei untersuchen wir computermode-riertes Erzählen und das Sprechen über Folklore als Kommunikationstypus und analy-sieren Textmerkmale elektronisch verbreiteter Folklore, die sie von der traditionellenVolksüberlieferung unterscheiden.



Fialkova, Larisa and Yelenevskaya, Maria (2001) Ghosts in the Cyberworld: An Analysis of Folklore...

Documents

Transcript of Fialkova, Larisa and Yelenevskaya, Maria (2001) Ghosts in the Cyberworld: An Analysis of Folklore...