Manifesting Spirits: Paranormal Investigation and the Narrative Development of a Haunting

Abstract

Using a paranormal investigation of a reportedly haunted hotel as a model, I propose a five-phase narrative development process that integrates media representations of ghosts, place-based tales of hauntings, and accounts that emerge through processes of interactive interpretation. By attending to both preexisting and emergent supernatural stories, the model illustrates how idiocultures function as mediating structures between established narratives and accounts that result from shared experiences. The narrative account of a haunting is thus a product of interpretive processes in which established ghost stories serve as resources for the collective co-construction of an account that both resonates with external expectations and supports idiocultural authority structures. Ultimately, idiocultural factors have greater influence upon the final narrative than folklore, media, or place-based supernatural tales.

Finding God in Grain: Crop Circles, Rationality, and the Construction of Spiritual Experience

“…Cassaniti and Luhrmann (:335) refer to this as “cultural kindling”—a process through which “local cultural practices shift the pattern of spiritual experience.” Crop circle culture, transmitted through common websites, collective activities, and social interactions, provides “cultural encouragement” (Cassaniti and Luhrmann :342) to perceive and experience crop circles in patterned ways, to select what is significant and to provide interpretation of the phenomenon. Additionally, croppies may be considered to comprise an “idioculture” which provides “consensual meaning system[s]” (Fine :744) and “pre‐existing cultural representations” (Eaton :2). Idiocultures involve “more general processes by which small groups interactively construct narrative accounts in ways that are congruent with external standards of believability and (are) supportive of group power relations” (Eaton :2).…”

“…Additionally, croppies may be considered to comprise an “idioculture” which provides “consensual meaning system[s]” (Fine :744) and “pre‐existing cultural representations” (Eaton :2). Idiocultures involve “more general processes by which small groups interactively construct narrative accounts in ways that are congruent with external standards of believability and (are) supportive of group power relations” (Eaton :2). In addition to providing a cultural template of sorts with which to perceive, define, and experience crop circles, then, crop circle culture also serves an important role in mediating external conditions (Fine :734).…”

“…I observed the culture and community of croppies negotiating this conundrum in two ways. Like some of the ghost hunters Eaton () studied and many of the Bigfoot trackers Bader, Mencken, and Baker () followed, many croppies embraced science as a means to prove the existence of the phenomenon. They referred to “research” of crop anomalies as a basis for defining crop circles as “real” and relied upon observable “evidence” to refute human construction.…”

“…My role as a researcher was as a supportive and respectful agnostic with regard to crop circle belief. Like Eaton (; ) and many of the ghost‐hunters he studied, I enjoyed the adventure of the discovery of the circles and the beauty of the landscape in which they appeared. What fascinated me more than their potential origin, however, was the system of meanings people attached to them and how this was created.…”

Things That Go Bump in the Literature: An Environmental Appraisal of “Haunted Houses”

“…Skeptical readers should not trivialize these anomalous experiences because they can affect several facets of people's lives. Fundamentally, belief in ghosts informs an individual's religio-cultural worldview (Dyne, 2010;Eaton, 2015Eaton, , 2019Hill et al, 2018). One journalist detailed an interesting and practical example of this during the COVID-19 pandemic (Purwanto, 2020).…”