Aliens, Ghosts, and Cults: Legends We Live

by Bill Ellis

In late May, a Pennsylvania high school hums with the rumor that a Satanic cult plans on killing the first four couples through the door on prom night. A horror writer in the Catskills is overcome with grief, alienated from his wife, unable to write, and suffering from recurring thoughts of physical and sexual indignities he has no words to describe. He concludes he has been abducted by aliens. In a Pizza Hut in Ohio, employees refuse to close alone because the ghost of a hanged man haunts the refrigerator. Tales such as these are the subject of Bill Ellis's Aliens, Ghosts, and Legends We Live . In the book, he explores the complex relationship between ordinary life and outlandish but oft-told legends. What he finds is startling. In multiple case studies legends become part of life. Officials take action in answer to each story's weird details, and people adjust their behavior to avoid or to experience aliens and ghosts. Written for both the cultural studies expert and the reader fascinated with reactions to extraordinary phenomena, Aliens, Ghosts, and Cults pursues motivations for why people tell these "true stories, heard from a friend of a friend." Ellis shows legends creating a sense of community in a multi-ethnic institutional camp. He traces some contemporary scares to such old tales as the vanishing hitchhiker and murderous gang initiations. In analyzing some newly emerging legend types, such as alien abductions and computer virus warnings, Ellis discovers connections between earlier types of religious experience and supposed witchcraft. Finally, the book reveals how legends can inspire people to actions, ranging from playful visits to haunted spots to horrifying threats of violence. Legends rely on active discussion to spread and mutate. This book considers them to be a social process, not a kind of narrative with a fixed form. People worldwide may tell a legend or one person to whom the event allegedly occurred may "own" the story. Individuals may relate an event as something strongly believed or as something laughable. Legends may be very new or have roots in old folklore. But when high schools, law enforcement agencies, city governments, and individuals take action, the story becomes one of the legends we live.

Genres: Folklore, Paranormal, Nonfiction, Sociology

312 pages, Hardcover

First published February 28, 2001

Reviews

[Dakota · Rating 3 out of 5]

The legends themselves are really interesting and meticulously researched/presented, but this is often really dense in how it seeks to explain and classify legends. A textbook with an occasional fascinating story in it.

[Román Sanz Mouta · Rating 5 out of 5]

https://dentrodelmonolito.com/2024/11...


Reediciones Anómalas lo ha vuelto a hacer. Nos trae traducida una obra, ensayo, fundamental para comprender el proceso y la evolución del folclore, de los mitos y leyendas de miedo. El cómo se inician, su evolución, la forma de contagio y expansión. Todo ello con conocimiento erudito pero dotado de una prosa amena que envuelve.

Comencemos, aunque tengo claro que no debo explayarme mucho en la descripción de un tratado que puede perder parte de su capacidad de sorpresa si revelo más de la cuenta. Y es que, aunque me tengo por un humilde docto acerca del miedo y su cuna, o de las más extravagantes y extrañas historias desde allende cualquier parte del mundo como aventurero de letra, me sorprenden aquí muchas de las anécdotas narradas y detalladas, además de la atmósfera y contexto, la época, y el traslado a nuestra actualidad desde tiempos más inocentes. Porque todo cambia para que todo permanezca.

Aquí vamos a encontrar un desglose que define a la sociedad, y es que la sociedad siempre se ha reconocido en sus miedos. Vamos desde historias de campamento a invasiones extraterrestres o persecuciones en pos de supuestos adolescentes satánicos, por plasmar varias de las acepciones que encontraremos en este manuscrito. Y a parte del magisterio demostrado por el autor, Bill Ellis, aporta citas, entrevistas, testimonios u opiniones científicas y académicas de otros expertos en todo tipo de sociología o psicología, por poner un ejemplo.

Creedme cuando os digo que algunos de los cuentos sobre los que este manuscrito desarrolla sus teorías te sitúan dentro del escalofrío. Bien secundado por el arte de gran Javier Prado.

Leyendas que cobran vida no es solo una obra fundamental para todo aquel que quiera conocer el miedo, sus formas, sus efectos, humanos y divinos. La arquitectura del mismo, procesos, entrañas. También aporta elementos, herramientas de valor mayestático para los escritores y escritoras, que pueden coger de aquí sustento, desde ideas hasta formación, que les permita potenciar su forma de narración, sobre todo dentro del género del terror. Pues, como siempre, todo empieza por una historia contada de boca a oído, quizá alrededor de una hoguera. Una experiencia individual sobre la que el propio o la propia protagonista duda (cómo se siente ese protagonista que se pone, al que ponen en duda, con su trauma, con sus apoyos, con su oposición…). Y esa frontera tenue entre lo posible y lo improbable. La realidad y la ficción con todas sus ramificaciones y divergencias.

Voy a aportar el índice para terminar de seduciros, para que atisbéis este contenido imprescindible:

Introducción: leyendas que emergen

PRIMERA PARTE, LA VIDA DE LAS LEYENDAS

Capítulo 1: ¿Qué es una leyenda?

Capítulo 2: ¿Cuándo una leyenda es tradicional?

Capítulo 3: ¿Cuándo una leyenda es contemporánea?

Capítulo 4: ¿Cuándo una leyenda es?

Capítulo 5: ¿Por qué una leyenda es?

SEGUNDA PARTE, LA VIDA COMO LEYENDA

Capítulo 6: El Ángel de Frackville

Capítulo 7: El fantasma de la pizzería

Capítulo 8: Las variedades de la experiencia extraterrestre

TERCERA PARTE, LEYENDAS COMO LA VIDA MISMA

Capítulo 9: La ostensión como representación folklórica

Capítulo 10: Lo que realmente pasó en el orfanato Gore

Capítulo 11: El baile de fin de curso satánico

Capítulo 12: Muerte por folklore

¿No es suficiente?

Creo que sí. Lo he disfrutado. Me he puesto en el lugar de cada parte en forma y fondo, aprendiendo largo. Pura historia, pura cultura humana desde los más atávicos evos. Acercándose a cualquier tema desde la aceptación y el escepticismo, cubriendo todo espectro para que nosotros, tú y yo, establezcamos nuestras propias conclusiones, alimentados para saber más y seguir indagando.

Recomiendo sobremanera este ensayo, porque se deja acercar para todo tipo de lector y lectora, pero, sobre todo, para los curiosos, para los inquietos, para la gente que quiere saber más allá de umbrales, velos o cuartas paredes. Consecuencias. Esto y mucho más ofrece Leyendas que cobran vida, de Bill Ellis.

Por más tratados como este, por favor. Y gracias.



Pd: lo siento, pero he sustraído algún bosquejo de idea asimilado en este ensayo para mis propios horrores. Lo siento. Y gracias.

[miguel Ángel Linares Tenorio · Rating 4 out of 5]

Buen libro, denso en algunos capítulos pero interesante

[Eric Wojciechowski · Rating 5 out of 5]

The present volume can be summed up by the words on page 144 to 145: "Folklorists can (provide) insights on how individuals react to contacts with puzzling forces. The contact itself, in most cases, remains unexplainable." In other words, we will never know if a person really encountered a ghost or alien. All we can really analyize is a person's reaction to a claimed encounter.

On page 145, the sentence continues: "...as soon as individuals react to such contacts, fit available belief-language to the experience, and try to communicate it to others, folklore intrudes." In other words, when someone is trying to explain some encounter with something they don't quite understand, they will resort to their belief system to mold it to communicate and understand it. And this very process, loses the real story (whatever that is).

So this book isn't out to explain what people are experiencing when it comes to numens so much as to give caution in immediately dismissing a claim as a hoax, or mental illness or otherwise. There may be genuine confusion by somebody who encountered something they didn't understand and their belief systems and language and culture and place and time and countless variables will impress on to it.

This is exactly how mythology is made. It's why myths worldwide are so similar and only the details are different. Humans have many common experiences from birth to death and these can be shaped by the cultures they live in. The environment, the proximity to water or not. The reliance on eating off the land or having food plentiful at the ready. Living in the country or cities. Access to libraries and the Internet and places of learning verse only what is local. All of this, and more, will take existing (dare I say it, Archetypes) and impress upon them to create something new yet identifiable at the core. Examination of this is what made the career of Joseph Campbell.

As an example regarding UFOs, the Cash-Landrum incident of 1980 remains quite an extraordinary case whether it was something truly unknown they encountered or a complete hoax or something in between. In any case, when they encountered the UFO, Vickie Landrum, a born-again Christian, interpreted the UFO initially as the return of Jesus. Clearly, this is a good of example as any to show how a bizarre encounter had a witnesses belief system interpret it.

The present volume was helpful in understanding how to treat ghost and alien encounter narratives. Which is to say, not very helpful at all in determining if there really are ghosts (departed, wandering human spirits) or aliens (extra terrestrials). This book makes it quite clear that if you only have a narrative, a story to go on, you'll never know the real story. So in order to investigate claims, you must have more evidence then just what someone tells you, even if they directly witnessed the event and not just heard it from another party.

So if you're looking for studies that want to prove or disprove ghosts or aliens, the present volume isn't it. But if you're studying any of these topics, this will help you understand the stories people tell when they claim to have had an encounter with numens. It will make you a little less likely to call someone an outright liar. They may very well just be trying to figure out something really strange that happened to them and using the only language they know to do so.

This review doesn't encompass a lot of other information in the book like discussions on legends that exist simply to allow teenagers to play safely with gruesome facts of life or irrational, fabricated fears of satanists or even outright hoaxes like the intentional spreading of AIDS to make people aware of AIDS. I've stuck mainly with the alien/ghost side of things as this was my main interest in reading the present volume. However, these parts of the book were interesting too and the volume was worth reading in its entirety.

[Andrea · Rating 3 out of 5]

Very dense, but very informative. I don’t know much about contemporary legends but this was a great book to start with. It also contextualizes societal fears and I’m running out of big words to use so I’ll stop here.

[Marilee · Rating 5 out of 5]

If you are at all intetested in popular culture/ modern folklore/urban legends, this is a fascinating read