Traditions (1982), proving through cross cultural examination that indeed, something
was happening to people (Hufford 1982: 3). However, the ontological reality of what was
actually happening was unclear, and so supernatural explanations arose (Hufford 1982:
xi). My research is similar to Hufford’s in that I take a phenomenological approach,
meaning that I explain how a demonic encounter looks, sounds, smells, and feels when
supposedly in the presence of a demon.
Study of the supernatural slowly have become more important in folklore studies,
transforming from an orientation that originally framed the supernatural as by definition
“untrue” to a more ambivalent stance. Barbara Walker edited a book in 1995 called Out
of the Ordinary: Folklore and the Supernatural. It was an early book (aside from
Hufford’s and he has a chapter in it) that considered the supernatural as its own subject in
folklore (Walker 1995: 17). She notes:
Referring to something as ‘supernatural’ is not to call it unreal or untrue—on the
contrary. The existence of the terms itself...[is] acknowledgment that inexplicable
things happen which we identify as being somehow beyond the natural or the
ordinary, and that many of us hold beliefs which connect us to spheres that exist
beyond what we might typically see, hear, taste, touch, or smell (Walker 1995: 3).
Walker notes that supernatural experiences are marked by those sensory intrusions of
sight, sound, smell, touch, and taste, aspects that I focus on in my classification system
(Walker 1995: 3). It is how people notice that a supernatural event is taking place and
people trust their own senses’ explanations (Dégh and Vázsonyi 1974: 232).
Walker’s book was soon followed by another book published in 1999. Folklorist
Gillian Bennett wrote about supernatural memorates in Alas, Poor Ghost! proposing that
the experiential source hypothesis and the cultural source hypothesis work together to
reinforce beliefs, especially of the supernatural variety (Bennett 1999: 38). Another book