Death by Folklore

Abstract

My original essay “Death by Folklore” was written soon after the 1982 murders of teenagers Annette Cooper and Todd Schultz in an area of Southeastern Ohio plagued by rumors of Satanic cults. I argued that the killings and the local reaction to them could be understood as acts of ostension, possibly criminal acts or, more likely, acts of interpreting ambiguous events in terms of familiar legends about Satanism. Since then, the original defendant has been exonerated, and a convict has confessed to being the actual murderer, which he says was the result of an unmeditated impulse with no folklore relevance. So, was my article irrelevant to the crime? The essay surveys new information uncovered through investigative journalism and criminal justice research, and concludes that ostension, in its current sense, remains the best theoretical tool for understanding the murders’ cultural significance.

From Stories to Behaviour, the Ebb and Flow of Fears and Panics: Discussion of the Needle-Spiking Epidemic Scares of 2021–2022

“…Folklorists' reference point for the notion of ostensive action is the seminal 1983 article co-authored by Linda Degh and Andrew Vazsonyi which concludes with the words "we have to accept that fact can become narrative and narrative can become fact" (Dégh, Vázsonyi 1983: 29, see also 5, 12). This article has not been forgotten: Bill Ellis has quoted and analysed it in several publications (for references see Ellis 2019).…”

A case of witchcraft assault in early nineteenth-century England as ostensive action

“…are also maps for action, often violent actions.' 42 Among the villagers of Great Paxton, the assaults were considered neither violent outrages, revenge attacks nor irrational outbursts. Rather to the villagers, conditioned as they were by a unified system of witchcraft beliefs and supporting narratives, the attacks represented an appropriate remedy to their problems; their reaction was the enactment of an inherited script for a folk exorcism.…”