Ghosts, Troubles, Difficulties, and Challenges: Narratives about unexplainable Phenomena in Contemporary Denmark

Bidragets oversatte titel: Spøgelser, problemer, vanskeligheder og udfordringer: Narrativer om uforklarlige fænomener i nutidens Danmark

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Abstract

Abstract: Many people experience something that they cannot explain, often they hear something that is not there as a visible fact. The sensation of hearing, for example, someone who is walking through your apartment, when no one is there as far as your eyes can see, poses a problem to the witness, especially if he or she does not think that this kind of occurrence is possible. Based on my fieldwork on haunted houses in Denmark today, this article deals with the narratives of people who have experiences that they cannot explain and that they consider to be on the limits of reason. Many of them do not consider ‘ghosts’ or ‘haunting’ as a possible explanation. This causes difficulties when they narrate and contextualise their experience, and typically they present ambiguous narratives and stress their disbelief at and bewilderment with the experiences. Still, as I will try to show in my article, their bewilderment and the way they use the notions ‘ghost’ and ‘haunting’ point to possible reinterpretations of these notions, so that the narrative mediation shapes not only the experience but also the ways that ‘ghosts’ and ‘haunting’ are reinterpreted in contemporary Denmark.
Bidragets oversatte titelSpøgelser, problemer, vanskeligheder og udfordringer: Narrativer om uforklarlige fænomener i nutidens Danmark
OriginalsprogEngelsk
Artikelnummer6
TidsskriftFolklore
Vol/bind65
Sider (fra-til)89-111
Antal sider22
ISSN0015-587X
StatusUdgivet - 1 okt. 2016

Emneord

  • anthropology
  • fieldwork
  • ghost
  • haunting
  • limit of reason
  • narrative
  • residual category
  • sensation

Kunstnerisk udviklingsvirksomhed (KUV)

  • Nej

Citationsformater