Roush 1

Kane Roush
M. Martin
Humanities
3/5/2015
WC: 2012
Folklore Reflection
Paranormal activity seems to exist in many places. Many people either believe
wholeheartedly or they believe that there is no way that it can exist. The folklorist Susanna
Holstein says that you dont have to know all of the story to get the story, you just have to know
the bones (Holstein). For centuries stories have been passed through families and many people
trade stories. There are folklore stories that people live by as well as ghost tales that some people
swear to be true and continue to tell through their families to this day. The Telltale Lilac Bush
and Other West Virginia Ghost Tales is an example of a compilation of many peoples different
ghost stories and things that they believe to have happened. Through the short stories Help,
The Old Burnt House, A Ball of Fire, and The Strange Creature the reader gets an idea of
how each of the characters or people in the stories respond to what is happening to them; in three
of the four the feeling of needing to help overcomes the short story. Each story allows the reader
to see into a more specific culture of people in West Virginia by visiting a smaller area, and
allows us to analyze how in each story of The Telltale Lilac Bush the people investigate the
situations to try and determine the reasoning behind the occurrences.

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Most people will help others in any case. In Help a small child appears and asks Doctor
Anderson to go down the road to tend to her sick mother. The narrator is in a third person
retelling of the story. He is almost watching the movie happening and allowing us to see what
we want to believe. The doctor gets bearings and asks her who her mother is, and then goes up
the road to help her. After he has checked her and found a way to help her illness he discusses
her daughter. She informs him that her daughter has been deceased for a period of time. How
could it be explained? He obviously saw something that made him come to the Hostler house.
He had every intention of helping the patient and knowing that he was called in a sense to do
so. The culture of the time, the early 1960s, doctors went if called at any hour. This stories
setting is Wetzel County; therefore, this information also allows the understanding that it is a
rural village and there is a town, but it would be out of the way. People helped others and were
always available at any call. The doctor saw the girl and felt that he knew he had to go. He
obviously saw or had an image and reacted to it. Many people have written on this subject,
specifically Robert Howard.
Robert Howard says what we experience, are conscious of, exists physically in a
different form than we imagine it (65). That said the possibility that for each of the characters in
the stories that they had a perception of need is high. They knew that something happened or
someone was in need of help and then went in search of it. The doctor believed a small child
was asking for help. In the upcoming paragraphs sounds occur in a house, and blankets
disappear; next are fireballs that cannot be proven to have been seen; and finally animals that are
never seen, but heard and shot at. The mind whether consciously or unconsciously makes these
appearances that create situations for people to work with. They are tested by what they can feel,
see, or hear. The feeling can be present sometimes as in the case with the doctor test how people

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will react to what they feel. The Old Burnt House is an example of people reacting to what
they feel when they hear abnormal events.
People can describe only what they see or hear; many ghost tales tell of strange things
that have happened. Peoples descriptions can be skewed at times. Julie Carthy has an
explanation for this. She states that folklore is said to be in the oral tradition (Carthy).
Meaning that these are stories that people have passed orally and that over time they are told and
retold. On the other hand fold tales are more like fairy tales as we know them (Carthy). The
next example of a folklore story is The Old Burnt House, which seemed to have many strange
occurrences. These range from the Strawsburgh families happenings of the courting gone
wrong to feeling that a cold hand was being passed over my face to not able to keep the
quilts on the beds at night to a new owner who heard chickens under the house even though
there were none (Musick, 73-74). The house was obviously the issue; however, the owner did
not realize that someone could be doing such things to them. After multiple owners, a pipe line
went through and the laborers stayed in the house. The house burned and eventually someone
took down the sections that did not burn. They would find boots and an old day book. The story
tells of an object that someone loved and stayed with. How could they be faulted for staying or
at least trying to stay? This story is set in a small town as well. Many people knew everyone and
they could rely on each other. If the ghost of this story knew everyone around, of course it
would want to stay. The people who lived in this house after them, probably did not know what
to make of the spirit thus, they could not get along. Tim Weisberg tries to give some reasons for
the plausibility of ghosts in his chapter in Paranormal Phenomena.
In Paranormal Phenomena Tim Weisberg wrote a chapter on the existence of ghosts and
their behaviors. He believes that they are real and that there could be many ways in order to

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support this claim. He states that there is an energy that is held within our bodies and when the
body dies the energy must go somewhere. This place can be the ether or sometimes it can be
retained in the form it held for so long, going through the same motions it had in the past
(Weisberg, 37). He believes that they stay, and that they may even be strong enough to move
objects as well as imprint their voices and create the features of a haunting (Weisberg, 37). He
makes interesting points when thinking about the differences between a good ghost and a bad
ghost. It would seem in Help the ghost or being was good, she wanted to help, but in The Old
Burnt House the spirit or spirits seem to want the families to be uncomfortable. Having
negative spirits would be a downfall to experiencing another world. As is seen in A Ball of
Fire the spirit sometimes just wants to be found or uncovered.
On the other hand there are people who stay because they are killed and want to be found.
A Ball of Fire shows us a man who is killed only for his money or profits. He has no idea, and
then the murderer cuts him and puts his parts where they will hopefully for him not be found.
Instead the ghost becomes the narrator. The reader sees as he sees and how he attracts a visitor
to be able to tell. A passerby sees the fireball and approaches. The form takes on a headless
person and tells the judge what happened. The judge cannot seem crazy, so he lets it drop after
inquiring about it. This ghostly form seemed to need the help of another and did reach out,
which is an underlying motif in many of the tales in the book. The Good Samaritan in the judge
explored to find out what happened and try to help the spirit. In this culture of Gilmer County,
West Virginia it would seem as though the judge did not feel comfortable reporting his findings
and doing something about solving the issue. The county is rural based and has one stop-light
even today. People know mostly everyone around. Knowing most people, however, this spirit
affected the judge in a good way as well. The spirit could have been seemingly bitterer. As the

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spirit used a fireball to identify himself, as a reader more of an attitude was expected. The
fireball was enough to attract attention and could have potentially been harmful if it could have
reached the judge. Continuing what Weisberg believed that after the spirit had someone to listen
to him he could finally go to the other side and continues on. On the other hand, in the last story,
The Strange Creature the people never actually see what they think is happening in the area
that it happened.
Men carry a protective instinct to try and take care of business. In The Strange
Creature men go out into a storm thinking that they are going to save screaming sheep and
shoot at an object that they do not find the next morning. The story is told from an outside
perspective almost like someone is watching from afar. This story has been passed on many
times; however, was told for this novel in 1958. The men wanted to catch the bulky figure
(147). The next time it rains they bundle up and go out expecting the same thing to happen.
When they hear the scream they go out to find it. They shoot at an object, only find sheep again,
but they never see it again. What would attack the sheep that the owners had to try and shoot?
The reader or listener is given the idea the creature was an animal only because the sheep were
the only thing harmed. The tale opens the idea that pets could come back as a negative form as
well. Barbara Ambros wrote an article on this subject focusing on the views of animal spirits in
Japan.
The Japanese culture now believes in pet cemeteries and the theories that pets do have an
afterlife. Ambros finds that there are notions about unsettled, vengeful spirits and benign,
protective spirits (39). She makes it seem in her article as though pets have as much energy and
chances at an afterlife as humans do. This being said, the animal killing the sheep could have
been a vengeful spirit and showed the same vengeful tactics that it was shown in its life. If

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humans can react in their afterlife, then animals that are thought to be like the humans in the
afterlife could as well. The larger picture shows us that each culture may be different, but they
can all believe that things happen. The cultures and people can investigate and try to determine
what is happening and how they can fix it or try to understand it better. Not everyone lives in the
same places, but coming from a rural community brings more understanding as to how these
people reacted to the ideas they faced.
All of these stories tell of people who have an experience unlike any other; they
experienced phenomena that many people survive their whole lives without. They all find a way
to react to their encounters and try to find a way to try to explain them. Each of the stories being
told are portrayed through a character or situation that someone else is describing after being
dictated to previously. They do not always work well in the end. As in both The Old Burnt
House and The Strange Creature they do not end with any more of an idea who or where the
apparition appeared. Help and A Ball of Fire both provide more of an ending and a better
understanding to the help someone was asking for. The ghost stories and the ideas that they open
us to trying to understand allow for a deeper understanding and questioning within ourselves to
challenge our own beliefs not only about ghosts but about our culture as well.

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Works Cited
Ambros, Barbara. "Vengeful Spirits Or Loving Spiritual Companions?." Asian Ethnology 69.1
(2010): 35-67. Literary Reference Center. Web. 2 Mar. 2015.
Carthy, Julie. Folklore in the Oral Tradition, Fairytales, Fables and Folk-legend. Web. 20 Mar.
2015.
Howard, Robert G. "If Paranormal Phenomena Are Information Received By The Conscious
Psyche, Then What Is The Conscious Psyche?." Journal Of Spirituality & Paranormal Studies
34.2 (2011): 62-72. Academic Search Premier. Web. 2 Mar. 2015.
Holstein, Susanna. University of Charleston. Charleston, West Virginia. 25 February 2015.
Musick, Ruth Ann. A Ball of Fire. Help. The Old Burnt House. The Strange Creature.
The TellTale Lilac Bush and Other West Virginia Ghost Tales. The University Press of Kentucky,
1965. Print.
Weisberg, Tim. Evidence Supports the Existence of Ghosts. Paranormal Phenomena. Ed.
Roman Espejo. Detroit: Gale, 2013. 34-38. Print.