Peter Engelmann, October 22, 2024
Today’s creepypasta researchers and YouTube presenters might search for local legends, supernatural stories, and the mysterious in the first place.
But it gets interesting if researchers and authors who are not after the uncanny in the first place discover ghost stories and unexplainable events in certain regions as a constant. They make us aware of something that seems obvious to the fans of folk horror but isn’t so much on our minds as we think.
These stories about witches, mountain lights, disappearances, ghosts, and supernatural encounters are like a layer that belongs to the landscape. Today this layer might be less accessible as people are less isolated and there are fewer families with close ties where different generations live under one roof: A while ago these stories were passed on from generation to generation and were part of the cultural heritage.
An Explorer Of The Supernatural Stories From The Bavarian Forest
When Karl-Heinz Reimeier, a local historian from Grafenau in the haunted Bavarian Forest began to visit families to learn more about traditions and life conditions in the remote region in Europe he wasn’t after ghost stories. But soon he learned that nearly in every family a ghost story or a mysterious supernatural story exists that plays an important role. Typical cases are the “announcement stories” where somebody announces his death even if he isn’t there. A picture falls from the wall or even voices occur the moment a close relative dies. And of course, there are endless supernatural stories from the dark forest (the Bavarian Forest certainly is one). Some of the typical themes of horror in the forest are similar present as those in haunted places in America or elsewhere. Mysterious lights for example play an important role, the witches in the forest and encounters with otherworldly creatures. Sometimes it is the devil itself.
Stories with a special quality
Nevertheless, there is always a special quality in these stories that makes them unique and ties them to the place and a specific landscape. The supernatural events are often connected to a very specific location. Reimeier says in a short report by local broadcaster Bavaria television that even though there is often a natural explanation there a 5-10% of stories that will never be explained. What’s important to him is the deep meaning of these stories for the people and the people who narrate them. Even if it is often a sad or uncanny story the narrators are alive, enriched, and fully focused when they speak about otherworldly experiences or old legends.
Folk Tales are soul, there aren’t just scary stories or cautionary tales. Often a “morale” is introduced later in the story. But again and again, they occur to be part of the connection of the land, they are a way of experiencing the landscape. In the Bavarian Forest, there is even a specific name for the lore, an old German word, “Weihrazt”. It indicates a special quality that these tales are not just creepy or scary. The word suggests more of a special kind of experience and a special reality that is there. Reimaier wrote a popular book “Wenn’s Weihrazt” – Stories from the Intermediate World. An excellent subtitle that describes the nature of the old legends and ghost stories.
The Intermediate Realm is bound to places
When it comes to the other world there is often a distinction between an (abstract) higher realm that is so different from our ordinary world that it creates an ontological shock if somebody enters these higher realms and an intermediate realm which is not so different from ours but exist on another plane of reality. It is the otherworld of the celts and there are similar conceptions known from the indigenous people in Northern America. The folk tales seem to happen at points where the intermediate realm and the ordinary world overlap at certain places or at certain times for example Samhain or winter solstice.
What Do We Learn From That?
There is another thing here which is obvious but easily overlooked. The author of the book “Wenn’s Weihrazt” visited families or single-living people and did long interviews with them. They stem both from a situation and a milieu where the internet wasn’t present as it is now and he got the “raw material”. In our digital era now there is endless replication and reproduction. So, often when you hear a story it might be that the story is already contaminated with all the stuff that hangs around on social media and elsewhere. We can’t turn back to the old times, but for everybody interested in the stories from the intermediate realm, the original folk horror we should always look for the original.
