Scary Stories. I tell a lot of them. I’ve been hearing them and sharing them for most of my life. Some of my favorite reading in my teenage years were the notably dark and pessimistic tales of Edgar Allen Poe (father of the American tradition of not only the story of suspense and horror, but also detective fiction) and such cheery fellows as H.P. Lovecraft. And if, like the young people of my generation, you ever went to a summer camp, you know what sort of stuff I heard there around the campfire from slightly older counselors whose sole purpose in life seemed to be to give us all nightmares with tales of the ghosts of deranged and inhumanly strong teenagers who drowned—due to the neglect of their friends—in that very pond just down the hill!! Tales that would later be transmuted onto the movie screen into such vengeful, implacably bloodthirsty characters as Jason and Freddy Kruger. By the time I was in high school, I was a master of spinning my own yarns. The gardens, ponds, and back roads within the artists’ colony of Yaddo on the outskirts of Saratoga Springs is a slightly spooky place at night. Yaddo, by the way, was built on the site of Barhyte’s Tavern, a 19th century watering hole where famous people often stayed. Among them was Edgar Allen Poe who purportedly wrote at least part of “The Raven” there. When I was in high school, we’d use those unpatroled back roads by the Yaddo ponds as a place to go parking. And as we sat there, two or three pairs of relatively innocent teenagers shoehorned into my fish-finned 1960 Plymouth, I would lean back behind the wheel and tell first of how Poe stayed here. Then of how his ghost was rumored to walk the dark woods around us at night. (Slide a little closer, Laura.) But how the worst of all was the ghost of the former caretaker. Who murdered a car filled with unsuspecting teenagers with his ax. Who might be heard, if one listened, tapping his ax against the nearby metal gate as he approached. “Wait, did I hear something? Roll down the window. Listen!” And then, sure enough, nervous ears would indeed begin to hear that clanking. From the faulty valve in the water pump a hundred feet from where I had carefully pulled over. Alas, my mood setting was far too effective. For it would be invariably followed not by Laura allowing me to put a protective arm about her shoulders, but by a high-pitched girlish scream imploring me to “Get us out of here!” At which point I would sigh and say, “Okay, Jeff.” And start the car. But there’s big difference between those scary stories--the hooked hand of the escaped murderer dangling from the handle of the car door—and the ones that I’ve structured some of my most popular books around. Traditional Native American stories that I regularly share with young people during school visits. Those stories do not merely exist for the purpose of traumatizing the innocent. Honestly. What started my mind along this train of thought (silent film image of helpless damsel tied to railroad track by black mustached villain intruding on my brain) was the response of a parent to a librarian at a school I’d visited. That parent had called the school the day after my son Jesse and I had visited. She was upset about what her 5th grade child had related to her. How a very scary story had been told at school about cannibalism. Cannibalism. Whoa! Now why does that sound like a familiar theme in 2013 America? Where every third movie released to the big screen features animated corpses stumbling about in search of something other than Burger King? Where just a few weeks ago the evening streets of our towns were inhabited by miniature members of the shuffling undead clasping goodie bags and uttering the dark, dreaded words of “Trick or Treat?” The cinematic spawn of George Romero aside (whose original film about zombies in a shopping mall might be interpreted on at least one level as a societal metaphor), that response to my telling of the traditional Mohawk behind my novel SKELETON MAN does deserve an honest response. Or two. One of which is that I think it is pretty cool that a 5th grader was impressed enough by a story we did to go home and tell a parent about it. Also cool that said parent had time to listen to said kid and cared enough to call the school. Generational communication is sometimes sadly lacking these days when overstressed parents are working multiple jobs and their children immerse themselves in the digital world as soon as they walk in the door. One of the simplest remedies for a lot of the problems our children and our families are having is the simple, nearly-vanished practice of a family sitting around the table having a meal together and talking. Response number two is that I am pretty sure that parent heard the retelling of only part of that story and heard it out of context. Because the scary stories that my two sons and I share with kids—stories that we always make sure are appropriate for the grade level, with the really terrifying ones reserved for young people old enough to handle them—are not just told to frighten. Au contraire, mon ami. Then why are such stories told? I think that there’s something within all human beings that enjoys it when frightening narratives are shared within a safe environment. A well-told story is a self-contained environment that the listener can enter, experience--and then leave physically unscathed but mentally enriched. Even when that story is about things that are terrible, even previously unthinkable. Think of how tragedy works, how well Shakespeare understood human nature. But let me narrow the focus to Native American traditions, to the whys and hows of using scary stories within the cultures my family and I know best and are connected to—those of the northeast Wabanaki and Haudenosaunee peoples. Stories are meant to do two things. The first is to entertain. That was people will listen to them and be more likely to remember. The second is to teach. Instead of telling a child NOT to do something (that works great, doesn’t it?), we would tell a story that illustrates the consequences of doing something foolish. Not “Don’t go into the swamp.” But “Oh, in the swamp you will meet Toad Woman.” (And, of course, Toad Woman loves children—as a main course.) Stories that are scary remind children of something they need to recognize. Life is dangerous. Kids especially need to be reminded of this. Caution and concern about one’s own mortality is much better developed in one’s later years. (That’s why every army in the history of humanity has largely been made up of young men in the teens or early twenties—when they still think they are immortal.) A powerful story, through frightening, may give a child the tools to make better decisions in situations that could be potentially harmful. Our stories about monsters also do something else for children. They give them courage. Story after story—including the one that child took home to a worried mother—may have monsters in them, but they also feature the defeat of those monsters. And who are the ones in the traditional tale of “Skeleton Man” who defeat the cannibal skeleton who was once a lazy, greedy uncle (so greedy that he ate his own flesh and became a monster)? It’s not the parents. It’s their little boy and little girl who not only vanquish that scary monster, they then bring their slightly dim-witted parents back to life. I suppose that’s enough for now. Especially since I am writing this late at night and I think I just heard a tapping on my window. Better go check it. I’ll be right back. Or not. Scary stories.
Posted on: Wed, 20 Nov 2013 14:54:07 +0000
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