Paper short abstract:

The paper discusses personal experience narratives of supernatural encounters in 21st-century Estonia. Perplexion and uncertainty regarding these events evoke different storytelling strategies and frames of interpretation ranging from traditional folk religion to disbelief and humour.

Paper long abstract:

Folklorists have usually interpreted experience narratives about the supernatural within the context of folk narrative genres, such as memorates and legends. This kind of approach enables us to see links between personal storytelling, narrative patterns, and cultural tradition as a shared resource. From the moment an experience is transformed into a verbalized account, it appears in an intertextual and –generic context and can be studied as an expression of a storyworld. For individuals, however, their personal supernatural experiences appear as unique and often shocking events. The related storytelling tends to be charged with a sense of uncertainty, insecurity, and fear. The lack of rational frames of interpretation turns personal experience stories into an epistemological problem, often handled with perplexion, disbelief and humour. The paper analyses storytelling about personal encounters with the uncanny from 21st-century Estonia, discussing these cases within the context of folk religion as a resource for meaningful interpretations and changing beliefs that sometimes contradict the narrative tradition of the past.