Episode 228

The Dirt Lays Down the 'Lore

Spooktober 2023 reaches its climax with a special Halloween treat. Amber shares a series of spooky stories from her own childhood back in Appalachia, but not without exploring the many roles of folklore in societies-- all of 'em!

Four Functions of Folklore (The Journal of American Folklore)

Why ‘Scary Stories to Tell in the Dark’ Frightened So Many Parents in the 1990s (Smithsonian)

The Folklorist Behind Scary Stories to Tell in the Dark (JSTOR Daily)

Tailypo: A Ghost Story (Internet Archive)

Tailypo (Storytelling for Everyone)

The Best of Scary Stories for Stormy Nights (Internet Archive)

The Bean-Nighe (Pan Book of Horror Stories)

Ruth Ann Musick's Trunk of Tales: Lesson plans for The Telltale Lilac Bush and other WV Ghost Tales (Fairmont State University)

The Telltale Lilac Bush and Other West Virginia Ghost Tales (University of Kentucky)

The Greenbrier Ghost (AppLit Project)

My West Virginia Family Ghost Story (WVU Libraries)

Time and Again (Short Story Project)

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The Dirt Podcast
Archaeology, Anthropology, and our shared human past.

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The Dirt Podcast

As science communicators in anthropology and archaeology, we hosts of The Dirt acknowledge that we hold a position of considerable privilege and opportunity, and commit ourselves to continuous learning, unlearning and reflection. We recognize that our disciplines, as well as our own lives, are rooted in and propped up by settler colonialism, white supremacy, and dispossession.

We now reside on the stolen ancestral territory of the Shawnee and Haudenosaunee and on the lands of the Muscogee and Cherokee Nations, but over its lifetime, The Dirt has also been produced on the unceded traditional territory of the Piscataway Conoy and Cedarville Band of Piscataway Indians, as well as that of the Yocha Dehe Wintun Nation, Patwin and Miwok peoples and all those dispossessed by Cession 296. We offer our show as a platform for Indigenous scholarship, history, and cultural expression, through citation and conversation, and we welcome the opportunity to host and compensate Indigenous scholars of archaeology and anthropology as interview guests.

Likewise, we encourage all listeners who reside in settler-colonial states to learn about on whose land they reside, their place in the ongoing process of colonization, and how to contribute materially to reparations and Indigenous sovereignty.