Reading Notes: Week 2 Anthology - Supernatural: A Teton Ghost Story

 Story Origin:

    Teton Lakota

Traditional ghost story elements:

    A man by himself encounters ghosts during the night.

    The first ghost seems as if she had been an illusion, and the man found a burial scaffold. A very traditional element in ghost and horror stories, with the burial grounds or grave of the previously encountered ghost being found after the encounter.

    This first ghost was also dressed in clothes of older times, as are typically encountered in ghost stories, as the olden clothing adds to the creepy atmosphere of encountering a ghost.

        The woman also physically touches the man, almost cutting his limbs when he appeared to be dead.

    The second ghost was a man made of bones, who had been wandering the woods while singing, a creepy atmosphere piece we are all familiar with.

Special elements:

    The man wrestles with the second ghost, who promises him victory in his fight if he wins.

        The ghost has a weakness to fire, which the man discovers, as the ghost gets stronger the further he is from the light of the fire.

        The singer ghost asks the man for food when he first encounters him, and the man promptly responds he has none. But the ghost knows that the man has wasna and tells him so.

        The ghost smoked on the man's pipe, with the smoke coming out of his ribs, as he was nothing but bones. After this is when he offered to wrestle the man, who would be guaranteed victory against his enemy and the ability to steal some horses.

    The man succeeded in winning against the ghost by realizing his weakness to fire.

A man and a skeleton wrestling.

Story chosen: Supernatural: A Teton Ghost Story

    Supernatural stories have been a favorite story topic of mine since I was young. In fact, my mom used to get onto me about how many ghost stories I read because I would occasionally have nightmares because of them.

Other Stories:

    Surprisingly, I saw a few stories I was familiar with in the anthology for this week, such as the Indian folk tale with the jackal and tiger along with the story of Androcles and the Lion. The first time I read the story of Androcles and the Lion was in my intermediate Latin prose course, so I had actually translated the original from Latin to English. It is always fun to see random stories pop up that you are already familiar with. The origins of the images on the moon were actually stories I had not heard of, but both teach a lesson, such as to be selfless and to be happy with what you have.