The Folklore Podcast

A quick interruption to your lives with some news about the podcast!

In another of our occasional series looking at the work of American storytellers, we meet the award winning Laura Packer. Based in Minnesota, Laura has over 25 years of storytelling experience and was recently inducted into the United States National Storytelling Network’s Circle of Excellence - a select group of storytellers determined by their peers to be standard bearers of the art, and masters at the craft. You can find Laura online at https://laurapacker.com/Please visit www.patreon.com/thefolklorepodcast where you can join our Patreon support page for free or pay a small amount each month to help our work.

To coincide with his new book 'Zoinks - The Spooky Folklore Behind Scooby-Doo' going to pre-order, Folklore Podcast creator Mark Norman presents a special episode looking at the way that folklore and the paranormal are represented in Scooby-Doo through the lens of Shaggy and Scooby's favourite thing - food.To pre-order a copy of Zoinks and receive an exclusive set of collector's cards with your order, please visit https://auk.direct/product/zoinks/To support the Folklore Podcast on Patreon and receive extra content, please visit www.patreon.com/thefolklorepodcast

In terms of folklore, ghostly encounters are not about the proof of existence of the supernatural so much as they are about the meaning of the experience to the individual. Folklore is about examining the story, the meaning that it has for the witness, and the way in which that narrative is both transmitted and recorded.We discuss the recording process of ghostly encounters, the 'writing of ghosts' with our guest Amelia Cotter, who has dome precisely this across different genres, including non fiction, fiction and poetry. Amelia is in conversation with correspondent Tracy Nicholas.Visit Amelia online at www.ameliacotter.comTo support the work of the Folklore Podcast and to help us to keep making content, please visit our Patreon pages at www.patreon.com/thefolklorepodcast

Join Blake and Wycke Malliway, Jac D. Hawkins, and Albert Bjorn Shiell in a roundtable discussion on folklore and magical practices. They explore topics like media representations of witches, folklore in TV shows, evolution of folklore in the digital age, cultural exchanges, witchcraft traditions, and invented folklore narratives. Dive into a world of magic and myth with this captivating podcast episode.

Wherever we might be in the world, we find that folklore will always take on very specific regional variations: any area will have both its own unique stories and versions of other tales which have been shaped by local knowledge or events.In the UK, where the country is divided into counties, records vary very much from place to place. The country of Lincolnshire has some fascinating folklore and yet, historically, it has been quite overlooked in terms of collecting and recording these stories.A new project, based at Nottingham Trent University, seeks to redress the perceived imbalance. On this episode of the podcast, creator and host Mark Norman is joined by Dr Anna Milon and Dr Rory Waterman to discuss the folklore of Lincolnshire and The Lincolnshire Folk Tales Project.You can visit the project website at https://lincolnshirefolktalesproject.com/To support The Folklore Podcast and help us to keep going, as well as getting access to extra member content, please consider joining our Patreon page at www.patreon.com/thefolklorepodcast

In this episode of the Folklore Podcast we explore the psychology of trauma and its intersection with alleged paranormal phenomena, with guests Bill and Jaci Kousoulas.For some, paranormal occurrences can be a precursor to later trauma, either on a personal level or on a larger scale. For others, trauma may act as a catalyst from paranormal events and they find after suffering a personal loss or other tragedy that they become susceptible to what we might term supernatural happenings. But what is the psychology between this intersection of trauma and the paranormal? We explore the answer to this question with particular focus on the tragedy of the Point Pleasant Bridge collapse and its connection to the Mothman sightings.To support The Folklore Podcast and access extra content, please visit www.patreon.com/thefolklorepodcast

The image of the fox appears in many cultures as a trickster figure, but in Asian folklore there are some subtle differences. The Chinese fox is a symbol of intelligence, and has the ability to shapeshift for example.Exploring the folklore of the Asian countries, with particular reference to foxes, in this episode creator and host of the podcast Mark Norman is joined by New York Times bestselling author Yangsze Choo. Yangsze's novel 'The Ghost Bride' was serisalised and broadcast as a Netflix original series and her latest work 'The Fox Wife' draws on the Asin fox folklore that we explore.Find Yangsze online at https://yschoo.com/To support The Folklore Podcast in all of its work and access additional content, please visit www.patreon.com/thefolklorepodcast

In the field of Gothic literature, from the Penny Dreadful and Chapbook through the Penny Bloods and novels. whether it a classic like Bronte or something less well known, there are many ways in which the female characters may as monstrous.We explore the landscape of 'mad', murderous and shape-shifting women with Gothic scholar Dr Nicole C. Dittmer, author of 'Monstrous Women and Ecofeminism in the Victorian Gothic'.After listening to this episode, seek out Story 4 of 'Stories from the Hearth', our storytelling show, in your podcast feed for a reading of 'The White Wolf of the Hartz Mountains' narrated by Nicole.To support our work creating free folklore-related content, please visit www.patreon.com/thefolklorepodcast

We welcome writer and folklore graduate Liza Frank to the Folklore Podcast for an episode looking at the many different ways in which you might be able to combine a bit of folklore into your daily life.In conversation with Mark Norman, creator and host of The Folklore Podcast, Liza looks at divination, calendar customs, food folklore and lots more ideas which came out of the Everyday Lore Project which she ran for a year through lockdown. Liza also discusses how this material then went on to form the basis of her book Everyday Folklore. Visit Liza's website at www.liza-frank.comTo support the Folklore Podcast and its work creating and producing accessible folklore content for everyone, please visit www.patreon.com/thefolklorepodcast