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Midjourney: Mormon missionaries and a dark spirit, in the style of Greg Olsen. (Because why not.)<\/p>\n
My memories of childhood \u201cI swear my uncle heard that\u2026\u201d fantastic stories are still fresh enough in my memory for me to associate folklore and urban legends with a sort of enchanting nostalgia of a more magical time before devices where we\u2019d gather around the campfire to share stories. Where my friend said it happened to his uncle, and my friend wouldn\u2019t lie, so ipso facto of course Bloody Mary is going to crawl out of the mirror to try to rip out my eyes.<\/p>\n
While I\u2019m uncomfortable with people conflating Mormon cultural tidbits with the gospel of Jesus Christ, at the end of the day it is my culture, and missions in particular seem like a perfect little laboratory for folklore development. Like Darwin\u2019s finches, each variation of an urban legend becomes quasi-isolated within the mission boundaries and adds local flavor and variation.<\/p>\n
Mormon folklorist is one of (many) things I would absolutely love to do full-time in a parallel life if I didn\u2019t have a large family and had to buy an awful lot of cheddar, and the chances of obtaining an R1 TT anthropology position wasn\u2019t akin to being drafted into the NFL (if you think through the numbers involved you\u2019ll find I\u2019m not exaggerating).<\/p>\n
Still, BYU faculty couple Christine and Christopher Blythe have pulled it off, and have started a very addictive podcast on Mormon folklore called “Angels and Seerstones.” This is especially impressive since \u201cMormon folklore podcast host\u201d isn’t typically something that goes in a tenure file, so this is a labor of love. So far they have episodes on:<\/p>\n
Missionaries and supernatural assault<\/p>\n<\/li>\n
Joseph Smith\u2019s martyrdom canes<\/p>\n<\/li>\n
Prayer circles outside the temple<\/p>\n<\/li>\n
Spirit children<\/p>\n<\/li>\n
Ted Bundy Lore<\/p>\n<\/li>\n
Sleep paralysis<\/p>\n<\/li>\n
Angelic music<\/p>\n<\/li>\n
Moroni lore<\/p>\n<\/li>\n
Wayward missionaries<\/p>\n<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n
A few asides from me:<\/p>\n
I consider myself somewhat familiar with the interesting odds and ends of Church history, so I\u2019m surprised I had never heard of the \u201cmartyrdom canes\u201d before. The parallels with other religious traditions that have relics attached to saint-like figures is obvious.<\/p>\n<\/li>\n
I heard the \u201cquorum of the 12 apostates\u201d thing in my visa-waiting mission in Las Vegas. Of course, I had no idea that that was a common trope across missions.<\/p>\n<\/li>\n
Same thing with the \u201cmany moons ago half the mission went on a sex trip to Thailand and were excommunicated\u201d type stories. I had heard this one so often I just thought that a lot of missions in the 80s were apostate.<\/p>\n<\/li>\n
If I\u2019m remembering correctly, my mother did know or was acquainted with either a Ted Bundy victim or somebody who escaped, but she actually did attend Bountiful or Viewmont High around the time when he kidnapped one of the students there<\/a>, so my personal experience of \u201cTed Bundy folklore\u201d might be more based in fact.<\/p>\n<\/li>\n W. Paul Reeve and Michael Van Wagenen’s\u00a0Between Pulpit and Pew<\/a> is a highly recommended book on Mormon folklore.<\/p>\n<\/li>\n Evidently there\u2019s a Mormon folklore archives at BYU that collects these sorts of stories. Given our penchant as a record-keeping people there is clearly another book or series of books on the subject that is waiting to be written. Errant missionary folklore alone could easily be a monograph.<\/p>\n<\/li>\n It is worth noting that just because something is \u201cfolklore,\u201d doesn\u2019t mean it isn\u2019t fact-based. Academically speaking \u201cfolklore\u201d covers actual practices and items of material culture, not just urban legends.<\/p>\n<\/li>\n Finally, a list of other potential Mormon folklore topics. I\u2019m not telling the Blythes what to do, I\u2019m sure they get suggestions all the time and don\u2019t have the bandwidth to address them all, but FWIW these are a few of mine:<\/p>\n Porter Rockwell\u2019s gunslinging<\/p>\n<\/li>\n People involved in the killing of Joseph Smith dying fluke, \u201cMummy\u2019s Curse\u201d type deaths<\/p>\n<\/li>\n Bear Lake Monster<\/p>\n<\/li>\n Bigfoot\/Cain (already addressed in a Mormonr post<\/a>)<\/p>\n<\/li>\n\n
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