ABSTRACT

This chapter seeks to how a team’s knowledge regime and status hierarchy affect which versions of the tale become part of the “real” story of what occurred. It illustrates how the “reality” of a haunting largely depends upon whether emergent narratives resonate with external expectations and reinforces internal power dynamics. Narratives are also constructive, in that narration is “a way of fashioning the semblance of meaning and order for experience”. David R. Maines refers to this constructive work as “emplotment,” which he describes as “the use of plot, setting, and characterization that confer structure, meaning, and context on the events selected”. During narrative crystallization, the narrative is purified of any remaining deviant elements through “boundary-work”, in which some explanations are excluded and delegitimized while others are treated as factual representations of an experience. The actual location in which a haunting reportedly takes place is also a critical feature of the sensing of spirits.