Ruth Hopkins: Natives sharing ghost stories on the Internet

Friday, February 1, 2013  

"Every Native has a ghost story to tell. I use the term ghost loosely, as we are a spiritual people with strong belief systems. Our ghost stories may involve spirits that mainstream culture refers to as ghosts, but they may also include personal accounts of encounters with bigfoot, deer woman, or spirit beings like skinwalkers, little people, Iktomi (the Trickster), or even something no one has ever heard of before.

Scary stories are just plain fun too. We enjoy passing them on. In 1999, I won an award for story of the month from an Australian website called Castle of Spirits. My submission was a Native ghost story told to me by a relative.

Like the #IdleNoMore Twitter phenomenon has shown us, Natives are becoming masters of social media. This technological adaptation has merged with our love of sharing and storytelling to create pages where Natives post stories online and provide each other with feedback.

The Facebook community page entitled is one such venue. While the page was just created on January 9, 2013, it’s taken off and currently boasts a following of over 21,000 people. The page is posting ghost stories from Natives of every Tribe, from all over North America. Once you begin reading the stories, you may find it difficult to leave. Accounts of the spirits of long dead Native children who play in abandoned boarding schools are heart wrenching, while others describing encounters with inhuman spirits are downright hair raising. By the way, the page has pictures too."

Get the Story:
Ruth Hopkins: Native American Ghost Stories (Indian Country Today 2/1)