What Gives Kids the Creeps?
Children as Keepers of Fear Folklore
Transcript coming soon!
In this episode, we will consider how children imagine themselves in relation to the invisible, the supernatural, and the spooky.
Along the way, we’ll ask: how do children describe their encounters with fear, with terror, or with the supernatural? How do adults remember their childhood fears? What are some of the stories and legends young people share when it comes to the otherworldly? And what are toilet ghosts?
image gallery
James Ransome’s illustration of Marilyn Nelson’s “The Floatin Baby” 
An illustration from Foxe’s book of martyrs — Collins and His Dog Burn at Smithfield 
An early twentieth-century Halloween greeting card depicting mirror divination 
An artist’s depiction of Hanako-San
reading list
Dickens, Charles. “Nurse’s Stories.”1860–1861. The Uncommercial Traveller. Chapman and Hall, 1911, pp. 174–186. Google Books.
Dundes, Alan. “Bloody Mary in the Mirror: A Ritual Reflection of Pre-Pubescent Anxiety.” Western Folklore, vol. 57, no. 2–3, Spring-Summer 1998, pp. 119–135.
Griswold, Jerry. Feeling Like a Kid: Childhood and Children’s Literature. Johns Hopkins University Press, 2006.
Langlois, Janet. “Confessions of a Legend Hunter in the U.S.A.” Cahiers de Littérature Orale, vol. 63–64, 2008, pp. 185–200.
Langlois, Janet. “Mary Whales, I Believe in You: Myth and Ritual Subdued.” Indiana Folklore, vol. 11, 1978, pp. 5–33.
Nelson, Marilyn. “The Floatin Baby.” The Poetry Foundation.
Shuttleworth, Sally. The Mind of the Child: Child Development in Literature, Science, and Medicine, 1840–1900. Oxford University Press, 2010.
Stevenson, Robert Louis. “A Chapter on Dreams.” Scribner’s Magazine, 3 January 1888. British Library.
Sully, James. Studies of Childhood. 1895. D. Appleton and Company, 1900. Google Books.
Whitlock, Anne. Mary Tudor: England’s First Queen. Bloomsbury, 2010.
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