How common are experiences considered supernatural among Estonians today?

This spring, a study commissioned by the Ministry of the Interior on Estonians' religious identity was completed. Among other things, respondents were asked whether they had ever had any supernatural or unexplained experiences. As a folklorist, I wasn't surprised that about a third of Estonians, or 34 percent, said they had. Of course, the report didn't go into much detail about what these experiences involved, such as prophetic dreams or unexpected coincidences surrounding the death of a loved one.

Death is an extraordinary event in itself and it gives rise to these kinds of stories and observations. But there are also quite a few cases in which a folklorist would recognize classic ghostly encounters: certain sounds, voices or footsteps.

It's not so much a question of belief as of experience — how people interpret these strange, striking experiences. How they give them meaning or, conversely, how they forget about them or set them aside so they won't be disturbed by them. The human mind is often surprising and these stories arise spontaneously. The question is whether a culture provides interpretive frameworks that can give them meaning.

I remember something you said in one of your lectures: that you personally know academics with materialist and rational worldviews who nevertheless talk about having had supernatural or unexplained experiences. What explains this contradiction, or is there even a contradiction at all?

Human beings are quite complex and strange creatures. We don't think in just one way, following a single, linear pattern. Instead, different ways of thinking come into play in different situations. The question is what circumstances lead us to talk about certain things in certain ways. We can be analytical, scientific and materialist, but there are social situations that call for a different interpretive framework. For example, when dealing with events that may be traumatic, unexpected or difficult to experience.

In Estonia, for example, many real estate agents know ghost stories. That's important information when deciding what to tell prospective buyers about a property. There are many old farmhouses where something has happened — deportations, violence or various accidents — and these events are often connected to ghost stories.

I remember a story told by a real estate agent who was showing prospective buyers a small, old house in Tartu that was in relatively poor condition. One beautiful sunny day, as they were viewing the property, a door slammed shut with an enormous bang. It was clear that something wasn't right in the house because there was no explanation for why the door had slammed like that.

A physics professor from the University of Tartu who lived nearby then told them the history of the house. An elderly woman had once lived there. One winter, she had slipped, fallen and injured herself so badly that she unfortunately died. In the storyteller's view, this explained why something was wrong with the house.

It's not surprising that this kind of interpretive framework works well in such a situation and that even a physics professor doesn't rule out that explanation. It would certainly be wrong to suggest that this somehow calls his expertise as a physicist into question. On the contrary, it demonstrates the vitality of culture and our ability to tell stories that fit particular situations remarkably well.

In Estonia, unexplained phenomena once again gained wider public attention after the restoration of independence, when there was a major wave of New Age spirituality. If you compare the material collected in Jakob Hurt's time with stories that have emerged in Estonia since the restoration of independence, what would you identify as the main differences?

Jakob Hurt was a clergyman and, interestingly, the word "devil," (kurat) referring to a figure who was still very important in Christianity, was virtually absent from his folklore collection questionnaire. Matthias Johann Eisen, who later became a folklorist, had already realized that the devil was becoming a figure of folklore and losing the position he had held in the Lutheran worldview. Sometimes it's surprising how quickly certain beliefs and storytelling traditions fade. Take the devil, for example. Just 150 years ago, he was a terrifying force, but that's no longer the case today.

When Estonia regained independence, themes related to technology and UFOs emerged very strongly, often in border regions. I remember how, on the remote island of Kassari, visitors from outer space began appearing alongside Finnish tourist buses. There is a connection between social developments and these kinds of supernatural experiences.

Now guardian angels, who were talked about less for a while, have reappeared in Estonian folk belief. And then there are entirely new figures originating in the digital world. Take Slender Man from youth folklore, for example. He's a terrifying humanoid created by an internet forum user in 2009. He's depicted in a manipulated photograph as a faceless man with long legs, dressed in black, who poses a threat to children. Initially, he was clearly fictional, but then people began telling stories about encounters with him. I've even heard firsthand accounts from people who say they've actually seen and encountered this figure. Folklore and the world of belief are changing.

So would it be fair to say that internet folklore brings us these global figures and that even the Estonian folklore entering our cultural memory today is, in a sense, part of this larger global village?

Absolutely, but in a way, that's always been the case. The world of belief is open to outside influences and many of those influences have been adapted and incorporated into local traditions. Today's world is particularly open.

For example, vampires were never traditionally part of Estonian folklore. They're more closely associated with Slavic folklore. But now you can ask any child and they'll be able to tell you what vampires are. The image of the romantic vampire, for example, has reached us through movies.

In one of your articles, you described a case in which a woman interpreted a frightening vision she had experienced as a child as a UFO encounter. Yet you also identified elements in her story that, in older folklore, might have been associated with the devil or a nightmare spirit. Does this mean that the experience itself can remain the same while people change the explanation they give it?

Yes, that can certainly happen, because the recurring motifs from which stories are constructed are the main means by which beliefs are passed down. A story presented as a true account also serves as supporting evidence that it all really happened.

That particular story was told shortly before Estonia regained independence. It was a time when Vahur Kersna's program "Monoloog tundmatuga" ("Monologue With the Unknown") was airing on ETV, bringing UFO-related topics very much into the spotlight. So it's hardly surprising that this interpretive framework immediately came into play and that the account of a strange being supposedly trying to abduct a child took on meaning in the context of alien encounter stories.

The idea of the devil stealing children and replacing them with his own offspring is itself part of Estonian folklore and broader international folklore. The fact that the figure is humanlike, or humanoid, is also characteristic. It points to the fact that human beings remain at the center of supernatural experiences and the stories surrounding them.

With internet folklore, it's understandable how stories spread around the world and bring us figures such as Slender Man, whom you mentioned earlier. But what's remarkable about unexplained phenomena is that descriptions of them show surprising similarities across the world, even historically. For example, there are similarities between the storytelling traditions of very distant cultures when it comes to sleep paralysis or near-death experiences. How might a folklorist explain these shared experiences?

David J. Hufford wrote a landmark book about people's nighttime terrors titled "The Terror That Comes in the Night." To my knowledge, Hufford is also the only person in the world to hold doctorates in both psychiatry and folklore studies. He studied the phenomenon of sleep paralysis and the storytelling tradition associated with it, known in Estonia as painaja or luupainaja, a nightmare spirit. His research focused on Newfoundland folklore, but he also compared it with folklore from Southeast Asia.

And indeed, similar images emerge: the perception of some being that is choking or tormenting you, the feeling of being unable to move and the awareness that you're actually awake but something is happening to you. There are also various recommendations for how to escape this state.

Medicine describes this condition as sleep paralysis, but folklore around the world offers different interpretations. It might be an evil person or there might be an erotic element involving affection or attraction. There are many stories in Estonia about someone becoming another person's nightmare spirit because of romantic feelings. These interpretations circulate and change.

The experience of dying is probably also similar around the world. There are states of consciousness that most likely don't depend on culture. Different cultures then add their own ideas, concepts and belief systems, which give meaning to the experience.

Another fascinating aspect of the spirit world is its linguistic dimension, because the Estonian language is full of different forms of the words for soul and spirit. We talk about hingevalu (heartache or pain of the soul), vaimujõud (strength of spirit), but also vaimuvaesus (poverty of spirit), hingetus (soullessness) and vaimustus (enthusiasm). What does the Estonian language tell us about how we perceive the world?

These are excellent examples of how language preserves certain beliefs and forms of knowledge that aren't supported by the modern worldview or scientific thinking. These concepts don't have a clearly defined place in scientific psychology. What is the soul? What is the spirit? Today, psychology operates with entirely different categories.

Charles Taylor once developed the idea that there are cultures in which people perceive themselves as physically open to the world and cultures in which people perceive themselves as enclosed within their bodies. In other words, there are cultures in which people perceive their own presence as extending far beyond the boundaries of the human body. It's precisely in these cultures that stories of supernatural experiences are especially common, along with strong beliefs in and fears of witchcraft and curses.

One might assume that Estonia is a culture in which people perceive themselves as enclosed within their bodies, but older folk beliefs and the Estonian language suggest otherwise. Even today, we talk about drafts passing through a person. People have spoken of illnesses contracted from the ground or of being able to pierce someone or something with their gaze. There are many such examples. Language is a resource for creativity, as well as for both artistic and scientific thinking.

You wrote in Müürileht that supernatural phenomena still involve a great deal of uncertainty and ambiguity, pointing to cracks in the materialist worldview. You also raised the question of whether science that doesn't dare question the validity of the prevailing worldview is still science or whether it has become a form of dogma. How should researchers approach the study of the supernatural scientifically?

I'm speaking here primarily as a scholar of culture. From a folklorist's perspective, we have no direct access to the experience itself. Instead, we study how people describe and interpret that experience. And that alone provides incredibly fascinating and diverse material.

A certain kind of uncertainty about how to understand things is characteristic of our time. When people perceive something that doesn't fit their usual understanding of reality and seems somehow supernatural or disturbing, they tend to look the other way rather than try to make sense of it.

This kind of ambiguity and uncertainty is very common, not only here in Estonia but elsewhere as well. For example, one of my colleagues in Copenhagen, Denmark, studies Danes' experiences with ghosts. For them, these are relatively unpleasant and surprising experiences because they lack the interpretive frameworks to make sense of hearing voices or seeing something in empty buildings.

Folklore studies certainly won't solve the mystery of the afterlife or the supernatural. But we can examine in considerable depth how people talk about their strange experiences and how those experiences shape their thinking and worldview.

It raises the question: Did it really happen this way or was it something else? All of this prompts us to reflect on human existence and the world. And that's precisely what science also strives for: to understand the world better and more deeply.

There isn't just one worldview at any given time, either. There are several. Still, I think we can be glad that a scientific, analytical and critical worldview predominates in Estonia.

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