Interviews.
I've had two interviews with local community members so far. One of them a housewife in her 50s, the other a blue collar guy in his late 30s. As this is a public log, I won't be quoting them directly or putting anything up here that could identify them, or reproducing their voices or likenesses.
Otherwise, I'll post something a bit more substantial tomorrow, but for now I just want to really get down what I felt about the interviews today. I still have a lot of work to get through, coding and analyzing these things.
But I'm feeling pretty encouraged, if a little disturbed. These, combined with the tunnel findings, and I'm unnerved at how pervasive these stories are, locally.
Pretty much right off I've identified a local... kind of boogeyman figure. I can't say an urban legend, because urban legends are almost strictly modern, and I hesitate to call him a folktale, because even though he seems to have a pre-modern origin, his story motif has persisted into modernity almost completely unaltered.
Both of the interviewees mentioned this figure, and both of them told stories that had similar themes and motifs.
There's a man in the woods.
That's what they say. That's what they all say. That's how the story starts off, how it always starts off.
"There's a man in the woods."
