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Gainer, in discussing Appalachian beliefs about folk magic,
remarks:
Among the people in the community where I grew up there
was a strong belief in the reality of the supernatural. Anything
out of the ordinary was likely to be accepted as a spiritual
manifestation, or a warning of some dire event to happen.
There were numerous warnings of death, and messages from
the spiritual world were common. This attitude was not a
result of ignorance, but a sign of people’s strong faith in God,
who had many mysterious ways of informing people how to
live. After all, if spirits communicated with living mortals in
biblical times, could they not do the same today? 75
In a similar vein, Gainer points out that “Almost without
exception, the people who told ghost tales to me believed in their
actual existence. A common preface to the tale is the statement:
‘Now this really happened’.” 76 In collecting ghost stories from coal
miners in rural West Virginia, Musick found that a common motif
was that, after a mining disaster had occurred, “victims were saved,
protected, and sometimes even led to safety by a helpful ghost or
spirit of a fellow miner who had died in a previous mining accident
and returned as a protector or rescuer.” 77 Many miners to this day
will swear as to the reality of these stories.
It would be incorrect to think of the Appalachian people as
having two separate and distinct worldviews—a folk magical
worldview and a religious worldview. Instead, there is only a
single shared worldview held among the folk magic practitioners
and the followers of traditional Appalachian religion. In this
worldview there is no distinct boundary between the sacred and
the secular. God is seen as being both immanent and transcendent.
He continues to operate in the lives of people through the Holy
Bible, Jesus, the Holy Spirit, and nature. In this worldview it is
possible for the devout believer to communicate with God though
prayer. As such, it is a world where personal sanctity is valued
over doctrinal orthodoxy and local spiritual unity is valued over
universal uniformity. All of life is viewed as being sacramental,
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