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have been in touch with such a tradition. Culture, in other words, would be the common
source of all fanlastic accounts and beliefs. 1
46
What Itufford's data reveals, on the contrary, is that certain belief traditions contain
elements of experience that are independent of culture. His research amply demonstrates
that some apparently fantastic beliefs are empirically grounded, and that the empirical data
have been dealt with rationally by those who have assimilated these experiences (0 their
worldviews.2 Far yet from advocating a tabula rasa of cultural determinants, Hufford
brings important qualifications to their actual role. To start with, a clear difference must be
made between the phenomenology of the experience itself and its description, that is
distinguishing the impact of culture on the experience from that on its description. One
muSt also consider that physical correlates to certain beliefs··the presence of a particular
supernatural (radition in a cenain cultural environment··do nOt exclude the possibility of
actual experience. So, if some people revel in the telling of ghost stories, thus recognizing
"ghosts" as a meaningful cultural category, this traditional motif rules Olll neither the
possibility of such phenomena nor the credibility of their reported experiences. These
hypotheses. Hufford remarks, are nonetheless systematically ignored in most scientific
accounts.
Along with the cultural source hypothesis as sole explanation, Hufford ::lIso objects to
the systematic resort to functional theory. He aptly points out that if certain beliefs serve
particular functions, they neither cause nor explain belief or the experience. Such a
reductive view, again, only explains beEef away. So, the observation as to which
supernatural belief tends to concentrate on the least predictable areas of human activity, and
attenuates anxiety, yields an interesting correlation but no evidence yet. Like function.
context is a tempting "peg" for the scientist as for the humanist. This links lip with what
commentators on worldview have suggested: that no single factor can in itself account for
such a complex phenomenon as culture. Hufford affimls that none of the supernatural
experiences he studied was found to be associated with ethnicity, religiQJ.ls background, or
any other ethnographic variable. Neither did there appear to be any association between
such reponed experience and any known pathological state. Last but not the le::lst trap in
the analysis of supernatural belief. is the similarly reductive explanation of the survivalists,
always applic'lble in the last resort. 3
1Hufford, Terror 14·15.
2Hufrord. Terror 250.
3Hurrord. "Reason" 179 and 187.