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These revenants, which the women speak of extensively, make little or no appearance
in legend, in which "poltergeists," "haunting ghosts:' "fetches" and "omens of death"
abound. They are plainly deceased parents or husbands. either even do they "return
from the dead," for they live alongside the living. These "spirits"--rather than "ghosts"··
arc of two principal types: one is attached to a panicular place, hence "domestic," and is
directly inOucnced by literary tradition; the other is "personal," far more comlllon and
relevant 10 the percipients. For want of a generic name, Sennen calls these "witnesses, "
and defines them as "revenants who remain close to the living, wimcssing the affairs of
mundane life, responding 10 crisis, and being powerful for good in the lives of their
descendants."I
Strikingly, it is this kind of revenant, largely unsuspected by folklorists and absent
from folklore literature, which is the most familiar to these women and the most relevalH to
their life. Bennet finds the success of this revenant revealing of a certain worldview.
From the analysis of her informants' narratives and the knowledge of their background,
she suggests that for these women the boundary between the spiritual world and the
mundane world is flexible and shifting, and that it is moral orientations essentially which
dispose them to supernatural belief. The psychic power they claim would be correlations
of, extensions to, or substitutes for, conventional religion. Such a belief allows the
continuation of relationships of mutual love even when one of the partners is sepamted by
distance or death. 2 The women reponing an experience of such presences all believe in an
afterlife in which "we will meet again," and this view infomls a worldview in which "the
dead never leave" them. Their belief in the power of love over death is part of a mystical
view of life in which the world is seen as a semi-magical place governed by lInrevealed
laws, such as a concept of order encompassing the chaos of fate and chance. Bennell
concludes:
Briefly summarized, optimum conditions for supernatural belief seem to
be reliance on, and love for, family; the placing of a hig" value on
interpersonal relationships; a metaphysical philosophy in whtch chance
and fate :.tre seen as part of an unrevealed benevolent plan; and a traditional
'female' morality, which places great value on intuition, caring,
unasseniveness, unselfishness and order. These attitudes run like a thread
in the women's thinking and, in both general and detail, influence their
beliefs about the dead....3
1Bennell, flHeavenly" 95.
2Sennclt, Traditions 32.
3Senneu. Traditions 35.