Why Ghost Stories Matter: Paranormal Experiences and the Stories We Tell
A ghost story is rarely only about a ghost.
It may also be about grief, fear, memory, identity, family, belief or a moment when the familiar world suddenly became impossible. Many people who experience something they cannot explain keep it secret for years, fearing ridicule or dismissal. When they finally speak, they are not simply recounting an entertaining tale. They are entrusting someone else with an event that may have permanently changed how they understand reality.
Since beginning her project to document paranormal experiences across Milton Keynes, psychologist and writer Dr Steph Lay has spoken with witnesses in cafés and pubs, through video calls, emails, voice messages and chance encounters. Some have recalled brief glimpses of apparitions; others have lived through years of disturbing activity.
In this talk, Steph explores the psychology and ethics of listening to extraordinary experiences, and the transformation that occurs when a private memory becomes a public ghost story.
Why do some experiences remain vivid for decades? Why do people choose one listener and not another? How can a collector respect a witness’s uncertainty without either dismissing their experience or claiming to prove the paranormal? And what is created, or lost, when memory is shaped into narrative, published online and absorbed into the folklore of a place?
Drawing together psychology, parapsychology, oral history and her own experience as a collector and storyteller, this talk considers ghost stories not merely as evidence to be proved or disproved, but as deeply human acts of communication.
We tell ghost stories because something happened.
But we also tell them because we need someone else to hear.
Speaker Bio:
Dr Steph Lay is a writer, researcher and cognitive psychologist based in Milton Keynes. Her doctoral research explored the uncanny valley and why certain near-human faces can feel so unsettling.
She is the creator of City of Secrets and its ongoing Revenants on the Redway project, gathering local stories of the unexplained and exploring the hidden histories, folklore and uncanny possibilities of Milton Keynes.
Behind the scenes, Steph also works with Peter Laws on the YouTube channel Into the Fog. She curates first-hand paranormal accounts submitted by viewers and creates atmospheric artwork and visual storytelling to help bring those stories to life.
Across her work, she brings together psychology, place, folklore and the paranormal, exploring not only why strange experiences unsettle us, but why they matter to the people who live through them.
Curated & Hosted by
Lena Schattenherz Heide-Brennand is a Norwegian lecturer with a master degree in language, culture and literature from the University of Oslo and Linnaeus University. She has been lecturing and teaching various subjects since 1998. Her field of interest and main focus has always been topics that others have considered strange, eccentric and eerie, and she has specialised in a variety of dark subjects linked to folklore, mythology and Victorian traditions and medicine. Her students often point out her thorough knowledge about the subjects she is teaching, in addition to her charismatic appearance. She refers to herself as a performance lecturer and always gives her audience an outstanding experience, Lena’s New Book – Mythical Creatures in Scandinavian Folklore is now available on Amazon
Don’t worry if you can’t make the talk live on the night – we will send you a recording valid for two weeks the next day
