Book Review: Aliens, Ghosts and Cults: Legends We Live
Abstract
BILL ELLIS, Aliens, Ghosts and Cults: Legends We Live. Mississippi: University Press of Mississippi, 2001. 291 pp., (including index). ISBN 1 57806 325 6 38 (hbk) Aliens, Ghosts and Cults: Legends We Live is a welcome progression of scholar- ship in the field of 'urban legends' from collection and classification towards a systematic analysis of the urban legend as part of a cultural process. As Ellis writes, 'legends are not folk literature but folk behavior,' (p. 10). Consequently, Ellis claims that 'legend telling is often a fundamentally political action' (p. 243) and that the acts of observing and interpreting such legends are equal- ly political. The book is divided into three sections. The first is Ellis's contribution to the urban legend naming game. Ellis follows the likes of Paul Smith and Gillian Bennett in renaming this type of legend the 'contemporary legend'. His stance is that there seems always to have been a body of controversial legends that were circulating contemporarily within their societies. As one example, he discusses the 'gang initiation' legend that was widespread throughout the United States in the 1960s and 70s but dates back at least to Roman times when Christian groups were accused