Modern Yakut horror story as a genre of urban post-folklore

Gogolev Anatolii Ignat'evich ORCID: 0000-0002-9694-7826 Doctor of History Professor of the Department of World, National History, Ethnology, Archeology, Federal State Autonomous Educational Institution of Higher Education "Northeastern Federal University named after M.K. Ammosov 677013, Russia, respublika Sakha (yakutiya), g. Yakutsk, ul. Belinskogo, 58, of. 610 ai.gogolev@s-vfu.ru Other publications by this author

Fedorova Aitalina Rodionovna Junior Scientific Associate, Institute for Humanities Research and Indigenous Studies of the North of Siberian Branch of the Russian Academy of Sciences 677000, Russia, respublika Sakha (Yakutiya), g. Yakutsk, ul. Petrovskogo, 1 aytap@mail.ru Other publications by this author

In modern Yakutia, oral folk stories are ubiquitous, in which archaic frightening folklore motifs are expressed, preserved in their living form to the present day. The genre we are studying is oral folk stories about the supernatural. The main purpose of such stories is to scare the listener, so the term "horror story" will be used for further designation. And if, in general, the rest of the folklore genres are leaving the modern culture of the Yakuts, then this segment, having transformed into a new post-folklore form, successfully exists in modern realities. It can be said that Yakut horror stories, on the one hand, due to their flexibility as a genre of folk art and not too rigid canons, and, on the other, due to their special proximity to universal, "archetypal" feelings and experiences, is perhaps the most stable part of the mythological tradition.

The term postfolklor was introduced into scientific circulation by S.Yu. Neklyudov to denote those genres of modern literature that have signs of archaic oral folklore, but at the same time do not fully fall under his criteria ^[1]. Thus, the modern Yakut horror story, being an oral, collective and anonymous genre, but at the same time having a format not peculiar to Yakut folklore, can be classified as post-folklore.

The study of horror stories as a genre was first conducted by Leningrad scientists O.N. Grechina and M.V. Osorina ^{[2, p. 232]}. Further, after the active collection of materials by writers and collectors of folklore, generalizing articles and monographs by S.M. Leiter ^[3-5], K.A. Rublev ^{[6; 7]} and O.Y. Trykova ^{[8; 9]} appeared, in which the Russian horror story is viewed through the prism of children's folklore. Among the modern authors, it should be noted A.S. Arkhipova and A.A. Kirzyuk, who conducted an anthropological study of Soviet urban folklore ^[10], as well as E.G. Matveev ^[11] and T.V. Savelyev ^[12] whose research is devoted to modern children's scary folklore of the XXI century. As for the question of the Yakut horror story, today this topic has not been fully reflected in the scientific literature. There are works devoted to traditional Yakut chthonic plots ^[13-16], but their modern oral interpretations have so far remained outside the scientific field, which is the novelty of the study.

It is also important that oral folklore is often an indicator of the social mood of society. This opinion is shared by some researchers of anthropology and folklore. Among them we can include, for example, A. Dundas ^{[17; 18]} and J. Viktor ^[19], among Russian researchers, A.A. Kirzyuk adheres to this approach ^[20]. Researchers in this approach suggest looking at folklore as a dynamically changing process that reacts to changes in society and constantly communicates with it. Thus, the mutual influence of the social life of society and folklore in the scientific community is commonly called folklore articulation.

In our opinion, the study of modern urban folklore in its dynamics allows not only to fix individual instances in their already formed form, but also to try to see the principles and mechanisms of their formation. In this article, our goal is to consider the modern Yakut horror story, determine its features and answer the questions: what are modern Yakuts afraid of and what ethnic motives are the most stable.

"Scary stories" in Russian science is considered to be a genre of children's folklore. Often the main motive of the narrative is a system of prohibitions. In the Yakut "horror stories", the ethnic component stands out very clearly, the objects of fear are not inanimate objects, but quite natural characters and archaic images from the same traditional folklore and mythology, and the main characters are not only children. The American anthropologist Margaret Mead pointed out in her writings that spiritual fears and the "natural" tendency of our children to animate the inanimate are actually instilled in them by their parents. She came to the conclusion that animating the universe is not intrinsically inherent in the child's consciousness. This is a tendency that he inherits from society ^{[21, p. 213]}. Perhaps in more traditional societies, segregation into children's and adult folklore is not so pronounced. Both groups are consumers of the same works in a more simplified and complicated form. So, the Yakut genre of horror stories is quite different from the Russian and all-Russian in that, in our opinion, it is not exclusively childish.

The survey materials were used as sources, in which 213 respondents took part. The questions concerned the main modern images of fear of the Yakuts, their belief or disbelief in the reality of the events described in horror stories, interest in this genre. Since the object of the study is a previously unexplored genre of urban folklore, in our opinion, it would be advisable to rely on data that most fully reflect the state of this genre and have a more widespread character. Since the modern Yakut horror story assumes a large range of different plots, their branches and variations, it was decided to identify the most common plots for analysis by means of a questionnaire. In this way, the survey method using expanded free answers seemed to us the most advantageous. Journalistic materials are also used as sources, since modern "horror stories" in the form closest to everyday understanding are more reflected in fiction and journalism. Thus, the sources for the study of modern chthonic motifs were the collections of Mikhailov D.D. "Scary Stories of Yakutia" ^[22], Reshetnikova-Osakovskaya A.V. "Scary stories told by Irina Mikhailovna Maximova" ^[23] and Sosin I.M. "Abaaahy tuhunan kapseenner" (Stories about evil spirits) ^[24].

If we conduct some content analysis, we will see that most of the recorded stories of this kind describe the events of the 70s and 80s. This period in the history of Yakutia is closely connected with the process of urbanization in the republic. S.Yu. Neklyudov and Ya.I. Gudoshnikov believed that it was the period of rapid growth of industrial cities and high rates of urbanization that lead to a change in mass consciousness due to the penetration of rural culture into cities ^{[25; 1, p. 2]}. This hypothesis is also confirmed by the example of the region we are studying. According to the Central Executive Committee of the USSR, the sharpest jump in the population growth of Yakutsk occurred just in the 70s of the twentieth century. (Population / Territorial body of the Federal State Statistics Service for the Republic of Sakha (Yakutia). Yakutsk, 2022). This period became the beginning of the formation of urban folklore and modern Yakut horror stories. Thus, on the basis of the Yakut traditional culture, a unique post-folklore genre of Yakut "horror stories" arises, which in its content and characters is still globally ethnic, but has the form of a modern Soviet "horror story".

What is the Yakut horror story? This is a short story whose purpose is to scare the listener. As a rule, it has a three-act structure. In its morphological form, according to our observations, it does not differ much from the generally accepted "horror story", the specifics consist mainly in the content and characters.

In 2018, a survey was conducted, where 79.3% of the respondents were women, and 20.7% were men. The overwhelming majority of respondents are young: 61% are 18-25 years old, 33.8% are 25-35 years old, 3.3% are 35-55 years old, 1.4% are under 18 years old, 0.5% are 55-70 years old. Such a sample of gender and age groups is due to the form of the survey, which was conducted online. 93.4% indicated "Sakha" in the nationality column, 3.3% - "other", 1.9% - "KMNS", 1.4% - "Russian". Place of birth of respondents: 43.2% - in the city of Yakutsk, 34.7% - in a village, 10.3% - in another city of Yakutia, 9.9% - in a village, 1.4% - in another city of Russia ^[26].

One of the questions was aimed at identifying the most popular motives of Yakut horror stories: "Horror stories about whom or what have you heard most often?". Respondents were asked to give any short answer. The most frequent answers in descending order were: stories about uer (ghosts), stories about buildings (localities) with ghosts can also be attributed here; the motif about the ghost of a girl by the road was also very popular, it is often mentioned that she is in white, and sometimes an old woman is mentioned instead of a girl; the next most popular motif is "horror stories" about the ichchi – spirits of the area, where people do not honor the spirits of a certain space or place receive retribution; also popular were stories about chuechekke (brownie), as well as "horror stories" about shamans, udagankas or their burials ^[26].

The next question was aimed at identifying the most frightening and scary characters of Yakut folklore in the opinion of the respondents. The most popular answers are as follows: uer (ghost), ichchi (spirits of the area), the evil ghost of a woman, often in white, often on the road, abaas, shamans and udaganki, darietinnik (undead), chuechekke (brownies) ^[26].

Here it is worth noting some confusion in the definitions of certain concepts in modern culture, and about the difficulties that the author encountered when interpreting the data obtained. Russian Russian was the language of the survey for greater comprehensiveness, and most of the responses were also received in Russian. At this moment, there is a confusion of translation, since we can translate the word "spirit" into Yakut as "ichchi". E.K. Pekarsky defines this word as follows: "All objects and phenomena of nature that directly affect human well-being have their own ichchi. It has: rivers, lakes, water, wood, forest, stone, earth, every mowing area, road, mountains, gorges, whirlpools, etc. These creatures do not belong to the category of ayyas (deities), nor to the category of abaas, although in fairy tales they are called abaas in cases when they threaten any evil" ^{[27, stb. 989]}. By itself, the word "icchi" does not mean anything malicious, but the phrase "evil spirit" can already be interpreted closer to the concept of "uer" (ghost), since, apparently, it means the restless soul of a person. Separately, it is worth defining the term abaasy – this is a fairly broad concept, denoting everything unfavorable, hostile towards a person. Thus, when respondents indicate the word "abaasy", they can mean almost any character of the Yakut chthonic spectrum.

Next, it is worth considering in more detail those motives and characters that are equally common when mentioning popular and frightening motives. In both questions, the most popular answer was "uer", but since the details of the plot are not specified, we will miss this category as indescribable within the framework of one typical image.

The image of ichchi in the modern Yakut horror story most often identifies the spirit of nature, the area or a specific room that has been disturbed or offended by people. An example of such a classic story was recorded in the collection "Terrible Stories of Yakutia", which describes how young hunters behaved ignorantly, complained aloud about the meager catch and consumed alcohol, for which the spirit punishes them with clouding of reason, after which they shoot themselves ^{[22, p. 26]}. In such stories, ichchi often has no material appearance, and only in some cases the image is concentrated in the anthropomorphic figure of an old man or an old woman.

Also, a very frequent mention was the plot about uer, most often in the guise of a young woman. It is this motive that, according to the data we have received, is the most popular concrete image. It would be noteworthy to note that it is this image of the ghost of a woman that has the most stable details that remain fairly stable from story to story. The most frequent signs of this image are white clothes and long hair, also a frequent circumstance of the story is that the location of this ghost is often a road or a farce. An example of such a story can be found in the collection already mentioned above, where the restless soul of a young woman appears to travelers as a traveling companion ^{[22, pp. 51-53]}. It is interesting that most often this image of a woman is quite passive and does not pose a great threat to her witness, the very fact of her appearance is frightening.

The next in terms of the number of mentions is the story about a haunted house. Such a story occurs both within the framework of urban folklore, where an apartment can be meant by a house, and its rural interpretation, where a ghost appears in an abandoned or hunting house. A similar story is described in the Yakut language in the collection "Abaaahy tuhunan kapseenner", where the skeptical Soviet protagonist has to spend the night in the forest in an abandoned house, where he meets ghosts ^{[24, pp. 18-22]}. We can combine such plots with the following feature: the events often described take place on a hunt, in an old house, after moving to a new home, after the death of a tenant, etc. That is, events never arise out of the blue, but describe some shocks or places that are sacrally dangerous, bringing a person closer to death.

We single out stories related to the shamanic cult as a separate category. These are horror stories in which the main images of the frightening are shamans, udagankas, their burials or places and trees whose spirits they became after death. Shamans in the Yakut traditional culture had their own special place and also after their death they were buried in a special way ^{[28, p. 71]}, and their soul, according to their views, could turn into a uer. Usually, scary stories associated with the shamanic cult describe the taboo about the inviolability (material and spiritual) of shamanic aerial burials and its violation ^{[23, pp. 191-193]}.

Having considered the typical variants of the most popular motifs, we can highlight some special features: (1) epic and "wonderful" characters from Yakut folklore are practically not mentioned by respondents, apparently they do not withstand the realities of modernity and are preserved weaker; (2) the most preserved were not personal and rather universal images, which can be found analogies in global culture; (3) we can observe mentions as frightening characters of those traditional images that are not supposed to be malicious in the classical version (shamanic cult, ichchi, chuechekke), perhaps the frightening factor here is not so much the level of danger of a particular character, but the very fact of supernatural phenomena and their reality.

77% of respondents have heard scary stories from friends ^[26]. Such a situation can be explained by the communicative function of a horror story, when the feeling of fear is a kind of unifying factor of a common experience, which is why this genre is more readily transmitted through informal horizontal communications. Being a post-folklore genre that arises during periods of active urbanization, "horror stories" arise as a product of the decomposition of rural communications in urban conditions.

A feature of the structure of this genre is that at the beginning of the story, a link to the original source is a mandatory part: "my grandfather told me this story", "this story happened to my friend in the 1980s in Yakutsk." This beginning of the tie is functionally aimed at enhancing the realism of the events described and defines them practically as "evidence", and not an already formed independent story. This, in our opinion, is one of the most important features of the Yakut horror story – greater confidence in the truth of what is happening. According to our survey, 59.6% of respondents believe in the existence of the supernatural and 33.3% find it difficult to answer ^[26].

With regard to modern well-established motives, it is worth noting that even conducting a primary analysis, it is possible to determine the social experiences declared in them. So, we can assume that most of the stories are based on the "prohibition/retribution" system, when characters accidentally or intentionally violate traditional prohibitions, thereby demonstrating the loss of cultural knowledge. Perhaps, in such stories we can observe the public experience of the loss of traditional culture and fear of it, this is indicated primarily by the fact that taboos are violated as a rule by ignorant young people or a bias is often made on the fact that Soviet times are described.

Separately, I would like to reflect on the most popular plot – the girl in white. Such an image of a young woman is inherent not only in the Yakut culture, it is a fairly common image for Anglo-Saxon, German, Russian and even Southeastern folklore ^[29]. It is noteworthy that the cause of a woman's death is often described in sufficient detail – an unhappy marriage, violence, unrequited love, betrayal, etc. Such circumstances emphasize the fact that this character is a victim of a patriarchal society, this can explain the fact that he is mainly to men. It can be assumed that this popular plot hides the social experience of the unequal position of women in patriarchal societies. This question could become a topic for a separate study in the future.

Thus, very complex and traditionally religious characters naturally disappear from folklore usage, so, for example, when describing the most popular and frightening motives, according to the survey data, specific folklore characters rarely appear. We can observe a tendency to mix some images, and a bias towards the fear of the abstract, the unknown. There is a kind of superimposition on the traditional existing forms of other images that remain tenacious and acceptable in the modern realities of the XXI century. And these are exactly the characters to whom we can draw analogies in the global globalizing culture.