Front Matter

Introduction: Border Crossings: legend, literature, mass media, and cultural ephemera

1-7

Robert Olen Butler's "A ghost story": contemporary legend as literature

8-17

"Please send your used Rolodex cards to the Muppet Wish Foundation": folk parody, generic sensibility, literalization and contemporary legend

18-33

The re-oralized legends of Robert Mannyng's Handlyng synne

34-62

Never talk to strangers: parental warnings, contemporary legends, and popular fiction

63-72

Who incidented that little girl?: stories as pollution rites in the Ramsey murder case

73-108

Babysitting and the man upstairs: negotiating the "politics of everyday fear"

109-136

Contemporary legend on film and television: some observations

137-154

Candyman can: film and ostension

155-173

The haunted house in literature, popular culture, and tradition: a consistent image

174-204

Back Matter