The Power of Story

From a very young age, I’ve always been certain of two things. First, storytelling is an essential aspect of humanity. It ties us together, bridging the divide between generations, time, and space.

And second, there is more to the human experience than many of us can perceive.

I was raised Yoruba, an ethnic and spiritual group originating in West Africa with a heavy emphasis on storytelling and teaching through stories. In Yoruba, we talk a lot about the Orisa, deities who represent the natural world and critical aspects of our shared humanity. In my earliest memories, my family regaled me with stories of Anansi the Trickster, who taught me morality, the Egun (my ancestors), who taught me my family's history, and the Orisa, who taught me why the world worked the way it does. Through oral storytelling and later, tapes and radio, I developed an enduring bond with my culture, family, and everyone who enjoyed sharing the stories I learned. While I knew the stories and creation myths were heavily metaphorical, I still related to them in a very real way. They explained odd experiences I found no other explanations for.

Around the same time, I discovered an intense love for science and the empirical process. Learning about fundamental forces like time and gravity explained so much, but also opened up entirely new questions- especially when it came to the assumptions adults seemed wedded to.

For example, they said that time and causality only flow one way, with our experience of the continuous present like an unmoving stone in a river. No one could go backwards, against the flow, or too far forward, perceiving a future that had yet to arrive. But...that didn’t make sense. I knew that wasn’t fully the case, because I had reliably predicted my mother’s pregnancy -and the eventual birth of my brother- before she had even been aware of it. If I could dream the future, didn’t that mean time was a little more fluid than we thought?

Over the years, pursuing these questions has always filled me with hope and wonder. Every anomalous experience becomes a new question, but also a reassurance that the world is still magical. Pursuing leads had led to several personal and professional connections across several cultures and organizations, from the Bial Foundation in Brazil, to the International Remote Viewing Association, to the Monroe Institute in Virginia. As a story scout, I would pursue leads using these connections, as well as various online sources like r/paranormal and the Anomalist. I’m always keen to pitch stories about people’s own unexplained psychic abilities, benign hauntings by relatives, and objects that disappear and reappear in unexplainable ways. I’ve noticed that these types of stories tend to remain consistent across cultures, and crafting a robust, well-researched story around them would be incredibly satisfying. While nothing about the phenomena themselves has ever spooked me, the reactions they elicit can be scary.

When people are confronted with the unknown, many respond with fear or rejection, regardless of how well-worded or thoroughly researched the claims are. This has always been the scariest, and most isolating, aspect of the supernatural. Someone can have an experience that turns their world on its head and changes their perspective of the universe...but that experience can’t always be shared easily. The more that person tries to express the impossible thing that happened to them, the more aware they will become of the massive gulf between their perspective and that of the dominant culture.

And yet, the power of storytelling can alleviate that isolation.

It can bridge the gap between experience, validating what we go through by reminding us that countless others have had the same dizzying glimpse into the unknown.

Stories can soften the fear of the supernatural by making the ephemeral feel like a distant fiction.

And, conversely, they can help people to believe, allowing their minds to open just long enough for them to hear us.