ST. GEORGE — What is the difference between a spiritual experience and a supernatural occurrence? 

Author Darren Edwards explores this riveting question among other critical questions throughout his upcoming non-fiction book, “Supernatural Lore of Southern Utah,” published by The History Press. The book navigates hundreds of prevalent supernatural folk tales unique to Southern Utah, focusing on what the stories reveal about the communities that tell them. The book hits shelves September 12, but it can be preordered here.

For three years, Edwards investigated well-known and obscure supernatural stories alike across Southern Utah, such as tales of screaming ghost mothers roaming the prairies of the Mountain Meadows Massacre, the ghost of Lydia Knight communicating to visitors at her tombstone in the St. George cemetery, curses from taking petrified wood from Escalante State Park and stories of Navajo Skinwalkers in the Monument Valley. 

He conducted over 200 interviews with witnesses who claimed to have experienced supernatural occurrences, and he delved into countless peer-reviewed, academic articles regarding cultural history associated with these stories.

Edwards didn’t seek to capture the stories in order to prove or disprove the historical, factual reality of stories. Rather, Edwards was interested in what the perpetuated supernatural stories reveal about the humanity within the communities that keep the stories going.

“I hope anybody that were to read (my book) would gain a better understanding for the nuances in stories and cultures,” Edwards said. “It’s empathy that makes something spiritual and not spooky.”

As an example of this kind of analysis of a supernatural story, Edwards retold a tale in his book, a story frequently told in a community close to the Mountain Meadows Massacre site. According to the story, a local woman adopted an infant who was spared in the massacre, and while the adoptee parent was gardening, a woman dressed in all white clothing appeared and asked if she could see the baby. The adoptee-mother agreed and watched the ghost-mother walk into the home, only to find the peaceful apparition totally gone within moments of entering the doorway.

“Why would a community share that story, real or not?” Edwards asked. “It’s a way of making themselves feel better about what happened. Here’s a massacre victim coming back and saying, ‘I’m at peace. Thank you for taking care of my child.’ There’s no acknowledgement of guilt there. That’s the community trying to make itself feel better about the massacre, and, in some ways, trying to cover it up.”

One of the final chapters of Edwards’ upcoming book covers legends of Navajo Skinwalkers. He said this is the one of the most commonly told monster stories among Southern Utah residents, and the stories drastically differ from the original Native American beliefs.

“I knew people were going to be picking up the book and hoping and expecting to find Skinwalkers, so I knew I had to have it in there,” Edwards said, “but how do you write about it when it’s something indigenous people don’t want to talk about?”

“I wanted to be sensitive to the fact that I didn’t want to further cultural appropriation. I wanted to address that and explore.”

Edwards conducted multiple interviews with Native Americans from multiple tribes, and he compared their stories and experiences of Skinwalkers with tales told by white Americans in Southern Utah cities who claim to have encountered Skinwalkers.

“It is fascinating to see the differences between the stories and see what we can learn from that,” he said.

After months of trying to set up an interview, he finally was able to meet with a Navajo woman who gave four personal, first-hand accounts of Skinwalkers, including one story of a group of Skinwalkers attempting to recruit her to use her own spiritual gifts to serve their group instead of the tribe. 

“I was getting chills listening to her tell me these four stories, and they’re just so different in context and flavor and detail from the non-native ones.”

Her stories about Skinwalkers were all domestic in point-of-view, enmeshed in a spiritual culture that grew independently from Western beliefs, Edwards said, instead of an Americanized view of a savage monster out in the wilderness.

Raised in American Fork, Utah, Edwards attended Utah State University for his B.A. in English and M.S. He taught English courses at Utah State for three years, and he taught creative writing classes at Dixie State University for four years. Eventually, he decided to take up his current job as a high school English teacher at St. George Academy, a college-prep school, where he teaches 11th and 12 graders.

His current administration allowed Edwards to create his own class at St. George Academy called “Academic Approaches to the Supernatural.”

“We look at things from a folkloristic perspective,” he said. “We don’t care whether ghosts are factually real or not. We don’t care whether or not Bigfoot is real or not. What we’re looking at is what is the cultural truth, the personal truth to these stories? I tried to put a lot of that into my book.”

“We also look at the scientific method, really giving students a firm understanding of what the scientific method is and then looking at things like pseudoscience and confirmation bias.”

Edwards has his class analyze shows like “Ghosthunters” that may claim they’re carrying out scientific investigations, but, Edwards said, they’re really not. He said he helps students see what an actual scientific search would entail, contrary to what the shows on television might include for entertainment.

“The kids love the class. It helps them think about things in two very different ways — the emotional truth and the verifiable, factual truth of things.”

Since he’s teaching in the Washington County community, Edwards said he knows the common religious views of the area, and he respects that. He said he helps his students see a different perspective regarding other cultures’ sacred spiritual stories that have turned into superstitious American ghost stories. 

“I always point out that the class isn’t arguing against religion or belief. We’re just trying to better understand them as what they are, and it’s actually very helpful to point out — like when we talk about Skinwalkers, which I have a chapter on in my book — the theft of Native American beliefs and cultural appropriation.”

One example is how he helps Latter-day Saint students imagine how they would feel if people dressed up in sacred clothing of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints for Halloween. He said he then helps the students empathetically apply that perspective to Native American spiritual beliefs, particularly to a Southern-Utahan, Caucasian perspective on Skinwalkers as a spooky monster story.

Although eager to share his work and the discoveries he uncovered from his research, Edwards acknowledged the adversity his book will likely face.

“I’m expecting some pushback on the book,” he said. “You can’t talk about the Mountain Meadows Massacre in any way without upsetting people. I try to get things very balanced, but for a lot of people in this community, ‘balanced’ is not going to feel balanced — it’s going to feel like an attack. But I hope that members of the Church will think critically and will appreciate the balance I tried to bring to this book.”

“When I talk about the interaction between pioneers and Native Americans, that’s going to feel like an attack. It’s not, though. It’s just a reckoning of what really happened, and we need to look at that.”

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