by Virginia A. Hirsch
The author leads the “Ghosts and Legends of Old Bayfield” walk as Mrs. D. Emmons.
A summer moon shimmers on Lake Superior, but it doesn’t penetrate the foliage of the ancient maples surrounding the old courthouse. A dozen guests are gathered on the dark side of the square, caught in the web of the walking storyteller as she weaves true tales of ghostly encounters, haunted houses, and chilling historic events: “Mary peered up the stairwell of the deserted building, but now she could hear the ghostly footsteps as they passed overhead on the upper floor. In a quivering voice, she asked again, ‘Who’s there?’” Seemingly in response, a dog on the other side of the square howls mournfully, “WooWooWooWoow.” The crowd laughs, the storyteller’s spell is temporarily broken. The storyteller laughs, too. The path of the walking storyteller is filled with the unexpected, including rain, hail, lightning, bats, and bugs, to name a few. Just go with the flow. She will have the audience back in a minute.
A walking storyteller? Yes! Walking storytellers are interpretive guides who literally take their craft “on the road.” They bring to life the challenges, hardships, triumphs, foibles, loves, and losses of people, places, and times. As storytelling guides, they make a dynamic contribution to understanding historic sites, homes, towns, cemeteries, battlegrounds, parks, and museums—any place with a story that needs to be told. In this case, the storyteller takes guests on walks through the historic town of Bayfield in northern Wisconsin, storytelling its history. At night there is a ghostwalk with guests carrying candle lanterns; by day, walks incorporate historic sites and a cemetery. Utilizing the skill of storytelling creates informative, interesting, and memorable interpretive walks.
But why a storyteller? Because the story format is the easiest way for guests of all ages to enjoy, understand, and remember the information. A story has a special impact on people’s emotions so that its kernel of truth—wisdom, folly, success, terror, humiliation, etc.—will be remembered long after details of dates and names may be forgotten. A “walking storyteller,” who may be in the costume and persona of an actual or representative person, combines the best skills of the interpretive guide, actor, and storyteller. Developing storytelling skills will be an asset to anyone who is engaged in cultural and historic interpretation. It can also be a useful tool for those working in natural history, science, ecology, or other areas of interpretation.
Doug Lowthian assumes the role of an early 1900s newspaper reporter on the “More Ghosts and Legends of Old Bayfield” walk.
The starting point in developing a storytelling walk is a strong theme—the central idea that helps to select, then ties together the various stories to be told. The central theme of the Bayfield walks is the history of that community. Its subthemes vary with the walk but include stories of individuals and groups of people—snapshots of how they lived, labored, recreated, celebrated, and persevered in boom times and bust times.
Of course having good stories to tell is a key ingredient. In the context of a walking storyteller, a good story is true (unless it is presented as a legend), it has human-interest appeal (love, courage, good vs. evil, etc.), it connects in a meaningful way to a particular site on the walk, and it fits into the overall theme of the walk—the big picture. The sum of the stories told is history revealed in a meaningful and unforgettable way.
A good mix of stories on a historic walk could include dramatic, traumatic, or humorous events, stories about or incidents from the lives of founding fathers (and mothers), stories about a particular building or site, and stories that reveal what life was like at that point in history. Using Bayfield as an example, its most traumatic event was the Great Flood of 1942. Standing on the Old Iron Bridge overlooking the town, the storyteller helps the guests to envision the terrible July night that destroyed much of the downtown: collapsing buildings, cars buried under sand, the railroad knocked off its tracks, a section of the cemetery washed out, and coffins floating down the main street toward the lake.
The local Episcopal church is an example of a site rich in stories. Built in 1870, its first vicar was sent as a missionary from Scotland. He almost destroyed the church when he tried to stuff the kerosene stove with wood and light it to heat the church. That provides a great lead-in to stories about the hardships endured by early clergy of all faiths who served this isolated frontier community. They fought wildfires, blizzards, and treacherous Lake Superior storms serving distant communities on foot, on snowshoes, or by rowboat. They hunted to feed their families and helped to birth their own children, many of whom did not survive infancy.
The church’s Carpenter Gothic “gingerbread” architecture is photogenic. Built with lumber from northern Wisconsin’s immense white pine forests, it also offers an ecology story: the widely proclaimed “endless” supply of timber was clear-cut in fewer than 70 years. Here, a picture is worth a thousand words. The storyteller shows an 1886 engraving of Bayfield. “Look at the background. All that is ‘endless’ are receding waves of hills with the ugly stubble of huge stumps.”
Some of the town’s leading historic figures are a gift to storytellers. They have lived lives full of interesting stories that make what could be a dull telling delightful! The basic facts about William Knight are pretty mundane. He arrived in Bayfield in 1869, grew rich as a lumber baron, founded the first bank in Bayfield, married a visiting Scottish lady, was an avid gardener, and established the first of the area’s now famous apple orchards. Yawn!
It is the stories that illuminate life in 1900 Bayfield and make William a memorable person. He didn’t own the first car in Bayfield but he owned the second and third (what a show-off), and like Toad of Toad Hall, got into a lot of trouble with them (clouds of blue smoke, ear splitting roars, smash-ups, and flip-overs). Despite local ordinances, cows ran rampant in town and when one used her horn to “pick the lock” on William’s garden gate and regularly decimated his prize vegetable patch, he finally resorted to his trusty “.22” to deal with her. She staggered off to die on the front lawn of the Presbyterian church—where she obviously went to say her last prayers. William’s and his wife’s ghosts are still in residence in the lovely Queen Anne mansion he built in 1892, providing a haunting love story for the ghostwalk!
Nellie Tate, an 1870s resident and wife of Bayfield’s first druggist, leads a lighthearted history walk. Her stories (gleaned from her four diaries) are of wild sleigh rides on the frozen lake, sneaking off on lazy summer days to go fishing, and sledding down Cooper’s Hill with her girlfriends. She has been known to startle tour guests by asking the ladies how they handle the buttonhole on their husband’s shirts when they turn the collars to make them last longer. “Do you make a new hole or do you reuse the old one on the opposite side?” When dreaded nor’easters forced sailing vessels to seek shelter in Bayfield’s harbor, Nellie was often called on to provide food and beds to stranded travelers on a moment’s notice. Sadly, Nellie, like so many women of her generation, succumbed to tuberculosis. Her stories reveal what life was like in early Bayfield.
Most stories don’t come to the walking storyteller ready-made. A good story is more than just “talking points.” It needs to be crafted so that it relates the essential facts and uses words and concepts to create the desired emotional response in the listener—laughter, empathy, anticipation, revulsion—universal feelings that people relate to. It also needs to be told in a “foot-friendly” amount of time. People like to walk but they get restless if they have to stand still very long. A good story is often pieced together from a variety of different sources, making the storyteller part detective, part historian, and part wordsmith.
Finally, the story needs to be told using the tools of any good storyteller: a sense of drama, timing, pacing, vocal control, meaningful movement, and an ability to “read” the audience. For this reason, many good storytellers have some background or training in acting. The walking storyteller also needs a good set of legs and feet, physical stamina, clothing for every kind of weather condition, excellent diction, ability to project their voice without straining their vocal cords, and a good sense of humor. The sense of humor is especially important when that dang dog howls at the story’s high point of suspense and the audience dissolves into laughter!
Virginia A. Hirsch is founder and owner of Bayfield Heritage Tours, LLC, a walking tour business located in Bayfield, Wisconsin. She has a Ph.D. in theatre and 29 years of experience as a teacher, arts coordinator, storyteller, and facilitator/trainer. She recently completed certification as an NAI Interpretive Guide. She can be contacted at bayfieldtours@earthlink.net.
Back in the ’90s, some of our friends moved to Cedar Rapids, Iowa. This was right around when the fast-food chain Arby’s was looking to set itself apart from the competition. They tried a campaign where they appealed to adults’ wishes to eat somewhere without a ball crawl, happy meals, and screaming children. What they came up with was the campaign “Satisfy your grown-up tastes.” Perhaps you remember the commercials.
