Ghost Stories around the 2010 Eruption of Mount Merapi in Indonesia

Abstract

Ghost stories usually emerge after the tragic events such as war, riots, disaster, and accidents with many victims died. Who created them and why they were created, nobody knows. However, they circulated in the society and strongly influenced the behaviour of the people. Some theories mentions that ghost stories reveal the hidden messages which cannot be manifested in other ways because of the limited capacity of those who want to send that message. This paper studies ghost stories around the eruption of Mount Merapi in 2010. It concludes that the ghost stories reveal the messages from the grassroots about their social problems suppressing them.