Ethnomethods of Increasing the Believability of Extraordinary Claims: Strategies for the Presentation of Self

This chapter is based on the results of a larger project on people's beliefs in ghosts and their claims to have encountered them. Thirty-eight such people were interviewed in depth upon their assumed paranormal encounters. Primarily using Goffman's work on self-presentation and Mead's ideas on the past, as well as his concept of the generalized other, we examine the transcripts for “ethnomethods” used by the claimants telling of their experiences with ghosts as strategies for increasing or assuring the believability of their claims. Ten such methods were identified. These ethnomethods are likely to arise when the claimant, in evoking the concept of the generalized other, interprets the perception of their extraordinary claims as false, highly fanciful, or dubious.