The Practical Applications

Throughout our journey, we've seen how folklore serves practical functions:

Social Control: Stories of White Ladies who punish rudeness maintain courtesy. Legends of forest spirits who mislead the disrespectful preserve environmental balance.

Cultural Memory: Ghost stories preserve historical trauma—revolutionary violence, religious persecution, colonial exploitation. The spirits ensure nothing is forgotten.

Identity Formation: Regional folklore maintains local distinctiveness within national unity. Bretons remain Breton, Corsicans stay Corsican, even as all are French.

Psychological Processing: Urban legends help process contemporary anxieties about technology, immigration, and environmental collapse. The stories provide frameworks for understanding rapid change.

Community Building: Shared supernatural experiences create bonds. The neighbor who also sees the vanishing hitchhiker becomes ally against rational dismissal.