Tristen insists that the myth, like so much folklore, must have some basis in fact, while Stephen, a diehard rationalist, is convinced the Blair Witch legend is nothing more than mass hysteria.
He grew up around "so much folklore that it was a direct influence, and I am still working from that place," Espinosa told the Miami Herald in 2003.
In recent years, developmental specialists have found that there is a scientific basis for this folklore -- so much so that they have come up with an "orchid hypothesis".
Mathews defends her work, and while the scientific duel goes on, Paul smartly concludes: "Perhaps these posited explanations have merit, or perhaps they are modern-day versions of the folklore that surrounds so much of pregnancy, and fetal sex in particular.
"When you talk to companies about how they recruit, so much of it is based on folklore and habits," says Chait. "They're in the dark about how many candidates they should have, or when they bring candidates in, how should they evaluate them.
For him, relics of repression have dwindled into tourist kitsch: "So much of it has been turned into folklore now".
The former world champion Mark Williams famously described the venue as "a shithole", unwittingly adding his own unwanted chapter to its folklore by upsetting locals so much he became one of the few players in snooker history to get booed into the arena.
Ed Miliband's rise to the leadership of the Labour Party which he claimed on September 25th, defeating his elder brother David not so much narrowly as barely was nothing like as unexpected as folklore is threatening to record.True, David had long enjoyed leader-in-waiting status, and had toyed with challenging Gordon Brown as prime minister more than once.
Its folklore was an inspiration: "We went not so much for religion as a belief in monsters and bogies and ghosts".
Pittsburgh, a program already known for hard-nosed basketball, has overcome so much physical pain and so many obstacles that its season already sounds like folklore.
Is it possible that Hope resented Kilvert's posthumous fame so much that she destroyed not only the diary, but also his collection of local folklore, some of which she had published under her own name?
