“Politics is downstream from culture,” people like to say online — which is just a re-statement of something that I have long believed, that “Life imitates Art.”
Maybe I am just reflecting my online environment and the podcasts that I listen to, but folklore is suddenly big. My feed has a lot of British contributors in it; some have MA’s in folklore, which won’t get you a teaching job but maybe will give you the skills to write, make videos, and so forth.
So there is a plethora of podcasts, such as the Modern Fairy Sightings podcast, hosted by Jo Hickey-Hall, one of Ronald Hutton’s former graduate students. Zines like I haven’t seen them since pre-Internet days. One of my favorites is Hellebore, edited by Maria Pérez Cuervo, also a former grad student (fill in the blank).
So this is also niche stuff, but you have to add it up.
The Epigram, Bristol University’s independent student newspaper, just this week published an article “The Old Gods- The Resurgence of Paganism and Folklore,“
These traditions may seem to belong to another time – yet interest in paganism and folklore is growing across the globe. Shamanism, although not an organised faith, is the fastest growing religion in England and Wales, according to the 2011 and 2022 censuses. In the US, the number of Wicca adherents is now over 1.5 million. Wicca, founded in the early half of the 20th century by Gerald Gardner, is one of the most influential and popular branches of the modern neopagan movement, with a complex variety of branches, denominations and traditions across the world.
I am not sure where those numbers come from, so just consider them to be “hand-waving.” Counting Pagans is a real difficult problem.

North America’s Pagan resurgence, should one occur, is going to look different. But there are cross-overs. Just today I stopped at the nearest small-town grocery store. This guy was stocking the shelves (not one of the employees that I recognized, so maybe new), and he was wearing a big ol’ Mjölnir amulet around his neck, maybe a reproduction of the one at the linked page.
Profiles always mention Gerald Gardner, described by one who knew him (“Robert,” Brenner, M.J., Profiles in Paganism #1, 1991) as totally without charisma, yet they never mention the woman behind the throne, Doreen Valiente! I surmise she wrote every word published by Gardner as his own, as he was also barely literate. And she is never given credit for the lunar ceremonies, “High Magic’s Aid,” and Gardner’s other writings. Without her, nobody would remember GG except as a weird old man with funny ideas.
I’m thinking that an American Pagan resurgence will probably look more to European folklore and adapting it to American settings than to American folklore on its own. And maybe to popular entertainment or more organized expressions of folkloric themes.
On my visits to Mt. Shasta, I was open to meeting St. Germain, witnessing Bigfoot from a safe distance, and avoiding Deros. All at the same time. And I understood that “Ghost Riders in the Sky” alluded to the Wild Hunt.
Maybe as cryptids have a cult like following, Mothman is got a lot of love in my neck of the woods. But i think one of the reasons European folklore is more popular is 1. its considered older 2. digging into indigenous mythology comes with a warning label of appropriation, and 3. a lot of American folklore is tainted with colonialism and genocide so no one wants to touch it. We got cowboy hats and blood on our hands. so Fairys and Renn fair garb is more innocent to cling to than Paul Bunyon and Davy Crocket.
I’m with you partway — about the cryptids. Otherwise, I would say that Old West folklore is huge, for example. Think of ghost-hunting tours in places like Tombstone, Arizona, for example, I wrote a little book when I was younger: Ghost Tales of Cripple Creek (Colorado). But we call it ghost-hunting, not “folklore,” which is interesting.
Or consider the 1948 C&W hit song “Ghost Riders in the Sky,” whose writer said it was inspired by a story he was told as a boy. It resonates with people as an American Wild Hunt with echoes of “The Flying Dutchman.”