Ghosts, Animals, or Angels. Christian Story-Telling in a Modern World

Diane, a young Christian university student, was home for the summer. One evening she returned late from a visit to her friends. She walked quite alone through an alley and asked God to keep her from harm and danger. Halfway down the alley she noticed a man, looking like he was waiting for her. She prayed for protection and instantly a comfortable feeling of quietness and security surrounded her, as if someone was walking with her. She walked right past the man and arrived home safely. The following day she read in the paper that a young girl had been raped in the same alley, just twenty minutes after she had been there. She decided to go down to the police station. She could identify the man at a line-up. The man was arrested. She asked the policeman if he would ask the man why he had not attacked her. His answer was as simple as it was surprising: “Because she wasn’t alone. She had two tall men walking on either side of her.” This story was mentioned in an edifying book on angel apparitions, published in Grand Rapids, Michigan, in 1982 (MacDonald 1982: 75). It is the oldest variant I know of a story that is still circulating around the whole world, especially in orthodox Protestant circles. In the following I am going to give some examples that became known to me from folkloristic publications, from internet messages and from oral communication. I will also treat the classic story-type of Guardian Angels, of which in my opinion the aforementioned version is a modern transformation. In some older wonder-stories that are particularly widespread in Dutch Pietistic circle, pious girls do not play the main role but rather reverend pastors. In addition, I will compare these with some variants from English Methodism, in which pastors are also protected, but not by angels, but by riders on horse, stray dogs or even mysterious ghosts. 1