Paved-over Graveyards in Bosnia: The Agency of the Dead, Personal Experience Narratives, and Legends in the Media

In this article I discuss Bosnian Muslim narratives about traffic accidents and other misfortunes that occur in places where the dead were disturbed in their graves, transmitted orally and in the media. I first discuss vernacular notions about the dead exhibiting agency when their graves were being paved over, built over, removed or disturbed in any other way. I then discuss the roles that the narration of these stories may play for the members of the conduit. Finally, I argue that new details and interpretations that were introduced once the oral narratives entered the public media affected the overall role of the narratives about the disturbed dead – converting them from moral agents into vehicles of the ethnonationalist agenda.