Author Neale Donald Walsh (Conversations with God) finds himself in the awkward position of being a well-known spiritual author with an apparent lapse of memory.
It turns out, according to the New York Times, that the personal Christmas essay he posted on beliefnet.com about a pageant his son was in wasn’t his essay and wasn’t about his son.
Candy Chand, the real author, published the story 10 years ago in “Clarity.” The essay also appeared in “Chicken Soup for the Christian Family Soul” in 200o.
The essay has been removed with Walsh saying that he’s been telling that story for years in speaking engagements with the absolute belief that it came out of his life. Walsh wonders if somebody sent it to him over the Internet years ago and it somehow became a part of his history.
Chand doesn’t think so.
Since it wasn’t my work that was lifted and claimed by another author, I’m free to say “I wonder” about this as I recall all the things that people in my life have told as yarns for so long, they could have passed a lie detector test on their belief in the truth of the events in spite of the fact they never happened. Not in their lives anyhow.
Nonetheless, I understand Chand’s skepticism.
Malcolm's Round Table 
I tend to get pretty cynical about things like that, but I know of several family members who remember entirely different accounts of events at which I was present myself and I know they believe their versions. To those I usually think, “huh?”.
Some people in my family tell me that things I remember being part of didn’t happen at all.
Malcolm
It is an interesting thing about family lore, how the truth is sometimes not at all important to the story. I’ve caught myself repeating a sibling’s creative nonfiction, only to late realize the error. Then again sometimes blurred memories are the mark of mercy, eh?
Sometimes those old stories turn into myths and parables where their relationship to reality and “ownership” become less important than the point one is illustrating by bringing them up. No harm, no foul, unless you’re using somebody’s copyrighted work. Yikes.
Malcolm
I have heard these type stories told (but none that I’ve known of written and claimed as own) but I have wondered lately about what I’ll call “preacher’s stories”. they often tell stories from the pulpit as if they happened to that preacher. then, they may tell them outside of that setting as well. I wonder how much stretching of the truth is really going on when telling these stories/parables/fables…I am all about teaching a lesson, but I don’t like having a story told w/o a disclaimer if it didn’t happen to the teller….so what if it didn’t happen to you, just say it happened to such and such a person, or “I read it” or whatever….why have to go and claim that it is something that happened to you. and yeah, as montucky says, it’s weird how we all remember a particular event in different ways.
well, not sure that comment makes much sense….
Silken, preacher’s stories is a good term for it, for preachers tell these kind of stories all the time. So do others who make a lot of inspirational speeches, including Walsh to be sure.
Usually these stories change over time to better meet the needs at the time. It’s hard to know how many of them ever happened or if they did happen, when or where it was.
Walsh might have such a vast repertoire of these, he just didn’t realize he mixed a copyrighted, printed piece into the mix when he was adding to his web log. You’re right, most people don’t say the stories happened to themselves or their families.
Malcolm