I always liked the spirit paths approach. Paul Devereaux books were first I read about the topic, and it seemed to meld perfectly with what folklore said on the topic, so that it seemed very much an elegant answer to me, as if someone was writing up in a scientific manner what I had always known from storytelling and folklore. Then again, he might have had a similar background with stories, and I know how they come back to haunt your thinking and beliefs in later life even when you think you are too old to be getting affected by them. I've had a couple of embarrassing incidences which leave me in no doubt I'm susceptible to suggestions from childhood myth under certain circumstances.

A few years back I read about the Kogi Indians of South America and their views on walking spirit paths, to cleanse and energise them, particularly at certain festivals, and that got me into looking at lots of shamanistic type cultures.

On another forum there were people saying a circle gave them a bad feeling, and a google showed a few people saying the same, all dating to when the farmer moved the pathways around so visitors didn't enter by an old path, but by a new one going past his collection tin.

Walking widdershins.... bad luck.