Connie Regan-Blake changed her life the day she jumped off a 3,000-foot cliff in New Zealand.

“Everything was different after that,” Regan-Blake said. “I had invited out a daredevil that I didn’t even know existed inside me.”

This story and several more captivated the audience at the 32nd annual Alabama Tale-Tellin’ Festival Friday and Saturday night.

The other featured storytellers were Rev. Robert Jones, right, and his wife, Sister Bernice Jones, who described their family history and a Sunday morning at church and later Sunday afternoon watching football. For their stories, the couple performed them through song.

The Dill Pickers, a vocal string band from Birmingham, also performed between tellers.

“I think the storytellers are just great,” said Kathryn Tucker Windham, local storyteller and the closing teller of the evening. “They tell stories in many ways, in words, music, pictures, songs.”

Kathy Burgette drove two hours from Morris to listen to the storytellers.

“It’s something you don’t see anymore,” Burgette said. “I just like to listen. It makes me tell my children stories of things that happened so they’ll know to tell their children.”