Author Archives: Dalton Chancellor

Purge the Legendary Pokemon

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The Pokemon video game franchise has a long history of fan-circulated legends and hoaxes. One such hoax was created during the 4th Generation of Pokemon games, utilizing Pokemon Diamond for Nintendo DS. A false pokemon named Purge, whose graphics did not resemble anything close to any other Pokemon found in the game, was featured in a number of videos on Youtube. These videos purported the existence of Purge as well as building on the lore of how to obtain it.

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The Informant was an avid Pokemon player in primary school, as was her twin brother. The two would watch a large number of videos on Youtube about secret/fake Pokemon and try to use their instructions in order to unlock the secret Pokemon for their selves. The Informant said that she and her brother also talked to other children on the playground about these hoaxes (as though they were not hoaxes). One such way that they discussed how to obtain Purge was to “evolve a Bidoof in a specific way on some particular route, and you have to be holding a specific item”. She identified Purge as being the Fake Pokemon that she was the most invested in.

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This tradition in particular is founded in Internet Culture because of the nature of sharing screen recordings of the supposed gameplay. Doctored screenshots and gameplay footage being shared across epistemic groups have the ability to spread like wildfire, and the members of those groups are supposedly people who deeply enjoy the popularity they receive from the group that they belong to (in this case, the fanbase of the Pokemon video game franchise). When the informant was voraciously consuming this sort of content, she was still in primary school and had enough free time to spend hours on investigating digital legends.

紅衣小女孩 | Red-Shirted Girl in the Mountain

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When people travel through the mountains (台中風動石, a mountain whose name the Informant tells me loosely translates to “Wind Moving Rock”), they will sometimes see a little girl dressed in red. If she begins to follow you, “bad things happen”. The Informant goes on to suggest “maybe the girl will possess you”, and explains that “you have to say other people’s names or you will be possessed until you die”.

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The little girl is believed to be a “Mountain Spirit” which has transferred their self into a little girl, wearing red. One family, between 1999 and 2000, went up to this mountain and recorded videos of their family walking through the trail in a line. When they reviewed the footage, they saw that there was a girl in the line of family members who was not a part of their family. She stands out because of the red she is wearing. One of the family members ended up dying afterwards, and the video was given to a TV Station in order to broadcast it. The Informant stated that “some people say that it’s maybe because the resolution of the video is too low” and implied that the presence of the girl was just a visual aberration due to the VHS-era technology it had been recorded on.

The story was made into a movie in 2015 called “The Tag-Along”.

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The elements of Nature Spirits being mixed with technology (VHS cameras, potentially capturing the existence of such a spirit) is interesting in that it creates a mystical story related to the cultural heritage and geographic identity of Taiwan that can still be recorded and distributed via the then-40-year-old infrastructure of television stations.

Religious Proverb

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“A person without religion is like a dog without a bone.”

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The informant was told this proverb by his great-grandmother, who also believed that dogs did not go to Heaven because they did not have souls.

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This seems to be a highly-religious proverb in that it extolls the human need for religion. Dogs are known to deeply enjoy bones, and be far happier when chewing on one. As such, this proverb is implying that people are happier when they have religion than when they do not have religion.

Gravity Hill Near Echo Mountain

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A “Gravity Hill” is a popular occurrence across California: a hill with a downward slope that, due to its surroundings, appears to be an upward slope. Because of this, cars are able to slowly roll down the hill and appear as though they are being pulled uphill. It has been said that at one such hill near Echo Mountain, if you cover the back of your car in powder and leave it for some amount of time and come back, you will find small childrens’ handprints left behind in the powder on your car.

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The informant began by talking about Echo Mountain and the lore surrounding it, of which much is distressing and and some is true. The Jet Propulsion Lab nearby had, she insisted she had confirmed, employed “some bigwig” who was also the leader of a satanic cult. Anything that follows, she acted as though was pure speculation.

In some of the camping trails in Altadena, the satanic cult which the bigwig led would meet and perform animal sacrifices. Somewhere nearby there was a mansion at the base of one of the Altadena Camping Trails which was supposedly the hose to local KKK meetings. It is near this mansion, “on the same street”, that the gravity hill is.

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A gravity hill on its own doesn’t require much explanation, as it is simply an optical illusion. The added element of “invisible children are pushing your car” is what interested me the most about this urban legend. I think the intention is to imply that the children are ghosts, which would line up with the number of uncomfortable stories floating around about the area in which the gravity hill can be found. This would be very easy to disprove, so I think it probably exists more as a joke which stemmed from the reputation of the area.

Fairy Houses

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Wherever there are open spaces in trees, such as stumps or open knots, a “Fairy House” can be built. Fairy Houses are collections of leaves, rocks, twigs, crystals, beads, and anything else that can be fashioned into things resembling furniture and treasure. The goal of these assemblages is to attract fairyfolk into one’s local park or garden.

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While the informant was in elementary school in Pasadena, CA, children would go outside into a playground area for lunch. While outside, children were informed by teachers of the idea of “Fairy Houses” as well as how to build them. When she went home and asked her parents about these structures , they confirmed and reinforced what she had been taught on the playground. While interviewing this informant, one of our mutual friends overheard this story and chimed in to confirm that she had also participated in this tradition in Mississippi. The informant went on to explain that the Fairy Houses would often only last for 1-3 days, her theory was that students from other lunch periods may have gone around dismantling them.

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This tradition seems to me to promote creativity as well as exploration in children. As opposed to climbing trees, which could potentially harm the trees, the building of Fairy Houses does not appear to do any harm to the tree or stump. The construction of furniture and collection of enticing objects, like crystals or beads, also feels similar to the way that young girls learn to arrange home decor using doll houses. It instills from an early age that shiny, colorful things are desirable.