Author Archives: Irene Wang

The Doheny Library Book Thief

Information about the Informant

My informant is a librarian working in Special Collections at USC’s Doheny Library. She first told me this story as an example of real security breaches that have occurred at Doheny Library. This is her second telling of the story to me.

Transcript

“So, I don’t know the dates exactly, but I think it was the 1990s. There was a guy Blumberg, and I don’t even remember his first name. I was gonna look it up, but you told me not to. Um, and I had heard of this guy, probably in library school, and then when I came to USC, I was on a security task force, talking about security of rare books and materials, and they kept mentioning, ‘Blumberg,’ and how there was a major theft in the 1990s from some USC Special Collections and Rare Books. Uh, and so, I heard that he–so this guy Blumberg, he was a totally obsessive collector. He collected not just books, but vintage doorknobs and all sorts of things, but my story’s mostly about the books, so in the 90s, he successfully stole millions of dollars worth of rare books from major institutions all over the country. And he would really do his homework, so I know at USC, I learned that he scoped us out for…I don’t even know how long, but he had been spotted in weird places, looking for how our security probably had any kind of holes. And then he ended up shimmying up the dumbwaiter system, which was used to reshelve books between floors in the stacks, and it had been deactivated. He shimmied up the dumbwaiter system, and that’s how he gained access to our closed stacks. And he stole a bunch of rare books, and he kept them in his warehouse. And when he was arrested, and he was sent to jail, when he was arrested, they found a warehouse which is–I think it was his home, but it was full of rare books. They were everywhere; they were in the bathroom, they were in the kitchen, they were just stacked up everywhere. And these were really expensive acquisitions from major institutions. And he had removed a lot of the…sort of…things we do to identify the books, so any kind of book stamp that we might have used or an embossing system. We try to do all these different things to identify the books as ours in case they are stolen. He removed all of those, so when the police were trying to sort of divvy out what books were whose, we couldn’t get all of our books back. So I think, we heard [other Special Collections staff member] say the other day that somebody from USC had to fly to the middle of the country and say, like–Indiana, maybe? I’m not sure. And try to identify all of the USC books that had been stolen. And we were only success–I–[Special Collections staff member] said about a third, um, she’s the [redacted for confidentiality purposes], she said we got about a third of the books back, but I don’t know the actual number.”

Analysis

As the story was originally told to me when I was discussing (as a student worker in Special Collections) the tight security that guarded that section of the library, there is the implicit warning that 1. the security precautions were there for a good reason and that 2. every worker in Special Collections must also be on the lookout for strange people in the restricted area. In fact, my informant told me after telling her story that she hears about people being in the Special Collections stacks that shouldn’t be there, and though they are usually students who have gotten off on the wrong floor because of an elevator issue, whenever she hears about such incidents, she always wonders if it’s yet another book thief or even Blumberg himself. Most of the staff members that work in Special Collections today were not working there during the 1990s when Blumberg struck. (Some were working in Doheny Library, but not in Special Collections.) But it’s a story that all of them know, usually through word of mouth. I suspect it is circulated amongst the Special Collections workers usually for the purpose of making them more security-conscious, but it’s also gained somewhat of a legendary status.

To my informant, the strange part of the story for her was voiced by(she read this in a book after hearing the story) a member of the Mafia who went to visit Blumberg in jail, and asked him, “Why books?” It’s quite possibly the question on everyone’s mind after hearing that Blumberg stole books and then simply kept them in a warehouse. He never tried to sell the books. He sincerely believed that he could take better care of the books than the libraries he stole them from could. My informant saw the irony in mocking him for this belief as this is exactly what libraries do. They procure books from various places and keep them in their own housing because they believe they can take care of the books.

But another aspect of Blumberg’s belief comes into play when the story is circulated amongst the library staff. He believed that he could take care of the books better than anyone else could and yet, from the story my informant told me, it sounds like the books were kept in abysmal and definitely not book-safe conditions. They were stacked up everywhere, in the bathroom, in the kitchen. I believe that my informant’s specific mention of these two locations reveals a deeper fear that this story induces in specifically library staff. As any person trained in the basics of book preservation knows, the most dangerous source of damage for books is water, with heat/fire being a close second. The idea that Blumberg was storing these books in his bathroom, where they could be exposed to water easily, and in the kitchen, where, even worse, they could be exposed to both water and heat easily, is a librarian’s nightmare. This is what makes Blumberg into a dangerous figure for those working in libraries instead of merely a, frankly, amusing eccentric. My informant speculated that Blumberg had to have had some sort of mental disorder for him to have done what he did and to think that he could take care of the books when he clearly had no idea what he was doing. For a staff member of Special Collections, the horror of Blumberg’s actions could very well serve to turn him into a figure of legend, a book thief whom library security cannot stop and who could unwittingly destroy centuries worth of rare books by making away with them.

Never carry a gun

Information about the Informant

My informant is a professor teaching English and American Literature at the University of Southern California. He grew up in Chicago during the 1950s, and fought in the latter half of the Vietnam War. After that, he returned and received his degree in English Literature at UC Irvine. He has worked on many textbooks and movies that deal with the Vietnam War.

Transcript

“Same man…who was a professional burglar…taught me to never carry a gun. Because, he said, if you carry a gun, you’re gonna have to take it out. And if you take it out, you’re gonna have to use it, because if you don’t use it, the son of a bitch you’re pointing it at is gonna take it away from you and use it on you. So, never carry a gun.”

Analysis

Practical advice, but also folklore as it has been passed down by word of mouth from person to person such that even I, who grew up in Taiwan and has been nowhere near Chicago, have heard a variant of this piece of advice. I have heard this advice given not just about guns, but about knives and about Mace. An interesting comparison can be made between this piece of folklore that my informant gave me and the similar advice I’ve heard. In my case, the example I’m thinking of was about Mace, and it was told to me as a reason why girls should not carry Mace pepper spray around with them to defend themselves with, because it could so easily be turned around and used on the girl if she was not careful or if she hesitated at all. Which seemed to me at the time a bit sexist and troublesome as its core message seemed to be that I, as a girl, should not carry items that I could use in case of being attacked. But here, it sounds more like practical advice, because it was told to a male, and was told to my informant by a purported criminal who would be more likely to know these things firsthand, and thus the advice has more of accuracy associated with it.

USC Haunted House

Information about the Informant

My informant is a USC undergraduate student majoring in Theatre. He used to have a major in the cinematic arts, and acted in a few student films produced by his fellow students.

Transcript

“So I was filming a student film here on campus a couple years ago. Uh, it was a–I was like–the film never actually got produced but I was a killer. I was like a serial killer or something. With all his–it was real–all like themed killings. It’s all pretty…insane. And, uh. We didn’t have a permit. So we got approached by a DPS officer. And we were all scared we were gonna get like…or the director at least was scared that we were gonna get busted. I didn’t care ’cause, you know, I’m just the actor. I can’t be held accountable for any of this. Uh. And… But she doesn’t say anything, she actually, uh, starts…talking to us and I forget how…this came up. But she starts talking about this house near campus. And uh, this is at night. And apparently this house near campus is haunted. And…because she said that like fellow officers have been in it to like…look at stuff or whatever, and there’ve been voices and moving things, spooky stuff. And uh, she said that apparently a family lived there, and…two–I’m pretty sure it was only two of the members of the family are…actually there as ghosts now. And they’ve been…messing with stuff, and…I think she said–yeah, she said one of them is friendly and the other one’s pretty…spiteful and vindictive. Uh. And so basically it’s not a place you wanna go. And I don’t know where it is. But…it’s around here somewhere.”

Analysis

Finally, a ghost story about USC. According to my informant, he had no real personal reason for remembering this story that the DPS officer told; he remembered it because it was part of the larger story that almost got their filming crew “busted.” But for me, and possibly for any other USC student hearing the story, it’s interesting because it presents a side to the DPS that we as students don’t normally hear about. It raises interesting questions as to why the DPS investigate this house that often in the first place and how the story is told amongst themselves. When one of them is told to go investigate it, how does he or she feel about this if he or she has been told about the supposed history of this house? It is curious that this story does not circulate amongst the student population of USC as ghost stories usually thrive amongst young adults around college-age, especially when it involves a location near them. Perhaps this can be attributed to the fact that this house is probably not one open to the public and thus the only legal reason a person would have for ever entering the house is to investigate it for some official reason, as the DPS officers do in this account. But it is still odd that even rumors of this house have not appeared en masse amongst the students and that even a Google search for haunted locations in the USC area turns up nothing except staged haunted houses for the purposes of Halloween celebrations.

Math Classroom Ghost

Information about the Informant

My informant is an English teacher at a high school in Southern California, and has been teaching for over twenty-five years. She has been featured as an Influential Teacher of the Month within the last five years, and has received great reviews and praise from her former students as a teacher who cares about and motivates her students to succeed. I met her next to Tommy Trojan when she brought her class to USC campus on a college visit and she gave me this school ghost story in the short time before she had to collect her class.

Transcript

“I teach at the oldest high school in [school name and location removed]. And there is a common story that, um, circulates. And that is that one of the math classes is haunted. And so everyone goes in, I–usually on a Thursday morning, and you can note the differences in air temperature. Um, on a Thursday morning, you can, at any other time, on any other day. So, we really believe that something is going on in that school, or in that room, or something occurred there that–and that is an ongoing reminder to us that something negative occurred in there, because it’s always cold.”

Collector: “Is there any, like, theory as to what it might be?”

“From my kids? No, we’ve no theory. We have no idea because we cannot, um, there’s no accounting of anything had ever happened in there. So it could be that prior to the building being built, that some violent occurrence was there. Maybe, you know, some, uh, early settlers or maybe some of the indigenous people, or something like that that was in–that was, gave that piece of land or that little area kind of a negative quality.”

Analysis

When asked how this possibly haunted classroom affected people at the school, whether staff members or students, my informant told me that all it seemed to do was reaffirm the beliefs that the students or staff members already had. For those students (and possibly members of the staff) who already believed in an afterlife that included ghosts or some sort of spiritual remnant left in the world after death, the story “gives credence” to that belief. But for those who did not believe in ghosts, they simply believed the unnatural cold was due to “wind pattern or something.”

This is an interesting example as it’s an instance of a ghost story where there is no actual ghost, but merely an unnatural phenomenon that could easily be attributed to a natural cause. It’s interesting to observe because, rather than attribute the cold to a problem with the cooling system or weather patterns, it seems like people at the school are more than willing to try to find a “supernatural” explanation for the cold, even undertaking, it sounds like, research into the history of the school to find out if anything violent had ever occurred on the school’s property. It’s an interesting example because it provides a look at how an experience may turn into a memorate, the process by which an experience can become a memorate, where the experience is something strange but explainable and those involved instead search for a way to incorporate it into the genre of ghost stories, using the tropes about ghost stories that they already know (e.g. that if there is a ghost, there must have been some violent incident in the past; that settlers or indigenous people may have cursed the ground long ago).

Crow’s Mouth

Information about the Informant

My informant is a freelance editor and translator living in Taiwan. She was born in Taiwan and has lived there essentially her whole life, except for a few years in America. I asked her specifically about this proverb that I’d heard my grandma tell me when I was young as I’d never really understood it, and she told me the origin of the proverb and how it became the version that I heard as a child.

Transcript

“‘Having a crow’s mouth.’ Because we Chinese believe—no, not believe, Chinese always claim that crows are bad luck. The story’s very simple. It’s just…we feel the crow—because it’s black, so it’s bad luck. So when it—and other people say…uh…most of the time, it’s just that we believe, it may go against biology, but we believe that most of the time, crows don’t speak. That they don’t go, ‘Wah, wah, wah, wah.’ So when they do speak, it’s that bad things are about to happen. That it’s kind of like…a…prophet, can predict, can tell you that bad luck or bad things are coming. So, so, when they speak, they just…they tell you that you will have misfortune—not necessarily you, not you specifically, just somewhere around there or Taiwan or something. Just that there’ll be misfortune.

So then people started saying ‘having a crow’s mouth,’ became like ‘you’re acting like…a crow.’ That is to say, what you say, after you say this thing, it’ll actually happen. So they’ll say you have ‘a crow’s mouth.’ But if…if a person says something and then it doesn’t happen, then it doesn’t count as ‘crow’s mouth.’

Collector: “But you…you—when you say someone has the ‘mouth of a crow,’ you don’t know yet if the thing will happen. Just, as soon as they say, ‘Oh, this bad thing might happen,’ then you need to say, ‘CROW’S MOUTH.’

‘Yes.’

Collector: So you haven’t even checked, to see if it’s really happened.

‘Yes. And, when it—when it first started, ‘crow’s mouth,’ this term was…was…changed—it was that the thing the person said, if it really happened, then we would berate him, saying, “It was you having a crow’s mouth.” That is, for instance, uh, we at NTCH [informant’s work place], each of us wishes…wishes that our boss won’t, won’t do a certain thing. And then a person then, then says, ‘Oh!’—never mind, if we, let me give an example, for instance, we have our first day off, we just had, let me see, Memorial Day. And the day before we get Memorial Day off, someone says, ‘Let’s hope that…after the holiday ends, the first day we come back to work, we don’t get called to a…kind of…meeting…that starts at 8 in the morning and lasts till 7 in the evening kind of meeting.’ I’ve heard that the person who likes our English writings, that boss has that kind of meeting a lot. And then…and then—because everyone thought he was just kidding, ‘No, no, no, that won’t happen,’ and then, yeah, the first day back at work, it actually happens that there’s a meeting from 8 in the morning, as soon as you get to the office, you get called to the meeting, lasting until the afternoon, 7 o’clock, getting home at 7 pm. And then people will yell at the person who said it, ‘You have a crow’s mouth.’ However, if it was this person, it happens that every thing he says like that always has this kind of effect, that is, whenever he says something, it always has this effect, for instance, he eats lunch, that one, that one, at that place that [a coworker of hers] took you to eat once, and then, the dish that they like to eat, they say, ‘I hope they’ll have that dish today,’ and then that person says again, ‘They won’t have that dish today because it’s that…um…that—lately that dish has been going up in price. They definitely won’t use that dish.’ And then when they go, they really don’t have that dish, they’ll say, ‘You had a crow’s mouth!’ And then…um…in the future, when he talks, people will say, ‘Don’t have a crow’s mouth,’ to stop him first. So when he’s prepared to—before he, um, starts to talk, you have to say, ‘Don’t have a crow’s mouth.’ But then, that is, nowadays, um—actually, Taiwanese people are becoming more and more superstitious. Because we’re having more and more bad luck. Don’t we say a lot that we are a bad luck family? The whole country, it has more and more of a workload, things like that. Less and less money. Then everyone starts to become really nervous, whenever someone starts to say something, they say, ‘Don’t have a crow’s mouth!’ Meaning in case, meaning if you say it, then it’ll become a bad thing. So, this phrase became a sort of ‘stop someone from becoming’—it’s superstitious, in case what they say becomes a thing that, um, comes true.”

Analysis

The meaning behind the proverb and how it became a preemptive warning instead of a way to blame someone after a misfortune is pretty clear in the transcript. I do agree with her that this change from a comment or exclamation after the fact to a warning (and the time I remember hearing my grandmother tell me the proverb, she did sound pretty horrified and frantic) does reflect a change in the culture of Taiwan. I don’t believe necessarily that it is due directly to a sort of economic crisis or “bad luck” for the whole island, but it does seem to at least reflect a change in behavior from a more relaxed one where such prophecies were not welcome but tolerated, to one that actively tries to prevent these prophecies from ever being made in the first place.

Original Chinese

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