Author Archives: Napoleon Martinez

The Old Lady and Her Dog

Background: My informant was a young Filipino  girl who was born and raised in Sioux Falls, South Dakota. She currently is a student at the University of Minnesota studying Double B.A. Global Studies and Cultural Studies.

Performance Context: According to the informant, she was told this story a few weeks ago by her friend while they were camping. She then while listening remembered her own version of the stories. The two stories ended slightly different.

Main Piece: There was an old lady who lives by herself with a dog. Then there is this murderer going around killing people in “the town”, “wherever she lives”. She hears about it on the TV, so she gets really worried. She realizes that she lives by herself, kind of far from town, so she thinks he won’t come her. The dog normally lays next to her on the floor while she is sitting on her chair. To feel calm and to relax herself, she will always put her hand at the bottom of the chair and the dog will lick her hand. So one night, while she’s alone in her room sleeping, she wakes up kind of freaked out thinking of the murderer. While she’s laying on the bed, to reassure herself, she puts her hand down by her bed and her dog licks her hand. And then she goes back to sleep. Then she wakes up again and then she puts hand by the bedside again, and the dog licks her hand a second time. Then, what happens next differs between the two stories. In the story told by her friend, the morning comes and the woman goes to the backyard and she realizes that she accidentally left the dog tied up in the backyard all night. In the version my informant remembers, she goes to the bathroom and she opens the shower, where the dog is hanging and dead. On the wall of the shower written in blood is “you’re next.”

To the informant, it’s just a scary campside story. It’s scary because of the idea of a strange person licking your hand. It’s a fear based out of the idea of invasion of privacy.

My Thoughts: I think it is interesting because it talks a lot about how Americans often play this thematic motif of invasion of privacy. It derives out of our inability to cope with the idea, in a world that people find perhaps more confusing as information spreads, that there might be people in the unknown that may do unspeakable or strange twisted acts that disrupt our natural understanding of social boundaries and cultural rules. It’s an extension of the fear of the unknown as well as xenophobia.

Hide and Seek with a Teddy Bear

Background: My informant was a young Filipino  girl who was born and raised in Sioux Falls, South Dakota. She currently is a student at the University of Minnesota studying Double B.A. Global Studies and Cultural Studies.

NOTICE: This is the “same” folklore I reported in my Hitori Kakurenbo, but told from a different completely unrelated informant and using a slightly different series of steps. It is most interesting because they learned about it through hearsay rather than through media like the first informant. I will list what is the same below and then follow with a list of discrepancies between the two stories.

Performance Context: According to my informant, the story was told to her by her two friends who are of Chinese and Vietnamese descent. They are not Japanese, but due to their Asian heritage they may have had contact with the original story to some degree. They described the story as of “probably Japanese or Korean” origin.

The Same  

Main Piece: My informant described a strange sequence of rituals that is played by presumably young people who enact a “Bloody Mary”-style ritual to play hide and seek with a demon. You must complete a series of ritualistic actions in order to play with the demon through the medium of a doll. Again, like the original/prior reported, you first take a doll, name it, and you must fill up a bathtub with water. You are also again supposed to play alone and with all the lights off (though the informant did not mention electronics like the prior reported).

The Different

After this, there is many discrepancies in the story. Firstly, the doll is supposed to be something like a Teddy Bear, because you should not (according to the informant) use a human doll. Anything with limbs will do. Then you cut it open with something sharp, not necessarily a knife. In fact, it’s not recommended to be a knife as the doll is said to stab you with it (similar to the prior reported story). Next you must fill it with rice. After this, you have to put something of your body within as well. It can be fingernails or a drop of blood, but either way it must be from you. Then you have to sew it back up with red thread. You then stab the doll. You find a hiding spot. You put the teddy bear in the tub (as prior) and then you go hide. Then, the ending is similar to the other. With your knife, you go back into the bathroom, the teddy bear shouldn’t be there. Then you have to find it and then you have to stab it to kill it.

The informant thinks this type of supernatural event could be real. She did not know whether it was real or not, but she wouldn’t want to try because she wouldn’t want to find out. She seemed afraid and avoided eye contact with me a lot during her description of the story. This is very different from the last informant who previously described it as “psychotic”.

My Thoughts: I think it is interesting because it shows how there are different modes through which stories can be passed. Sometimes they are passed through authored and derivative work, and other times, hearsay and the internet spread the stories to the point of becoming beyond recognition of origin. This new story even used a specific non-Asian doll as the main centerpiece rather than a more traditional doll. It is really interesting to witness the multiplicity and variation myself, as I asked these two informants to separately provide me some folklore, neither of them knowing one another nor knowing they would tell me this story.

Hitori Kakurenbo (Hide and Seek By Yourself)

Background: My informant is a young screenwriter born and raised in California. She is a USC graduate in the screenwriting program. Currently she works on contract as a writer for several projects such as comics, television and podcasts.

Main Piece: My informant described a strange sequence of rituals that is played by presumably young people who enact a “Bloody Mary”-style ritual to play hide and seek with a demon. You must complete a series of ritualistic actions in order to play with the demon through the medium of a doll. You must play this game alone, at night, and with all lights and electronics off. First, you take a doll and name it. You fill up the bathtub with water. You say “for the first game, I’m going to be it”, drop it into the water, and then you run away. When you come back, you say “I won” and then you stab the doll three times and leave it in the bathroom.  After that you put the doll down in the bathroom, you hide and you wait. After that the urban legend has a few differences depending on the account. In one, you seek out the doll. Basically, after some time, you get up and you look for the doll. If done correctly, when you seek out the doll it will no longer be in the bathroom. When you find it, you must say “I win” three times in a row.  If you do not do the ritual correctly, supposedly the doll will find you instead and stab you three times, killing you. Another version has you instead of finding the doll, waiting in your hiding spot until sunrise, upon which then you chant “I win” three times in a row. Either way, to end it all, you are recommended to burn the doll. Many people recount that they still feel strange or feel that their home is haunted even after the ritual. There also varying accounts of use of salt in the story. The informant said that she has heard a few different usages, but the one she learned about was when you are hiding, you are supposed to put salt in your mouth. Others talk about putting salt in the tub and such other usages.

My informant thinks that it all is super creepy because they are strange in their own act because “why would someone do something like that”?

Performance Context: According to my informant, she learned the story while translating the manga version of Occultic;Nine, a Japanese manga. During the manga, they make reference to several supernatural events come to life. Wanting to know more and understand the context, she explored the story herself and has been recounting it to her friends since.

My Thoughts: I think it is interesting because it shows a certain commonality in storytelling to teach children respect and also to ward them from staying out or straying too far into the unknown through the use of mythical creatures. I think that their “curse” is quite severe, and really would be something that would scare children. I wonder if it is somehow derived from some medical fact or otherwise medical incident long ago that was explained through spirits.

The Uncle Who Works at Nintendo

Background: My informant was a young 23-year old adult who was born and raised in Las Vegas. He grew up playing many games on the internet including those on Newgrounds and talking with communities online. He currently professionally translates Japanese visual novels and manga.

Performance Context: According to my  informant, he learned about the story from someone who had mentioned to him the game over the internet. The friend has linked to them the game and from there they had come to play the game and subsequently learn the original story of “The Uncle Who Works at Nintendo” story.

Main Piece: The game is a text-based horror game using Twine, an interactive narrative game engine, with various images and sound during parts of the game adventure. The game, although authored work, is a derivative form of the original idea of the childhood fable of “My uncle who works at Nintendo”. My informant told me about how the original fable goes that in the early 90s, children playing the popular video game Pokemon would find themselves competing for attention in their small social groups. It was a common conception for younger children to claim that they had certain  advantages in the game because they had “an uncle who works at Nintendo”. An example of this was famously the indication that the child had access to the legendary Pokemon, Mew, because of their connection to Nintendo. Back on the original versions of the game, only those that had attended Nintendo Events could attain the fabled Mew and these events largely, if not exclusively, occurred in Japan, making their acquisition in America near impossible. The only other way to attain the legendary Mew was to use a GameShark, a common game-hacking application, to cheat the game into using the appropriately-titled “Mew Glitch” to obtain the Mew. According to my informant, children would use this as a means to show dominance and pride over other children and establish “coolness” in their friend groups. They would do so by pretending that they had obtained their Mew from a their so-called mysterious Uncle, despite the reality that they had merely cheated to get it. The game is a form of this folktale in game format, wherein a supernatural ghost story is told. In the game, you play as a middle school child in the 90s staying over at your friend’s house, when you hear that his uncle is coming over. It is a horror game where this strange entity known as the uncle is on his way and by the end of certain endings of the game, he arrives, and the game ends, implying that he almost quote on quote gets you. And that he always will.

The final ending of the game proves to be truly revealing as the game informs the player of a constant cycle that exists throughout this game each time you play it, and that the way to truly end the game is to leave it altogether. In the sixth and final ending of the game, the idea is shown that the uncle should be abandoned, and the child, your friend, can be saved. In the author’s note for the game, revealed only upon completing the game, the author waxes romantic on the current state of the game industry and how in some ways, saving your friend is a metaphor for the salvation of the industry by finding those within the community and having them repent for their self-applied attachment to the label of “gamer”. In the end, the game is about what being a gamer meant in the past, a prideful label meant to denigrate and obfuscate others and their voices though the use of games as power fantasy. The way forward, instead, is to work to let go of these attachments to the “gamer identity” and instead work against what the structures of exclusion and emotional manipulation that games have in the past allowed and encouraged.

My informant found this very profound and important to him as a long-time gamer who often found that he related and learned about the world a lot from video games. It was more so even because he had played it during a time including recent events such as the media incident called GamerGate, a controversial media event whereupon so-called “gamers” vilified and gave death threats to a small populace of anti-patriarchal women writers, developers and social activists. To him, it was somewhat introspective as a means to reflect on what it meant to be a gamer to him, and how the game industry sometimes excludes by patriarchal design women, minorities and other voices. Nowadays, he thinks people think of “gamers” as “everyone” now, rather than the small subset of young males in the 90s. He says that perhaps this is him being optimistic about the future, but who knows.

My Thoughts: I think it is interesting because as a game developer, this idea of using games and the power of games in order to manipulate and pull the rug over people is very dangerous. I don’t know that I quite agree with the author, but I agree with my informant that we can hope for a better future in which women and minority voices are free to be expressed. In a way, this game is a bit personal because of this as a minority game designer. This is a game that my informant highly recommends and that I played after him telling me about it. It is a short game that does take a couple hours to completely beat, but it is very interesting. If the game is too long, the author has also made his notes, which are supposed to be unlocked after beating the game, available online to be read. I will link these below.

The Game: https://jayisgames.com/games/the-uncle/

Author’s Notes: http://correlatedcontents.com/misc/UWWFN/UncleNotes.html

The Amidon Affair of Sioux Falls

Background: My informant was young Caucasian man who was born and raised in Sioux Falls, South Dakota. He currently attends the University of Sioux Falls for Biology and History.

Main Piece: My informant told me about the story behind a historically recognized landmark of Sioux Falls. There is a obelisk that stands just outside of city limits that marks the place where supposedly the origins of the city originate. The story goes that when the first settles came to the area they were not accepted by the local Native Americans. As Judge Amidon and his son were out hunting, the son went one way away from his father. The son was found by the local tribe who killed him. They also hunted down the father and killed him with his own rifle. The local settlers at the time found out when they found their bodies. They buried them under a mound where the obelisk was marked. After this, the local town was evacuated. Soon after, the town was attacked by the same tribe who killed Amidon. They say that everyone would have died on that day if not for them being killed. A few years later, the settles came back and the town of Sioux Falls was formally founded. However, the tricky part is that, the bodies of Amidon and his son were never found again. An archaeologist was hired to examine the mound where they were supposedly buried, but their bones were never found. A couple other locations were also searched, but there was no definite finding for the duo. Thus, the story’s authenticity has been put into question. It is mostly important and memorable for the informant because they think we should see this as a way to see how we should inform our native/white relations today. The history has value to people and he thinks that this can be used to inform rather than showcase tyranny of the past. He has been thinking about writing a histographical paper on this subject for some time.

Performance Context: According to my informant, the informant’s mom was an aficionado of the occult, so she would tell her son (the informant) stories like this. He also knows about it through the historical plaque that is in front of the obelisk. The informant thinks he was taught the story to talk about Sioux/settle relations in the past, specifically to highlight how poor they were.

My Thoughts: I think it is interesting because it shows how we form significance and superstitious regarding our own creation myths for not only the world, but even our towns. The origins of Sioux Falls may go somewhat unrecorded because all we have to go off of is the words of a few would-be settlers at the time. However, the effect is strong enough that whoever is in charge of marking historical landmarks in South Dakota has gone to the trouble to even put up a official plaque that is used on various other landmarks in town. It is even given the name “Amidon Affair” to commemorate the story.