Author Archives: Napoleon Martinez

The Ghost Girl of Siquijor Cebu

Background: My informant was a Filipino immigrant who came to America when she was 12. She was born and raised in Manila before coming to America, her father seeking out new opportunities. She then got married and moved to Sioux Falls, South Dakota and currently works as a Denial Analyst for the Sanford Health Network, the largest hospital network in the Siouxland area.

Main Piece: My informant told me a story about a young girl that her mother told her about. In the small town of Siquijor Cebu, there was a girl who was a very unhappy girl. When my informant’s mother was a young girl, the girl hanged herself on a tree. When she was growing up, people would say that you should never walk pass the tree when it gets dark out. They say if you do, you will hear the girl crying to this day. These kinds of stories are very commonplace in the area, because there are a lot of people that are said to be crazy. The area is known as the Visayas. It is one of the three major groups of islands of the Philippines, being in the center. According to my informant, people that are not Visayans often refer to the area as a place of witches and mythical creatures because of some of the more remote places where strange things are said to occur. However, what most people view this as is the idea that even if it cannot be proven, we are made aware that there are forces beyond our control. Ghost stories and other supernatural tellings are quite common because of this. The informant says that people now probably don’t believe in this anymore, but maybe that they still remain cautious of that kind of thing, in the case that it is true. Witches putting curses on you, and voodoo stories were quite common when my informant was growing up, and maybe that has changed, but perhaps not. After all, they still believe in injuries and afflictions that only faith healers can heal.

Performance Context: According to my informant, the story originates from her mother, who is from Siquijor Cebu.

My Thoughts: I think it is interesting because it talks a lot about the idea of vengeful spirits. This is a quite common motif in stories throughout the world and the idea that some things cannot be explained is quite common in the fiction of every culture. There is also the strong idea that is shown here and shown in the reaction of many people to many stories that we fear their power. That if we cannot say for certain that they are not true or that they hold no weight, we remain wary, just in case. It’s that just in case that makes these kinds of stories all the more interesting.

Anansi Goat Man

Background: My informant was a American who has lived across the country and has learned a lot of stories about other people through her travels.She is currently a student at the University of Southern California studying game design.

Main Piece: My informant told me a story known as the “Anasi Goat Man”. It is a very long form “creepy pasta” (internet horror story) about a group of young teenagers who go out campiong in the woods of Alabama. Throughout the story, the children encounter the smell of ozone, a copper-like smell, that indicates that the Anasi Goat Man is in their presence. At first, the kids are unaware of the creature and search their RV for an electrical malfunction. One of the kids owns a cabin in that area as well where they also own some pigs. They find that the pigs have been ripped up and eaten, which freaks out and scares all of the group. They also see the visage of a man in the woods, although they only see his back. They also begin to hear a “gibbering” from the woods that changes in volume and comes from all around throughout most of the rest of the story. They discover that he is a man with the head of a goat, who gets into groups by disguising itself like a Wendigo, before hunting the group members. The original group started out as 12, but the number dwindles down to 8. Towards the end of the story, they bar themselves into a larger cabin owned by one of the friends cousin. There they barricade themselves in and arm themselves with weapons and wait out the night. Throughout the night, something keeps approaching the door screaming to be let in, banging on the door. Meanwhile the gibbering continues to fade in and out throughout the rest of the night and the smell of copper turns to the smell of blood. Morning comes and the children leave the place. The storyteller who is recounting the tale, however, ends the story by talking about one of the friends who came to them two days after the event. Two days after the strange event in the woods, one of the friends had been nodding off to sleep, when he caught one girl walking out of the bathroom and begin sleeping in the middle of the room as everyone else was. Out of curiosity, he counted the members of the room, and there were one too many. The rest of the night he could not sleep and watched this one girl, even as they left. He was too scared to act against her because he thought the creature might kill all of them, or in their fear, they might use the guns on one another. As he kept his eye on her as they left the campsite, at one point, she slipped away and went into the forest.

It’s supposedly from an account from an actual person, but the informant says that it probably is just because people want to be scared or want to feel like they have had some sort of supernatural event. It doesn’t seem to be much more than an urban legend to her. She doesn’t buy into most urban legends or ghost “crap”.

Performance Context: According to the informant, she read it in an old book before she looked it up online.

My Thoughts: I think it is interesting because it is an example of a much longer form narrative that forms a series of internet ghost stories. There is also special attention made towards making it seem as if an actual account, to not only immerse the reader in its possibility, but also I believe to fall into the recent trend of stories that are from first person youth perspectives such as Cloverfield and other such “found footage” stories.

Russian Sleep Experiment

Background: My informant was a American who has lived across the country and has learned a lot of stories about other people through her travels.She is currently a student at the University of Southern California studying game design.

Main Piece: The Russian Sleep Experiment is a story about how they were trying to figure out in a perhaps-WWII era the effects of sleep deprevation on their soldiers. They put a group of soldiers in a room with a porthole. Then, they poured in gas that keeps them awake into the room. For a while, it goes normal, up to a week without any real observable effects. At this time, the mics stop responding and the researchers are only able to look into the room via the viewport.  However, the porthole gets covered some sort of liquid. The researchers attempt to talk to the subjects, but they get no response, at first. They end up turning off the gas and opening up the door. Inside, there are only a small group of the subjects left alive. The rest have been disembowled with blood everywhere, the same liquid on the porthole. The one that are still alive had portions of their body missing, and some of them had their own skin ripped off. Evidence suggested that there were no markings of teeth, and it is suggested that the portions of them missing were by hand. The subjects alive begin shouting and panicking, asking the scientists to turn the gas back on.

They become hysterical as they were screaming to put the gas back on. The scientists tried restraining them, but like in a superhero story, they threw one of the researchers across the room, as if a ridiculous strong superhuman.  Eventually, they wrangle down the subjects. They tried to inject them with morphine, 10x normal dose, did nothing. They try to operate on them, they were immune to sedatives. They put them under anesthetics, his heart stops, and in the autopsy, they discover their is triple the amount of oxygen in the blood of the first subject. The second person had his vocal cords ripped, and wanted to be operated without anesthetic. The doctors operating on the subjects said it’s medically impossible for them to still be alive. Once they were finished, the patient wanted to write a message. When they let them write their message it just said “keep cutting”. Afterwards, only two subjects were left alive. The scientists began to monitor the position of the two that live and noticed that the EEG would hard line several times. They were suffering from repeated brain death at various times.

Then the story ends “really stupidly”, according to the informant. One of the soldiers kills themselves, the other broke out. When they caught the other, the scientists asks what they are. The remaining soldier goes on a rant saying “We are you, we are the madness within you, we are what you hide from at night.” The End. To the informant, this last part makes the story seem the most absurd and unworthy of redemption. The informant said it was “stupid as fuck” and it just another example of stupid internet stories run wild.  “It’s just a lot of gore.”

Performance Context: According to my informant, someone linked it through the internet because they said they thought she was Russian.

My Thoughts: I think it is interesting because it another example of creepy pasta that is on the internet of these strange twisted stories that almost seem to have no evidence, and yet is compelling enough that people read anyways. It makes you question whether the insanity of the story is of value or rather the insanity of its construction at all.

The Wendigo

Background: My informant was a American who has lived across the country and has learned a lot of stories about other people through her travels.She is currently a student at the University of Southern California studying game design.

Main Piece: The Wendigo is a Native American story of a cannibal evil spirit. It is an animal-human hybrid that had white skin pulled hard over its bones so that you can see the skeleton. It’s eyes are pushed all the way back so they looked deep. It’s nails would go through its skin, making it bloody. It would eat people. They would explain it, when they would go crazy in the Native American camps, they would lose their minds and try to eat other people. The Windigo was tied to greed. If you got too greedy, you would become a Windigo.

Performance Context: According to my informant, it’s an old folklore that she knew growing up because she was interested in Native American culture. She might have heard it from one of the Native American camps that she visited while growing up when she was doing her own research.

My Thoughts: I think it is interesting because it talks a lot about how cultures apply value to virtue and “sin” (to use a Christian idea). The idea that greed can cause one to lose one’s one mind and succumb to a disease that robs you of your humanity as a marker that lust for money and things are not only deplorable, but by nature they are unnatural and condemnable. This is an interesting idea and strongly suggests the ideals of the Native American culture, esp. of the tribes where this story is prominent and/or originates.

The Mothman

Background: My informant was a American who has lived across the country and has learned a lot of stories about other people through her travels.She is currently a student at the University of Southern California studying game design.

 

Main Piece: The Mothman is a man with wings and red eyes that shows up on this very specific highway near Pittsburgh. It scares people because they can see it in their rear view mirror. It’s similar to Sasquatch. It comes from a story from West Virginia wherein a bridge collapsed  killing dozens of people. It is said that before the bridge collapsed, and before other events both there, in Pittsburgh, and even in the world, the people saw premonition in the form of the Mothman. The Mothman is a sort of boogeyman that everyone talks about and blames, although the informant does not believe in it. It is as common as Sasquatch in the area, but is about as believable.

Performance Context: According to my informant, the story was heard by her while she lived there as it is a fairly common folk story about the mysterious creature. It is much like most other forms of cryptozoology.

My Thoughts: I think it is interesting because this touches upon this idea of cryptozoology, strange animals and animal-like creatures that may or may not purportedly exist. There is also a strong connection with prophecy and premonition with this and other stories. If we see something strange, there must be a reason. It must be some sort of experiment, or some sort of a sign. We start to attribute theorized motifs to the creature and further describe and explain its existence. It is really interesting from the perspective that we are encapsulating our fear of the unknown as well as our loose explanations of nature, which many feel is not meant to be conquered as humans do, in the form of folklore through these creatures.