Category Archives: Digital

Give Me Back My Leg

Background: This story is a common one told to children by their parents in Korea. According to the informant, it is especially told when the parent wishes to emphasize filial piety or when the child misbehaves. It is also a popular tale during camping trips.

Context: The informant conveyed this story to me over a video call, in the daylight at their house. They told the story with energy and passion, emphasizing certain onomatopoeia with gestures and carrying animated expressions throughout.  

Relation to story: The informant learned this story from her parents and teachers. She explained that her parents would tell it with relative frequency and casually make references to it semi-frequently, every few weeks. They consider it a chilling tale, reiterating that it “made the hairs on the back of her neck stand up” when she heard it as a child. She states that the details were graphic and suspects it was likely told to get her to behave as a child, mentioning how she was unruly when she was younger. 

Text: 

*(Notes: The informant will be referred to as “M” in the following text. Furthermore, this was originally told in Korean; it appears here in its translated form, translated by the interviewer.)

I: When did you first hear this story? 

M: I heard it first from my parents, then my teachers, then on TV on a program called “Korean Ghost Stories”. It’s commonly told in summer. Something about summer makes people want to tell ghost stories, to “get a chill” I guess. 

I: Thank you. Could you tell me this story in full?

M: A long, long, time ago, there was a respected grandson who lived in a village. He was living with his grandmother, whom he assisted. However, this grandmother was very sick, and there wasn’t enough money in the house either, and he was trying to buy whatever medicine he could with the small amount of money he did have, living day to day just trying to stay alive. 

I: What happened to his parents? 

M: Oh, it doesn’t really say in the story. Maybe they’re at work far away, or maybe they died. It wasn’t that weird for grandchildren and grandparents to live together anyways, so it doesn’t really matter. 

I: I see.

M: So, one day, he was preparing to cross a river, and in the middle like shaaa there was this massive bridge. Then, while he was preparing to cross the river, there came a wise man crossing from the other direction, who went plop! into the stream. The grandson rushed over and pulled the wise man out of the water, and the wise man kept saying “Oh, thank you so much, thank you so much, is there anything I can help with? Anything that bothers your mind?”. The son responded, “Oh, lately my grandmother is very sick, but no medicine can help her, and my mind is full of worry because of it.” He said it exactly like that. The wise man responded, “Go to the local cemetery nearby, and find a corpse who hasn’t been dead for more than 3 days, and cut off its leg. Then, if you boil it in water and make a soup, and have your grandmother drink it, she’ll be better.” He said it like that, and the grandson kept saying “How could I do that, Wise Man, oh, how could I do that,” and then he noticed that the wise man had disappeared without a trace. 

I: So the wise man was a ghost?

M: Maybe he was, or maybe he was just a vision sent by the gods or something for being hardworking. It doesn’t really matter.

I: Kind of like a reward, then. (laughs) Although I don’t know if that’s really a reward, being told to go dig up a corpse. 

M: Super grotesque. So, the grandson went back home, and the grandmother kept coughing like she would die at any moment, and just then he saw a funeral procession go by the house, and he started to think. The first night after he saw it, he worried and worried, not sure whether he should do it or not. The second night—remember, he has to get the corpse within 3 days— the second night, his grandmother was so ill, coughing “Oh, my child,” and he felt like his heart was going to tear. He couldn’t stand it, so he went to the kitchen and grabbed a knife, and went to the graveyard. He went to the graveyard, and was tearing up the dirt everywhere, and suddenly it started to rain and thunder—Boom! Clap!—and lightning started to flash. He was so scared but what could he do? Thinking, “For my grandmother,” he gritted his teeth and kept digging furiously, windmilling dirt around. So then, a corpse finally popped out—tuk!—and he chopped off the leg—tuk!—and was turning around to go home, when suddenly something (tuk!) grabbed his leg, moaning “Give me back my leg.” So the grandson screamed, “AHHHH!” and scared, sprinted like crazy away from the graveyard, but since the corpse was missing the leg, it kept chasing kong kong kong after the grandson, still moaning “Give me back my leg”. It was so scary that he was dodging this way and dodging that way and tripping and falling and he finally arrived at his home near-crawling. Then he went inside and quickly boiled a pot bugulbugul and tossed the leg in and when he finally turned to look outside, on the floor, there was ginseng—you know, how ginseng can be in the form of human-like shapes—ginseng with one of its “legs” cut off lying there on the floor. Waow, he was wondering what it could be, so he quickly grabbed it up and put it in the pot too, and closed the lid tight, and boiled it papapa. He was thinking “Oh, I have to save my grandmother,” and when he opened the lid, the ginseng—the cut-leg ginseng from earlier and its “leg” which transformed into ginseng too—was boiling away. So he went “Oh, what is this? This is so weird” but anyways since he remembered the wise man’s words from earlier, he put some in a bowl and put it in his grandmother’s mouth, and once she drank it she was completely better and bulduk (onomatopoeia for getting up) stood up, healed. 

I: That’s so scary! So why’d it transform like that? 

M: My parents always told me it was because they wanted to test how far the grandson was really devoted. Or maybe it was so I would eat the ginseng they bought sometimes at the market. (laughs) 

Interpretation: This story consistently emphasizes elder worship and rewards the grandson for being an attentive and helpful family member. As the informant says, this story was commonly told from parents to children, likely with the intention of imparting lessons about respecting one’s elders and the concept of filial piety. Taking the informant’s Korean background into consideration, we can gain further perspective on the key themes. The inclusion of the wise man in the story is especially interesting; historical Korea tended towards an emphasis on spiritualism and shamanistic practices (although in recent years they have increasingly been adopting Christianity) and the “wise man” is a callback to this time. However, according to the informant, the wise man’s identity as a ghost or a spirit isn’t the main focus of the story. The nonchalance with which he is treated by the informant reveals that these kinds of spiritual experiences were not entirely uncommon in stories. The corpse’s leg transforming into a ginseng root also holds significant importance. Ginseng root is commonly prescribed as a panacea by various herbal medicine stores, which suggests that this could be an origin story for the practice. The transformation also adds an additional meaning to the horror story, as it removes the horror element of the grandmother drinking human-flesh broth and shifts the story to one of ultimate filial piety. The informant says that their parents said it was to test the grandson’s devotion to his grandmother; I hypothesize that the ginseng root transformation helped ground this story to reality and create a more easily teachable lesson to the children that heard it.

Haunted Hospital Stories Among Nurses

Informant Context:

Stella is a traveling ICU (intensive care unit) nurse who currently work in Atlanta, Georgia.

Transcript:

STELLA: Nurses believe their hospitals are haunted, oftentimes. 

INTERVIEWER: Really?

STELLA: Yeah.

INTERVIEWER: Do they believe that the hospital *you* work at is haunted? 

STELLA: I mean like, when I worked at a different hospital, like—there were certain rooms that like, had really weird, like—vibes. And like, people—nurses would be like, “Oh yeah, like, I worked in that room”. And like, you know, lights would flicker and like, things would be moved. I just, like—it was always cold like, I just felt really weird. And like, there were definitely times, like… like before they would even mention that to me, like—I would walk down to that side of the hallway or like, near the room and I would like… like I felt different and then they like, told me about it later and I was like, “that’s so weird, like—I like, felt that like… [kinda(?)] that way or there’s like certain rooms like, in ICU or something where like… the patients like, always do bad and like… it’s kinda like the “cursed room” sort of thing.

INTERVIEWER: Wow… that’s really interesting and really takes the form of ghost stories [laughs] kind of in—in general, the—

STELLA: Oh, yeah. I mean, I was like, working on like, a neuro ICU at night one time, and there was like… this like, curtain that just like—kept moving. And me nurse were just like, “what the heck? Like, what’s going on?” And there was like no draft in the room and like, there was no reason for there curtain to be moving, but it was just like, fluttering. And like, it was in like the “haunted corner”. You know, it’s just like… it’s like, super spooky. 

[…]

INTERVIEWER: Yeah, because of all places to be haunted—I hadn’t thought of hospital rooms. But it does make total sense now. Um—

STELLA: Oh, it’s a thing. Like, all these nurse Instagrams that I follow online like… especially around Halloween, like—people will send in their like, haunted like, nursing stories. And it’s like, ICU nurses and they like… will be like “Yeah, like—this like, hospital used to be like, a psych hospital, and patients would like, jump out the window. And it—you know, it’s—like, it’s haunted. Or like, they’ll have multiple patients in the same room like, see like, the same kid in the red dress. Or like, the same like, patient who like, died there tragically will be like “oh, like—the lady with like, the blue shoes.” And it’s like, multiple patients like, have… have like, said that they see this person and like, stuff like that.

Informant Commentary:

The informant seemed to relate beliefs in ghost stories among nurses to community. Shared experience is powerful, and the experiences Stella relates from her time travelling between units and hospitals served to bond her with her new, and ever changing, fellow medical professionals.

Analysis:

The prevalence of ghost stories among medical professionals might be explained by a common association of hospitals with death. Transience of people (coming-and-going) is also a factor, which might also explain the prevalence and proliferation of ghost stories among professionals in the hospitality industry (hotels, theme parks). One of Stella’s accounts also follows a common pattern seen among ghost stories: a person has a moment of discomfort or a brief paranormal encounter (without being told about any possible paranormal activity beforehand) which is later fleshed out by others who already know about the phenomenon. Perhaps the most interesting thing that Stella notes is the belief, not only in ghosts in the building, but in a supernatural force which acts upon the physical world, such as malevolent forces which cause a room to become “cursed”, and patients to “do bad” when assigned to them. This might suggest a search for comfort by members of the folk group, seeking to attribute unexplained medical tragedies to forces outside of their own control. There is a strong desire among medical professionals to exert control upon illness and suffering, thereby ending it with scientific means. When this fails for no clear reason, and seems to follow an uncanny trend, it makes sense for medical professionals to replace their own uncertainty with a conclusion which gestures towards the metaphysical, beyond science. 

Joke: Asexuality and Garlic Bread

Main Piece: 

Collector: “I remember a while ago you were talking about the link between garlic bread and ace people, right? Can you explain that?”

Informant: “Well, essentially, the consensus is that garlic bread is better than sex. And thus, slowly, over time, through memes and such, it became part of ace- asexual culture to just be like ‘Sex? Phhht. Garlic bread. That’s pretty good.’ It’s like that with various other foods. Like cake. Lemon bars are one thing- no, wait, lemon bars are bisexual. I don’t know why they’re bisexual, but they are.”

Collector: “What’s like a formula of one of these memes? Like if you had to cite a stock meme to me.”

Informant: “Like here’s the basic thing of how they kind of go. Sex. Then reaction pic of somebody going no, or nuh-uh, or whatever—”

Collector: “Like the Drake meme along the side.”

Informant: “Yeah. Like that and then the good one.”

Collector: “The approving side of the picture. 

Background:

My informant is a member of several online asexual communities designed as spaces of solidarity and safety. The common practices of these communities include sharing struggles unique or semi-unique to ace people, figuring out or helping others figure out whether the sexual identity applies to them, and sharing memes about asexuality. 

Collector: Why do you think this developed?”

Informant: “Primarily firstly because garlic bread is just good. It’s just fantastic. And then garlic bread being better than sex was kind of a meme outside of asexual culture. Just around, I used to occasionally find one just out in the wild.”

To my informant, garlic bread being better than sex was the adopting of a pre-existing, potentially ironic meme by a community that agreed whole-heartedly with the sentiment. Oher potential benefits include bonding over a meme.

Thoughts:

It seems telling that this is a joke told within communities specifically labelled as asexual safe spaces and not frequently elsewhere. It’s likely there’s an element of safety and community to this meme. The meme is proliferated within a safe asexual space to prove that the space is safe- saying that sex is bad is fine here and we’ll do it in a funny way. It’s also likely that catharsis is another element at play. In a culture dominated by people who value sex, it’s likely that the community has latched onto garlic bread as just one example to hold up of the many things they see as more appealing. By participating in the meme, consuming and posting, they reaffirm their feelings and get a release from the tension of being misaligned with a sex-dominated culture.

The Cult in worlds.com

Description: There are rumors of a cult developing within a MMO game that no longer has a large enough player base. People believe there to be a recruiter and people have reported strange content appearing in certain areas of the game.

Background: The informant learned about this from browsing Reddit.

Transcript:

BD: This one I don’t remember in extreme detail, but there was a rumor that there was a cult in worlds.com. It was an old mmo from I think 90s era where it had just like a bunch of “worlds” you could go to and eventually lost the majority of its player base. But the servers were kept up (and I think still might be up?) despite having no players. The reason why cult started to float around was for a few reasons; one that there was a user that would float around and try to recruit you (this is the one that was debunked) ((also tbh I think this started bc the guys avatar looks like a goat iirc)). Another being that there were worlds floating around that had questionable content.

Me: Questionable as in illegal?

BD: Not illegal, but weird. It was naked photos of people in a room with their names under photos I believe. Actually it might have had some personal info on them too. But not 100%.

My thoughts:

Surprisingly, video games are considered by some as some of the most effective ways of secret messaging. For example, someone can shoot massages in the form of bullet holes. Looking at the circumstances, it’s interesting to think about a cult being created inside of an abandoned server. There is a level of creepiness in being in a server with so few people when they are meant to be filled to the brim. This rumor, while debunked, is not unthinkable especially since the server is still operational despite having no players. Of course, the reports of questionable content furthers the narrative. Seeing strange things on the internet often leads to extreme speculations because of the crazy things that happen on the web.

Mrsleepypeople

Description: A youtube channel that shows videos of someone playing with a woman’s eyes while they sleep, the video shows only the hand so the person behind the videos is unknown.

Background: The informant learned about this from Reddit.

Transcript:

BD: It’s gross and extremely creepy but to me extremely fascinating because it was on YouTube of all things. But basically there was a channel called mrsleepypeople (something along those lines) that was uploading videos where there’s a man playing with a woman’s eyes while they’re asleep. The channel creator was probably the person filming bc it was always shot from like a first person pov so you never saw him, only his hands. Er scratch that usually only his hands. But anyways yeah basically he would open their eyes and what not but they’d clearly be knocked out bc their eyes weren’t reacting to light or anything (also it’d always be dark in the room minus the camera light so there’s also that). I think the first video he uploaded was actually a couple sleeping together too? He was only messing with the girls eyes but was uh ballsy enough to do this despite her boyfriend/SO being right there. And the videos got progressively worse, with the notable escalation being where he uh… licks one of the girls eyeballs

And this was on YouTube for a few years. And apparently there’s a community around it that was also around

Me: Were there any theories on what was actually happening?

BD: Basically that it was very likely a fetish thing. Because of the type of comments it’d get. But then when either people or YouTube got wind of it finally, most channels got removed or deleted by the owners. But yeah essentially there seems to be a fetish community around sleeping women’s eyes, but as you may have already guessed it a) absolutely did not seem consensual and b) some of the other channels that were found to be within the community posted children and infants….

Me: Did we ever know who the person is?

BD: Nope, which is probably the worst part.

My thoughts:

While my informant has not confirmed the existence of the channel, I believe this to be true. The case reminds me of Jack the Ripper in many ways. Mainly the creep factor and the fact that the perpetrator is never identified nor caught. I think this walks the line for what can be considered folklore. It is a very real thing but I think the knowledge lies outside of public or institutional knowledge. So I think this gives off a feel of an urban legend in the sense of how strange and unknown it is.