Category Archives: Legends

Narratives about belief.

Bay Area Catholic School Ghost Story

Text:

“My all girls Catholic school was founded by these nuns in the 1950s but before it was a school it was a mansion called the Cole mansion, built in like 1916 or something. It was owned by this guy, Frederick Cole, we call him Freddy. He was a young wealthy dude who’s dad made money in steel production. He’s basically a trust fund baby, so he builds a nice mansion in the Burlingame hills overlooking the San Francisco Bay. And so Freddy built his beautiful mansion, it’s pretty big with a working elevator, bunch of servants, big bedroom. He’s living there with his wife. At the time, it’s all the rage to have a maid from France. And so his wife is like, a huge entertainer at their house, and she’s like “I need to have a French maid for my parties.” And so she sends a letter to her aunt in France who’s visiting, and she’s like “While you’re in France, can you pick me up a french maid?” So when her aunt comes back she brings an 18 year old girl named Annette. Annette speaks no English, like very very little, and she works at the house. While she’s there, Freddy, the little pervert, is all creepy on her. He’s like harassing her and will not stop bugging her. She’s like not having it, but the wife of Freddy is like “Oh my god my husband is jealous of this 18 year old I brought into the house, I’m going to get her fired. And not only am I going to get her fired, I’m going to tell all the other people in the Bay Area, all the other rich people, that she had sex with my husband and she’s an adulterer.” And so the wife went around telling everyone that Annette had sex with her husband and was all like, not holy or whatever. So she fires Annette, Annette can’t get hired anywhere, so you know what she does? She files a wrongful termination lawsuit in the San Francisco court in like, early 1900s, and she wins! Which is so rare. Then Freddy takes her to court to try and overturn it, and he’s going down the elevator to the courtroom and when the elevator opens, he sees Annette. And Annette just looks at him and tells him he lied, pulls out a pistol, and shoots him in the stomach. So this man is rushed to the hospital and they stich him up, but they leave the lead bullet in him, and Annette gets deported back to France. Freddy is recovering, but the bullets’ still inside him. So he tells people that he’s started receiving these postcards, and each one says “I will see you soon, from Annette.” And each one gets closer and closer, so it starts in France, then there’s one from England, then there’s one from New York, then she goes through Canada down to Washington, then to Portland. She books herself a boat from Portland to China, but there’s a stop in San Francisco. She gets out there, and the postcards stop. And the next day Freddy is found hanging in his mansion. And so people don’t know if he killed himself because he was worried Annette was gonna get him or if she got to him or if she even was there, because he still had the lead bullet in him and lead makes you go insane. And so people think he imagined it all, it’s like totally up to interpretation, people don’t know. Anyways, Freddy is now a ghost in the mansion and my ceramics teacher has seen him multiple times, people believe he still exists in the mansion on campus. My ceramics teacher had to go to the kiln on the bottom floor right by the servants’ stairs. Freddy was renowned for hanging out in the servants chambers and hitting on them. So she was in the basement unloading the kiln for pottery class, and she was bending over the kiln and she feels someone grab her waist. She turns around and no ones there. So she thinks it was him hitting on her, cause he’s a creep.” 

Context:

B is an 18-year-old college student from the Bay Area, California. She used to go to a Catholic all girls school, where she says teachers would tell this ghost story about the campus. She doesn’t know which facts are certifiably true, but she says she was first told this story while on a campus tour by an old nun who she trusts to be reliable. Teachers share this story with the students around the school. 

Analysis:

This story is a legend about Freddy’s ghost. It’s told to me as a “friend of a friend” story, so the speaker has never actually had an interaction with this supposed ghost. It’s clearly a legend because it could possibly be true, or it could not. No one really knows why Freddy died. This uncertainty about his death could be the reason for his haunting. Ghost stories tend to follow people who weren’t properly buried or their death wasn’t settled, because it’s very important for communities that their community members get the proper burial and death rituals. If the ritual is done wrong, it leads to haunting. It’s particularly interesting that this story is spread around a Catholic school, as in the Christian religion killing oneself is a sin. If Freddy really did hang himself, that’s a hard conversation for Christians to have because it means he went to hell. Ghosts probably form around these figures that die in ways that Christians don’t see to be natural to serve both as a warning to others against sinning, and as a way of understanding and reconciling what happens to someone who dies in a sinful manner. Another aspect of this ghost story is the way in which it is performed. When this story was told to me it was told by a girl the same age as Annette, and the school is an all-girls school so almost everyone who tells and knows this story is a girl. By looking at the social context of the story, we see how it takes a very feminist lean. It’s almost a satisfying revenge story for women, as they watch the lying creep suffer for his actions against the young girl. If this were told by someone else, Annette may be the villain. But both the speaker and the audience receive the story as a triumph for Annette. This bias can be seen in the vocabulary the speaker uses, calling him a “little pervert” and “creep.” It makes sense that this story would circulate amongst a group of young women as a victory for them against this creepy man. It reminds me of murder ballads, which is a type of legend that often details the murder of a young woman and paints the male killer in a positive light as opposed to a condemning one. In an environment filled with young women, the same plot instead is inverted to declare Annette as the victorious hero. Looking again at the social context, the audience was a group of young women the same age as the speaker, and she was often interrupted by expletives denouncing Freddy as a pervert as well.

Band Legend

Text:

Every Saturday each instrument section within the USC band gets together to practice before all the instrument sections come together. Back in the day, the tubas would practice on the roof of building facing the field where everyone could see them. To prank the rest of the band they put a plastic sousaphone on a manikin and pushed it off the roof. Everyone who watched the incident freaked out. After the prank, the tubas were prohibited from practicing on the roof and had to practice on the ground.

Context:

Apart from the USC band, A.B. explains she heard this story as a freshman getting initiated into the band. She thinks it could be a made-up story told to the band freshman to make them stop complaining about what their band initiation tasks were. at the same time, she also thinks it is true, based on the old band’s history of being intense and troublesome.

Analysis:

This is a right of passage legend to get the freshmen initiating to easily comply with the tasks given to them. The legend is more convincing due to the USC band’s past of recklessness. This right-of-passage legend strengthens the tradition of band initiation.

Ghost Uncle Visit

Text:

Late one night in 1966 in Santa Ana, California, my grandma heard a knock at the front door. She opened the door and saw her Uncle Udono, who lived in Japan at the time and felt shocked to see him in the United States. Behind her, my grandpa asked, ”What are you doing at the door?” She turned around to respond that it was her uncle, and when she faced back towards her uncle, he was gone. The next day she found out he had passed away in Japan.

Context:

This is my grandma’s personal experience. After she saw her uncle show up at her house and then disappear, she thought she was hallucinating since she was tired when the experience took place. Later the next day, after hearing about her uncle’s passing, she felt startled but also oddly at peace. Her Uncle had no children and in a way saw my grandma as his child. She interpreted her uncle’s ghostly visit as her Uncle saying goodbye to his favorite niece one last time.

Analysis:

I think her one memorate strengthened her belief in the supernatural because after she described her experience she briefly described another personal paranormal story. Her experience was her smelling an awful stench in her home that only she could smell. About 2 weeks later she found out her brother had died and was rotting for a month in his apartment. She interpreted this as a sign from her deceased brother that he was dead and wanted her to know. I think if she didn’t have her uncle’s ghost experience she may not have correlated the two occasions (the sudden odor and her brother’s death) together.

Hiroshima Miracle

Text:

On August 6, 1945, next to Hiroshima Japan, my great great aunt (grandma’s aunt) was using the restroom when the atomic bomb dropped on Hiroshima. As she was right outside ground zero, and felt a sudden shake and boom. In an attempt to leave the bathroom, she realized the door to the exit had collapsed. Desperate, she looked for any way out and found a crack in the wall leading to the outside. She escaped and ran for cover. Later on, rescue teams searched the area for trapped survivors. She had questioned if they found the hole she escaped through, but they said there was no opening where she had escaped. In doubt, she went back to her work building to seek out where the escape hole was. After searching around the building there was no crack nor indication of an opening near the outside of the bathroom.

Context:

This story was originally told to my grandma by her aunt but shared the story with me on her deceased aunt’s behalf. She (my grandma’s aunt) interpreted her experience as a miracle from God and a sign that she had meaning in life. My grandma believed her, as she was very respected within the family and was known to be truthful. She strongly agreed with her aunt and the story lead to her Christian belief being strengthened.

Analysis:

After the bomb, my grandma’s aunt was unable to have children, since she was in contact with radiation. She ended up never marrying and lived a long full life. I think because she felt she had a purpose after her experience, despite not being able to produce a family and the trauma of war, she decided to live a fruitful life. When you understand you have meaning you start to see the beautiful parts of yourself and within life more often, rather than it going unnoticed. Her story also inspired my grandma and she too has the same positive outlook on life.

Friend of a Friend Ghost Story

Storyteller revered to as JZ.

Text:

At night inside JZ’s home, he and his friend Jay were getting creeped out by looking out at a pitch-black window. Jay began to talk about how he and his family are very into the supernatural and shared with JZ that he (Jay) can sense ghosts. JZ asked how can you sense ghosts? Jay explained by using an experience he had when traveling. The family got an Airbnb, and the house looked and felt haunted. Right when he (Jay) entered he felt a “bad aura”. Then at night when he and his sister were going to brush their teeth, he went to open the door and it opened by itself and started to swing back and forth by itself. Startled, Jay and his sister decided to not go in the bathroom and went to bed instead. They were sharing a room so he slept on the floor while his sister slept on the bed. As they were trying to sleep they heard something walking down the hall while scratching the wall and heard pounding in the attic. Jay also added that he felt like he was being watched. He asked his parents in the morning if they were walking through the hall after they all went to bed, and they said no. Then he asked if they heard any walking through the halls and they said yes.

Context:

JZ was telling this story on his friend Jay’s behalf (Jay’s memorate). At that moment he questioned his belief in the paranormal. JZ explained to me he has a very analytical mind, and he was surprised that he even considered if ghosts were real.

Analysis:

I think JZ’s trust in Jay combined with the “creepy” environment the story was being told in, influenced JZ to wonder if ghosts were true. If you trust someone, you usually don’t question if they’re making up a story. And if a spooky story is being told to someone in an office compared to a creepy environment, there’s a better chance the story will be taken more seriously in an uneasy atmosphere. Jay’s memorate made ghost lore a bit stronger because it had JZ who is not a ghost believer consider if the paranormal was real.