Legend

Nichelle’s interpretation of this story goes as follows:

“This was a story of my great grandfather. In 1932, there was this one island called Crete that had a curse on it. The curse came on the island 7 generations before. After so many years this curse was supposed to come into effect. When it did, all of the young women (girls who started their periods but weren’t married) got possessed and their possession didn’t become bad until night time. And so there weren’t enough priests to deal with all of the girls. So what they had to do was recruit all the college young men because they would have had religious training. So, what they did, they had to do this mass exorcism. So the priests were going to walk around all the houses and say the exorcism prayers. So what they needed the young men to do…the belief was “the devil could not step over a true Christian”. So they wanted the young men to lie down in front of the doorways of the bedrooms (Greek bedrooms don’t usually have windows so all they had to do was worry about the door). The priests told them, “If you never speak to the devil then you can’t become possessed.” So they lead girls into their room. The girl that my great grandfather was keeping in her room was very young but strikingly beautiful. So she gets in her bed and he lies down on the floor inside and the priest told him to say prayers to himself. First, everything’s normal. First she starts asking him, “Oh please Mr. can I have some water?” or “Can you come fix my blankets?” So, basically anything to get him to move. As the night goes on she gets more persistent and he can’t talk to her. It starts getting so bad he can’t even look at her anymore. So his eyes are closed and all of a sudden he hears movement. He opens his eyes. The devil attacks people mentally who are mentally weak that they can’t fend off everything because their mentally not strong enough. And that’s why mentally insane people can’t really be helped by medicine, psychiatry or anything. A lot of times the church believes they’re actually possessed. And you know and the thing is with possession a lot of the times people will be completely normal sometimes and all of sudden they’ll have these attacks. Ok so we were at the point where he hears movement and so he opens his eyes to see where it’s coming from and he’s looking around the room, he can’t its dark, he really can’t see that much but he realizes light is moving. And he looks up and he realizes the light that’s moving is the candle on the shelf in the corner and its zooming from corner to corner to corner to corner of all the rooms and the girls just sitting there peacefully in her bed. And this thing is zooming and zooming and zooming all around the room. And he closes his eyes again because he is scared and he just says his prayers over and over and over again. So eventually this stops…but she starts screaming bloody murder. And again he opens his eyes and no longer does she look young and beautiful but she looks old and scary and screaming and clutching her her her bed sheets and screaming and screaming. And he shuts his eyes again cuz he is in complete terror now. He like doesn’t know what to do but she like never leaves her bed. She’s like in her bed the whole time. So eventually, morning comes the girl is like she passes out eventually. But you know, he gets up apparently the curse is broken, the girls no longer have any symptoms and the island is peaceful forever more.”

I agree with Nichelle’s interpretation of her great grandfather’s story. This story seems to be of great importance to the Megowan family that even the intricate detail that was described in this legend ended up being passed down to three generations. Nichelle told the story as if she was reliving the moment herself; she spoke with great dynamics and animation in her voice. I have not heard of any other legend such as this. But I could imagine that this legend is used as a tool to cherish the Megowan and Greek culture where it would be important to pass down this legend from one generation to another as a means of holding onto family tradition. I could also see this legend as a method of group identification amongst younger kids and peers. For example, a young child who would tell this legend in the Megowan family may be accepted into the group of kids who are known for telling scariest stories at summer camp.

This legend also reflects the history and the people of the Greek culture in the 1930’s on the island of Crete. The Greek people described in this legend were all of religious affiliation besides the possessed girls, which shows that religious identity was an important identification of that particular time. The priests and college boys seemed to consistently be practicing religious doctrine, and sticking to religious doctrine was important to their lifestyle.