“So there’s this character named Irkchapitl, who’s this weird blue entity. He never has a clear image, because every time this story is told he has a different appearance, but the way I see him is kind of like a crazy looking monkey. So he travels in a garbage can that’s actually a spaceship, and he often comes to visit kids on nights when they can’t sleep. Whenever Irkchapitl comes at night, he’ll take the kids into his garbage can that looks bigger on the inside than the outside, and then Irkchapitl and the kid will go on an adventure to faraway lands before returning to Earth before the morning.”

I got this from a friend at USC who said that her dad would always tell this to her, and that he got it from his dad who lived in Britain. No one in their family really knows from where their grandfather heard this or whether he just made it up, but I found it really interesting that each of her siblings and cousins apparently have different images of what Irkchapitl looks like. Also, the person I asked suspects that her dad later added the part about the spaceship being larger on the inside based on the British TV series Doctor Who, even though her dad denies it.