Monthly Archives: April 2015

Fossils in the Creek

Nationality: Chinese American
Age: 22
Occupation: Freelance Commercial Artist/Student
Residence: Glendale, CA
Performance Date: 4/2/2015
Primary Language: English
Language: Chinese

The Informant GT lived in a house with a huge backyard in Minnesota for 6 years until he moved to California at the age of 11.

GT: There’s this creek in our backyard in Minnesota, and there’s fool’s gold and ammonite fossils in it, and a bunch of other fossils I didn’t know the names for back then. It was really cool, we used to collect them.

There’s a forest behind the creek, and behind that is farmland and undeveloped territory. One of the older kids told us that if you went past the creek into that territory, there’s a guy named Dead-Eye Pete or something like that who lives there, and if he catches you he’ll kill you and turn your body into rocks and that’s what the fossils were. Since the fossils all looked really organic and we were a bunch of dumb kids, we actually thought all the fossils were made of dead people who got lost and wandered into his territory.

This story exploits a child’s fear of the unknown. The older kids referenced in the story were not interested in actually protecting the younger children by warning them off from unmapped territory, but wanted to scare them into doing what they want them to. Scary stories often pique a child’s curiosity about its subject matter more than it does to dampen it with fear.

binbo yusuri – The Poor’s Leg Shake

Nationality: Japanese American
Age: 26
Occupation: Freelance Commercial Artist
Residence: Fullerton, CA
Performance Date: 4/20/2015
Primary Language: English

The informant, KK, is Japanese-American and does not speak Japanese, but can understand it to a degree.

KK: One thing my parents told me a lot was that shaking your legs while sitting leads to you getting poor. It either attracts some figure, or ghostie that lives in your house and sucks up all your dosh.

My parents said it whenever I shook my leg while sitting. I’m drawing a blank on the exact wording but the phrase is “binbo ni nacchauyo!”

I think either the story or the entity is called “binbo yusuri.”

(Japanese script: 貧乏ゆすり)

After I did some digging, I discovered that the first two characters literally mean “poor” and the rest of it is a verb that means “to shake.” It is the official term that refers to the behavioral tic, but it can be considered a proverb because the literal components of the word are not only metaphorical, but also reference a superstitious belief that shaking would cause a child being poor when they become adults.

There is no official consensus on why the Japanese associate leg-shaking with poverty, but there are two most commonly held beliefs why this is the case. The first is that shivering and fidgeting is associated with malnutrition, and the poor are possibly more likely to be afflicted with it. The second, more convincing possibility is that among samurai, fidgeting suggests a lack of self control. Shaking one’s leg thus implies that the person lacks discipline, which in turn suggests a lack of honor.

Don’t Let the Cucuy get you

Nationality: Mexican American
Age: 24
Occupation: Custodian
Residence: Riverside, CA
Performance Date: 4/21/2015
Primary Language: English
Language: Spanish

SC: Whenever me or my siblings would act up, the nearest authority figure would say, “You better calm down or I’ll call the cucuy.” This happened often in the car, and my parents would knock on the windows. (Informant knocks on the table)

“YOU HEAR THAT? THE CUCUY’S COMING!” And I’d be all “…fffff.” Y-yeah. Didn’t spook me at all. Wasn’t like I thought I actually was going to get abducted when no one was looking.

Me: What’s a cucuy?

SC: It’s basically a Mexican boogeyman. Are you asking what I thought it looked like? Probably seven feet tall, ratty moss-green fur, bloodshot yellow eyes. Craggly coffee stained teeth. Like a giant baboon that lived in a sewer all its life.

The cucuy is also sometimes called the coco in Portugal and el cuco in Latin America, and the Coco Man in Hispanic communities in the states. Its appearance is different in each culture, ranging from a pumpkin-headed ghost to an anthropomorphic alligator. This legend is referenced in the last chapter of Don Quixote by Miguel de Cervantes, in which Don Quixote is referred to by this title on his epitaph.

Scary Story: The Message

Nationality: U.S. American, Russian Heritage
Age: 20
Occupation: Student
Residence: California
Performance Date: 4/6/15
Primary Language: English
Language: Russian

Context:

The informant and I had recently gone on a retreat together to a wooded area. At the retreat, we participated in a nighttime ghost story telling session with some friends, and my informant was talented at performing ghost stories. I later asked her to share some ghost stories with me again, and I recorded the interview for collection purposes.

Interview Transcript:

Informant: Once upon a time… there was, um… You know, I don’t know if, in the story… I don’t know if it ever tells you who it is, ’cause it’s written from… When I read it, on like, Creepypasta, although the first time I heard this story, it was not on Creepypasta. It was, someone told me in my highschool art class. That was when we were sharing scary stories one time. In my highschool art class. When I was like, “You guys, let’s tell scary stories.” I think it was Halloween.

Me: I feel like… I feel like you’ve had too many instances, where you were like, stuck somewhere, and were just like, “Let’s tell scary stories.”

Informant: Yeah… I think it was Halloween. That’s the first time I heard about Creepypasta. It’s because, we were telling scary stories, and then I was like, “Where do you guys get this stuff?” And some guys were like, “Creepypasta.” Um, but yeah. The first time I heard this it was socially. Um, so, okay. Anyway. Once upon a time… There was, let’s mix it up and say, a teenage… boy this time, who was home alone. Um, his parents were gone for the weekend, and he was alone and he heard something in his house when he was up in his bed. And he got nervous, and he thought, “Okay. It was probably something.” But then he heard the sound of something heavy, like, coming up the stairs. Like this like sound of something, like a really heavy person, thumping up the stairs. And he was like, “Okay, maybe they think it’s an empty house. I’ll just lie in my bead, and I’ll like pretend, and I won’t do anything, and maybe they’ll leave and maybe they won’t notice.” And he heard it creep closer to his door, and closer to his door. And he like lay himself flat against the bed under the covers and he thought, “Maybe, it’s like a thief. And maybe if I act like I’m sleeping, like they’ll just, they won’t harm me and they’ll leave.” And then, under the covers, he looked through the door, and saw this… huge caveman looking like… like this caveman, this big bulky, hairy caveman, with like this prehistoric face. And he was like, “What?” And he was like, “Maybe, okay, like it’s a caveman. He’s probably not that intelligent.” And he was like, getting really nervous and scared. And he was like… sweating. And he was like, “I’ll stay under the covers, and maybe he won’t notice me, and he’ll leave…” And so, and he heard the caveman walk to the wall, and like, make some scratching sounds, and then the caveman sat down on the other side of his room in a chair. And he was like, “Okay… Maybe he’ll leave…” And like an hour passed. And then like another hour passed, and he stayed under the covers, and like, he was just peeking just barely under the covers, and the caveman wasn’t leaving. And he, like, was waiting, and waiting, and at some point he decided to just look under the covers just a little, and then he realized the scratching noise, was the sound of the caveman writing something on the wall. And he looked up at the wall, and it said, “I know you’re not asleep.” The end!

Analysis:

This story plays off of the listener’s fears concerning violation of privacy within one’s home, the unknown, and being watched. Its ability to invoke shock from an audience in such a short span of time makes it appropriate to tell both verbally and digitally, as shown by its being shared through multiple platforms. The informant’s explanation as to how she became exposed to the story suggests that it is usually performed at night, the time of day scary stories are usually associated with. The story itself also takes place at night while the main character lies in bed trying to sleep.

Scary Story: The Sound in the Night

Nationality: U.S. American, Russian Heritage
Age: 20
Occupation: Student
Residence: California
Performance Date: 4/6/15
Primary Language: English
Language: Russian

Context:

The informant and I had recently gone on a retreat together to a wooded area. At the retreat, we participated in a nighttime ghost story telling session with some friends, and my informant was talented at performing ghost stories. I later asked her to share some ghost stories with me again, and I recorded the interview for collection purposes.

Interview Transcript:

Informant: I’ll tell another one! Here,  I’ll tell one that I did not tell at the retreat. I think I told most of these at the retreat… But ok. This one. It’s very short. Once upon a time, there was a teenage girl… *laughs* She was, not babysitting, she was home alone and, um, and her parents were gone. They were… doing something. I don’t know. They were gone for the weekend. Okay. That’s the story. They were gone for the weekend. She was home alone, and suddenly she heard a sound. And she couldn’t like, she heard a sound and she was like, “That’s weird… What is that sound?” And she was trying to figure out what was making it. It was kind of like this thump thump thump sound. And she was like, “Weird…” And she would just go back on Tumblr, and then she would hear it again a few times. Like thump thump, thump thump. And then she like walked around the house, and was like, “Huh…” She was like, “Is it like a tree? Like a branch banging against the house? But that’s not what it would sound like…” And it was like, late at night. It couldn’t have been like, kids bouncing a ball anywhere or anything. So she just like, let it go. And she like, heard it again. Thump thump thump thump. Thump thump thump thump. And she was like, “That’s strange…” But she let it go. She just turned on her music. And she went to sleep. She did not die. She was fine. The next day, um, her parents came home. Um, oh, it’s not as scary as I imagined it would be. But anyway, her parents came home, and everything was fine. And she kept wondering what that sound was. She even like experimented. She like, moved some things around. Smacked a branch against the house to figure out like, what it was, but nothing was making that same sound. And she was like, “Huh… I guess I’ll never know what it was.” And then, her dad went to go open the window, and the window was locked. And as he tried to open it a few times, it made that thump thump thump sound. And that’s when she realized that the sound was someone trying to like, break into her house. The end. That’s like, a more real fear, I guess.

Me: Yeah, but like a lot of, um, a lot of horror stories are based off of, like, real life fears. So yeah, that makes sense.

*pause*

Me: And I guess part of the, like, horror of it is that she doesn’t know who it was.

Informant: Yeah… Or that she didn’t even realize until like, later.

Analysis: 

This story feeds off of the listener’s fears concerning plausible situations, such as the possibility of being a victim of crime. The main character does not even figure out the source of the unknown sound until after the situation she was in danger during passes. The story takes place at night, playing off of people’s fear of the dark and of the unknown. The story’s nighttime setting is also appropriate considering that ghost stories are often told at night.