Monthly Archives: April 2017

Origins of the Gulf of Mexico

Nationality: American
Age: 19
Occupation: Student
Residence: Houston, TX
Performance Date: April 23, 2017
Primary Language: English

Subject: Legend, Folk Belief, Origin Myth

 

Informant: Lauren Herring

 

Background Information/Context: Lauren and I live in Houston, Texas, and for a beach, we go to Galveston, Kemah, or somewhere else along the water. The “beaches” aren’t usually what you would think of when you picture a beach. They are usually just a drop-off into the water. Sometimes, like the Galveston beach, you’ll have rocks that lead into the water, or occasionally some sand and some sort of beach. The water is murky brown, almost black, because of the pollution and oil spills that are in the water. The body of water is called the Gulf of Mexico, which is shaped roughly like a semi-circle, and leads out into the ocean.

 

“So, I don’t know if you’ve heard this one, but I learned it at Kinkaid [the high school we both went to]. But it was in a science class I think in middle school, and I remember believing it when somebody told me it. It was that the asteroid that made the dinosaurs go extinct struck Earth where the Gulf of Mexico is, and that’s why it’s shaped like that.”

 

Conclusion: I had not heard about this belief, but I can see why Lauren would believe it if a classmate told her about this story when she was a little younger. I do think it’s funny that one of our classmates made it up.

Bloody Mary School Bathroom

Nationality: American
Age: 19
Occupation: Student
Residence: Houston, TX
Performance Date: April 25, 2017
Primary Language: English

Bloody Mary

 

Subject: Ritual/Game

 

Informant: Lauren Herring

 

Background Information: Bloody Mary is a common legend in childhood that involves a sort of game of going into a bathroom, standing in front of a mirror, and saying “Bloody Mary.” As the legend goes, if you do this, some figure will appear in the mirror. I asked Lauren about her take on it, and the following was her response.

 

Lauren: That game was so scary. I was always way too scared to do it alone. But everyone said the upstairs girls’ bathroom in Elementary school was haunted by [Bloody Mary].

 

Me: Did you ever see her?

 

Lauren: No, not really, but I did have one really scary experience with it.

 

Me: What was that?

 

Lauren: Ok, so it was around the third grade, and the story was, like, huge. Like, everyone was talking about Bloody Mary in the girls’ restroom. I think it started because there was some story about a girl a year ahead of us who actually conjured Bloody Mary in that bathroom, and then everyone said she haunted it ever since then.

 

So, I raise my hand and ask to go to the bathroom one day in class, and I go, and as soon as I wash my hands, the power goes out and the paper towel machine starts ejecting the paper towels. Like, not as in they were crazy-possessed, but they were those automatic ones, and they just all started rolling out the whole rolls of paper towels.

 

And so obviously I’m freaked out, I’m like in third grade. And I run to the door, but it’s locked. And then I start really freaking out, and all I can think about is Bloody Mary.

 

It turns out that the school was having a lockdown, so that’s why the lights went out and the doors automatically locked. But it was so scary. Like I really thought I was going to die. Also why would the school have it so that the bathroom doors locked? Oh, and it didn’t explain the paper towel thing.

 

Conclusion: I went to school with Lauren, so I knew about the Bloody Mary in the girls’ restroom story, but I had never actually heard her whole story about her experience with it. It is interesting to note that, if taken in the context of a ghost story, Lauren’s experience didn’t fit exactly right with the Bloody Mary ritual. The way I’ve heard it, in the ritual, one is supposed to stand in front of the mirror and say “Bloody Mary” three times while spinning in a circle three times with your eyes closed. When you open your eyes, you are supposed to see Bloody Mary in the mirror where your body is supposed to be. But in Lauren’s story, she never actually summoned Bloody Mary. Rather, it came to her when she did not expect it.

 

For more versions of this legend and different beliefs about Bloody Mary herself and how she is summoned, see: (Dundes, Alan. Bloody Mary in the mirror: essays in psychoanalytic folkloristics. Jackson: U Press of Mississippi, 2002. Print.)

One Frog

Nationality: American
Age: 19
Occupation: Entrepreneur
Residence: Houston, TX
Performance Date: March 16, 2017
Primary Language: English
Language: Spanish

One Frog

 

Subject: Game

 

Informant: Tye Griffith

 

Background Information/Context: The following is a description from Tye of a game called “One Frog” that she used to play with her friends at recess when she was young.

 

“My friends and I used to play this game at recess. It was around when I was at R.O.B. [her Elementary School], I think. We called it ‘One Frog,’ and you would get a big group of people and all stand in a circle, and you would all start this pattern: [as she demonstrates] so, first you pat your knees, then clap, then you snap your right hand, and then you snap your left hand. So that’s the pattern.

 

And then the first person starts, and they go, ‘one frog.’ And then it goes clockwise, so the person to your left would go, ‘two eyes,’ and then the next person would go, ‘four legs,’ and then the next person says, ‘ker-plunk.’

 

And then the next person to the left starts it again but says, ‘two frogs,’ and then the person to their left would say, ‘four eyes,’ yadda yadda yadda. So—wait do you get it? [I say yes.] So that all goes on, and you have to keep going at the rhythm that your doing the clapping, snapping pattern. And then if someone messes up or gets off rhythm or, like, can’t think of the next number or something, they’re out.”

 

Conclusion: I was surprised when she started telling me about the game, because I know the same one, but in a different context. I’m a theatre major, and we use this game as a warm up activity for a show that I’m in right now. I was also surprised that the way Tye described it seems exactly the same as the version I know for theatre. I was surprised even more though that Tye played it as a childhood game because my whole cast, myself included, really struggles with it. If college students find it difficult to think of the next thing to say so quickly, then I can’t imagine how young children who have barely learned simple multiplication could figure it out, or even think of it as a fun game.

Reiki

Nationality: American
Age: 24
Occupation: Entrepreneur
Residence: Houston, TX
Performance Date: March 16, 2017
Primary Language: English
Language: Spanish

Reiki

 

Subject: Healing Ritual, Superstition

 

Informant: Tye Griffith

 

Background Information/Context: Growing up, I had a nanny who helped raise me, and who had been working in my family since before I was born. Her name is Eva, and she is from Monterrey, Mexico. Eva also worked as a nanny for a close family friend of mine, Tye. Tye and I essentially grew up together, and had the connection of Eva, who I feel linked our two families together even closer. I asked Tye about a healing ritual Eva would perform called Reiki when we were little.

 

Tye: So, I don’t remember as much about this one, but I remember Eva would do it, and it was supposed to be a transfer of energy from one person to another through the placement of hands. I think she only did it if something was wrong, like if you were sick or in a bad mood or something, maybe.

 

So [Eva] would take our hands and run patterns along your palms with her fingers. And then she would, like, put her hands over yours. I don’t think she said anything while she was doing it or anything though. I’m pretty sure she didn’t. Yeah, Reiki was supposed to send good energy into you if something was wrong, and it was just a ritual involving your hands. It was kind of cool actually.

 

Me: Do you think it worked?

 

Tye: [laughs] I don’t know. I mean, at the time, I remember like fully believing in it.

 

Me: Yeah, me too, actually. I think it was like a placebo effect or something.

 

Tye: Yeah, because I do think if I was feeling sick or something before, and then she did it, I would feel better. Honestly, I think Eva is magic [laughs].

 

Conclusion: I asked Tye about two of the rituals Eva would do with us, and I actually really enjoyed looking back on them. I could tell when we were talking that Tye also had fun looking back on the experience. I do believe that the Reiki ritual worked to a certain extent, but more of a placebo effect type of thing. But when I was little, I did believe it worked. I thought that Eva was performing magic and that the magic was healing me magically.

Egg Ritual

Nationality: American
Age: 24
Occupation: Entrepreneur
Residence: Houston, TX
Performance Date: March 16, 2017
Primary Language: English
Language: Spanish

 

Subject: Ritual, Superstition

 

Informant: Tye Griffith

 

Background Information/Context: Growing up, I had a nanny who helped raise me, and who had been working in my family since before I was born. Her name is Eva, and she is from Monterrey, Mexico. Eva also worked as a nanny for a close family friend of mine, Tye. Tye and I essentially grew up together, and had the connection of Eva, who I feel linked our two families together even closer. Recently, I was remembering how when I was little and my parents would be either out to dinner or on vacation, Eva would stay with me. But when it was my bedtime, Eva had a very specific ritual she would perform while tucking me into bed. I didn’t remember the specific details of the ritual, other than it involved an egg that she would hover over my head and recite some sort of prayer. I reached out to Tye, knowing that Eva had done this same ritual with her when she was also younger.

 

This was Tye’s memory of the egg ritual:

 

Tye: Eva would get an egg from the fridge downstairs and rub the egg in different patterns across the body while saying a bunch of prayers. And then she would crack it into a clear glass and put it under the bed. The egg would stay there all night while you slept, and in the morning, you would check the bowl, and it would be completely black inside the bowl. Like a black goop. Ew, that sounds really gross when you say it out loud [laughs]. But it would be black in the morning because of all the bad spirits that came out of your body during the night.

 

And then you had to throw the egg out onto the street in the morning. The room wouldn’t smell though.

 

Me: Wait, would the whole room not smell like a rotten egg in the morning? [laughs] How is that even possible?

 

Tye: Magic! [laughs].

 

Conclusion: I was happy that Tye remembered a little more about it than I did, and having her tell me what she knew really jogged my memory. I was still curious about what Eva was saying during the ritual, so I thought about it for a while. I finally remembered a line from the prayer she recited: “Padre nuestro, que estás en el cielo.” So, I Googled that one line, and as it turns out, that was the first line to a Spanish prayer called “El Santo Rosario.” I read the prayer online, and it all came back to me. Eva would have me say the prayer every night when she was with me. The whole prayer reads,

 

Padre nuestro, que estás en el cielo,

Santificado sea tu nombre;

Venga a nosotros tu reino;

Hágase tu voluntad en la tierra,

Como en el cielo.

Danos hoy nuestro pan de cada día;

Perdona nuestras ofensas,

Como también nosotros perdonamos a los que ofenden;

No nos dejes caer en la tentación,

Y líbranos del mal.

Amén.[1]

 

The text of this prayer comes from an excerpt from the book Oración del Enfermo. However, in this book, the prayer is referred to as “Padrenuestro,” instead of “El Santo Rosario,” but it is the same text as the Santo Rosario prayer. Upon further reflection, this prayer is actually the Spanish version of The Lord’s Prayer, but I never connected the two, as I did not grow up in a particularly religious household. The only significant religious practices that I grew up with came from Eva, which were all in the Spanish language. I knew of The Lord’s Prayer in English, but I never made the connection until now, because the Spanish version was so much more prevalent in my life.

 

[1] Cadena, Alvaro Jiménez. La Oración del Enfermo: ¡Señor, tu Amigo está Enfermo! Bogotá: Ediciones Paulinas, 1991. Print.