Monthly Archives: May 2019

The Bay Area: The Toys R Us Ghost

Nationality: American
Age: 21
Occupation: Student
Residence: Los Angeles, CA
Performance Date: 2/21/2019
Primary Language: English

Context:

My informant is a 21 year old student from the University of Southern California. This conversation took place in a university dining hall one evening. The informant and I were in an open space, and the informant’s significant other was present and listening to the conversation, as well. The SO’s presence, is the most likely reason that the informant was much more dramatic and told the legend quite jokingly, as if for the purpose to get laughs out of both me and the SO. In this account, he explains a legend of a ghost in his town that he doesn’t remember who he learned it from: “Everyone just seems to know about it.” This is a local legend, and has also been reported on Mercury News, SFGate, and a series of blogs. This is a transcription of our conversation, where he is identified as A and I am identified as K.

 

Text:

A: Before the bustling suburb of Sunnyvale grew to its imminent heights that now houses Amazon and Google offices, it was once a sleepy little farm town in Silicon Valley, where tech was replaced by fields and farms and orchards. One day, this man (as it was explained to me) was out in the field, in one of those like, you know, he has some kind of labor agreement with the farm… So he’s hacking away with his hoe, and this guy injures himself. Turns out he bleeds out into the field and dies. Decades later, there’s now a Toys R Us here… long story short, this guy who self-maimed himself with a hoe and bled out… he hunts, this uh, Toys R Us. Even though Toys R Us just got bought out, before that, all the ghost hunter people would come into Sunnyville to see this ghost. He would come into the aisles at all hours of the night, pretty crazy stuff… You can say Sunnyvale’s not sleepy anymore!

Don’t sleep on Sunnyvale….

K: Ok, what did you take away from this story?

A: Um, I think especially in areas like suburbs, when there’s not traditionally a lot of culture, people latch on to certain stories, just to impart some kind of history onto a town that otherwise wouldn’t necessarily be that notable.

K: What effect did this story have on you?

A: I still shopped at Toys R Us, but honestly I heard it after I stopped shopping, but I still do play with Legos just as a disclaimer.

 

Thoughts:

I thought this story was particularly interesting and ended up looking it up to find out more about this ghost. As it turns out, this ghost has made quite a name for itself in the Bay Area. Just like my informant said, this ghost worked the land as part of a labor agreement, where he would have housing in exchange for his work. However, what my informant didn’t mention was the fact that this ghost fell in love with the daughter of the family that owned the land; she eventually ran away with a lawyer, breaking his heart. Distracted by the pain of his broken heart, the ghost ended up hurting himself with one of his tools and slowly bled to death, thus leaving his unsettled ghost to roam the land.

Years afterwards, many people came to the newly built Toys R Us that was constructed on top of the land that he worked to ghost hunt for him., but it seems that this story has re-emerged under the new context that Toys R Us is now shutting down. It seems that this story has a new relevance, where people can now interpret this story in the death of people, but also in the death of companies. Many of the new articles wonder whether or not the death of Toys R Us will also result in the disappearance of the ghost. However, the ghost’s story is separate from Toys R Us’s: he was clearly wronged by a member of the family that owned the land, and his haunting is meant to instill guilt in the owners of that land. Furthermore, ghosts are believed to be tied to the soil, not the structure that they resided in, so it’s most likely that the ghost will remain and that for those that were hopeful that he would leave, they will have to continue to remember the wrongdoings of the daughter that broke his heart.

 

For more on this ghost story, please refer to this article below:

Dowd, Katie. “Will the Death of Toys R Us Kill off This Famous South Bay Ghost Story?” SFGate, San Francisco Chronicle, 17 May 2018, www.sfgate.com/bayarea/article/haunted-toys-r-us-sunnyvale-ghost-store-12750779.php.


Folk Medicine, Pneumonia

Nationality: American
Age: 78
Occupation: Retired
Residence: Delaware
Performance Date: April, 2019
Primary Language: English

UB: I think as a person who helped to heal in my community, um, she also seemed to know something about um, and I, I don’t want to call it acupuncture, but she knew that, that uh, there were certain that went on with the foot, um, that if you, if you, did certain things with the foot you would also cure other things. And this was before acupuncture and before mapping of the foot and all this other kind of stuff that went on.

N: mhm

UB: and what had happened was that when I was almost 2 years old, I had pneumonia, and, uh, my mother managed to get me to the hospital, which sent me home because they wouldn’t give me penicillin. There was none available and the prognosis was that I was gonna die. And my mother was very upset about that, and so when Mom Mae came, Mom Mae said that, to my mother, my mother told me about this many times, Mom Mae said you should turn his feet to the fire. This was her way of, of, addressing the congestion in the lungs and the nasal and everything else because I was barely breathing, that’s what my mother said and so, that’s what she did. They opened the stove, the gas stove, and my mother said that Mom Mea sat with her all night, of course prayed, and held my feet to the fire even though I tried to resist it, and she said the fever broke I started coughing all of this phlem and everything and cleared my lungs and everything and so then I survived this.

N: interesting

UB: So in my neighborhood, um when people became ill, um they would always call for Mom Mae, her name was Mae Springfield, was her full name

 

Folk medicine is a staple in culture, ancient and modern, and is a basis of much modern medicine. Thus use of folk medicine is seen by some to be a source of magic, often being practiced by a select chosen few such as shaman, witch doctors and medicine men, for example. This bit of folklore was given to me by an informant, now in his late 70s, who experienced it first hand, and was then retold it as he grew up. He remembers it because of all the help this woman, Mom Mae, brought to his community. Mom Mae was not a trained doctor, but someone who was able to learn these things, probably through oral tradition, a show of her West African heritage that had survived through the atrocities of slavery. While I would be skeptical in the beginning, it would be because of a general lack of understanding and the societal idea that folk medicine is to be considered not “real medicine”, though, these recalls seem to say otherwise. The retelling of these stories also turns Mom Mae into a sort of a local legend, giving her status while she was alive, and mystifying her among the generations afterwards.

Folk Medicine, Copper Penny

Nationality: American
Age: 78
Occupation: Retired
Residence: Delaware
Performance Date: April, 2019
Primary Language: English

UB: Ok, well I’ll tell you the story about Mom Mae

N: Mom Mae?

UB: Um, her her name, Mae, was her name

N: ok

UB: and, um,  we called her Mom Mae, cause, she was a mother, a mother to a lot of people growing up. And Mom Mae was born into slavery

N: mhm

UB: um, around 1857 or something like that. When I, (clears throat) when she first came to the community where I was born, which was public housing,

N: mhm

UB: in Chester, um, she was already in her 80s and that was, uh, that was around 1942, right at the, uh, after we had entered into, the United States had entered into the World War 2

N: mhm

UB: um Mom Mae, um we often referred to her as a witch doctor

N: mhm

UB: Um, but that was because we didn’t know what else to call her. But she was a, uh, a person who practiced folk medicine

N: mhm

UB: and where she got all of this knowledge, um, I really don’t know but I believe, um, much of it came from West Africa

N: mhm

UB: um, her mother was also born into slavery, um, and during that time, uh, in the early 40s, I was born in 41, 1941, um, doctors were not available for the most part to black people

N: mhm

UB: and it was a time, uh, that, uh, that penicillin had been discovered but all that was being produced was being used by the military.

N: Mhm.

UB: and I, I, and it just wasn’t available to people, uh, who were seriously ill, and I was one of those people, with pneumonia

N: mhm

UB: um so, in my neighborhood, when people got sick they called Mom Mae

N: mhm

UB: to come and, and to uh, and to help out. Now She understood a lot of things, about medicine and curing people

N: mhm

UB: but she couldn’t explain, she couldn’t explain how she knew it

N: mhm

UB: uh, for example, she knew that um, uh that garlic had an antibiotic properties, she also knew that honey had antibiotic properties. And so she used garlic and she used honey, in a number of cases, cuts, infections, stuff like that.

N: mhm

UB: um, she, she also knew, and and this was very interesting to me, many of the households in my community, uh, would keep, there were no refrigerators, there were ice boxes with blocks of ice in them, but in the icebox, you would find a, uh, a small cup with, uh, vinegar in it

N: mhm

UB: and a penny, a copper penny

N: mhm

UB: and, I don’t know whether you’ve had any chemistry or not, or if you would understand what would happen-

N: Not since 15 (says with a chuckle)

UB: Not since you were 15, ok so the penny, the copper penny and the vinegar interact, uh, form the chemical reaction

N: mhm

UB: and it produced, uh, copper acetate. Now Mom Mae knew nothing about copper acetate or chemistry she just knew that when the penny turned blue, blue-green, that you could rub that penny on sores and it would cure fungal infections

N: interesting

UB: Copper acetate is a, is a fungicide

N: mhm

UB: and when I was growing up, it was really common for ring worms to be spread around from one child to another and ring worms are caused by a fungus infection and there’s lots of skin infections, um um, that are caused by fungus, getting into scratches. So you take the penny after it turned green and rub it on the, on the sore, and it would cure it.

N: interesting

UB: and, and, we all, we all knew that that’s what was going on but we didn’t understand it, not until I was an adult and looked back on this that I see what she knew and how she did it

 

Folk medicine is a staple in culture, ancient and modern, and is a basis of much modern medicine. Thus use of folk medicine is seen by some to be a source of magic, often being practiced by a select chosen few such as shaman, witch doctors and medicine men, for example. This bit of folklore was given to me by an informant, now in his late 70s, who experienced it first hand, and was then retold it as he grew up. He remembers it because of all the help this woman, Mom Mae, brought to his community. Mom Mae was not a trained doctor, but someone who was able to learn these things, probably through oral tradition, a show of her West African heritage that had survived through the atrocities of slavery. It is interesting to see how other can survive without the use of modern medicine. I interpret this as proof that the idea of “modern science” is not so modern, but acts as an example of the concept of colonizing what is often the culture of people of color and calling it new and innovative. My informant sees it as extraordinary that this woman came into his community and was able to help so many people, seeing the circumstances of the story, I agree, given her age, background, the year, etc, this woman was a god sent to a community in need. She, to me, represents those who dedicate themselves to helping others out of care, sharing their knowledge for good.

I met a man going to St. Ives

Nationality: American
Age: 79
Occupation: Retired
Residence: Pensylvannia
Performance Date: April, 2019
Primary Language: English

Na: I met a man as I was going to St. Ives and every, and every, oh! I met a man who had, um, cats, he, oh gosh, anyway (Ni: *laughing*) at St. Ives, and he met this man with cats and kits and whatever. So the whole term is: How many people were going to St. Ives?

Ni: I, I don’t know, 2??

Na: One, (Ni: one??) me! (*chuckles*)

Ni: Oh! Ok (*chuckles*)

 

I received this folklore while talking to my Grandmom, an elderly lady of almost 80, with a lively personality and jovial spirit. She often likes to tell jokes and poke fun, especially and my brother and I, her grandkids. As I was interviewing her for folklore, she decided to tell me a riddle which I had never known before, but apparently both she and her husband, my grandad, definitely knew. Why she remembers this specific riddle is unclear, and as to where she know it from, at this point she doesn’t even remember, but she still remembered the main gist of it, and in the end, both of us were laughing even though I got tripped up when asked to answer the ending question. Riddles across cultures have been used as a way to bring people together and to decide who is and is not a part of the gang, fortunately, my grandmom did not kick me out for not properly answering the riddle. In instances like these, the riddle is all in good fun, a bonding element between and grandma and her granddaughter, everyone was able to have a laugh and the light fun spirits continued. In one variant of the riddle, there are two men, one with I believe cats, and the other with wives, despite this divergence, it always ends the same, with only one person going to St. Ives, me!

Convocation

Nationality: Iranian-American
Age: 16
Occupation: High School Student
Residence: Albuquerque
Performance Date: 3/17/19
Primary Language: English

Main Piece (Direct Transcription):

A tradition at my school for all sixth graders is called convocation.  I remember my first day of sixth grade, they paired me up with a senior the first day of school and we walked up the long brick pathway at our school up to the gym.  It’s a way of initiating the entering sixth graders into the school, and kind of a way of saying farewell to the seniors since it will be their last year.   After we went to the gym, we took our seats to listen to a convocation speech.

 

Context:  The informant K, my brother, is a high school student living in Albuquerque, New Mexico.  He attends the same middle/high school that I attended, and we were talking about all the interesting and unique traditions that our school has while I was home for spring break.  I was reminiscing about different events that I was able to take part in while I was a student at the school, while listening to my brother’s perspective and take on these different traditions.  We both agreed that we feel like our school is very unique, and that we don’t believe a lot of schools have the traditions that ours does.  Although folklore is often considered to be something that larger groups of people can relate to, I believe that folklore and tradition surrounding schools and small local areas are sometimes some of the most interesting to hear about.  It gives insight into how the individuals in these areas live and gives valuable insight into what their values might be.  Because of this, I asked my brother to tell me more about his experience with these traditions to tell in my folklore collection.

 

 

My Thoughts:

I have an interesting perspective on this tradition because I was both the sixth grader and the senior.  Although it is one event that the whole school takes part of, there are several different perspectives individuals can have on the event.  Since my brother is only a junior in high school right now, he has not yet gotten to walk a 6th grader up the path and has only been the 6th grader walked by a senior.  I was both the 6th grader, feeling nervous and excited on the first day of school, and the senior, feeling sentimental on the last first day at the school.  I was also able to be the spectator from grade 7 to 11, and still felt excited watching the seniors and new sixth graders walk into the gym after their walk up the path.  This traditional ceremony at the school is something that a lot of people look forward to every year, and I believe it serves as an excellent first entrance to the school for 6th graders.  The school has so many unique and powerful traditions and ceremonies that happen year after year, and the new students are able to get a small taste of what is in store for them throughout their time at this school.