Monthly Archives: May 2025

Story of My Father’s Escape from Communist China

Context: “My grandfather and Nai-Nai were in Chiang Kai-shek’s army when the Communists won. [Their escape from the country] was like the Underground Railroad: they could only move between safehouses at night. My dad [at the time] was only 1 year old and had to be quiet so he didn’t jeopardize their lives. One day, [the family] heard that the Communists had found their safehouse and were on their way. They had to just grab whatever they could find and run, but Nai-Nai couldn’t find [my father] and they just left. 3 long days later they met up at a new safehouse where they learned that one of the grandfather’s friends had grabbed and taken care of my father in the scuffle. He is now called “Uncle” because he saved my dad’s life.”

Analysis: This legend is a textbook example of a family legend. Despite there being no concrete proof of it happening, the story is treated as truth by the informant and her family and has been passed down for multiple generations. While the main claim of the story, that being the losing of the informant’s father for 3 whole days, may or may not be true, the story has persisted in the informant’s family because it represents the chaos and pain of the escape from China to Taiwan. The Chinese Civil War’s conclusion in 1949 was an upending of the social order. Following their victory, the CCP ruthlessly hunted down any remnants of the old China, both landowners and soldiers alike. In this mad dash to escape certain death, the informant’s family was thrust into a period of chaos and danger where all they had was each other and the clothes on their backs. While they were able to safely escape into Taiwan, they remember both their struggles and the strength of their community through this story. While the disappearance of the informant’s father in the chaos was a serious crisis, it was resolved by the strength of their family and solidarity.

Roseville Castle

Context: “There’s this house that’s known as the Roseville Castle. People say it’s haunted. Some very eccentric guy bought it and it’s like super creepy on the inside. It’s called the I-80 castle. I’ve never been inside but it [apparently] looks super medieval on the inside and it’s super creepy. It’s a weird mix of 70’s aesthetic and medieval. People are just put off by it. [I’ve heard that] there’s a hot tub in the bedroom that got filled in with concrete and is now a stripper pole.”

He also mentioned that he’s seen many references to the castle on social media platforms like TIkTok. The stories all vary but they appear somewhat frequently on his timeline. 

Analysis: After doing some more research on this local legend, it is even stranger than he described. A local radio station did a piece on it where they detailed the property and did an expose on the owners. The aforementioned “very eccentric guy” was an air force pilot and beauty school tycoon who fell in love with the idea of living in a castle when stationed in the UK. So, he built his own “poor man’s” version of a castle off the I-80 highway with his own hands. Now, after his wife left him, the castle has fallen into disrepair. Despite sources like this detailing the history of the castle, it still remains shrouded in mystery. The article makes many references to a myriad of rumors; some claim that the castle was built by the Shah of Iran and others say it is a maze littered with hidden rooms and passages. While these rumors are categorized as purely fiction, there is still a common sense of confusion and mystery surrounding it

This castle and the surrounding rumors represent a variation on the idea of a local legend. Much like a haunted house, the dubious origins of the castle and its out-of-place aesthetic makes it stick out in the public consciousness. Furthermore, the “eccentric billionaire” character has always captured the imagination. The whole archetype is a representation of what people would choose to do with almost unlimited resources. It is a fantasy not many get to live out, making their antics all the more alien to the rest of the population. In this case, the idea that a man with a ton of money would just build a castle because he liked one in England doesn’t fully satisfy the imagination. Thus, like a sort of memorate to explain his oddities, people draw upon the past and make up stories about mysterious passages and foreign princes to explain how something so out of the ordinary can exist in a small suburban town. 

Haunted House

Nationality: American
Age: 23
Occupation: Full-Time University Student (Graduating)
Residence: Los Angeles, CA
Language: English

I interviewed JJ on her haunted house in Mexico.

J’s Grandma has a house in Mexico. In their family, they say the upstairs bedroom is haunted, and nobody stays in it. One summer her cousin went to stay at their Grandma’s house for the summer. She was forced to share the room with her two brothers, and was sleeping next to Emilio. She was on her phone at night while they lay in bed to sleep, and she felt a tapping on her shoulder. She initially ignored the tapping, believing it was her brother, Emilio. Subsequently after, she decides to see what it was and she sees that it’s a hand, and that her brother is sleeping. She feels the hand grab her and pin her down. Ever since then she has refused to sleep in that room again.

This is a taboo space that seemed to have a physical manifestation of a ghost with the hand-grabbing. The origin of where it came from is unknown to her, meaning that it has been passed on through oral tradition. Even her parents have known of the room as being haunted, and she believes they link it to the revolution in Mexico. She couldn’t provide further context, but my guess is that the room possibly holds unresolved trauma. Perhaps stemming from the revolution and one of their family members was the subject of an early demise in that room.

Burning House

Nationality: American
Age: 21
Occupation: Full-Time College Student
Residence: Los Angeles, CA
Language: English

I met with PM to discuss his ghost story.

Everyone thought my house that I lived in from ages 7-13 was haunted. Everyone in my family had their own encounter with the ghost. You know when it feels like someone is watching you? We all got that feeling something when no one was around, especially at night. My mom has a story where she was sleeping and woke up unexpected and felt like a presence standing over her. Super creepy stuff. I had my own encounters where I felt a presence watching or hovering over me when I was sleeping. My sister had it the worst though. From what I remember the ghost encounters were worse on the third floor where her room was. Things would break unexpectedly, she felt like someone was watching her a lot of the time, windows would open on their own, and the floorboards would creak up there when no one was there. Fast forward to my house burning down out of nowhere. Coincidentally, the fire started on the third floor and no one really knows how. They thought it could have been an electrically fire but who’s to say the ghost wasn’t involved. Later on, when we were looking at the pictures of our destroyed house my grandma actually thought she saw it or something eerie in one of the photos.

This is a first-person account of P’s house burning down. It’s almost as if the farther you went into the house, the more haunted it became. This is definitely a ghost story or legend, where shared experiences and personal encounters are physical manifestations of the ghost. Not only that, but the fact that the fire originated in the most “active” area of the house—and that, in a photo of the remains, Pearson’s grandma claimed to see something eerie—aligns closely with common folklore motifs. These elements are frequently seen in other ghost stories and legends.

The ants and the grasshopper

Nationality: American
Age: 21
Occupation: Full-Time College Student
Residence: Los Angeles, CA
Language: English

I was able to meet with the informant in order to discuss a story she was told in Elementary School around 1st grade by her teacher.

It’s the summer, all the ants are working together to store food for the winter. A lone grasshopper doesn’t care and plays in the grass. He’s cold and hungry in the winter, he then goes and asks ants for food. They say he was lazy and didn’t work hard. The grasshopper died of starvation.

T was told this story around 1st grade by one of her teachers. She explains how she was taught that the story centered around emphasizing hard work, planning for the future and the consequences of procrastinating. This reminds me of a fable that I also learned about around the same time.