Author Archives: Carla Frankenbach

“If you sprinkle salt on a birds tail it won’t be able to fly”

Nationality: American
Age: 50
Occupation: Teacher
Residence: Lakeville, CT
Performance Date: March 2013
Primary Language: English

“If you sprinkle salt on a birds tail it won’t be able to fly”

Informant Analysis: “My friends and I heard this from someone at school or something like that, and we kept trying to prove it wrong,as if, as if that was even possible. We would spend hours when we were really little waiting for a bird, salt in our hands, waiting for a bird to be still long enough to try to test out our theory. We wanted to be able to do it and then kind of, I guess, corral the bird into a cage so we could keep it as a pet, because it couldn’t get away.”

Analysis: It’s interesting how the informant took this folk belief and proceeded to investigate it with his friends. Most of the other beliefs I collected are prohibitive, and with this one it was something that had to be proved, at least it seemed that way to the informant at the time. In that way this belief became active, something that the informant could participate in, even if he was never successful. I think as kids, they wanted to be able to control something, and by enacting this belief successfully they could somehow gain some authority over something less powerful than them.

Old Man List House

Nationality: American
Age: 50
Occupation: Teacher
Residence: Lakeville, CT
Performance Date: March 2013
Primary Language: English

“My older sisters would always tell me about this, this house in our town, a few blocks away. When they wanted to scare me they would talk about how this big businessman had lived in this nice mansion, but he had fallen on some hard times so he lost all his money. It didn’t take long before he went crazy and everyone was scared to go by his house because he would just sit on his porch and yell at anyone that walked by. They always told me about his red tie that he wore, even though he had lost his job he always wore the tie. I was so freaked out, I mean I was only seven or eight. But it gets scarier. They would put on their spooky voices and turn off the lights to tell me about how one night, he just lost it and killed his whole family, and left them in the dining room and disappeared, and they were still looking for him today, some people thought he was somehow still living in the house, either alive or as some kind of spirit. So because my sisters had told me this story, and it kind of circulated around our town, we would always walk by the house and dare each other to go into the abandoned house or get as close to it as possible or something like that.”

Informant Analysis: “Well when I grew up, came to understand that it was just a scary story, and I was actually watching TV one night and, saw that they had finally caught this criminal named John List, who had been on the run for years. As they described his crime, which was killing his whole family and leaving them in sleeping bags in the living room before disappearing, I got this horrible feeling that he was the old scary man from my town. Realizing that the story was based on something real (I’m sure my sisters added some false details) actually scared me more than the original story. He had haunted me for my whole childhood, and here he was on the TV.”

Analysis: This is another example of an urban legend that seems to extend far beyond childhood. The informant’s sisters were obviously trying to scare him by telling him about the scary house, and it’s unclear whether they knew the real story or not. This legend becomes a challenge for the informant and his friends, a way to prove themselves by going into the dark, abandoned house. The experience of seeing this mythical, almost ghostlike figure come to life as an actual criminal must have been jarring, as these urban legends and ghost stories usually remain abstract, so the danger is not immediate.

“When you set the table, you can’t put the chopsticks upright in the bowl because it looks like incense, which people burn at funerals, so it’s bad luck”

Nationality: Chinese American
Age: 19
Occupation: Student
Residence: Los Angeles, CA
Performance Date: April 2013
Primary Language: English
Language: Chinese

“When you set the table, you can’t put the chopsticks upright in the bowl because it looks like incense, which people burn at funerals, so it’s bad luck”

I think this superstition also is a way to honor and respect the dead. Positioning the chopsticks in such a way is bad luck, but it is also an affront to the serious nature of funerals, where the incense is burned. The informant can’t remember when she was evert taught this, it’s just something she’s always known. This belief would also create an easy situation where outsiders can be recognized, because they would not know this custom by heart like native Chinese people do.

White Spots for Lies

Nationality: American
Age: 19
Occupation: Student
Residence: Los Angeles, CA
Performance Date: April 2013
Primary Language: English

“You know those white spots under your nails? My mom told me that I would get one of those for every lie I told.”

The informant was told this constantly by her mother, and it was obviously a way for her mom to scare her into always being honest. She said she also felt a sense of guilt because she had some white spots under her nails (actually due to a calcium deficiency) so she felt like she may have lied without knowing it. Obviously when she got older she realized this wasn’t true, but she says that everytime she looks down at her nails she’s reminded of it, so in a way her mother is always there to remind her to be honest. This reminder, even when she is old enough to know the original statement isn’t true, shows the insight her mom must have had in telling her this and instilling this semi-fear into her at a young age. Many parents say things like this, like my mom always said my nose would grow if I lied, so it makes sense that every parent comes up with their own version of it to instill honest values in their kids.

“You aren’t able to die in your dreams, so if you dream that you’re dead then you are actually dead”

Nationality: American
Age: 50
Occupation: Teacher
Residence: Lakeville, CT
Performance Date: March 2013
Primary Language: English

“You aren’t able to die in your dreams, so if you dream that you’re dead then you are actually dead”

The informant said that he heard this growing up, and so of course he developed this fear about having a dream that he was dead. He probably did at some point, whether he remembers or not, but regardless he thought this was a fact for much of his childhood. I found this belief strange, but the more I thought about it I realized in most of the nightmares I can remember I was trying to escape death or run away from something, but I had never actually died in a dream (that I can remember). This belief shows the interest we have in dreams as a society. We often try to interpret them or analyze them to get answers, so it makes sense that they would also indicate our demise.