Author Archives: evamolin

The Colorado Street Bridge

Nationality: Vietnamese American
Age: 18
Occupation: Student
Residence: Arcadia, CA
Performance Date: April 23, 2016
Primary Language: English

AA is a high school senior living in Arcadia, California. She is certainly a folklore enthusiast- when I collected this piece from her in her bedroom, her bookshelves were stuffed with books about mythologies and tales from seemingly every corner of the world. But I was surprised to hear this legend about a location only miles away from our neighborhood that she shared with me:

 

“Ok, so the Colorado Street Bridge in Pasadena, right? So what I heard is that it’s known to be, like, a suicide bridge, so a lot of students will go there and jump off the bridge. I think there was this one time, uh, where there was this couple that went on the bridge. It was late at night. And they saw this kid, you know, and he was about to jump. And they had persuade him, and coax him for an hour or two so that he wouldn’t jump. He didn’t jump off the bridge. But he disappeared into thin air right after he told them that he wouldn’t jump.

Another story says that a man was just walking down the bridge and there was this certain area where, like, it felt colder than other places on the bridge. The air was still- there was no breeze or anything. And later he found out that someone had actually died jumping off from that same spot.

This legend really fascinates me. I’ve basically asked everyone if they’ve heard anything about it and I’ve read about it online. I’ve never gone to walk around there myself, though- I would be too scared.”

What made you want to look more into this story?

“The bridge is just so pretty. I always wondered about it though- I always wondered why it was just empty. Like, you will never see anyone on the bridge. I remember driving past it at night and the streetlamps were on, do you could totally walk on it- but still it was completely empty. I always wondered why, I drive past this bridge every day and not once have I seen someone walking on the bridge.

It’s interesting because it’s so close to us. It’s this super recognizable landmark. You’ll read about everywhere, it’s one of the things people know about where we live.  And the story is just so sad, you don’t really think about people committing suicide so nearby. It’s such a nice area. You wouldn’t expect it. Also it’s so public. It’s hard to imagine people going there to kill themselves right in front of the highway, in this very recognizable, very public place. It’s very tangible when it’s happening in a place you know. It’s a huge problem.”

The Colorado Street Bridge in Pasadena, CA

The Colorado Street Bridge in Pasadena, CA

 

My thoughts: Places with tragic histories almost always have legends surrounding them.  Perhaps these frightening legends are meant to deter people from going there to commit suicide themselves, or to warn people to stay away in case they end up witnessing something traumatic.  While it might have originated as a way of explaining why the bridge is always empty, I think it might have gone the other way around, too. It’s a widely circulated story I’ve heard in my neighborhood, and I think it’s definitely had an impression on the people who have heard it- the bridge is always deserted because people are scared to walk there at night, even though its safe and brightly lit. Also this legend ties into other folklore that claims that the spirits of those who committed suicide might stay behind- again, this is a cautionary tale that denotes suicide as wrong or immoral by presenting potential consequences of committing suicide.

For more on this legend, see Weird California’s write-up, Pasadena’s Suicide Bridge, which discusses the bridge’s tragic history as well as the ghost stories surrounding it: http://www.weirdca.com/location.php?location=57

La Descarnada

Nationality: Panamanian
Age: 45
Occupation: Medievalist, Professor
Residence: Los Angeles
Performance Date: April 18, 2018
Primary Language: English
Language: Spanish

The informant, LF, is a 45 year old Panamanian woman. She went to college in the United States and lives here now, but she grew up in Panama City. Here is a cautionary legend she recalls from her childhood:

 

“This is a story that has to do with masculinity, I guess, and it is about men who are in the wrong place at the wrong time doing the wrong thing.

The men in the story are usually drunk, family men are coming back home from womanizing- whatever it is, they’re not supposed to be doing it. It’s always very late at night, and they are driving home, minding their own business- almost always driving under the influence. They’re driving through a lonely place on a deserted street when they see a woman on the side of the road. She’s beautiful beyond belief, so the men pull over to offer her a ride. And of course the woman says yes.

So the woman gets into the car. When they drive past a cemetery, the woman will say that that is her stop. When she gets out- the men want to touch her sometimes, taking advantage of the fact that her back is turned. But when they touch her, the only thing they can feel through the fabric is bones. When she turns back to look at them, she’s just a body without any flesh.

The story is called “La Descarnada”, which means “the one without flesh”, or “the flayed woman” in Spanish. At this point she will then turn around and run into the cemetery. The men are said to lose their minds, either forever or temporarily. If they survive the experience, they change their ways and learn to stop staying out so late, picking up women.”

Why do you know or like this piece?

“I know it because during the Holy Week, there used to be no TV. Well, there was TV, but it was just the same movies over and over, like “the Robe”- really old movies, black and white, all related to Catholicism. And when I was a kid, I didn’t know those movies were good! So I was bored. The radio would only play classical music- there was nothing to do. So us kids would gather around and tell stories, usually with the lights off. It was the Holy Week, so you couldn’t hear anything. You only heard dogs barking in the distance, or cats meowing, it was really scary. That was one of the stories that was told in our storytelling circles. I think I first learned it from my mom or my grandma, one or the other.

When I was a kid, I thought it was just a scary story. Now that I’m old, I recognize that it was a cautionary tale from women to men, like “don’t do this, you’re going to find something you don’t want to find”.

 

My thoughts: This legend reflects attitudes towards gender in Panama, and what is expected from both genders. Latin American societies consider womanizing to be a display of being macho, as well as heavy drinking and even driving under the influence to prove that you are “man” enough to handle it. These behaviors are self-destructive, so this cautionary legend warns against them. The fact that the story is often told by women reflects that they want men to remain faithful to them and be at home with their families instead of out drinking. Legends like this one can be powerful because they can dissuade people from acting dangerously or immorally since it is ingrained in them from a young age- in this case, this story would be passed from mothers to their children.

The Snake’s Curse

Nationality: Panamanian
Age: 45
Occupation: Medievalist, Professor
Residence: Los Angeles
Performance Date: April 18, 2016
Primary Language: English

The informant, LF, is a medievalist from Panama. She comes from an agricultural family that largely lived in the countryside. LF recounts a family story involving a curse transmitted by a snakebite:

 

“So in my family- in the part of my family that lived in the countryside- my relatives earned their livelihood through the raising of animals and crops. Everyone participated. Even in our home closer to the city we had a chicken coop and a little bit of corns and tomatoes. We have a deeply-rooted agricultural tradition in our family.

So my great-great aunt had her own farm in the country. She was working on the farm and there was this snake. She didn’t see the snake and it bit her on the hand, and she had to be taken to the doctor- she was very close to dying but miraculously she recovered. When she went back to her farm, it was after the harvest and it was time to plant again. But when she planted the seeds, the plants never came up. So she went to tend to the trees that had been growing on the farm for generations, but according to the family story, the trees withered and died after she tried to prune them.

No one in the family knew how to explain it. The only thing they could come up with was that after the snakebite, she couldn’t touch plants because she had been damned. It was like something from the garden of Eden- if you get bitten by a snake, you cannot have a beautiful garden. You cannot touch a plant, because you will kill it. Upon contact, you kill the plants because you have been cursed by the snake’s poison.”

Was this a common belief, or was it exclusively told within your family?

“No, I think it was something my family came up with because they couldn’t explain what had happened to their relative. It was like a family superstition.”

Who did you learn this story from?

“I think I learned it from my mother. It supposedly happened to her great aunt. I never met this person and I don’t even know if it’s true. I heard it when I was a little kid. It came up actually when we were all watching a documentary about snakes, my mom suddenly goes- “Do you know what happened to your  great aunt?”- It was just a casual thing.

It means that people come up with explanations for things that are unexplainable. It could have been that it didn’t rain that year, or that it rained too much, and the plants died naturally. But it was such a drastic change- this farm had been in the family for generations and it had always been successful until that year.”

 

My thoughts: I agree with the informant when she says that folk beliefs often arise when people want to explain strange events. It’s a way of rationalizing things we can’t explain otherwise, like a sudden lack of crops. I think it’s interesting that the informant makes a connection with Christian religion when she mentions the Garden of Eden- perhaps folk beliefs sometimes subconsciously reflect aspects of organized religion.