Author Archives: Naomi Granado

PE Possession

Nationality: American
Age: 18
Occupation: Student
Residence: Los Angeles
Performance Date: 4/21/17
Primary Language: English
Language: Spanish

Informant Information:

Jaden Davis is a student at the University of Southern California. He is originally from Smyma, GA, before moving to Los Angeles, CA for college.

Urban Legend:

“Have you been to the physical education building? Legend has it that if you go into the physical education building and you go all the way down to the bottom floor. There are lights in the hallway but they won’t turn on no matter what. Apparently one time there was an earthquake and 2 kids who happened to be down in the basement. Well the basement kind of caved in and the kids were buried in the rubble. They were presumed dead. But when they were repairing the damages people go down there and clean up the rubble but when the halls finally clear the bodies weren’t there. If you go down in that hallway, you can sometimes hear the sound of them screaming before the rubble fell on them. There’s also a door at the end of that hallway. The door has no handles but it can be opened from the inside. Now, if you go in that hallway on the night that they died which was March 8th, the door might be open and in that door is a bill collector to collect all your tuition. Just kidding there’s no bill collector, but if you walk into the door legend says one of the kids will take over your body and the kid possesses you till midnight. This is why kids wake up and don’t know where they are.”

Q: Where did you hear about this legend?

“One morning me, Eva, and Jack were in the physical education building. Some guy comes up to me and starts telling me this story.”

Q: Had you heard of this legend prior to your visit?

“Well Jack told me the physical education building was creepy, so I assumed there was stuff going on.”

Analysis:

Though I am also a student at the university, I have never heard of the urban legend that the informant mentioned. After doing more research,  I couldn’t find any information on the event that inspired the urban legend.

Wartime Proverb

Nationality: American
Age: 18
Occupation: Student
Residence: Los Angeles
Performance Date: 4/21/17
Primary Language: English

Informant Information:

Clerisse Cornejo is a student at the University of Southern California. She comes from a mixed background (Japanese/Mexican), and is originally from Fontana, CA.

Story:

“I think that one story that really stuck with me that my grandmother told me was about her adolescence. As a child she was born into WWII and lost her dad at a really early age. Because it was wartime kids couldn’t really go outside and play so she often stood home and spent time with her cousin Hiroko who she considers her best friend. When the war was over in Japan they were finally able to go out and be kids. So when she was a teen they both decided they wanted to learn how to ride a bike. They would take turns riding it and help each other balance. My grandmother said that they both fell down a lot but they would always help each other up and try again. She told me this as a lesson for failure so even though I might fail a lot at first I should keep trying until I succeed.”

Q: What would your grandmother and Hiroko do inside if they couldn’t play?

“I never asked about that, but I would think as kids in wartime they would try their best to emulate what they would do if they were allowed to go outside. I think it was probably really important for them to make up their own games or play game they heard from other people outside of their house. You weren’t confined to your house every moment of the day, but going outside you were never sure if the bombs were gonna drop. So it was really important to them I think.

Analysis:

 The informant told me this as a sort of proverb/lesson from her grandmother. From what I can see, this proverb can be seen in other cultures/circumstances (the whole notion of never giving up/trying again), but it just so happened that in this case the proverb was told to the informant from her grandmother’s personal experience. Because her grandmother was isolated throughout her childhood, this goes to show that proverbs/advice such as this can pop out of basic human circumstances and different situations we all go through regardless of whether or not we’ve heard the proverb before.

Sukiyaki Family Gathering

Nationality: American
Age: 18
Occupation: Student
Residence: Los Angeles
Performance Date: 4/21/17
Primary Language: English

Informant Information:

Clerisse Cornejo is a student at the University of Southern California. She comes from a mixed background (Japanese/Mexican), and is originally from Fontana, CA.

Tradition:

“Every New Year, this is pretty Japanese, but we eat sukiyaki so on the first day of the year we go to our Aunt’s house and our three aunts, my dad, and my grandma will get together in the kitchen and make sukiyaki together. Like traditionally speaking, it’s typical for the Japanese to eat sukiyaki only when it’s cold so usually during the winter time, but because we all live in California it’s still pretty warm out here even during the winter, so we just eat it on the first day of the New Year because that’s probably around the time of the year when it’s most cold in  SoCal.”

Q: Would you say that your celebration is similar to other families?

“I’ve never met another Japanese family and got to know them that well to ask about their traditions, but I do think that for people whose families have immigrated from Japan that getting together and eating traditional dishes is still an important activity. There’s not a lot of traces of Japanese culture in American culture so I think it’s very important for Japanese families to get together and participate in their culture.”

Q: Is your recipe for sukiyaki standard?

“Yeah I think it’s pretty standard. There’s like generally the same kinds of ingredients that always go into sukiyaki and that usually includes some sort of beef or other meat, a variety of vegetables and often tofu. We usually eat it alongside rice balls.”

Analysis:

The informant gave a lot of detail as to when sukiyaki is usually eaten by Japanese people (around winter time). Upon further investigation I found that one of reasons for this winter celebration was that because after the introduction of Buddhism, the Japanese were forbidden to eat meat unless special circumstances applied. One of those special circumstances was the winter celebration of bonenkai, a party towards the end of the calendar year. The informant mentioned that her family celebrates on the New Year because it’s when California is cold, but she didn’t mention this special winter celebration, probably due to the fact that she might’ve not been aware it existed.

Weston Women’s Asylum

Nationality: American
Age: 19
Occupation: Student
Residence: Los Angeles
Performance Date: 4/21/17
Primary Language: English
Language: Spanish

Informant Information:

Frank Pol is a student at the University of Southern California studying Computer Science. He is from a Venezuelan background, and is originally from Weston, FL before moving to Los Angeles, CA for college.

Story:

“There’s this building, like Weston’s not huge  so if there’s a building in Weston someone’s gonna make up a story about it because it’s new and small. There was this big giant gray block essentially a building with a large fence around it. The story people made up was that it used to be a women’s asylum, my friends said they’ve gone and they ran into the police. They said they ran into people who lived there and they just chased them out. When I went, we were getting out of the car to get over another fence and some lights shined on us from a truck driving up to our car so we got back to the car and drove to the left of the fence trying to get back to the road without going back. We did see some people, I mean this sounds bad but we saw people with guns inside the area, so maybe they were cops. We kept driving until the guy behind us went home.”

Q: How long did this story circulate around the school?

“Uhm, there’s always been stories about this building but this one started in my class. So around 4 years.”

Analysis:

From what the informant told me, it sounds like this legend was inspired by the outer appearance of the building, as well as the police officers that occasionally walked around the perimeter. I could not find any prisons/other similar locations when researching the informant’s story, so it looks as though this story is contained in his old school.

 

Pase del Diablo

Nationality: American
Age: 19
Occupation: Student
Residence: Los Angeles
Performance Date: 4/21/17
Primary Language: English
Language: Spanish

Informant Information:

Frank Pol is a student at the University of Southern California studying Computer Science. He is from a Venezuelan background, and is originally from Weston, FL before moving to Los Angeles, CA for college.

Story:

“My dad, so in Venezuela where my dad is from, they have a mountain called the Avila and it has a bunch of hiking and biking paths all the way down. I would take them all the time. So there’s this one that him and his family called Pase del Diablo. It’s basically just a super deep drop they would never do on their bikes, because there’s a story of people always trying to do it but they always end up dying because it’s hard to land. The whole area was protected so you weren’t supposed to be up there according to the government, but because the government doesn’t mean anything in Venezuela they still go up there.”

Q: Before your dad started biking, was this place familiar for this atmosphere?

“Yeah from the way he told me it was a story that was told to him by older friends.”

Q: Have you ever had a personal experience with this mountain?

“I just saw it from a distance. We didn’t make it to the waterfall but yeah we didn’t see the actual thing but we passed the path and he told me the story.”

Analysis:

The informant had heard of this tale from his father, and didn’t really know much about this belief other than what his father had told him. After conducting further research, I could not find the specific pass in the mountain that he mentioned, nor any mentions of a “devil’s path” on the mountain of Avila. It must only be a belief held by his father and his father’s biker friends.