Author Archives: Nicola Carreon

St. Anthony Prayer

Nationality: American, French
Age: 20
Occupation: Student
Residence: Downtown LA
Performance Date: 4.22.14
Primary Language: English

The Informant is 20 years old, a sophomore B.F.A. actor at USC, and she grew up in Louisiana and Texas.

Her: Well, I learned this from my Mom when I was really little or something. But whenever we can’t find something we say a small, rhyming prayer to St…St…who’s the saint that helps you find things? Oh, wait. Okay. No. Yeah. I think it’s St. Anthony. So, yeah, we’d pray to that guy, St. Anthony. The little thing-a-ma-jig we said was like, “Dear St. Anthony, I hope you’re around. Something is lost and can’t be found.” And then apparently he’d help you find whatever it was that you were looking for! I can’t remember if it always worked, but we always thought it did. My mom learned it from my grandma when she was little and passed it on to my sister Adeline and me. I think Addy still does it a lot.

Me: I was taught a similar prayer growing up! I still use it today, I think it at least brings good luck.

Her: Yeah, that’s the thing. I’m defs not as religious as I was raised to be. My mom made me this little card that I keep in my wallet that has the prayer written on it. Like, I have a super-southern-catholic family from Louisiana and Texas, but I like keeping little things like that with me when I remember them because they remind me of my mom and make me happy. I do the prayer every now and then, but not as often as I used to. I might start doing it again now.

Analysis:

This shows the small ways that religion can help bring families together and remain in a person’s life, even when they no longer consider themselves religious. This prayer was a little activity that the Informant was able to participate in with the females of her family when she was a child. In this way, this prayer became something that she closely associated with the women in her family and will probably always be a bonding factor for them when she looks back on it. The small card that her mother gave her then becomes a folklore object in that it remains in existence after the performance of the folklore has ended.

Christmas Run

Nationality: American
Age: 20
Occupation: Student
Residence: Downtown LA
Performance Date: 3.16.14
Primary Language: English

The Informant is 20 years old, a junior at USC studying Screenwriting, and is from Denver, Colorado.

Him: Yeah, I come from a big running family. Christmas morning we get up super early and all go on a 5k run together. We’ve always done it. I run with my dad like 2x a week or so whenever I’m home. And I run a 5k about 5 days a week. It’s just habit at this point. Running is a big part of my life and our family’s life.

Me: Do other members of your family still run? How has this tradition changed as you’ve grown up?

Him:  I think my grandparents on my dad’s side are the ones who started it. My aunts and uncles do it too, but not with their kids I don’t think. My dad has always been a runner, and I think my mom just started doing it when they met. I’m not sure how the Christmas Run thing got started though. I don’t even remember NOT doing it. It’s always been a thing for us. It’s changed a little. When we were younger, we’d just run 1 mile or so, but now that we’re older and all still running, we bumped it up a bit. This is BEFORE we open presents by the way. I think that shows how ritualistic it is *laughs*.

Me: I know you’re from Colorado, so it can get pretty cold out there. Do you always go on a run no matter what the weather?

Him: Typically, yeah. It just might be a shorter run. It’s just a habit for us. We can’t NOT go on our Christmas Run! My dad would get sad and it wouldn’t be a proper Christmas *laughs*.

Analysis:

This tradition is interesting because it shows how holidays can differ among the people who celebrate it. Christmas in my household is about staying inside and eating as much as possible. No exercise required. In fact, if you exercise, you’re “doing Christmas wrong” in my house. However, in the Informant’s home, running is such an important factor in their lives that they make sure to fit it in even before opening Christmas presents. Even when they were children. Which tells me that there is a great level of significance and discipline placed on this Christmas morning run. Yet, despite the differences in how each family may celebrate the same holiday, the same intentions hold true. It’s about unity, family bonding time, and creating a sort of happiness among those you love. The different ways families choose to address those intentions will always be different according to each household.

Another thing to keep in mind is that Colorado tends to be a very athletic state. There’s snowboarding, skiing, sledding, running, etc. In Las Vegas (where I’m from), athletics isn’t a big factor at all. It wasn’t until I moved to California that I realized how important physical activity can be in social and familial aspects.

Suicide in Ithaca

Nationality: American
Age: 20
Occupation: Student
Residence: Downtown LA
Performance Date: 4.22.14
Primary Language: English

The Informant is 20 years old, a junior at USC studying Screenwriting, and is from Denver, Colorado.

Him: My dad went to Cornell in Ithaca, NY, and he told this story to my cousins and I when we were kids.

Me: It’s like an urban legend?

Him: Totally. It might be distinct just to this part of the country. Apparently Ithaca has one of the highest suicide rates in the world. In the country? Maybe just in the country. Like, my dad said people actually go here to kill themselves. They have these big gorge-canyon things there. In Ithaca.

So, anyway, my dad heard this from his friends in college when he went to Cornell and said there was a couple that was driving through Ithaca and they stopped for some sight-seeing on a bridge. They got out of their car and went up to the railing and it was really, really foggy. So foggy that suddenly, a man who didn’t see them, and they didn’t know he was behind them, ran between them and jumped off of the railing.

Me: He didn’t see them? Or he purposefully jumped between them?

Him: He didn’t see them because it was so foggy! The fog is important here. That’s a thing! It’s actually a thing! It’s so foggy out there that people don’t see other people sight-seeing when they jump off of these rails into the canyon things! My dad it told it to me and then my friend who goes to Cornell right now also told me she heard it from her orientation advisor and roommate when she was admitted.

Me: When did your dad tell you this?

Him: He told it to us when we were kids when we went camping because it’s like one of the only scary things that he knows. So whenever we told scary stories he’d tell that one because it’s the only one he has in his brain.

Analysis:

I actually found a similar occurrence in Japan in the Aokogahara Forest: http://www.atlasobscura.com/places/aokigahara-suicide-forest

It’s the second most popular place where people go to commit suicide (The Golden Gate Bridge tops at #1). http://www.nytimes.com/2014/03/27/us/suicides-mounting-golden-gate-looks-to-add-a-safety-net.html?_r=0

These places are interesting in that people choose to travel to these locations in order to kill themselves. Some even make treks across the country. It makes me wonder about what in their personal, cultural, or sociological experience makes them want to travel to a “perfect place to die”. It also makes me wonder about the roots of the phenomenon of how suicides appear to others. There are statistics showing that females are more likely to commit “pretty suicides”, (i.e. death by pills, hanging themselves) whereas men are more likely to commit more brutal suicides (i.e. gunshot to head, murder suicides with knives, etc.). I wonder to what extent location factors into that mindset.

Haunted Taxi Ride?

Nationality: American, Korean
Age: 21
Occupation: Student
Residence: Downtown LA
Performance Date: 4.22.14
Primary Language: English
Language: Korean

The Informant is 21 years old, a junior at USC studying Theatre and Narrative Studies, and he’s from San Jose, California.

Him: My dad told me a version of that story with the pretty lady hitch-hiking? Do you know what I’m talking about? Ok, so there’s a taxi driver puling a late-night shift one night, he’s driving down an empty street and everything is closed. He sees a pretty woman wave him down and she asks if she can go to the house on top of the mountains. He’s a bit skeptical about it, but she’s so gorgeous and beautiful, he says he’ll take her. Every now and then the driver tries to glance at this woman sitting in the back seat. She’s so beautiful that he can’t help himself. He looks in the rearview mirror and sees nothing except his backseat. He turns around. She’s sitting there smiling at him. So he turns back around front. He tries to take another glance at her in the rearview mirror, and again, he can’t see her reflection, just the reflection of the seats. He turns around to look at her, and, again, she’s just sitting there smiling at him. He turns back around to face front. Finally, one more time he tries to take a look at her in the mirror, but, again, no reflection. He turns around one more time to look at her. She’s sitting there, smiling, and her nose is bleeding!

Me: I don’t get it.

Him: Every time he was looking at her in the rearview mirror, she was bent down picking her nose. And she picked it so much that her nose started bleeding.

Me: Oh my god.

Him: I know, right?

Me: When did your dad tell you this joke?

Him: It was at a family get together or something and he wanted to tell a joke to all of the kids and he knew that we’d start yelling out in the middle of it, “She’s a vampire, duh!” and then he just liked showing us that we were wrong! It was hilarious!

Me: Do you still tell the joke now?

Him: Yeah, I love telling it to people who haven’t heard it because they think it’s gonna go one direction and it just doesn’t. I think I like doing it for the same reasons my dad did. But I tell it to my friends or to break the ice instead of to  little kids.

Analysis:

This example is interesting because it’s a spin-off of the original joke rather than an alternate version of the original joke. It’s intent isn’t to satisfy with a scaring ending, but to throw the audience off the path of the punchline. In a way, this joke is similar to a “catch riddle” in that we are catching the teller in a practical joke. These types of spin-offs are important because they allow us to laugh at ourselves and redefine what it means to tell a scary story. It creates a new genre of minor folklore by walking the line of black (and even toilet) humor.

Underground City – Edinburgh

Nationality: American, German, Mexican, Irish
Age: 21
Occupation: Student
Residence: Downtown LA
Performance Date: 4.29.14
Primary Language: English

The Informant is 21 years old, a senior at USC, was raised in Las Vegas, and now her family resides in The Bay Area.

Her: I studied abroad last semester in Edinburgh, Scotland, and before I got there I was told about this urban legend from some people I know. A teacher, my mom’s fiancé, and then one of my friends going to Edinburgh with me all told me about this urban legend that there was an underground city beneath Scotland. Beneath Edinburgh.

Me: So, these were Americans telling you about Scottish urban legends?

Her: Yes! When I was in Edinburgh though I didn’t go on any tours for the underground city or anything. I actually didn’t really see them. No one in Scotland that I talked to really heard about it when I asked them *laughs*. I think there were like cemetery tours and torture tours that would talk about stuff LIKE that, but nothing really on the nose.

Me: So, when you were in Scotland you realized that the underground city wasn’t really an urban legend that Scottish people talked about?

Her: Yeah, exactly. It was like a Scottish legend that Americans had heard about but like wasn’t really true! Or maybe it is! I’ll never know! The same thing happened with the term “water closet” though.

Me: What happened?

Her: Well, I was always told that English people say “water closet” for bathroom. I also heard that they said “loo”. But then when I went to England and I brought it up to my English friends they laughed so hard! They’d never even heard of that word before and thought it was ridiculous. No idea where it came from. I was so confused.

Analysis:

I think this piece is especially unique and informative of how folklore is transferred across and perceived by other cultures. It gives insight to how cultures view one another, and how inaccurate they may be sometimes, bringing about the significance of “emic” and “etic” observations. The difference of opinions between the “emic” culture (Edinburgh and England) and the “etic” culture (America) are striking in this instance in that they cancel one another out. Alone, each of these views are uninteresting, but when combined we get a more complete picture of each of the cultures.