Category Archives: Magic

Ritual actions engaged in to effect changes in the outside world.

Legend – Slenderman in Real Life

CONTEXT:

J is a freshman at USC studying screenwriting, and a good friend of mine. 

Slenderman is an online-created urban legend spread throughout the site CreepyPasta. It originated with photoshopped images of a slender, tall and faceless man in a suit.

TEXT:

J: So one time when I was a kid, my cousin and my mom were talking about Slender Man, because I guess they both heard of it. And I was like, eight at the time. And I had never heard of this because I was like, eight years old. And I had no connection to like, creepy pasta or anything on the internet. And so I asked them to tell me a story about it because I wanted to know what he was like. So they told me this story about this girl who was home alone one night, and she forgot to get water before she went to bed. So when she was in bed, she was like, oh, I need to get up and get water because I’m really thirsty. So she went to her kitchen. And as she was getting the water, she saw this weird, creepy figure in the corner of her kitchen, and it really freaked her out. But instead of going back to bed, she continued to get the water. And so then when her parents came home, they saw that she wasn’t there. So they looked around, and they asked a bunch of people. And eventually they found out that she was at the hospital. And so they went to the hospital to talk to her and ask her what happened. But her ears and her tongue and her eyes were all cut out. And her hands were cut off. So that she couldn’t see if he was going to come again. She couldn’t hear if he would come again. She couldn’t speak what happened, and she couldn’t write down what happened. And so that way, he would remain anonymous. 

Me: They told you this when you were eight?

J: Yeah. And so then I remained afraid of Slenderman until I was like, in the middle of high school. Because the legend goes that like, if you cease to believe that Slender Man exists, then he will come kill you. But so long as you believe that he exists, you’re sort of safe. And so that made me not want to stop believing in it. But then it kept freaking me out.

ANALYSIS:

Slenderman is a curious case of folklore in which it takes on a life of its own outside of its place of origin: the internet. Creepypastas tend to be another form of scary storytelling for children and young people, and they are, in a way, a place akin to campfires for the exchange of scary stories. For something as famous as Slenderman, however, it evolves into a cultural being despite having been started with fan narratives that were written down, which is not how we traditionally think of folklore. Yet because there is no official canon nor a copyright, the people are able to be communally creative while making agreements on who this character is and what he should be. 

Legend – Couch Island

CONTEXT:

P is a freshman at USC, and a good friend of mine. In the United States, children tend to go to summer camps, where they spend time with nature and with older camp counselors who supervise and lead them.

TEXT:

P: So the camp was at a lake and across the lake you could see like, I don’t know if it was an island, it was just another strip of land and there was just a couch there. Just a white couch with nothing else around it, just a couch. Yeah, we could see this couch like we could see it and so we called it couch Island. I don’t think it was an island though. That area of land, we called it couch island because it looked like it was surrounded by water kinda, and so I think the legend was, you should never step foot on couch island because — we had boats, like wooden boats. We have like, you know, canoes and we would canoe around the lake. But you’re not supposed to go on couch Island. Because there’s like some shadow guy, some shit that lives there. And like that’s his couch. You don’t want to fucking sit on his couch. But sometimes the couch would get removed and then there wouldn’t be the couch there. Like I would see the couch. Like it just wouldn’t be there some days other days it would be sometimes it was just like a chair. You know, it was switched out? Yeah, it was weird. I think, really there was a house over there. It was somebody’s house and they would just put furniture out sometimes. But we would never see them sitting there, was the thing so we were like they would always switch out the furniture so it must have been like after we’d left the camp because there was a daycare. But sometimes we would have overnights and we still wouldn’t see who was over there. So people would just make shit like people were talking about this they saw like a shadow man over there one time or whatever. But you’re not supposed to go to Couch Island. That’s what I remember. Don’t set foot on Couch Island.

Me: Did you ever hear stories about someone who stepped on couch Island and got killed? Or got caught by the Shadow Man?

P: Maybe, if anything, it was just like they stepped on the island and then they would never be heard from again. Yeah. Like that’s why you wouldn’t go there. Because if you stepped on his couch, if you sat on the couch immediately either the fog and Shadow Man  or the couch just enveloped you.

ANALYSIS:

Folklore tends to be the most believable for children, who are obviously less knowledgeable on how the world works and are more susceptible to believing legends. In this case, there are clear trends on what is unseen and the legends that surround things. When something is foggy or unexplained, there tends to be more mysticism and magic around it. For the couch, there might be a very logical explanation for it. But because there is so much in the unknown, people, and especially children, are likely to come up with a more fantastical and interesting explanation for it. In many ways, the reveal of what actually happened doesn’t matter — what is real is not what’s important, what’s important is what we believe and choose to believe. 

La Befana

Nationality: Italian American
Age: 76
Occupation: Retired schoolteacher
Residence: Westfield, NJ
Performance Date: April 3, 2023
Primary Language: English
Language: Italian

[A]: My father spent most of his youth in a small town in the Campania region of Italy…I believe he was 13 when he came to America with his parents. It was so sad…they came here at a time where immigrants were treated very poorly for having accents and…or speaking a different language, so he had lost a lot of his Italian traditions by the time he was married and starting his own family. One of the things that he made sure carried over to our new generation though was the story of La Befana…let’s see if I remember it correctly…in a lot of parts of Italy the big gift exchange happens on January 6th instead of Christmas day…I remember distinctly because I always got more presents the day after my birthday…and the night of January 5th kids would hang their socks or stockings along the chimney in hopes that La Befana (the witch) would come in the night and fill them with candy and all other sorts of treats. If you had been bad that year, supposedly, La Befana left you a hard black candy called carbone (coal) —a lot like what Santa does! I don’t know how much I remember about her background or why she would do this…but I think she was considered a sort of…add-on to the story of the birth of Jesus Christ. If I remember correctly, she lived near Bethlehem and on the night Jesus was born the Three Magi stopped to ask her for directions to the town and for food and shelter. She helped them but before she sent them on their way they invited her to come with them but she…I believe politely declined and so they went on their way. But that night she was awoken by this incredible bright light that she took as a sign to go find the Magi and baby Jesus…I don’t remember what happened in between but she couldn’t find them and the story goes that every year on January 5th she flies all around, still looking for baby Jesus and she drops treats off for sleeping children…something about hoping baby Jesus is with them or safe or something like that. When I was younger I remember my father buying small broomsticks and leaving them outside our doors to try to keep the magic alive…I guess it worked! I can’t believe I didn’t do that for the boys…frankly it’s been many years since I thought about that story.

A is a 76 year old woman who’s spent her entire life in a suburb in northern New Jersey. Both of her parents come from an Italian background, and her father specifically lived in the south of Italy until he was roughly 13.

A is a family member, and I was on the phone with her thanking her for sending me an Easter card when I realized I had the perfect opportunity to ask her if she could think of any stories that would help me with my project. She didn’t totally understand what I was asking at first, so I told her about some of the other pieces I had collected already and when I mentioned ghost stories and monsters she pretty quickly remembered the story of La Befana. She told the story with a kind of reverence and nostalgia that you only feel from someone like an older relative when they recall a magical story from their youth, and I could tell she was so very happy to remember that small piece of her father that she’s lived without for the past 30 or so years.

One of the things that sticks out most to me from hearing this story from A is the power that folklore has. A hadn’t thought about this story since she was a young girl, and although she would likely argue the point, she remembers it extremely well. This tale about a witch from thousands of years ago traveled across the ocean in the early 20th century with a little boy who managed to practically tell it across generations, and now I’ll likely remember the story for years and years to come.

La Befana serves as a sort of Santa-like figure to children, but can also be interpreted as a piece of religious folklore. The story of the birth of Jesus Christ and the 3 wise men is relatively fundamental to most forms of Christianity, but I’d never heard the addition of La Befana before and likely won’t hear it outside of the context of Italian culture. It struck me as both odd and interested that La Befana is affiliated with the story of the birth of Jesus because although I’ve never had much religious education, from what I understand about Christianity, witches and witchcraft is frowned upon; yet, nothing about what A told me frames La Befana in a negative light. She actually seems like a very positive character, as she gave food and shelter to weary travelers.

Vertical Chopsticks

Nationality: Chinese
Age: 47

Text:
Once at dinner, the informant arranged the table and served rice for everyone’s bowl. The informant’s father-in-law put chopsticks and spoons next to the bowls. As he gave the informant the chopsticks, he stuck the chopsticks vertically in the informant’s rice while everyone else’s chopsticks were next to the bowl. It is later revealed that sticking chopsticks vertically in another’s bowl is a curse, as the chopsticks and the rice look like burning incest sticks, which is something people do to dead people at their funerals and later visits to their tombs.

Context:
The informant did not have a very good relationship with her father-in-law, as he often suspected others of not liking him and telling people what to do even though he didn’t know much about things. However, they live together. Thus they would sometimes have small conflicts. The informant said she did not think much about why her father-in-law sticks the chopsticks in her bowl, but she swapped her bowl with her father-in-law’s. The informant described his face as “angry and surprised,” but he didn’t say anything and put the chopsticks down. Not until later did she realize it was a curse when a child stuck her chopsticks in her bowl, and the mother scolded her. The informant looked proud as she returned the bowl even though she didn’t know about the curse until later, and she was still angry about the curse even though she never knew why her father-in-law wanted to curse her.

Analysis
This text includes elements of superstitions and family dynamics in Chinese culture. The act of sticking chopsticks vertically in someone’s rice bowl resembles the ritual of burning incense sticks for the dead ones. It’s a respectful thing to do to the dead but terrible to someone alive. Although China is not a religious country, the belief in superstitions and curses still exists in Chinese culture.
The problem of the family dynamics is also reflected in the text. As a culture that respects the elders and values family, many Chinese families live together with their elders. Usually, after the couple gets married, they would live with one side of their parents (or their parents would move to live with them.) The high price of housing also contributes to this phenomenon. As the two families stay together, conflicts arise. In this case, the woman lived with her husband’s parents. The young and the old generation are unfamiliar with each other, while the family power dynamics differ from the old times. Thus, conflict arises. In modern days, more and more families choose to live separately from their parents to avoid such conflict.

USC Good-luck Sweater

Background: R is a proud grandmother of a USC student and she routinely watches USC sporting events in support of the school. R is a Mexican immigrant and loves to support her grandchildren in all their endeavors.

Text:

R: “I always, always wear my USC ….cómo se dice…sweater….always no matter how hot it is! I am convinced I gave USC football and uh… Caleb… Williams good luck last year when they won all the games. The only game I didn’t wear it was the USC and… Utah game…that was when they lost!”

Interviewer: “Do you wash the sweater?”

R: “Si, I’m not crazy. The sweater‘s powers activate when I put it on… it can’t come off in the washer.”

Interviewer: “Why are you so invested in USC sports?”

R: “Because I want to be supportive of my grandchild and their success of getting into such a good school. I’m so so proud!

Analysis:

Sports superstitions are among the most common superstitions in American contemporary life. Sports fans like to feel like they have some control over the game, even when they’re watching from the stands or their living rooms. They pretend that they take part in the action through insignificant routines/gestures/sayings/or performative rituals, such as wearing the same lucky sweater. In R’s scenario, her sports superstition transcends just wanting to take part of the athletic event, she wants to take part in the success of her grandchildren.