Category Archives: Folk Beliefs

seasonal omen or a weather-related folk saying – “June Gloom”

Pulled from audio recording:

“Informant:
Okay, I’m from California. I wonder if you’ve heard of this one—“June gloom.”

Pearson:
No, what’s that?

Informant:
It’s a thing on the California coast where, in June, there’s this weird period of overcast skies in the middle of summer. It happens every year. Growing up, people would always say “June gloom,” especially when planning beach trips. Like, we’d want to go, but then someone would say, “Oh no, June gloom.””

Analysis:

“June Gloom” refers to June in California where the skies are overcast and a haze or a Gloom lingers over the coast. In my mind it can be used literally and figuratively. Literally because it’s a real weather-related phenomenon and figuratively as a sort of saying. Someone could ask you to go somewhere to do something with them and you could reply “oh no I don’t wanna go. June Gloom”. It’s used as a way to describe a state of being almost. It reminds me of the idea of not wanting to go outside because it’s raining if that makes sense.

Age: 20


Date_of_performance: Told to me on February 14, 2025. A thing they’ve heard throughout their life


Language: English


Nationality: American


Occupation: Student at USC


Primary Language: English


Residence: Somewhere in the Los Angeles area

Onions for fevers

Nationality: American, Mexican (dual)
Occupation: Stay at home parent
Residence: Concord, CA
Language: Spanish

I actually interviewed my mother because I’ve honestly never thought that some of the things we do may be considered folklore. I remember in class we talked about remedies and in my family if someone has a fever then we put onions on their feet. Specifically purple onions that are cut in half. The onion halves go on the soles of your feet and “pull out” the heat from you. She says that my grandma (her mother) would do that with them as children so she has continued the tradition.

Now, I have been on the receiving end on this and admittedly I am skeptical. I feel like it has worked to bring my fever down, but at the same time we used rags that are wet with the onions so I’m not sure if it’s the rags or the onions (my guess is it’s the rags). Nonetheless, I continue to do it because it’s tradition.

Snow Day Wishes

Age: 19

Date: 2/27/24

Major: Media Arts and Practice and Game Development in Interactive Design

Year: Sophomore

Primary Language: English

Place of Origin: District of Columbia

INTERVIEWER: Okay. so what is a superstition that you know of and practice and where did you learn it from? 

STUDENT: Um. I don’t know, actually, I don’t know if I have any superstitions. Is that..? 

INTERVIEWER: I mean, do you know of like the one you’ve seen a lot? 

STUDENT: Well, yeah. I like know some. There’s not but I that I practice. Like the first one that came to mind was like on like snow days where you were supposed to like flush an ice cube down the toilet to like wish for snow. or like put your pajamas on backwards to like wish for snow.

INTERVIEWER: And who did you learn that from?

STUDENT: I feel like just my elementary school community I don’t know if it was like my teachers or I feel like it wasn’t my teachers that like, I first heard it from. 

INTERVIEWER: Would you you still do this today? 

STUDENT: No No, I don’t. I don’t practice any. It was it was more just like as a kid. I didn’t practice it. I don’t. I just heard of it. 

Split the Pole

Age: 20

Date: 2/27/24

Major: Media Arts and Practice

Year: Junior

Primary Language: English

Place of Origin: Georgia,USA

INTERVIEWER: Okay. All right, so what is a superstition you practice and where did you learn it from? 

STUDENT: Um I guess I practice I do not split holes. and I learned, um yeah, from I guess just like my family, like my parents. they told me that if I split a pole or if a group of people splits a pole in the youngest person dies, first, the youngest person dies first, and since I’m the youngest in my family, and they told me that when I was a kid, I took that very seriously. And so I carry that with me today, even though I feel like that’s kind of ridiculous, but at the same time who’s to say? So, yeah, okay. 

Weird Trees

Age: 20

Date: 2/27/24

Major: Archeology and Cinema and Media Studies

Year: Junior

Primary Language: English

Place of Origin: Houston, Texas

INTERVIEWER: What is the superstition that you’ve heard of and that you practice and where did you hear it from? 

STUDENT: Superstition? Sorry, I got to think. No, cause oh, I have one! I guess I only developed this superstition, this past summer because I was doing like archaeology work in Providence in San Andres . And so there’s like these funky looking trees on the island and like kind of, if you see a tree, like that stay away from them, because that means like someone’s doing like black magic. And so I’m like always looking at like kind of the foliage and being like, is this one of the trees like is today gonna be like a curse? I don’t know. 

INTERVIEWER: That’s really specific, but like it is it is that is kind of weird.. And you learned this from like other archaeologists? 

STUDENT: Well, yeah, like I learned it like in the field because like I kept having bad luck. and so so they were like, oh, like did you accidentally interact with this tree and I was like, I don’t know. So now, like whenever I have like a bad day, I’m like, did I touch the tree? Like, like, I don’t know that I touched the tree today, who knows? Right, okay, yeah. You’re welcome.