Whenever my friend Kenny and his Dad go scuba diving, they dive down to the bottom of the ocean and kneel on the sand. They both perform the sign of the cross, where they take their right hand and touch their forehead, move their hand down to their sternum, and then cross to their heart and the opposite side of their heart. After they perform the sign of the cross, they look up to the sun. They perform this ritual every time they go diving together in order to keep them safe while they are under water.
Category Archives: Folk Beliefs
Lock the House for Scary Movies
Dylan and his friends always lock every door in their house and close every window before they watch a scary movie. They believe that if you leave a door unlocked or a window cracked, there is a high chance that something evil will come into their house. Before putting on any scary movie, Dylan in his friends need to lock the doors and windows or they cannot start the movie.
One night, which happened to be Friday 13th , which is known as a very unlucky night, Dylan and his friends forgot to lock all the doors before they watched a scary movie. Halfway through the scary movie, a burglar snuck into his house. The robber knocked over a lamp downstairs in the house. He left by the time Dylan and his friends made their way down the staircase to see who was there. Because the one time they forgot to lock all the doors in the house and a burglar came in, Dylan and his friends can never watch a scary movie again without checking to make sure that all the doors are locked and the windows are closed.
Fiji Hold Down
Robbie’s family and his family friends used to go to Tavarua every year during Thanksgiving for a week. This island of Tavarua is a small island in Fiji that only takes about 10 minutes to walk all the way around. It is known for being very haunted. The main haunting is known as a “Hold Down.”
Robbie said that he and a big group of family and friends, about 40 people, were all out one night having dinner. The weather was super windy. By the time it was 10:30-11:00, everyone went back to their burrow to sleep. Robbie falls asleep not too long after. At exactly 2 am, Robbie randomly wakes up, without knowing what exactly woke him up. He said he can’t explain what did it, but it felt like he took shots of caffeine. He had a bunch of adrenaline: he was breathing heavily and his heart was pounding. He tried to calm himself down by walking around, and eventually lies in bed, attempting to close his eyes and fall back to sleep. At 2:10, he hears his sister scream at top of her lungs. Everyone in the family wakes up to see what has happened. Robbie’s sister is crying and sobbing, in a state of complete panic. She was saying that she was held down and paralyzed, stuck in a sleep position, all she could see were white images flashing through her eyes of her past memories. The family did not know what to make of this besides being a night terror of some sort. Eventually, they all go back to sleep.
When they woke up, they started asking around Tavarua island about the experience Roxy had at 2:10. People on the island said that it happens all the time, they even have a name for it: “hold down.” Robbie’s dad asks a maid about it. The maid said a Hold Down happened to her daughter at 1:50 in the morning that same night, so only twenty minutes a part.
The story behind the Hold Down, is that the island used to be a carnivorous island. Every animal and person who lived on the island would eat meat, and sometimes would cannibalize. It is said that many spirits of people who were cannibalized or improperly buried haunt the island. One woman in particular is associated with the Hold Down. She has been doing it to guests and people living on the island for years.
Chinese Folk Belief: Flat Noses Aren’t Pretty
Contextual Data: I asked my friend if she knew of any Chinese folk beliefs that she had heard when she was younger. She mentioned this one, and the following is a transcript of her response.
“My grandma told me that if I had a flat nose, I wouldn’t be pretty and I wouldn’t be able to find a husband, so she pinched my nose like this [pinches the bridge of her nose] every single day, and now my nose is tall and I’m pretty.”
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In talking to a couple of other Chinese friends, they all mentioned similar experiences — or at least, that they had all heard about that type of valorization of a “tall,” Roman nose at some point before. This does draw out the value that people place on physical appearance and indicate that beauty is something that people desire, which is one reason why they continue to perform this practice. My informant also mentioned that her grandmother would never do this to her brother and that it was something specifically reserved for girls. This idea that my informant was told she wouldn’t “find a husband” if she had a flat nose could speak to anxieties about being an unmarried woman — the idea that not being able to find a husband is something to worry about. If this practice is believed to help avoid that, it offers another explanation as to why people would continue to perform it.
Instant Karma
Contextual Data: Over Spring Break, I was at dinner with my family, and my dad accidentally bit his cheek. He cried out and my mother, who was sitting next to him chirped out, “Instant Karma!” I had heard her do that once before, and so I asked her what she meant by it and where she had heard it. The following is an exact transcript of what she said.
“It’s the saying that if you bit your tongue or your cheek that means you were either having bad thoughts about somebody or thinking bad about somebody…or cursing somebody. That’s why in… uh, karma you got bitten — because of bad thoughts about bad [Laughs]… As soon as you get bitten, you — first thing comes out of your mouth is ‘Ouch!’ and then person across from you knows that ‘Oh, you did something wrong. That’s why.’ So they assume you were having bad thoughts about somebody that’s why you got…”
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Karma (the general idea of what goes around comes around) is a big part of Hindu culture and that can certainly be seen in this little saying. For the most part though, it doesn’t seem as though this saying is meant to be taken seriously — partially because it’s not a wholly accurate representation of Hindu ideas of Karma. Beyond this, most of the times that it happens, the person “accused” usually isn’t actually cursing someone else. When it happened in this particular situation, my dad just kind of laughed it off. It therefore seems as though this saying is meant to be passed on as more of a joke. It’s teasing and can make people very defensive, particularly messing with them if they were thinking bad thoughts about someone else. My informant enjoys sharing it just to poke fun.