Category Archives: Folk Beliefs

Penis size

Nationality: American
Age: 22
Occupation: Student
Residence: Los Angeles, CA
Performance Date: April 2012
Primary Language: English

You can tell the size of a man’s penis by his shoe size

This is a myth I had heard before, but I thought would be interesting to put into the archives after my informant started talking about it.  Neither of us could remember where we first heard it, but he mentioned that it would be pretty difficult to either prove or disprove the theory because of the nature of what would have to measured.  There are different versions of how this theory is played out in modern folklore, but the most common version I hear is “you know what they say about a man with big feet…”  Alternatively, someone may say as a joke afterward, “He’s got big shoes?”  Even though they may say that phrase instead of what everyone else is thinking, that person knows what was meant in the original statement.  A problem with this myth is that, even if someone wanted to prove it to be true, how would the measurement comparison work?  And would it work for European and Asian shoe sizes as well?  There are many issues that would have to be resolved before such a study could be undertaken.

Thunderstorms

Nationality: American
Age: 22
Occupation: Student
Residence: Los Angeles, CA
Performance Date: April 2012
Primary Language: English

When you hear thunder during a storm, it is the angels bowling in heaven

I had heard this myth since I was a child, so I was glad when my informant brought this up.  He told me that when he was young, he (obviously) didn’t understand that lightning splits the air and causes a loud displacement that reverberates for miles.  Instead, his parents, like mine, just told him that thunder was the sound of God’s angels bowling in heaven.  This always made both of us smile as kids because the image of an angel bowling is quite humorous, and easily swats away the image of a scary thunderstorm outside.  This is something that my informant and I absolutely agreed that would be a great thing to tell our own children when we get older.  To go along with this, my parents also told me that lightning was the angels having a disco party in heaven.  When I told my informant this, he laughed and said he was going to steal that to use on his own children one day.

Irish farewell poem

Nationality: Irish-American
Age: 20
Occupation: Student
Residence: Los Angeles, CA
Performance Date: April 2012
Primary Language: English

May the road rise up to meet you,

May the wind be always at your back.

May the sun shine warm upon your face,

The rains fall soft upon your fields.

And until we meet again,

May God hold you in the palm of his hand.

Maybe it is just because I am Irish-American (like my red-headed informant), but I feel like this is possibly the warmest goodbye a friend or stranger could offer me.  My informant tells me that, although his upbringing wasn’t stocked with Irish poems, this is the one that he remembers best because of the sheer beauty of it.  He and I both agree that while the Irish can come across as a bit feisty sometimes and nearly always a bit too loquacious, they are the most kind-souled people either of us have ever met (we have both had the fortune of going to Ireland).  The way that this poem ends perfectly encapsulates the Irish attitude towards God: a loving figure who watches out for his children and gives them the gift of the world’s beauty every day.  My informant and I were both raised Catholic in the Chicagoland area, so we are used to being around Irish Catholics.  For whatever reason, this poem resonates with both of our childhoods, and we both look forward to sharing it with our respective children one day.

Miracle Mothman

Nationality: Caucasian American
Age: 48
Occupation: Database Manager
Residence: Monterey, CA
Performance Date: 4/10/12
Primary Language: English

Informant Bio

My informant grew up in Ohio in the 1960s and 1970s and lived there for much of her adult life. She attended college in Bowling Green, Ohio, and lived in a suburb of Cleveland, Ohio for many years. Though she now lives in California, she retains a membership to the Rock ‘n’ Roll Hall of Fame and Museum in Cleveland, and has great pride in her heritage.

My informant is also a spiritual woman, though not in the religious sense. Raised Lutheran, she stopped going to church in her early 30s. She instructed her children to study many world religions and choose their own faith. She actively meditates and finds comfort in the teachings of the Buddhists, though she claims no one faith or spiritual path. She believes in some kind of higher power or energy, yet she is also very practical in her views of supernatural phenomena.

My informant told me the myth of the Mothman that she had heard while recommending to me that I watch the film about the creature that was released in 2002. She had just seen it recently and liked comparing the film to the Mothman stories she knew.

The Mothman

The myth of the Mothman that my informant told me is connected to the collapse of a bridge that crossed the Ohio River between West Virginia and Ohio in the 1960s. (My informant did not know the name of the bridge, but she was referring to the Silver Bridge collapse of 1967.) Apparently days prior to the event in the town of Point Pleasant, West Virginia where the bridge was located, sightings of a creature that looked like a man with wings and glowing red eyes were reported. According to my informant most of these sightings occurred in an off-limits area of town that had once housed a chemical plant where materials were made for the military. In spite of being cordoned off, this area was still a place where locals would go to hunt and fish. After the bridge collapse, reports of the winged man abruptly stopped.

After the fact the connection was made between the sightings and the bridge collapse. Some believed that the Mothman vision was a kind of warning. Others believe that the Mothman is a demonic creature that thrives on tragedy.

When I inquired if my informant believed the Mothman was a real creature she responded: “No, I think when there’s any great tragedy people look back and try to think of some way to explain it or learn from it.” She compared the Mothman phenomenon to belief in miracles. “People love to say, ‘oh, its a miracle that I forgot my keys and was ten minutes late to work, because otherwise I would have been in that accident on the freeway. Someone must be looking out for me.’ People like to make connections like that after the fact because it makes them feel safe somehow. Me, I kind of like to see engineers looking at the bridge and saying, ‘oh, maybe we should have replaced those rusty bolts.'” Personally, I agree with her thinking. However it is still fun to speculate about what the people of Point Pleasant were seeing in the days before the bridge collapse.

The population of Point Pleasant has embraced the Mothman myth, and now holds a Mothman festival each year.

Authored Versions

The story of the bridge collapse and Mothman sightings was recorded in a book entitled “The Mothman Prophecies” written in 1975 by John Keel. Keel’s book was published by a known publisher of pulp sci-fi novels, however Keel’s lengthy investigation in Point Pleasant resulted in a book that straddles the line between speculative fiction and non-fiction.

The book was made into a film with the same name in 2002 starring Richard Gere and Laura Linney. The film turns the event into a supernatural psychological thriller, and while it was hardly a blockbuster success, it has drawn new attention to the phenomenon. In 2011 a documentary called “Eyes of the Mothman” tracked sightings of the creature all over the world in yet another attempt to explain its appearances.

Cited

Keel, John. The Mothman Prophecies. London: Panther Books, 1975. Print.

Pellington, Mark, dir. The Mothman Prophecies. Perf. Richard Gere and Laura Linney. 2002. Columbia Tristar Home Video. DVD.

Pellowski, Matthew J., dir. Eyes of the Mothman. 2011. Payback Productions. DVD.

Roses on the Pulpit

Nationality: Caucasian American
Age: 22
Occupation: Student (Animation)
Residence: Los Angeles
Performance Date: 3/5/12
Primary Language: English

Informant Bio

My informant grew up in the small, rural town of Hanford, California. Her family owns a mill and is quite comfortably wealthy; she is very close with her parents and younger brother, and drives home from USC (where she attends school) frequently.

My informant has a strong faith in god though when she is at school she does not attend church services. When in Hanford however she attends the Lakeside Community Church, which conducts non-denominational Christian services. She was very close with her pastor there for many years, until his recent death.

Roses

Lakeside Community Church (slogan: “Come as you are”) is a small congregation with very relaxed services. The church-goers all know each other, and everyone helps out with the church’s potluck dinners and car washes, which are held to raise money for charity. These charity events are the largest events that the modest church holds.

The church does not require baptism, but does like to be involved in events like births of members’ children. So to commemorate the birth of a child, a rose is placed on the pulpit. I asked my informant if any announcement would be made during services, and she said no. Perhaps something might be put in the community newsletter at the request of the parents, but otherwise the only sign is the rose. The rose remains on the pulpit for about a week.

My informant told me that there was only one time that the rose commemorated something other than a birth, and that occurred this year. A rose quietly appeared on the pulpit on the birthday of the beloved pastor who had died the year before.

The adoption of the rose tradition to honor the loss of a loved one in the community touches me. Though I am not religious myself and I cannot know who decided or why it was decided to use the rose in this way, on some level I like to think that the gesture was an encouragement not to think of the pastor as gone, but reborn to a new form of life. It’s a comforting image in any case.