Category Archives: Legends

Narratives about belief.

Stealing the Caltech Cannon

Nationality: American
Age: 19
Occupation: Student
Residence: Harvey Mudd College
Performance Date: 3/22/2022
Primary Language: English
Language: N/A
The Caltech Cannon

Legend Transcript:

Note: Commas indicate a pause in speech. Italicized words indicate words said with emphasis.

Informant: We stole the Caltech cannon one time

Me: Nice?

Informant: Yeah, like by pretending to be construction officers and, fraudulently producing documentation.

Me: Wait, really??

Informant: Yeah. Someone had had a summer internship at like a construction company so they still had the stamp, and they stamped a bunch of like, construction documents, um and then in broad daylight went and just took the statue and whenever anyone asked they would just show them the document.

Me: Really? And nobody questioned it?

Informant: No.

Me: Damn.

Informant: And then we had the cannon for a bit. And then we gave it back ’cause Caltech wanted to be lame. (pause) That’s not the first time we stole the cannon either. That was just the first time that included, like, fraud. Um, sometimes they would just do it in the dead of night.

Context:

The informant said he learned about these legends from a seminar called Mudd lore. He also commented that these stories highlight the “evil genius aspect of our Mudd lore” that is a “kinda little fun and cute little STEM moment.”

Context of Conversation: In-person conversation

Personal Interpretation:

Legends are grounded in the real world as dubiously true. Even so, they add identity and character to the places where they take place. This definitely applies to the legend of Harvey Mudd stealing the Caltech cannon. While this story is true (some Harvey Mudd students actually did go in and take the cannon in broad daylight) it has since been immortalized as part of Harvey Mudd’s identity, even being included in their Mudd lore seminar.

Interestingly, college legends tend to be crazy things alumni have done, perhaps as a reflection of the time between childhood and true adulthood where college students have more freedom than children but less accountability than working adults.

Additional Notes:

Another version of this legend can be found at:
Caltech Cannon Heist Memorial Page. The Caltech Cannon Heist. (n.d.). Retrieved March 24, 2022, from https://people.bu.edu/fmri/somers/cannon.html 

Harvey Mudd Experiments

Nationality: American
Age: 19
Occupation: Student
Residence: Harvey Mudd College
Performance Date: March 22, 2022
Primary Language: English
Language: N/A

Legend Transcript

Note: Commas indicate pauses in speech. Italicized text indicates words said with emphasis.

Informant: OH! um, a while back there was like, a tradition of like just making bombs and diffusing them but keeping the sound, so the bomb squad was just here all the time.

Informant: um yeah OH and then this one time this there’s this statue outside of my dorm that this person gave us and they were like this is very expensive and I made it so it like, can’t rust and the chem majors were like, no way. no shot. and so the chem majors rusted it… on the first day. They concocted some… I don’t even know.

Background:

The informant said he learned about these legends from a seminar called Mudd lore. He also commented that these stories highlight the “evil genius aspect of our Mudd lore” that is a “kinda little fun and cute little STEM moment.”

Context of Performance: In-person conversation

Thoughts:

Legends are grounded in the real world as dubiously true. They can also mark who is in or out of a group. For these tales specifically, knowing about them shows that someone is a student at Harvey Mudd. In addition, these legends seem to hint that Harvey Mudd students have a particular curious and spiteful approach to life, as demonstrated by the legend with the statue that couldn’t rust. I think the telling of these legends encourages new Harvey Mudd students to fulfill the legacy of prior students by continuing evil genius moments.

Why are there no bathtubs at Harvey Mudd?

Nationality: American
Age: 19
Occupation: Student
Residence: Harvey Mudd College
Performance Date: March 23, 2022
Primary Language: English
Language: N/A

Legend Transcript:

Note: Commas indicate a pause in speech. Italicized words indicate words said with emphasis.

Informant: Oh, I mean, Mudd doesn’t have bathtubs anymore because someone made meth in them.

Me: Wait, what? *laughs*

I: Not a joke.

Me: Wait, tell me more.

I: This is a real thing, um, one of our dorms, Atwood dorm, when it got installed had bathtubs in it because it was a newer dorm, right? And everyone was like yo bathtubs! and then um, one day, uh, somebody, and by somebody I mean- I think I think I think it was the FBI, um, came to Atwood and they were like Yo! there’s been a suspiciously high amount of like, drugs going through here. And we were like, that’s strange. um I mean it’s a college campus, so we expect the usual amount of drugs going through here, but an unusual amount…but then they were like no no no no not like that, like drug trafficking. and the school is like what do you mean? and they were like well we suspect that someone at Mudd has been, um, like, creating meth. and they were like, what? and then um, the the I don’t know when it was. But anyway, the FBI like, kinda starts to narrow down who the student is and then they come to the realization that this kid has been cooking meth in the bathtub. and, um, and the story ends and he like jumps out of like a 2 story building and like, attempts to get away and then he is caught and then they took all of our bathtubs out because the meth thing.

Background:

The informant said he learned about these legends from a seminar called Mudd lore. He also commented that these stories highlight the “evil genius aspect of our Mudd lore” that is a “kinda little fun and cute little STEM moment.”

Context of Performance:

In-person conversation

Thoughts:

Legends are grounded in the real world as dubiously true. While this story definitely happened in real life, it has since been elevated to legendary status, to the extent that it is told in a seminar. In addition, this story has definitely changed over time. Was it really the FBI, or was it the local police? This legend likely gains credibility because its effects can be tangibly seen on Harvey Mudd’s campus. Where are the bathtubs?

For this specific legend, I think there is something about STEM schools and breaking the law in very nerdy ways, such as creating meth. I’ve heard stories about a student at MIT who also created meth in their dorm room, and even a Boston University professor who was creating meth at their home.

Boots

Context: C.O. learned about this story on a ghost tour in Old Williamsburg, Virginia.

C.O. : And then the ghost story I heard when I was, oh gosh, eleven?
P.Z. : Eleven?
C.O. : And I was in Old Williamsburg in, just outside DC.
P.Z. : Okay
C.O. : On a trip with my parents and we went on a walking ghost tour of the town, uh, at night and one of the stories they told us outside the old inn was about two sisters who I guess back in the early eighteen hundreds were staying there and it was late at night they were asleep in their beds and one of the sisters woke up because she heard something outside the window
P.Z. : Okay
C.O. : That sounded like bootprints, or footprints. Or, I can’t, footprints. Boot noises. And she went to go look at the window, pulled back the curtains and there was nothing there so she went back to bed
P.Z. : Okay
C.O. : And then she heard it again so he went back to the window, opened the window, looked outside the window, still can’t see anything, asked your sister if she heard it, she didn’t, so both of them went back to bed. And then about five minutes later she heard the, the bootstomps outside her door. And there was light but she couldn’t see any shadows, so she opens the door and nobody’s out there. So now she’s freaking out. She doesn’t know where the noise is coming from, if someone’s messing with her so she goes back to bed. And then a little whiles later, maybe about an hour, she hears the bootprints or footprints even closer. In the room. So she throws the light on, there’s nobody standing there, so she goes to sleep again, turns the light out and like not 10 seconds later she starts feeling someone pushing up on the side of her bed for her feet
P.Z. : Ohh
C.O. : Slowly pushing up. And she feels like the indentation of someone sitting like right next to her head on her bed and she freaks out turns the light on and there’s nobody there
P.Z. : No, I hate that
C.O. : And that is the last time it happens that night and that’s the end of the story. And they called it Boots. And that scared the shit out of me as a kid, I didn’t sleep for two days
P.Z. : Oh yeah I can imagine that
C.O. : But the kicker is like a week later when we got home and I was in my bedroom, going to sleep. And I felt the same thing on my bed like at the foot of my bed as if someone had sat on the edge of it and I turned the light on and there was nothing there. My cat wasn’t in the room, my pillow didn’t fall off my bed, my parents and my brother were both asleep, and it was just, and my door was closed, and it was the weirdest feeling and it was just too much of a coincidence for me.
P.Z. : I hate that
C.O. : Yeah. So that’s my one ghost story.

Thoughts: This seemed a fairly standard ghost story or legend. I’ve heard many ghost stories that similarly focus on past tragedies, colonial-era ghosts, and unexplained footsteps. I thought that the truly interesting part of this story was the personal story. As a child, I also would be terrified by these sort of stories that people told me, so I understood the concept. I thought that it was interesting to hear the first hand experience of an otherwise general story.

Bloody Mary

Context: The popular legend was spun off into an outdoors urban legend and corresponding children’s game in New York.

A.F.: For us, it [Bloody Mary] was like a, we had two ways. It was a sleepover game. We had a flashlight at someone’s house, but the main way that we would do it, so I went to elementary school in a relatively, even though it’s suburban, it’s still an isolated area, so there were like paths, that went to like houses or roads. So there was this path that led from like our, because we had like a vaguely biggish field, that went from the path to a house on my road. Which again, we thought it was like the Bloody Mary path, and if you wandered too far then Bloody Mary would come and get you.
P.Z. : Okay, so it was outdoors?
A.F.: Um, yeah, ours was actually outdoors. Yes.

Thoughts: This was a much different version than the one I am familiar with. I’m not sure if this was primarily an East-Coast variation or specific to the respondent’s school. But usually, there were not these specific, wooded, secluded paths that made this version possible.