Category Archives: Legends

Narratives about belief.

Club Penguin Iceberg Flip

Context:

J is an 18-year-old from Canada who has parents from the Philippines.

This conversation took place over a discord call with my friend group when I brought up old games from our childhoods. We talked about club penguin and were discussing the club penguin “secrets.”

Text:

J: I remember like… when everyone was playing club penguin, there was this one rumor that you could flip the iceberg if you had enough penguins standing on one side of the iceberg. I think it was… the left side? I can’t really remember.

Me: yeah yeah, I remember that! I tried so many times.

J: Yeah exactly! But then people started thinking that like.. you needed to use the- the, what was it called. ummm…. the- Oh the jackhammer. I think.

Me: The one with the like orange hard hat that you got in the mines right?

J: Yeah that one! Everybody was convinced that like the reason it wasn’t flipping was because you needed to do that on a side of the iceberg with enough people. But it just like, never like flipped. BUT! I think on the final day of club penguin when the servers were getting shut down, I’m pretty sure it flipped over and there was like… a dance floor or something like it was a huge deal because everybody wanted to flip it so bad. And it like- finally happened.

Me: No because I like remember that happening and I like lost my MIND!

Reflection:

Like many childhood games, there were many rumors and secrets that were propagated over the internet and the game community. I think it was nice that at the end of the game, the developers were aware of the rumor and made it actually happen as a nod to everyone finally getting some closure to it. Rumors and secrets like this help to distinguish the game and make it more interesting for children. Especially when children could not get club penguin premium accounts, the secrets and rumors helped to make every player feel like they were part of something exclusive.

Kiss, or Don’t Kiss, The Blarney Stone

S is 54, he lived in England where his mother is from for the first ten years of his life before his family moved to California. He is soft spoken and pauses thoughtfully while speaking. He told me about the Blarney Stone, which he learned about visiting Ireland.

“One I heard about visiting Ireland… it’s like a rock that’s sort of like a cliff’s edge and if you hang upside down and kiss the Blarney Stone, you’ll be given the gift of the gab… meaning you will be able to speak well extemporaneously… and so during the day, the tourists come and lay back and kiss the stone but the locals pee on it at night.”

The Blarney Stone is found at the top of Blarney Castle, there are various legends about where the stone came from, some can be found here: https://web.archive.org/web/20100830230658/http://www.blarneycastle.ie/pages/stone. The bit about locals peeing on it seems to be another piece of folklore. This reddit thread proved inconclusive, some contributors thinking it’s too difficult to get into the castle at night and during the day there would be too many people including a guard to get away with it. https://www.reddit.com/r/ireland/comments/3ywbkq/do_people_really_piss_on_the_blarney_stone/. Either way it’s an interesting piece because it shows the tension between a reliance on tourism and the potential for resentment than can arise from that dependence.

“Las Doce Verdades” (“The Twelve Truths”)-  Catholic Prayer

*Originally spoken in Spanish. The following is a rough translation. 

Description (From Transcript): “You tell the first truth and then the second, and then you would go back to the first one. Every time you would tell the next one, you would grab a handkerchief or a cloth and you would add a knot. The first was “La santa casa de Jerusalén donde vive y reina mi padre dios para siempre, Amen” (“The holy house of Jerusalem, where my lord lives and reigns forever, Amen”). You would add a knot and move on to the second. So the first, then the second, then the first again. Then the first, the second, and the third, and the first again, before moving on to the fourth one. And after the 12th– “The twelve apostles”– you would return back to the first again: The holy house of Jerusalem, where my lord lives and reigns forever, Amen”. And when you tied the final knot, that’s where you trapped the witches. They would get choked there. 

Context: TR is a Mexican woman, born and raised in Zacatecas, Mexico. She immigrated to the United States in 1995. This is a Catholic prayer. It was told to her by her grandmother. She explains, 

“This is a prayer but it was also a story that was told by people who believed in witches. In those times, there was no electric light so we would sit and light a lamp with a candle inside it and my grandma would tell us about witches. The light was very opaque so it would be scarier. We would sit with a cinnamon or yerbaniz (mint marigold) tea and once we were scared, we would trap the witches with the prayer of the Twelve Truths”. Even though she never saw a witch, she explains that she did believe in them as a child. She also explains that this is a Catholic prayer but not many people within the religion are familiar with it. 

My interpretation: Although this is a prayer, and therefore a religious practice, it also crosses over into the genres of legends and games because of the unsure belief in witches as well as the audience that the prayer is being told to (children). As explained by the informant, there was also the ritualistic aspect of doing this in a mostly dark environment, drinking hot tea- practices reminiscent of Americans telling scary stories by the fire pit. Additionally, this piece is unique from other Catholic practices and prayers because it crossed over into superstitious and Indigenous beliefs of Brujeria (witchcraft), which is often a taboo topic in the Catholic church. 

“La Muchacha desobediente” (“The Disobedient Young Woman”)- Mexican Legend

*Originally spoken in Spanish. The following is a rough translation. 

Description (From Transcript): “There was a young woman who’s mom wouldn’t let her go to a dance. There were dances and she went without permission. At the dance, there was a very elegant young man, very well dressed, tall, and a stranger. He wasn’t from that region. So he asked the young woman to dance with him and she was super happy, danced with him, and after a while he disappeared. She saw his legs and saw that one of them was a horse leg and the other was a rooster’s. When she saw this, she tried to run away, she wanted him to let go of her. She managed to get away and that’s when he disappeared. But she had his handprints printed on her back, like animal claws. Her back was burned where he touched her. I don’t know if the young woman died, if they found her dead, or something. But they found her with the handprints. Or maybe she lived to tell the story, herself. Other people saw that he disappeared. That’s how they know the story. This happened in some ranch probably close to where I’m from because they told this story as far back as my grandma’s time. This story also happened here (Denver) and it was on the news. There were rumors because they found this young woman dead, and they would say that something similar had happened to her because they found the handprints on her back”. 

Context: TR is a Mexican woman, born and raised in Zacatecas, Mexico. She immigrated to the United States in 1995. She explains how they would scare “one” with this story. When asked to clarify who she was referring to by “one”, she explained that she meant teenage girls. In an attempt to not let their daughters go to parties or dances, parents would tell them this story of the devil. Her mom would tell her this story since she was little and began wanting to go to dances because she was disobedient. 

She explains that parents would let them go to dances, but not all of them. But the young women wanted to go to all of the stories. She states that the story was told to young men and women but men were less scared by it. Parents wanted their daughters to be more careful. This was the belief, the lifestyle in small communities; that the man had to protect the woman. It was a stereotype from where we lived. Men were given more freedom. 

My Interpretation: Much like La Llorona, this legend is used as a warning to women in order to ensure that they wouldn’t go out too much. I found it surprising that this legend traversed to an American city considering that the informant originally learned in a very rural, small town context. It’s also indicative of different gender treatments of children and victim blaming culture because even though the woman in the story was harmed (and in some cases murdered) she is used as an example of how being a disobedient woman has consequences that can be avoided. 

Denver International Airport Horse- Denver Legend

Description (From transcript): “There is a big statue of a blue horse. It’s really really tall; you can see it from far away and its eyes are red. It’s really bright and visible. It’s a huge thing that you notice right away on your way to the Denver International Airport. The name is Blucifer. That tells you a little bit about where this is kind of headed *laughs*. There’s a lot of legends at the airport, the history of where it was built, how it was built, what’s underneath it, all of that. But this horse is just kind of out there, it’s a bolder staple. I also recently learned that the guy who was building it, a piece of the horse fell on him and he died while building it. And his son finished the construction of it. I feel like that also adds a layer of spookiness. And the red eyes? Like for what? And the name? It’s really interesting and scary.”

Context: The informant (LV) is a first generation Mexican American woman residing in Denver, Colorado. Because she lives in Denver, she says that it feels its, literally, a little more close to home. She explains how there’s a lot of theories about DIA (the Denver International Airport) such as stuff being built underground. She says that there is so much information, such as illuminati related content and “who knows what’s true”. She says that this airport is one of the biggest in the US and Colorado is very historically important and rich, which plays a big role on why there are so many theories around this location. She says Blucifer is a unique aspect of Denver. 

She remembers hearing stories as she was growing up about the airport. She had an uncle who worked there. Because she likes to travel, she’s always taking Lyfts and Ubers to the airports. She learned new details of the story from an Uber driver who was taking her to the airport. She says that Uber drivers know a lot about the places where they live and part of their job has become telling people these stories.

My interpretation: This legend is intriguing to me because despite sounding heavily fictional for the sake of shock factor, parts of the story are true, making it one of very few legends that are heavily based in truth. However, because people continued to add their own interpretations of it, other aspects are not as clear on truth values. Despite resulting in tragedy, it also seems to have become an important part of Denver’s history, especially because it is one of the first things outsiders see in Colorado, emphasizing just how important the figure and the story have become. 

For further reading on this statue and legend, see: 

Wolf, Stephanie. “Everything You Ever Wanted to Know about Blucifer, the Demon Horse of Dia.” Colorado Public Radio, Colorado Public Radio, 11 Feb. 2021, www.cpr.org/2019/11/04/everything-you-ever-wanted-to-know-about-blucifer-the-demon-horse-of-dia/.