Category Archives: Legends

Narratives about belief.

The M-Word

Nationality: American
Age: 19
Occupation: Student
Residence: Los Angeles, CA
Performance Date: April 2pm 9, 2021
Primary Language: English

“So in the theatre you’re not supposed to say the word Macbeth ever. And that is because in legend, Shakespeare used like actually witch spells in the beginning of Macbeth, um, and so the witches cursed him and cursed the play so every time it was said in the theatre like something would go wrong in the production. And I’ve heard stories of like this happening to, you know, not to my school but like my friend’s school or a friend of a friend’s school, where like someone said Macbeth like 40 times in the middle of the theatre, and, like the pipes burst during opening night and like the lead broke their knee or whatever. And the only way to reverse this curse is to go out of the theatre, spin around three times while spitting over your shoulder and saying Shakespearean curses, and then ask to be invited back into the theatre. That’s the only way to reverse the curse. And so um for a lot of thespians, they try and find new and creative ways to say Macbeth. So I’ve heard the M-Word, I’ve heard Mac Daddy, I’ve heard the Scottish Play…Mac Daddy is a funny one I heard that at a like regional theatre competition like out of the mouth of like a grown man so that’s fun.”

Notes: This is a tentpole of the theatre community. I’ve never met anyone who was tangentially involved in theatre and hadn’t heard of the M-word. I’m not particularly superstitious, and even I jump at hearing the word Macbeth. This is a long-persisting legend, I feel in part to the universal “friend of a friend” that we can cite as our real-life source. I do think its interesting that this is the play that was chosen to be taboo as opposed to any of the other tragedies, which can be more gruesome and more supernatural. Perhaps this is the most well known tragedy?

For more on the curse, click here for the Royal Shakespeare Company’s article on the M-word.

Pali Highway

Nationality: Asian
Age: 55
Occupation: Businessman
Residence: Honolulu, HI
Performance Date: 4/23/21
Primary Language: English

Background

Informant is college educated and has lived on Oahu, Hawaii for their whole life. Informant was dating the Interviewer’s mother for around a year. 

Context

Informant discusses a superstition about taking meat over the Pali, the possible consequences, and where the legend stems from.

Transcript

Informant: “You’re not supposed to take pork over the Pali [highway on Oahu].”

Interviewer: “Do you know why?”

Informant: “So, I forget. But they say that your car will stall if you go over they Pali, but it got something to do with warrior being pushed off the edge? Or something like that? Or the sacrifices that were made? Something to do with that, they had the war right over there and they just pushed the warriors over the Pali. They were just throwing them off the Pali, King kamehameha. Imua. There’s a reason behind it.”

Interviewer: “Yeah, I heard there was also like, this thing where on the old Pali, that if you broke these rules, these like bloody ghost warriors would run at your car and try to make you crash or something.”

Informant: “Oh jeez, I don’t know about that one, that’s probably just the old Pali highway, but no one uses it now.”

Thoughts

The pali highway is situated beside a mountain where a very famous Hawaiian battle took place. King Kamehameha, the ali’i who united all the Hawaiian islands, defeated the reigning monarch of Oahu at this mountain by cornering his warriors and pushing them off the mountain. The spirits of these fallen warriors not only haunt the place where they died, but patrol the island in military formation. These spirits are known as night marchers, and will kill anyone who looks at their sacred marches. This legend and pulley legend scare me to no end, but I’m a vegetarian so I never have meat in my car so I never have to worry about it.

La Llorona

Nationality: Hispanic
Age: 19
Occupation: Student
Residence: LA, California
Performance Date: 4/24/21
Primary Language: English
Language: Spanish

Background

Informant is a student at USC who is currently living in the surrounding area. The Informant and Interviewer have been friends for around one year and met through the housing application process. 

Context

Informant discusses the La Llorona legend, with the Interviewer throwing in a possible variant of the traditional legend. As classes are online, the conversation took place over discord.

Transcript

Informant: “La Llorona is just like a woman who had her kids drowned in a river, and so uh, I don’t know if it’s like a specific river or if it’s any river. But be careful around rivers because if you hear a woman crying she’ll like drag you in, especially for like children, like she’ll drag children in, because she’s mourning the children that she lost.”

Interviewer: “Yeah, that’s a classic, I,  that story fucks with my head still. I heard that La Llorona, like if you hear her, like only cries, and you don’t approach her, you’ll have a shorter lifespan.”

Informant: “Huh, I uh, don’t think that’s a part of the story. Or at least I wasn’t told it like that.”

Interviewer: “Yeah I only know the La Llorona story from like a horror YouTube channel, so I’m probably wrong.”

Informant: “Haha yeah I don’t know about that one.”

Thoughts

La Llorona is an incredibly popular South American urban legend that has proliferated beyond the culture of origin, hence how I found it. The informant’s retelling had all the core details that existed in the internet retelling I heard, but the internet retelling had a few embellishments. The aforementioned shortened lifespan was one, and the fact that La Llorona wears a white wedding dress is another, as she drowned her kids when she found out her husband cheated on her. I think the version I heard had a few added details to get more attention on the internet compared to the original version, but stories evolve over time, so who is to say which story is more valid.

Citations

http://uscfolklorearc.wpenginepowered.com/la-llorona-46/

Maxwello, and Maxwello. “University of Southern California.” USC Digital Folklore Archives, 19 Nov. 2020, uscfolklorearc.wpenginepowered.com/la-llorona-46/.

Bubonic Plague In Hawaii

Nationality: Asian
Age: 55
Occupation: Businessman
Residence: Honolulu, HI
Performance Date: 4/23/21
Primary Language: English

Background

Informant is college educated and has lived on Oahu, Hawaii for their whole life. Informant was dating the Interviewer’s mother for around a year. 

Context

Informant discusses a friend who could see the spirits of those who died from the bubonic plague in Hawaii under restaurant row. Informant then goes into how the plague was brought to Hawaii and what the afflicted did.

Transcript

Informant: “You know what, they had the bubonic plague, right? In Chinatown, they had a lot of people die, and what they did was they buried them into a mass grave in Chinatown, underneath restaurant row, so a friend’s attorney, a friend’s secretary, could see, could see everything. She could see all these massive graves and just bodies piled on top of each other.

Interviewer: “Oh, damn… so what, what like-”

Informant: “And it is scary though, like at the parking lot.”

Interviewer: “So it was like decaying bodies of the bubonic plague? Just bodies on bodies on bodies of people with the bubonic plague?”

Informant: “Yeah it was just, just like one mass burial in the black plague times. In chinatown, it was bad. Whaling ships came in and brought it, and people where we live, where you guys used to live, they said that people in the neighborhood, the families wanted to die together, so they hiked all the way up into Aiea, where we live, and that’s where they all died. They wanted to die together so they died together with the plague.”

Thoughts

Restaurant row used to be the party place of Oahu, it was the happening spot where everyone would go to get plastered and party. While restaurant row stands virtually abandoned now and was in its prime before I was alive, I had no idea about this side of history until the informant told me about it. The bubonic plague outbreak in Hawaii was never formally taught to us in school, so I had no idea the ground below restaurant row, which is next to a major roadway, is inundated with corpses. Also, I found the part about families going into the mountains to die together was morbidly sweet, like a final gesture of love while they all slowly and painfully died.

Spy House

Nationality: American
Residence: NJ
Primary Language: English

Text/Interview:

MW: “When I was in the Girl Scouts, we went on a field trip to this place called the Spy House. The lady who worked there said that it used to be a tavern during the Revolutionary War and the British would come and stay in the house. The Americans would be under the floorboards and behind the walls and they would spy on the Red Coats. Then, they would sneak out through a secret tunnel under the bay and give information to the other Patriots. The lady who worked there also said that the ghosts of Revolutionary War veterans lived in the house.”

Context:

MW lives in New Jersey and has been to the Spy House several times since that initial trip. Although she has never seen any of the ghosts, she claims to have seen the tunnel which goes under the bay and the hiding places behind the walls. MW says that, unfortunately, the Spy House has been closed for the past few years for general upkeep; however, she claims that the ghosts did not get the message and still haunt the house to this day.

Personal Interpretation:

I think that the Spy House has a very cool story. As a fellow resident of NJ, I have heard claims that the house never harbored British, nor is it haunted. However, I have also heard that the ghosts terrorize anyone who crosses the threshold. I think that the duality between these two stories is what makes the Spy House so unique. Some people claim it is real. Others shout hoax. However, you will never know until you visit it for yourself.

Annotation:

If you want to read more on the Spy House, check out this Weird NJ Article:

Weird NJ Author. “Is the Spy House ‘The Most Haunted House in America’?” Weird NJ, November 3, 2014. https://weirdnj.com/stories/garden-state-ghosts/spy-house/.