Category Archives: Legends

Narratives about belief.

Slit Mouth Woman

Context:

MV: “So there’s this slit mouthed woman from Japan who around the 70s and 80s there were several reports of her walking around Japan with a pair of scissors or a long knife and asking children ‘am I beautiful?’ and if they responded no she would kill them…and if they responded yes she’d take off her mask and show her mouth which was cut from ear to ear and she’d be like ‘am I still pretty?’ and if they said no…she’d kill them and if they said yes she would carve their mouths like hers.”

Q: When did you first hear about the story?

MV: “I personally remember researching about it when I was super into urban legends and was looking into folklore in Japan. I found out about the legend online.”

Q: Have you seen this story told anywhere else?

MV: “Not that I know of. I would love to see one though.”

Q: Have you shared the story with others?

MV: “When I was a bit younger, I would yap on and on about this kind of stuff since I found it super interesting. I think I would just tell people about the legend but not get into detail since I don’t know folktales by memory.”

Q: What significance do you think the story has?

MV: “It’s thought that these occurrences happened due to masculine insecurity from the rising role of women in Japan in the 70s.”

Analysis: The Slit-Mouth Woman (Kuchisake-Onna) tells the story of a woman who in the 70s-80s would roam around Japan with a pair of scissors or a long knife. She would ask people if she was pretty and if they said no, she’d kill them and if they said yes, she’d carve their mouth similar to hers.

La Llorona

Context/Q: What do you know about La Llorona?
GV: “I heard about it from like different stories that my grandma used to tell me. It was about a lady who drowned her kids in a river and now she haunts different kinds of rivers.”

Q: How did you hear about the story?

GV: “Yeah again, my grandma from my mom’s side would tell the story to me and my brothers. She also used it to like…scare us I guess. If we were being bad, our grandma would tell us that La Llorona would get us in our sleep.”

Q: Have you heard of the story anywhere else?

GV: “I guess basically every form of media. They’re pretty much all retellings of La Llorona but in their own way so like in the form of a book, movie, tv show, and more probably. I’ve also heard that other countries have their own interpretation of La Llorona.”

Q: Are you familiar with those interpretations?

GV: “No I just saw a TikTok explaining the different ways La Llorona is told in different countries. It might actually just be more Latin countries that have their own version of it.”

Q: Why do you think the story is so memorable?

GV: “I feel like it has to do with the story being really creepy and hearing about it super young. Like I think I might have been 8 or 9 when my grandma told me about La Llorona. I guess it just sticks with you I don’t know.”

Analysis: The story of La Llorona is widely known in Latin countries, telling the story of a woman who drowned her own children and now roams different bodies of water in search of them. It’s become widely recognized for its unsettling nature and being a myth passed down through different generations.

The ghost at Catalina Island Marine Institute (CIMI)

A: “Um, so at my summer camp, which is located on Catalina Island in Toyon Bay, specifically.”

Interviewer: “What’s it called?”

A: “It’s called Catalina Island Marine Institute, CIMI, and there’s basically this big hill that you can hike up and climb, and at the top of it there’s kind of, like, a chimney, basically just a chimney stand. And so the story is that there used to be a house up there, and it was a wife and a husband, and they had a kid, and it was a boy. And they were playing or something, and the kid fell off the cliff. And the mother went over, ran over, saw the kid dangling there. And for a moment, was like, Oh my God this is perfect. I wanted a daughter – something about that. So then, the kid plummets to their death. It was tragic. The husband sees it as a tragedy. No one knows that the wife, like, could have saved the kid potentially. They have another kid, ends up being a girl, and when she’s about six years old, they’re playing again, and the kid, once again, slips off the cliff and is hanging off the tree, and the mom rushes over and tries to save it. And the kid looks up and goes, Are you gonna save me this time, Mommy? Also, plummets to their death. The mom is obviously so, like, traumatized and, um… You know, is very, like, distraught by what just happened and what the kid said to her that she lit the house on fire and committed suicide. And the only thing standing is the chimney now. And so the husband wasn’t home, and came to find only the chimney left standing without the wife and the kid.”

Interviewer: “Wow. What did the husband do after?”

A: “I don’t know. Yeah, but that’s, like, the ghost story. And so the ghost of the wife, like, haunts the camp. And the kids.”

Interviewer: “How old were you when you first found out?”

A: “I was in late elementary school.”

Context: In class, we were discussing ghost stories. A. went to camp at Catalina Island Marine Institute. At CIMI, this is a ghost story that is passed down from generations of kids at the camp. It is based on an abandoned chimney that is at the top of the hill on the island there and how the house came to be burned down, along with the ghosts that came with the event.

Analysis: This story is a good example of a camp ghost story that gets passed down between kids to make a place feel more mysterious. I have never heard of a camp without a ghost story or legend because those aspects are part of the camp experience and create a community within that tale. Inside info that only camp members are in on. The legend connected to Catalina Island Marine Institute takes something real, that being the chimney at the top of the hill, and builds a dramatic, creepy backstory around it. Overall, it’s less about whether the story is true and more about creating a shared tradition that makes the place feel haunted and memorable.

Fortune Cookies and Their Origins

Age: Adult man
Performance Date: 04/20/2026

Speaker: “I was told by a friend here that fortune cookies actually did not originally come from Chinese restaurants. He said they originally came from Japanese restaurants. During World War II, as you know, a lot of Japanese Americans were put into internment camps and had to leave behind their businesses.

Because of that, many of their restaurants and businesses were left behind, and the Chinese community had the opportunity to take over some of those Asian restaurants. Along with that, they also adopted the fortune cookie from Japanese restaurants.

So now, when you go to a Chinese restaurant and get a fortune cookie at the end of the meal, people think of it as something Chinese. But according to what I heard, it actually started in Japanese restaurants first, and then Chinese restaurants continued the tradition after that.

Fortune cookies are those small folded cookies that usually have a little slip of paper inside. The paper might have a short message, a prediction, or some kind of lucky saying. They are very common in Chinese restaurants in the United States now, especially after a meal, but they were not originally from the Chinese community.

That is basically what I know about it.”

Context: This conversation took place during an informal discussion about food traditions and common items associated with Chinese restaurants in the United States. The speaker explained that he had heard from a friend that fortune cookies were not originally Chinese, but Japanese. He connected this history to the internment of Japanese Americans during World War II, when many Japanese-owned businesses were abandoned or taken over. In his understanding, Chinese restaurants later adopted the fortune cookie, which eventually became strongly associated with Chinese American dining culture.

Analysis: This tale reflects a common folk explanation for the origins of the fortune cookie in the United States. It distinguished a origin clearly and it shows how food traditions can shift between communities and become symbols of a different culture over time. In this case, the fortune cookie has become widely recognized as part of the Chinese restaurant experience in America, even though its origins may be more complex.

Shooting the Drum (Miao Courtship Custom)

Speaker: “This is a custom from a Miao(Hmong) village in Guizhou. It is called ‘shooting the drum.’ Yeah, shooting the drum. It is a pretty interesting one. From what I heard, the way people talk about it now is almost like a legend. It existed in real life in the past, but nowadays no one really practices it anymore. People say that back then, someone would use a stick in a very skillful way, almost like performing magic, to ‘shoot’ or strike the drum in a special way. It is one of those traditional customs that has been passed down in the local Miao community over time. Back in those days, people were very poor, you know, so life was quite different. Because of that, some of these customs were tied to relationships and marriage in ways that might feel unusual now. The story goes that after this kind of ritual or interaction, the couple might be brought back to the home, and then their relationship would basically be settled from there. It was not something easy to walk away from once it happened. People sometimes describe it in a joking way now, comparing it to something like being carried along by the situation, like once you are in it, you cannot really back out. But that is more how people talk about it today rather than how it was formally understood back then.”

Interviewer: “So is it more like a legend now than a real practice?”

Speaker: “Yeah, pretty much. It is something people talk about as part of history or folklore now. Not many people actually know how to do it anymore, and it is not really practiced today.”

Context: This conversation took place during an informal discussion about regional customs and lesser-known traditions in ethnic minority communities in China. The speaker introduced “shooting the drum” as a Miao custom from Guizhou, describing it as something that once existed but is now mostly remembered through stories and informal explanations. His description mixed fragments of historical practice with more modern interpretations and humor.

Analysis: This folklore practice reflects how certain traditional practices, especially those tied to courtship or community rituals, can fade over time and become more like folklore than lived reality. The speaker’s uncertainty and casual tone suggest that knowledge of the custom is no longer widely preserved in detail. Instead, it survives in fragments part storytelling. The mention of poverty and social conditions also hints at how older folklore were shaped by economic and social constraints and evolved by time.