Category Archives: Legends

Narratives about belief.

Tahoe Tessie

Text: “I was born in Tennessee, and my parents decided that they wanted to move to Northern Nevada when I was only one-year-old. When me and my family made the move, we initially settled in Virginia City, but my parents soon decided to build a house in Reno. 35 minutes away from Reno is Lake Tahoe, where a third of the lake falls in Nevada and the other parts reside in California. Lake Tahoe is extremely deep, one of the deepest in the country, and growing up, there was always a legend that if you went too deep in the lake, you would get eaten by Tahoe Tessie. Tahoe is so deep that no one necessarily knows what is down there, so when people talk about what is at the bottom of the lake, Tessie is there. It is said that if you ever go to Tahoe or you go on a boat in the lake, stay in the boat and in shallow waters so you don’t get eaten.”

Context: My informant – a 24-year-old woman from Reno, Nevada – told me this story, drawing on the local legend she heard from parents and teachers while growing up. She explained to me that her family would always spend their summers up the mountain at Lake Tahoe, and while extremely beautiful, it was always emphasized to her to stay in the shallow parts of the lake and to not swim out too deep, or else the lake monster Tahoe Tessie would drag her to the bottom of the lake. Lake Tahoe is extremely deep, so it is impossible to swim or dive to the bottom; if one were to get dragged down by Tahoe Tessie, there wouldn’t be any chance of rescue. She remembers this legend being told to her by adults all around the lake, serving as a warning to swim in areas where your feet can still touch the sand beneath.

Analysis: Upon hearing this legend, I was able to quickly draw a correlation between Tahoe Tessie and the infamous Nessie, AKA the Loch Ness Monster. Alongside the names of the creatures being virtually the same, they both dwell in the depths of freshwater lakes and incite fear among lake goers. Dating back to ancient times, the Loch Ness Monster has been believed to inhabit Loch Ness, Scotland since the Picts (northern British peoples in the Middle Ages) first created stone carvings of a large water creature with flippers. As time has gone on, the Loch Ness Monster has maintained its popularity, with people traveling to Loch Ness to see the creature or to encounter it while swimming.

There were claims that date back hundreds of years of the Loch Ness Monster surfacing to bite or attack swimmers, paralleling the legend that is Tahoe Tessie. My informant said that Tessie would surface to drag children to the bottom of the lake, and it was always told to her by adults as a cautionary tale to stay in shallow waters. Both legends act as warnings about any potential dangers lurking in the deep, but I also believe that these legends are both used by parents to convince their children to stay close to the shore and in their eyesight; Tahoe Tessie and the Loch Ness Monster are used to fearmonger children to ultimately keep them safe from drowning. On top of this, both creatures demonstrate the human fascination with creatures in the depths of waters, and it highlights the shared anxieties about what can occur in the natural world.

References:

Tikkanen, Amy. “Loch Ness monster.” Britannica, 2024, https://www.britannica.com/topic/Loch-Ness-monster-legendary-creature. 

The Lost Goldmine

Text: “Legend has it that a German settler moved to the Phoenix, Arizona area and was working in the Peralta Mine of the Superstition Mountains in East Phoenix, about one hour from the city of Mesa. In the late 1900s, that man was said to have become wealthy by stumbling across a section of that mine that was closed off to everyday miners. After stumbling upon the gold, he became extremely rich, and he left Phoenix to live a life enshrouded in wealth. After much time, the man grew old, and seeing the way the gold had changed his life, he didn’t want to take its source of origin to the grave. He told a nurse in his hospital the location of the hidden mine. Rumors spread regarding its location, and many people have tried to find the lost gold in the Superstition Mountains. The Superstition Mountains are rumored to be some of the most treacherous in the U.S., so if you were to get lost, you most likely wouldn’t find your way out and be left for dead. Countless bodies have been found in the mountains. People have been found with their heads removed and lost to the point of dehydration and starvation, The gold is said to be cursed as it has never been found, and those who seek it out never return.”

Context: My informant – a 29-year-old man living in Mesa, Arizona  – told me this story, drawing on a legend he had heard from one of his old bosses. My informant works in construction and infrastructure, and he was once on a job site near the base of the Superstition Mountain Range. On a lunch break, he and his coworkers began to wander into the mountains, which their boss proceeded to warn them about, calling upon the story of the lost goldmine and those who go missing in the mountains. My informant described how his boss was extremely adamant about not going into the mountains because of the legend and how many get lost in the range, and to this day, he still hasn’t ventured into them.

Analysis: After hearing this legend from my informant, I recalled a piece written by Tok Thompson on proverbs in Ethiopia. In the article, Thompson explores the rich cultural landscape of Ethiopia through the lens of Amharic proverbs. In Amharic culture, wealth is perceived as a transformative force in social relations, yet it is also believed to be determined by destiny, making the pursuit of wealth futile. The proverbs critique greed and highlight the futility of chasing wealth, which stands in stark contrast to the belief in capitalist societies like the United States, where wealth is often equated with hard work. Ethiopians value a full and meaningful life regardless of wealth, a sentiment reflected in their proverbs. 

While the legend my informant described to me doesn’t come from Ethiopia, I see a lot of Amharic cultural narratives within it. The legend tells the story of one lucky man who discovered a lot of gold in the Superstition Mountains, and when he revealed its location on his deathbed, people quickly sprung into action to find the goldmine and claim it for themselves. While the mountain range is inherently treacherous, people are still able to explore them and hike through them; however, if someone seeks out the gold that the man discovered years ago, they go missing. I feel that this legend is similar to the Amharic proverbs regarding wealth in the sense that they both discuss the consequences of greed, and how chasing wealth is a fool’s errand. My informant told me that the man who found the gold in the legend merely stumbled upon it, asserting that it was by luck. However, when people go out into the Superstition Mountains with a purpose of claiming the riches, they are never to be seen again. The legend of the lost goldmine in the Superstition Mountains, as recounted by my informant, echoes themes found in cultural narratives from around the world, including Ethiopia. The legend warns against the pitfalls of greed and the futile pursuit of wealth. While the story of the German settler who stumbled upon the gold speaks to luck, the fate of those who actively seek out the treasure serves as a cautionary tale. Through these cultural narratives, we are reminded of the folklore that transcends borders and generations. 

References:

Thompson, Tok. “Getting Ahead in Ethiopia: Amharic Proverbs about Wealth.”

Proverbium, 2009, 367-386.

Dancing With the Devil

Text: “My grandma told me this story from a time when she was young and she liked to party in downtown Juarez, Mexico. In the late 1950s, my grandma was in her late teens, and one night she went out to party. As she became drunk throughout the night and enjoyed her time with her friends, a Tejano with a tall figure and blue eyes asked her to dance. She said yes, and as the night went on, the dance floor became more vibrant and she lost track of time. Suddenly, the doors shut and no one was allowed in or out. Because the dance floor was so full, people couldn’t see that this man had the feet of a goat. She tried to leave the club, but the man chased her to the door, and the lights went out. One by one, people started to get murdered, and there was an eerie laughter in the background. She noticed what was going on, then she was able to find an escape route through the back of the building.”

Context: My informant – a 29-year-old man from Las Cruces, New Mexico – told me this story, drawing on the legend he and his siblings would hear from their grandmother as they progressed from adolescence to young adulthood. He explained to me that this was a story he heard from his grandma whenever he would come home late or be out with friends, and he believed it basically served as a warning to not spend too much time out of the house and away from family or else the Devil will come for you.

Analysis: Upon investigating this legend, I came across a news article titled “San Antonio’s Dancing Devil of El Camaroncito.” In this article, the story parallels the one my informant told me almost to a tee, describing a man dressed to the nines who wooed all the ladies in attendance and swept them off their feet. However, as the night went on, people started to recognize that his feet were not those of a human, and after people started to panic, the man fled out of the nightclub through an open window. While the story described in the news article is almost exactly the same as the one my informant told me at the beginning, my informant’s version takes a darker turn, with the dancing Devil going on a murderous rampage in the club. I was curious to understand what might have caused the two stories to end on two drastically different notes.

My informant heard this story from his grandmother, a devout Catholic woman. As someone who also grew up in a Catholic family, I know that the over consumption of alcohol is considered to be a sin. In his grandmother’s version of the legend, she had indulged excessively in alcohol, and that ultimately brought her face-to-face with the Devil. Among a crowd of excessively intoxicated people, the Devil began to claim his sinful souls, stealing their lives and taking them back to Hell for their sins. This story told to my informant by his grandmother is similar to an example provided by Larry Danielson in his chapter on religious folklore. Danielson recalls the anxieties recounted to him by Roman Catholic friends and family before their first communions as they “had been warned by their elders, sometimes by their parochial school teachers, that if they chewed the communion wafer, their mouths would fill with blood” (50). Danielson describes how this is a prime example of religious folk belief, as it isn’t upheld by the institution but instead through oral tradition.

My informant’s legend is an example of religious folklore. His grandmother told him and his younger family members this story as they approached the age where they would begin to drink alcohol and party with their friends, and in order to dissuade them from doing so, his grandmother told them of the time where she committed that same sin, and the Devil almost came for her for it. Of course the Bible doesn’t say that if a teenager goes and gets drunk at the club, the Devil will appear and take their soul; but pulling on a collective fear in a shared faith will hopefully dissuade my informant from indulging in sin, at least in his grandmother’s eyes. 

References:

Danielson, Larry. “Religious Folklore.” In Folk Groups and Folklore Genres: An Introduction, edited by Elliott Oring, 45-69. Utah State University Press, 1986.

Shadows, Chasing. “San Antonio’s Dancing Devil of El Camaroncito.” San Antonio Current, 31 Oct. 2011, https://www.sacurrent.com/news/san-antonios-dancing-devil-of-el-camaroncito-2250845. 

The Witch’s Grave

Text: “As a kid, my parents and elders would tell us not to misbehave or they would take us to the cemetery in the town of Old Mesilla. The town was colonized by the Spanish in the late 1500s, and the indigenous peoples of the land faced heavy persecution from the settlers. There was a woman who was native to the land, and as a form of revenge, she sought to poison one of the men who was settling in her home. The man soon caught on to the woman’s plot, and he accused her of witchcraft and poisoned her himself. The woman died soon after, and the colonizers buried her in an unmarked grave that was covered with an extremely heavy rock. That rock began to crack, and it is believed the woman is trying to escape her grave and seek vengeance against the men who stole her home and killed her. To this day, locals have repaired the tomb with many layers of concrete, but the concrete continues to crack and become more brittle. There is a story from a couple years ago of a teenage girl being dared to lay on top of the large grave, and when she did, she began having a seizure. It is believed that the woman’s spirit possessed the girl, filling her with the same rage the woman had.”

Context: My informant – a 29-year-old man from Las Cruces, New Mexico – told me this story, drawing on the legend he and his siblings and cousins would hear from their parents and elders as children. He explained to me that if he was misbehaving among his family, someone would reprimand him by telling him to act right or else he would be taken to “the witch’s grave.” He had heard the legend as a child from his mother, and it was common knowledge that the area was the burial site of a bruja (witch), so it wasn’t to be neared. My informant explained to me that the last part of the story is the part that scared him and other children the most – the story of a young girl laying on top of the grave and being possessed. If anyone were to get too close to the grave, they would be filled with the spirit of the woman who seeks revenge on anyone who settles on her land, a spirit that is malicious and bound to cause harm to anyone in her path. Playing on the children’s fear of their bodies being inhabited by a witch’s spirit, parents would warn their children to behave or else they would be taken to the grave to be possessed. 

Analysis: When my informant was telling me of this legend, I began to draw parallels between this story and the wider-known legend of La Llorona due to the history of colonization. In “The Politics of Taking: La Llorona in the Cultural Mainstream” by Domino Renee Perez, the author examines the legend of La Llorona, honing in on a specific interpretation of the legend where La Llorona is an indigenous Mexican woman that ends up bearing the children of a Spanish colonizer. After her children are born, he abandons her and her children, and the ensuing grief and rage that comes over her motivates her to kill her children and wander for eternity. Perez stresses that the traditional legend views La Llorona as a figure of resistance to imperialism, and she serves as a reminder of the violence and pain that were inflicted on the indigenous peoples who fell victim to colonization. Yet, in the majority of Western media, La Llorona is portrayed as a mere woman who solely seeks to exact vengeance upon unfaithful men.

After my informant told me of the legend regarding the witch’s grave, I wanted to see if that history of imperialism provides some insight into understanding the witch’s motives in other tellings of the story. While there wasn’t much published on the legend, I came across a blog post that described the same witch’s grave in Mesilla, yet instead of describing her actions as resistance against colonization, it states that she was merely trying to poison a man who instead poisoned her, resulting in her death. I am unsure of who the author of that blog post is, but I found it very interesting to hear the legend from my informant as he provided historical context that doesn’t enshroud the woman with petty vengeance, but instead details her fighting back against the men who stole her home. My informant is an indigenous Mexican, and I believe that the version of the legend that he heard was told to him by members of his culture that share in feeling the collective pain caused by colonization. His version of the legend grants greater insight into the history of his people, and while it may differ from other interpretations, it showcases the unique forms legends can take in order to tell a story that others may not know.

References:

“A Witch’s Grave.” The Scarlet Order, 8 Feb. 2016, https://dlsummers.wordpress.com/2016/02/15/a-witchs-grave/. 

Perez, Domino Renee. “The Politics of Taking: La Llorona in the Cultural Mainstream.” The Journal of Popular Culture, Vol. 45, No. 1, 153-172. Wiley Periodicals, Inc., 2012. 

Peddocks Island Ghost Story

Main Piece

Informant CH told many ghost stories from the Boston Harbor, on islands near her hometown. She recalls that of the islands, Peddocks Island was the “scariest place she’s ever been” and that she was taken there on a camping trip in both 7th and 8th grade.

An island tour guide who frequents Peddocks told her and her classmates of ghost stories that took place there–there are abandoned wartime barracks on the island and an abandoned ship watchtower, and the grounds are said to be haunted. One such story involves “hearing someone playing a piano, but there’s nobody there.”

While on a walk with another 7th grade peer at night by the barracks, CH and her friend saw a wandering man in a “war helmet with a visor,” wearing black, green, and white. He was “limping and had a gun slung over his shoulder.” They both screamed and the figure didn’t react at all. He was “walking on a path that didn’t exist” and, upon later recollection, CH added that she didn’t remember his walking making any sound. When they returned to camp and told of the occurrence, other teachers and peers didn’t believe them and asked why they all didn’t see it if something was there.

The next day, CH and her peers were taken to a history museum, where she saw photos of soldiers with the “same color grade and hats with visors and everything.” She learned that soldiers used to be trained on this island, and there used to be homes and hospitals set up on the grounds where she was camping.

The next year, CH returned as an 8th grader and, while staying in tents by the old watchtower, she saw a “girl…sketching the exact same guy because she said that she also saw him.”

Interpretation

Informant Interpretation: CH believes this story to be one example of many haunted stories told about Boston Harbor, and traces this back to the fact that “this is the portion that still retains its history.” No one builds or tears things down on the island. “The life as it was is still how it is,” CH mentioned, which makes it a “magnet” for stories like this. CH noted that she honestly believes she and her friend saw a ghost that day, and that this occurrence made her think ghosts dwelled in a parallel world (as he didn’t acknowledge her or her friend) rather than haunting this one.

Personal Interpretation: I found this story to be emblematic of a regional perspective on haunting, as permitted by the history of Boston Harbor–as a city much older than many others in America, it feels more in touch with its history. This plays out in CH’s legend by virtue of haunting coming about in old, untouched places–ghosts become representative of the collective public memory, remaining relevant because so much physical history and buildings remain too. I think it’s also an apt example of human perception informing folk narrative–observation of physical land features, attitudes of locals, and sheer emotional intuition all lend themselves towards forming regional beliefs and legends.

Background

My informant is a current student of Theatre at the University of Southern California, originally from Hull, Massachusetts (located on a peninsula on Boston Harbor). She grew up there, and notes that her family has strong ties to the area. Both of her parents believe in ghosts, though she believes there to be a general local apprehension about their existence around the Harbor.

CH is white and of European (primarily Irish) descent, and female-presenting.