Category Archives: Legends

Narratives about belief.

Metropolitan state hospital

Text

“My boys and I snuck into the hospital in Waltham and once we were in, it was abandoned and disgusting with trash such as beer cans everywhere. There were eerie sounds in there and we reluctantly were scoping around the area. Legend commonly says that this hospital is haunted and noises we heard we thought to be the mythical ghosts. We searched the deserted building for a bit til we ran out of fear, finding nothing but trash but I swear we heard these weird sounds constantly.”

Context

This ghost story is commonly known by teens in Massachusetts familiar with the Waltham area. Kids often talk of the area in a spooky manner due to its past being a psychiatric institution. Rumor has it that the abandoned hospital is haunted with ghosts of past patients. This sparks curiosity in the young kids of the area who explore the building often.

Analysis

This folk story is a common example of an abandoned building with an emotional back story becoming associated with ghosts. The psychiatric hospital has cultural ties to suffering and isolation which permit horror stories and supernatural beings. This story is a legend because it is based in reality and believed to be true by some and false by others. In society, people often use folklore to rationalize factual events. This specific legend is used to make sense of why the hospital is abandoned and show how the suffering within that building created ghosts. Him and his friends’ exploration is legend tripping because they are experiencing and testing their belief first hand.

War Orphans in WW2 China (遗华日侨)

Context:

The informant is a senior undergraduate International student from China, studying at USC. She grow up in a very traditional Chinese household, and are well-educated in Chinese culture.

Text:

“This story is about the wife of my grandmother’s younger brother.

She was born in 1938, during the war between China and Japan, which was the early stage of World War II. Her biological father was an officer in the Nationalist Party. Her biological mother was a Chinese woman who could speak Japanese.

I think one of the big problems at the time was this: after Japan occupied Northeast China, many people born there — including Japanese settlers and local Northeasterners — experienced an identity crisis. They couldn’t tell whether they were Chinese or Japanese.

For the Japanese born there, they thought: “Our country has occupied this land. I was just born on land occupied by my country. I was born in the fourth year of the Shōwa era, so I am Japanese.” Later, when this land was redefined as China, they still considered themselves Japanese.

For the local Northeastern children, because the Japanese required everyone to learn Japanese, they spoke Chinese at home but had to speak Japanese at school and pledge loyalty to the Japanese Emperor. So they too experienced this identity confusion.

The mother in this story was exactly that kind of person with an identity crisis. Ethnically, she was Chinese, but she was fluent in Japanese and worked as an interpreter for the Japanese. Naturally, at that time, she was labeled a “traitor” (汉奸).

Around the time the War of Resistance against Japan was about to be won, in the mid-1940s, the Nationalist government was retreating to Taiwan around 1944–1945. Her biological father was very irresponsible. He bought only one boat ticket and abandoned the mother and daughter in Northeast China. The mother was left alone with a baby only five or six months old, barely able to carry her in her arms. Life was extremely difficult. Also, because she had been labeled a traitor, she couldn’t raise her child properly. So one day, she placed the baby on a woodpile in a rural area, hoping some kind-hearted person would adopt her.

Soon an old woman came out to gather firewood for the heated brick bed (炕) common in Northeast China. She found the baby. The baby hadn’t been wrapped properly — her right foot was exposed, which later caused a permanent disability. The old woman took the baby home and slowly began raising her. To be honest, the old woman wasn’t entirely kind-hearted: she wanted to raise the girl as a future child bride for her own son. But regardless of her intention, she did save the girl’s life.

The girl grew up in that household. Besides her future husband, there was an older brother, much older than her. The brother treated her more or less okay, but after he got married, the sister-in-law was not so kind. For example, when the girl wanted to study, the sister-in-law wouldn’t let her use the oil lamp. She suffered a lot, but through her own hard work, she got into China Agricultural University — which is still a prestigious university today.

When she grew up, the Cultural Revolution had already passed. Then, in the 1990s, someone contacted her, claiming to be her biological father. It turned out that he had never made it to Taiwan for various reasons. Later, during the Cultural Revolution, his identity as a former Nationalist officer was exposed, and he was severely persecuted, even losing the use of one leg.

As for her biological mother, she fared relatively better. After leaving the baby at the old woman’s home, the mother claimed to be a Japanese refugee. Since Chinese and Japanese people looked similar, and she spoke fluent Japanese, no one could tell the difference. Before the People’s Republic of China was founded, she managed to flee to Japan, where she remarried — a Japanese man — and lived a fairly happy life. Although the Japanese economy was poor after the war, under American occupation, people could still get enough to eat.

So, in the end, this is a family tragedy set against the backdrop of a turbulent era, but also a small family legend.”

Analysis:

This is family legend shaped by historical trauma, where large political events are understood through personal experience. It highlights themes of identity instability, as characters are caught between cultural and national affiliations and judged by shifting social norms. The narrative also reflects a common motif of abandonment and rescue, though presented with moral complexity rather than clear good or evil. Overall, the story shows how family narratives preserve cultural memory while helping later generations make sense of difficult and ambiguous histories.

Comedic Ritual

Age: 20

The Story:

“I’m going to tell a story about an improv comedy club on campus. We have a lot of initiation rituals that are funny and weird and cute. I remember when I first got on the team my freshman year, that night they called you, it’s like a football draft. You audition for two teams and then they all take turns picking who they want. I got picked by my team, then I got a phone call from an unknown number to  meet me at this location on campus. They told me to meet them at *REDACTED*, which is like this little stage. “

“I went there and it’s like the middle of night, it’s like 10 p.m. and I was alone and it was dark for a little while. I thought ‘what did I sign up for?’ then they all were like dark clothes and like cloaks and they yell like comedy rules out in the woods. Then all at once they scream and yell at you to get to the stage. It was like a medieval theme going on in there. After getting to the stage, then they knight you, so you get on your knees, and then they knight you in the name of the club. It’s all in the middle of the night and terrifying, and then they take you to a secondary location.”

Pretty much all the teams do this, they kidnap their noobs, they’re called the noobs, they’re the new people, then they bring them to this diner called *REDACTED*. The staff already know just right now because it’s been happening for years. And then they treat you to just a really nice meal at this diner.

Reflection:

The informant’s story was a perfect example of how in certain folk groups, folk members must go through rites of passage to fully be accepted into the respective folk group. Additionally, it highlights the specific rituals in place amongst acceptance. I thought it was very interesting to see that these rites of passage were not only an act of dedication, but mutually were an opportunity to show the understanding of the traditions and morals of the respective folk group trying to be joined. On a more personal note, it was interesting to see some of the stigmas I may carry about clubs with rituals be broken down or disproved by an actual perspective. I, as the outsider to the folk group, had my own connotations that did not actually align with the personal experience of an actual member of the folk group. Further, it lessened any stereotypes that I carry when hearing about group initiations when hearing of clubs. I realized that in believing that many club initiations are harmful or taboo, I participated in watering down the culture and lived experience of participants of those folk groups instead of having a direct contact and understanding.

Spooky School Tale

Context:

Age: 19

Occupation: College Student

Location: Los Angeles, CA

The Story:

One of my friends lives  right next to this  old, like, middle school, it’s called Hogs Hollow, But because  one of my friends lived right next to there, and we would hanging out there, and one day after school was over we would sometimes like pop the fence and run around in there because they would leave all the doors open, so you could kind of just wander around in there. 

There were all these kinds of maze-like passages and stuff. I hadn’t been into the school but some of my friends had and so we decided to go in there and we were kind of wandering around it was dark and we decided to split up just because we thought it would make it more scary, you know, like, because we knew it was a bad idea. Then somebody heard a voice. And everybody started freaking out and running, and one of my friends  tripped over something and fell into a bunch of equipment, and there was all these loud noises and stuff, and everybody got freaked out.

Everybody went back to school and was talking about it, so it’s become a little bit more of a known thing at my school. I was kind of happy to be in sort of like the founding group of this our own little legend of this unknown myth. There were also some embellishments, I remember some stories saying we heard the voice at exactly 3 a.m. which I don’t think was true, but started going around, and that somebody saw like a little  middle schooler running around. It was kind of fun to see it like in real time develop into this sort of legend. 

Reflection:

When originally hearing this story from the informant, I thought it was interesting that the that the school operated as a contemporary legend that is set in the real world. The informant’s clarity of no one else being present but the friend group, but the rumor still spreading around the school is an example of metafolklore. Therefore, the location of this story, the school, starts ordinarily, but through the metafolklore and different versions created and spread, becomes saturated with fear and inauthenticity. Further, I think the real aspects of the story, such as the group splitting up and it being late at night also pave the way for embellishments of the story to amp it up in metafolklore. Although no time of the arrival was given and it was never shared which voice was heard, speculators assumed it was at 3AM and the voice of an old middle schooler was heard to fit the narrative of other folk stories they may have heard before. The informants proximity to the story allows for a social bonding factor for those within the folk group, but also ritualized performance that enacts group identity and belonging. 

La Sihuanaba

Text:

“It’s called La Sihuanaba — it’s like this beautiful woman that sits by the river, and she would oftentimes come and lure men that were either drunk or cheating on their wives. And then she would turn into this monster. She was basically punished by God to be this ugly creature because she was too vain. I don’t know if it’s kind of similar to, um, the one where the king looks at himself in the river too much and he’s too vain. But yeah, so she basically just lures men in and kills them if they’re not well-behaved. And then she also got punished with a son who is very treacherous.”

Context:

La Sihanaba is a widely circulated supernatural legend across Central America, particularly El Salvador, Guatemala, Honduras, and Mexico. The informant’s family is Salvadoran, and the moral tales that he reflected on were often very vivid for his mother.  La Sihuanaba belongs to a cluster of feminine supernatural figures in Latin American folklore, most notably La Llorona, the “Weeping Woman,” a ghost who wanders waterways and targets children.

Analysis:

The recurring figure of a powerful, marginal woman who tests the moral fitness of those she encounters is recognizable across world folklore as the archetype of the Crone — a figure who sits at the crossroads of wisdom, danger, and social judgment. La Siihuanaba activates this archetype while complicating it in instructive ways. Unlike many Crone figures whose threat is purely spiteful or generalized, her targeting is morally precise: she punishes sobriety violations and marital infidelity, making her less a monster than a supernatural enforcer of communal norms. What gives her lasting narrative power is the irony embedded in her origin: she was herself condemned by God for vanity, and is punished to seek out and condemn that very excess in others. She is a flawed injuster, shaped by her own transgression. This reflexive quality — the punished becoming the punisher— invites an interpretive richness that sustains stories across generations.