Category Archives: Legends

Narratives about belief.

Gutter School Superstition

Nationality: American
Age: 19
Occupation: Student
Residence: Laguna Niguel, CA
Performance Date: April 9, 2018
Primary Language: English

My friend was already aware of my folklore project. While getting coffee, we were happened to be telling stories about our experiences in high school. I realized this would be perfect for this assignment. GG is the informant, PH is myself.

PH: Do you have any folklore about your school, like stories everyone would tell, or things everyone would do?

GG: Oh, I think I have one. I don’t know for sure if it’s folklore.

PH: You tell me and then we’ll see.

GG: Okay, at my elementary school there was this gutter by the lunch tables and kids would say… just to freak other kids out… they would say it was built on an old ranch where there was a princess or something or a rich family and where the gutter was used to be a little stream and she fell face first and hit her head and died in the stream so people would never step in the gutter because she would come to haunt you

PH: Yes, that is folklore! Thank you.

Ability to See Ghosts

Nationality: Filipino American
Age: 19
Occupation: Student
Residence: Bay Area, CA
Performance Date: April 24, 2018
Primary Language: English

A fellow student in this class and I met to exchange folklore. We are both very aware of the guidelines of the project, so there was no explaining necessary. Neither of us had any preference for certain category of folklore, so we agreed to share whatever we wanted. She chose the following story. BD is the informant, PH is myself

BD: My name is Beanna, I am 19, I am from the San Francisco Bay Area. What other questions are there?

PH: Nationality

BD: I’m Filipino but I’m also American, my family is third generation

So when my mom was a senior in high school her dad passed away and then she…was the only one there when he actually passed away and ever since then she says that she can see ghosts or like not see ghosts but she experiences ghostly things..so…like seven years ago my grandmother on my dad’s side passed away, and again, like, my mom was not the only one there but, after that we were cleaning up my grandmother’s house and my mom said that she saw my grandmother in the …mirror? Like the main mirror of the house and like every time she passes it she sees like a white flash…and I’m not really sure if that white flash is also supposed to be my grandmother? It’s kind of freaky…and, yeah, things like that happen. Like whenever someone passes away and my mom knows about it, all of a sudden, she gets, like, mirror sightings ‘cause I don’t think it helps that in our house in our main hallway we have this very large mirror and like our neighbor’s…mom passed away …two years ago? And my mom kept insisting for like three weeks after that she kept seeing flashes in the mirror… Yeah.

PH: Wow. So, do you believe that she is, like, seeing those things and seeing ghosts?

BD: Not really, no. (Laughs) It’s also kind of like a Filipino superstition thing because her mom also thinks that she can see ghosts which is really weird because, like, my mom thinks it stems from her being present when her dad died, but my mom’s mom was not there, so why would she be able to see ghosts by that same logic, sort of?

Professor Thompson’s Alaskan Log Story

Nationality: American
Age: 51
Occupation: Professor and Folklorist
Residence: Kenai, AK, now Los Angeles, CA
Performance Date: April 25, 2018
Primary Language: English

A fellow classmate and I went to Professor Thompson’s office hours to ask him for any folklore. ME is the classmate, PH is myself, and TT is the informant.

PH: We were wondering if we could collect folklore from you for the project.

ME: Specifically, any stories about Alaska, the Alaskan wilderness, maybe about animals

TT: Stories… You’re looking for something kind of traditional I suppose, um. There’s a story my dad told to me that was told as, somewhat traditional, he got it from someone else who got it from someone else… I got a few stories, probably somewhat true. So here’s, uh, um, uh uh um, there’s one from my hometown, I’ll give you one of those from my hometown, it’s not really an animal story but it’s one from my hometown. So, I grew up in, uh, what was at the time kind of transitioning away from a Native village, it was a Native village when I was born there, but then they discovered oil and a lot of people came in, but just a few years back it was more of a Native village, kind of a Russian Native outpost since the 1700s, this is in Kenai. So, um, my dad moved out there a few months after World War II, uh, and he hung out with a lot of people and collected stories, not that he was a folklorist he just liked talking to people and it was a small town but uh there were a lot of stories from the small town. One that was on my mind um, just recently… Are you ready for it?

PH: Yeah, it’s recording

TT: Back in the day, everybody had little cabins, it was a small little town, and everything was, all the heat was woodpower, everybody had to cut their own wood, there was just wood stoves, and at one point, some guy became aware that somebody in the town was stealing his wood and he didn’t know who, um, you know it’s hard to stop because everybody had their log pile right in front of your house and he just started noticing his log pile going down further than he was burning it, and he couldn’t figure out how to… how to catch the thief so he came up with an idea and he invited everybody over to a party and um, pretty much the whole town… It’s pretty cold in the winter so if someone throws a party everybody shows up, and, uh, they had food, drink, or whatnot, and at one point, he kind of just casually announced to the party, “Yeah, you know, somebody’s been stealing my wood, but that’s okay, I fixed it.” And everybody’s like, “Oh, how did you fix it,” you know, like, “Did you find out who it is?” Like, “No, no, I took care of it.” …like, “How’d you take care of it?” and he’s like, “Well. Here’s what I did, I hollowed out one of the logs and I crammed it full of dynamite and plugged it back up…so….and I noticed that piece of wood was gone last night, sooo, as soon as that…pretty soon we’re going to hear a big bang, and somebody’s fireplace is going to explode.” Yeah, he waits a couple a minutes, pretty soon this one guy says like, “Uhh, I have to get going” and he looks out the window and he sees the guy running as fast as he can home, so..”

All of us laugh

ME: How old were you when you were first told this story?

TT: Probably quite young, and I heard it many times over the years

Professor Thompson’s How To Get Rid of A Bear Story

Nationality: American
Age: 51
Occupation: Professor and Folklorist
Residence: Kenai, AK, now Los Angeles CA
Performance Date: April 25, 2018
Primary Language: English

A fellow classmate and I went to Professor Thompson’s office hours to ask him for any folklore. ME is the classmate, PH is myself, and TT is the informant.

PH: We were wondering if we could collect folklore from you for the project.

ME: Specifically, any stories about Alaska, the Alaskan wilderness, maybe about animals

TT then proceeded to tell us a story not related to animals that is documented in a separate post. That other post has more background about the town he grew up in, where these stories come from.

TT: Oh, and I have one about …

There are plenty of stories about their encounters with animals and whatnot, um and especially with bears, that was the main thing you had to watch out for, especially brown bears, so there was all these stories of people getting, you know, attacked by bears and chased by bears, um, and the one that kind of sticks out in my mind, that my dad told me as if it were true, but I, I kind of wonder, (laughs) iit sounds a little traditional to me. Um, so this guy was out, um, somewhere and this uh, this brown bear started chasing him, and he climbs up this tree, which is what you can do when you’re chased by a brown bear, people are climbers, and uh, so the bear wouldn’t go away though, he just kind of waited for the guy underneath the tree, so the guy would try to climb down the tree and the bear would run over right underneath the tree, ready for him, so after a while, this kept going on, the guy would yell at him, try throwing sticks at him, nothing, the guy’d be up there for, like, hours, and he’s getting really annoyed, you know, the bear’s not getting him, but he’s not leaving either, and see it’s going to get dark, and he’s up in the tree, and so then he gets really annoyed, and he realizes he has to, uh, he has to take a leak, so he comes down, uh, about most of the way out of the tree, the bear rushes over right underneath the tree, and he just starts peeing right on the bear’s face, and the bear gets so upset, so annoyed, that he tears off, and then the guy can go home.

(We all laugh)

PH: Alright!

ME: That’s interesting…

TT: So as a kid, I always remember that story, so in case I ever got chased up a tree by a bear that was going to be my fallback move

(We all laugh again)

PH: Good to know!

ME: Now we know what to do, too

Play: Pirate Folklore

On April 13, 2018 I attended the play Peter and the Starcatcher at the Long Beach Playhouse Theaters. Written by Rick Elice, it was based on the book by Dave Barry and Ridley Pearson and directed by Gregory Cohen. The play is a prequel to the iconic story of Peter Pan, providing the origins for several of the characters of the story, including Hook, Tinker Bell and Peter Pan himself. The play is set in Neverland and opens up with orphan Peter, being called Slank at the time, being sold into some kind of slavery or indentured service to the King Rundoon. This is what sets the stage for his ongoing hatred of adults that stays with him through the original story.
The main piece of folklore that I wanted to explore in depth for this assignment was a story within the larger play about Black Stache, who is reminiscent of the folklore about the infamous Black Beard. Black Stache is first introduced by the character of Smee, played by Jazzy Jones, is Captain Hook’s loyal servant. After taking the Wasp hostage, Smee tells the Captain Scott the legend of Black Stache, which is quite reminiscent of Black Beard. Smee’s monologue is meant to instill fear into the crew so that they fear the elusive figure and plays into the folklore of the figure of Black Beard.
He calls Black Stache “the prince of darkness, our satanic satanic supervisor, foul and nasty with a cloven hoof.” Smee tells the Captain that you can recognize Black Stache by his “celebrated mouth brow, that’s how.” Then, Black Stache, played by William Ardelean, arrives himself and reaffirms all the folklore that Smee has just announced about him. He calls himself “a pirate with scads of pinash wants the key to the trunk with the cash” and tells the crew the he is a “blood thirsty outlaw.”
Interestingly, the play connects this character of Black Stache to Captain Hook, as Black Stache later becomes Hook when he loses his hand later in the play. I found this incredibly interesting, as Smee is elaborate in his tale of Black Stache and the horror he inflicts on the high seas. Thus, the play is harkening back to real folklore tales and placing the story of Captain Hook into these legends as a way to further provide depth and legitimacy to his character. It is an interesting development for Captain Hook’s character and I feel an innovative spin on an old folklore legend.