Category Archives: Legends

Narratives about belief.

The Pineapple Man- A USC Legend

Nationality: Irish-German American
Age: 20
Occupation: Student
Residence: Anaheim, California
Performance Date: April 23, 2017
Primary Language: English

Informant is a sophomore at the University of Southern California, majoring in Computer Science/Business Administration. This is a story about an event that he had heard last about last year from a senior student, who said it had happened long ago on Menlo Street, an area off campus that is known for its parties.

“So this is a story that one of my senior friends in an entrepreneur club told me. The story goes that one of his friends had gone to a party at the SoCal Vocals house on Menlo Street. This friend was slighty tipsy and was under the influence of a marijuana edible, so he was at the kitchen sink drinking water straight from the faucet, when to his right, there was a guy who pulled a pineapple out of the fridge. The guy set the pineapple onto the counter, and he look a big ass, machete ass knife out of their wooden cutlery block and starts hacking away at the pineapple. Starts slicing the fuck out of the thing. Then, a brother from the SoCal Vocal house approaches the guy and says ‘Hey bro, you can’t just eat our pineapple.’ So the guy says, ‘Fuck you, I can do whatever I want. I don’t even go here.’ And he starts waving around the knife and air slicing everything with this big ass knife. The friend is still at the sink this whole time, drinking water and feeling like this is a movie going on. So the brother tells him to calm down, and two other brothers come in to help, at which point the dude is just getting angrier. They try to wrestle the knife out of his hand, and eventually they pin him down and get it away. They try to drag him out of the house, but he breaks away and breaks a window, barrel-r0lls out of it, and runs off into the street. That is the Pineapple Man.”

 

Collector’s Comments:

This is a story that almost sounds unbelievable, yet based on the setting, is very possible. Menlo Street is an area where many different people, primarily USC students but also outsiders, will go to party on the weekends. The houses throw parties where anyone can enter for a fee, so it is not surprising that this person is an outsider. Based on the fact that the person who experienced the event and told the story was intoxicated, some of the details might be jumbled or exaggerated, but this makes for a very memorable tale to tell friends and underclassmen, which is how the informant had learned about it. This story could be easily passed along by word of mouth, and would be very relatable to the experience of many USC students.

 

 

The Nuns and the Indigenous People

Nationality: Irish American
Age: 20
Occupation: Student
Residence: Anaheim, California
Performance Date: April 26, 2017
Primary Language: English

Informant is a sophomore at USC majoring in Computer Science. He attended Catholic school from Kindergarten to 8th grade. This is a story that he heard during this time.

“This is a story that I heard from a priest when I went to Catholic school in elementary school. So two of the most faithful nuns were sent from the Vatican to a foreign country to spread the word of God, and when they arrive, they got lost. These nuns had brought nothing but their Bibles and the clothes on their backs, and had no food and water. They couldn’t find the village that they were looking to convert, so they wandered around lost and hungry for three days. Finally they ran into an indigenous person, who asked them why they are there. They said that they were there to spread the word of God to the villagers, to which the person said that he would help lead them to the village. So, they started walking to the village, which was multiple days away, and as they’re walking, the indigenous person showed them plants that they could eat and the plants that were poisonous. After the first day of travelling, they take a rest. The next day, the person tells them that they are only one day away, but that they must trek through wetlands in which there are no edible plants. And, um, the nuns say to gather all the food in the area, to which the indigenous person responds that if people before had taken everything, then they wouldn’t be alive today. They all argue over taking some or all of the food, and the nuns decide to go with their plan. One of the nuns reaches to a bush to grab a berry, when suddenly lightning comes down and strikes the bush, killing all the food on it. At this point, the nuns realize that the indigenous person was being more Christian than they were. Basically, the point of the story is that by coming to the indigenous land, the nuns had brought Christianity to these people without even trying.”

Do you remember how you and your classmates reacted to the story?

“Well I had to hear it basically every year, so I got real tired of it by the end. Plus, it seems super unbelievable, but apparently it’s a true story and a miracle. Either way, it’s something that they told a lot in my Catholic school.”

 

Collector’s Comments:

“This is a story that is supposedly true, but is within a religious context so its validity is questionable at best. It is very interesting in that it shows Catholicism in the context of indigenous conversion, although it is very watered down in that it omits much of the violence that went into the conversion of indigenous populations. However, this story is very much geared towards believers of the Catholic faith, as it would be most believable if the audience believed in the miracles of God.

Bloody Mary

Nationality: Irish American
Age: 20
Occupation: Student
Residence: Anaheim, California
Performance Date: April 27, 2017
Primary Language: English

Tell me who Bloody Mary is.

“Bloody Mary is a story that was really really popular among my schoolmates back when I was in elementary school. Basically uhh…, she was like a ghost or phantom or something that was the Virgin Mary with bloody eyes. And you could conjure her in a mirror through a ritual, and she would kill you. I don’t know why it was so popular looking back on it, cause it was basically asking for a death sentence if you did the ritual. But yeah, we used to tell it to each other and dare each other to do it, especially if there was someone who said they didn’t believe in ghosts. It’s especially fun to do at sleepovers, which is what my friends and I used to do.”

How is the ritual performed?

“You go into a room alone with all the lights off, and there has to be a mirror inside obviously. You stand in front of the mirror and you chant ‘Bloody Mary’ three times. After the third time, Bloody Mary is supposed to appear in the mirror, where she will slit your throat and you will die. I actually have tried it before, but nothing really happened which is good cause I really didn’t want to die. It was super scary though, and sometimes you even feel like something might happen, especially when you’re in the dark standing in front of the mirror and have said it twice already.”

 

Collector’s Comments:

This is perhaps one of the most famous ghost stories out there, and one that I have heard multiple times before. One very interesting thing that I noticed is that the informant describes the ghost as a bloodied Virgin Mary. In the versions that I have heard, Bloody Mary is another woman entirely, with no relation to the Catholic Mary, so this makes me wonder if the fact that the informant heard this story at Catholic school had affected the telling. Another point that is interesting is that the informant had actually performed the ritual, and while nothing happened, the fear that he felt was very real, making the context and the setting a large factor in his belief.

 

For another version of this story, see the horror film Paranormal Activity III (2011), which has a scene where the characters recreate the Bloody Mary ritual.

Wong Fei Hung- A Chinese Legend

Nationality: Chinese American
Age: 19
Occupation: Student
Residence: Houston, Texas
Performance Date: April 27, 2017
Primary Language: English
Language: Cantonese

Informant is a Chinese American student at USC from Houston, Texas. Her parents were born in China, but she was raised in the United States. This is a story that she was told when she was younger.

“So, uh, this is one of the stories that my dad used to tell me about when I was younger. It’s about a person called Wong Fei Hung, who was a legendary Chinese martial artist who was born sometime in the late 1800’s. So it was actually a real person haha. But there are many stories about how he was the greatest kung fu martial artist of his time, and had mastered many of the kung fu styles, including one that he had made famous, called the Hung Gar style or something. One of the stories goes that he helped to save parts of China from the Imperial Japanese Army by teaching the local farmers kung fu so that they could fight back, and then leading them against the Japanese troops to save their lands. He’s a pretty big deal in China, so I guess its pretty cool because he was a real person and not just a myth. I’m not sure if all the stories I heard were completely true however.”

Did you ever do kung fu?

“Oh no not me hahaha. But this is a famous story for a lot of Chinese people, so you don’t have to be a kung fu student to have heard of it.”

 

Collector’s Comments:

This is an example of a legend about a person who actually lived in real life and did important things, but the stories told about them may have been exaggerated or made up to make them seem like an even bigger deal. I have also heard about this story from my Vietnamese dad, so it is a very popular tale in Asia.

 

For another modern version of this story, see the movie Rise of the Legend (2014), a Chinese film on Netflix that tells about the Wong Fei Hung legend and how he rose to fame and saved his town.

 

Zirahuen Lake Legend

Nationality: Mexican
Age: 35
Occupation: Nanny
Primary Language: English

Main Piece: Zirahuen Lake Legend

 

Full Piece – Transliteration (told in English by a Spanish Speaker)

 

“The Legend say that when the fall of Tecnochtitlan. Spaniards come and was a handsome captain who fell in love with Princess Erendira. She was the daughter of King Tangazoan, the captain wanted to have her for himself so he kidnapped the princess and hid her in the valley surrounded by mountains. The Princess Erendira cry day and night, and pray to her gods to save her from her natural prison. The gods of day and night Juriata and Jaratanga decide to help her; they turn her into a mermaid and her tears were so powerful that a lake was formed in the middle of the valley.

 

Villagers say that the mermaid is still living under the deep of the lake and sometimes she emerges to punish me of evil hearts.”

 

Translation

 

“The Legend says that when Tecnochtitlan fell, Spaniards came with a handsome captain who fell in love with Princess Erendira. She was the daughter of King Tangazoan, and the handsome captain wanted to have her all to himself, so he kidnapped the princess and hid her in a valley surrounded by mountains. Princess Erendira cried day and night, praying to the gods to save her from her natural prison. The gods of day and night, Juriata and Jaratanga, decided to help her. They transformed her into a mermaid and gave her tears so powerful that when she would cry she created a lake in the middle of the valley where she was held.

 

Villagers say that the mermaid is still living in the depths of the lake and will surface sometimes to punish mean of evil hearts.”

 

Background:

 

This story was told by my Mexican nanny, Mirna, of 18 years, and it is one of her favorite stories growing up as a kid. Her mother would tell it to her brothers and sisters as a sort of bedtime story, and to teach her sons what would happen if you were mean to a woman you loved. She likes this story because it gives her a feeling of empowerment as a woman, and likes to think that it gives her a voice in her head that she won’t take crap from anyone. Her grandmother passed on the story to her mother, who then passed it on to my nanny and her siblings.

 

Context:

 

My nanny is a native Spanish speaker, but she told me in English as to help me understand, and I did not get the chance to get the full Spanish telling. The origin of the story is from the Michoacán region of Mexico, where my nanny grew up and where her family still lives to this day. It tells of the formation of the lake nearby where they live, and is more of a creation story from the region.

I think of this as more of the kind of story that would be told around a campfire or to a child as they are being put to bed, because it has both a mythological part in the story of the gods helping out the princess, and also tells of why certain things came to be near their home and gives a reason that almost dictates their way of life.

 

My thoughts:

 

When I first heard the story, I thought it was a variation of the “La Llorona” story, where a similar event occurs in that a woman is distraught by her man and ends up living in a body of water. When I asked if this was a version of La Llorona, she began to explain that this was a local legend from where she grew up, and was a story explaining the creation of the lake near where she lived.

I don’t think this was the entire story, as it seems very short and not very detailed, but it still gets the point across as being a creation story.

 

 

 

For another version of this story, see:  The Leyend of Zirahuen’s Lake (http://ourcommunityblog.blogspot.com/2009/04/leyend-of-zirahuens-lake.html)