Category Archives: Legends

Narratives about belief.

Marina’s La Llorona

Nationality: Colombian
Age: 71
Occupation: retired
Residence: Glendora, California
Performance Date: 3/14/2017
Primary Language: English
Language: Spanish

My Grand Aunt Marina, my grandfathers sister, swears the following legend of “La Llorona” is absolutely true. She knows there have been other stories about La LLorona but hers is the “god’s honest truth”, the real story. She told it on Good Friday at a dinner at my grandmother house

When they would go out to the country for a family camping weekend near the Magdalena River, my aunt said “that on nights with a full moon if you went to the river at dusk or dawn you were sure to see a Llorona/The Crying Woman. She tells me that a young woman drowned her own children in the river because her husband did not care for them and had abandoned them for younger woman (Marina rolls her eyes at this point of the story and murmurs “typical”).  Marina continues but more feeling her voice… “no matter how hard she tried to forget her husband, he had left them without any money and had taken all of their meager belongings. She tried to find work but with four young children to take care of, it proved to be impossible and in a moment of desperation after hearing her children cry all night from hunger, she drowned her children at dawn, letting the river take away their bodies downstream and when she saw her child were no longer with her she cried out in grief and after no longer able to bear the pain she kills herself. St. Peter finds her at the gates of heaven and deems her unworthy for purgatory or even hell because of the gravity of her sins and was sent back down to earth and to find her children. For this reason she roams around at dusk and dawn, crying as she looks for them.”  Marina assures me that she had heard La Llorona on many occasions down by the Magdalena River but only saw her once. This is where Marina gets super serious and lowers her voice to almost a whisper… “One early morning she woke up and saw it was only dawn, she tried really hard to hold back her need to go to the bathroom but was unable. She thought if she was quick enough nothing bad would happen but on the way back to the campsite through the misty dawn she saw a woman wearing rags down by the river crying. She says she felt her blood run cold and ran to the campsite arriving in a cold sweat!” Seeing La Llorona is considered a bad omen and Marina says she was inconsolable all day, finally the family headed home that day to find that grandmother Celestina had passed away. She never went camping to the river again. Marina finishes the story with tears in her eyes because she says that she felt some kind of responsibility for Celetistina death. My Abuelo thinks this is absurd mainly because Celestina was very old and lucky to have survived as long as she did. He cannot collaborate his sister’s story because he was already living in the U.S. but Marina swears it is the God’s honest truth “te juro ha dios” and she is very Catholic. My Abuelo said he did have a dream where his grandmother Celestina talked to him at length, telling him all that was to come in his life, the night before she past away.

Analysis: Although there are some aspects of the supernatural and personal loss, overall I found the story very melancholy and haunting. The way she spoke of La Llorona made me believe that she believed what she had experienced was true. She was so upset during the retelling, she had to get up and leave to the restroom, when she came out she was dabbing her eyes and refuse to tell me any more stories. I feel fortunate to have been allowed to have such a personal retelling.

AIDS poem in lipstick on mirror

Nationality: Colombian
Age: 32
Occupation: Event planner/ English student
Residence: Santa Monica
Performance Date: 4/16/2017
Primary Language: Spanish
Language: English

I have a cousin who is an event planner in Colombia, Juliana, who arrived to the US in February of this year to start an intensive English program through UCLA extension. She was told in Colombia by her aunts to be careful because STD’s are rampant in Los Angeles, although none of them have traveled here. After making several American friends, one night at a party, the subject of STD’s came up and people started to tell stories. She said an American guy with dark hair was saying he had a former roommate when he was a freshman in college, who would sleep around without precautions. One night after “bagging a chick” he woke up to find he was alone, secretly he was grateful to avoid any awkwardness of kicking out a stranger. When he went to the bathroom, he saw lipstick on his mirror. Juliana initially did not understand what was written on the mirror and ask the guy to type it down on her phone so she could translate it later. It was a poem that read “Roses are red, Violets are blue, I have AIDS and now so do you” when she finally translated it, she said she was so shocked and it freaked her out a lot. One of her teachers seeing her so upset asked her what was wrong and she relayed the story, she said that her teacher started laughing really hard, this only made Juliana confused and embarrassed until her teacher explain that what she was told was an urban legend by the guy at the party and therefore not true.

Analysis: Juliana asked me three times to reassure her that the story was an in fact, an urban legend. She also asked why would anybody repeat such a horrible lie. I said that I am sure that Colombia had their share of urban legend as well but she denied that claim and said that any stories told were just to scare children into compliance. I think she was more susceptible to the legend because she was primed by her aunts. Her lack of confidence with English also made her likelier to believe someone who was a confident English speaker and storyteller. These kind of legends because of the believability factor seemed to get under people’s skin more and last longer, my cousin Patty said the same story was told to her with slight variation when she was in her 30’s when Aids was more of a death sentence than now and she stills remember the circumstances around the telling of the story.

Slenderman

Nationality: U.S.
Age: 14
Occupation: Student
Residence: Los Angeles
Performance Date: 3/22/2017
Primary Language: English
Language: Basic Spanish

According to my younger brother, he heard about an internet ghost story that was meant to scare people. About 4 years ago while on a YouTube site he saw that a reference was made to a “creepypasta” page about the Slenderman story that was made into a game. Slenderman was a faceless tall skinny figure with tentacle arms. When he first saw the picture of Slenderman, he did not think it was scary, however the game had many jump scares and fast action that did make it frightening or at least surprising to the player. In the “creepypasta” story the pictures of Slenderman always showed children playing unaware while back in the background within the shadows of the woods there would be slender figure appearing to be watching them. The game did not add any additional info about Slenderman but the story in the “creepypasta” site made it seem that the children he was photographed with would disappear without a trace, leaving some to speculate that they were kidnapped maybe even taken into a different dimension. Two “idiots” girls “allegedly” bought into the story of Slenderman believing they had to become proxies of Slenderman in order to protect their families, it ended up with one of their “friend’s” being stabbed 19 times but survived. My brother made air quotes with his fingers when referencing the words “Creepypasta”, “idiots” “allegedly” and “friend’s”. He says he know Slenderman is completely fictional although he kind of understands the fascination with the image because it is usually shrouded in the shadows letting your mind to fill in the blanks. He says that maybe because of the girls attempted murder of their “friend”, parents seemed more disturbed buy Slenderman than actual kids.

Analysis: Slenderman became an internet meme and started to trend on the internet about 5—6 years ago but I paid no attention to it since the demographic was skewed for some reason to younger viewers (preteens). Creepypasta sites in general have no real interest to me because the stories always seemed written by a mentally unstable person. However, the concept of photographic pictures showing mysterious paranormal orbs or other unexplained phenomena has been around since photography was invented and the first double exposure was seen as a ghostly reflection. Slenderman is just a continuation of that tradition that can now use advance technology like Photoshop to get just the right amount of mystery. The over reaction by parents also made Slenderman even more popular because the forbidden, will always be more attractive.

Jhansi Ki Rani

Nationality: Indian-American
Age: 19
Occupation: College Student
Residence: Houston, TX
Performance Date: April 24, 2017
Primary Language: English
Language: Hindi, Tamil

My informant is a young Indian-American woman who loves to tell the stories of her Hindu faith and national identity. I sat down with her and recorded her telling me the story of Queen Rani of Jhansi, a historical figure who over time has over time morphed into a legend. I have transcribed the story here, in as exact phrasing as I could manage.

Informant: “Okay, so Jhansi Ki Rani is the- ‘Jhansi Ki Rani’ means ‘Rani of Jhansi’, her real name was Lakshmibai, and she was married when she was very young. She’s originally from the court- her dad was in the court of a very important Maratha general. There were different kingdoms… yeah, different kingdoms-ish in India at this point: there were the Mughals, there were the Marathas, and there were the Rajputs.”

Me: “And around what time period is this?”

Informant: “Um… whenever the Mughals were there *laughs* Okay, this was when the Mughals were there but also the British. The British were involved in India as well at this point. And… basically she got married really young, she had a son… Also when she was young. And then her husband died who was the king of Jhansi, so she had to take over. And, she was kind of great. Um, there are a lot of stories about like her generosity, and just her generally being a badass. And like, she would dress in men’s clothes, and wear like a turban. Um, oh god this is not gonna be very good I’m so sorry *laughs* Um, but yeah. So, she was known for being just like, a great general. And like military strategist and she just struck fear into the hearts of the British. Like, there was one particular general I don’t know what his name was but he was particularly afraid of her, and he was one of the higher ups. And when she died, she died at like late 20s early 30s or something like that, so she died really young. But she died in battle. And they say she died with two swords in her hands on the back of her horse and she took out like eight people with her. And she thought- like she knew she was going to die so she asked her servants to burn-like, cremate her body so that the British couldn’t do anything stupid with it *laughs* I told you about this but I think they weren’t actually able to but the British didn’t do anything stupid out of respect for her. And um, I mean since then she’s been like a huge figure in all of India like there are many, many statues of her. Um, and I think the first all-female regiment of the army is called-is named after her.”

Me: “Nice.”

Informant: “Yeah, and so like in common language and phrases and stuff she’s like- her name is used like… when um- so the same way in America when you hear something you don’t believe you would say like ‘I’m the Queen of England’ or ‘I’m the Queen of Sheba’ *laughs*

Me: “Yeah, ‘I’m the Queen of Sheba'”

Informant: “So you would say, like, ‘I’m Jhansi Ki Rani’ the same way you would say all of those things. Like when you hear something you don’t believe.”

Me: “So she’s like a historical figure but also a legend almost?”

Informant: “Yeah there are a lot of like, I tried to stick to what I know, because there are a lot of really crazy stories about her and what she did. Rumor has it that she was a lesbian, because all the greatest historical figures are.”

Me: “Excellent. Do you know of any, like, crazy outlandish stories? That probably aren’t true but are still kind of popular?”

Informant: “I mean like the most common prevalent story is like… she killed twenty men in battle, like, in some crazy way – like she took out twenty dudes and then like she made a British general like turn tail, like his whole army turn tail and run because he saw her in the distance on the battlefield. Which I don’t completely believe that but it’s cool. It’s fun to think about.”

I love the idea that India has such a powerful female legendary figure in common vernacular. She seems to be a powerful nationalist figure, especially in her resistance to the British at the time.

Haunted Local Movie Theater

Nationality: American
Age: 19
Occupation: College Student
Residence: Silverton, OR
Performance Date: April 26, 2017
Primary Language: English

My informant comes from a very interesting small town in Oregon, and she told me about a local movie theater that just about everyone in her town knows is definitely haunted. The theater itself, like most things from my informant’s hometown, has a bizarre origin.

The Palace Theater in Silverton, Oregon was created by a previous mayor (interestingly, this person was the first transgender mayor in the United States. This has less to do with the theater being haunted and more to do with the fact that it is really odd that this small country town would have accomplished such a progressive milestone). The theater burned down years ago due to a fire started by an unknown cause. It was eventually rebuilt, but now the residents of Silverton believe it to be haunted.

My informant gave me a memorate from her friend who worked at this movie theater. Supposedly, one night when she was closing up, she heard a young girl asking for help despite the fact that nobody else was in the building. On another occasion, a light shattered right when my informant’s friend walked directly underneath it.

Whether or not one truly believes in the existence of ghosts, it is worth noting that the residents of the town seemingly all have their own supernatural experiences with the Palace Theater.