Category Archives: Legends

Narratives about belief.

Lei Gong

Text:

“雷公 (Lei Gong)”

Translation:

The Thunder Father, the Thunder God

Context:

“I remember it being a more folkloreic thing. Becuase there were these gods, and it wasn’t authoritatively taught to us or anything. It’s more of like a- my parents would use it as a way for discipline thing… It’s funny because they only ever use him a lot because he’s the one that causes the thunder, and that scares children. It’s kinda a way to explain where thunder comes about. But it is the idea that if you behave badly, the thunder god will come to judge you. He punishes the morally guilty. So whenever you are misbehaving, he is gonna strike you down. It is related to thunder because you kind of caused it. And whenever it did thunder, and I didn’t do anything. My mom will reinforce that: ‘You hear the thunder? He is coming. Listen to how angry he is.’”

Analysis:

J: Turns out it is just a tactic for the parents to manipulate their children…
P: Yeah- but also,I guess the fact that it exists- in Chinese, it is a personification of the judge of guiltiness. It is really interesting that it passes down. Our parents say it.
J: Right, it is like- culturally, how our (Chinese) parents teach their children by scaring them instead of teaching them actual lesson.
P: Yeah, yeah. So I always have fascination about this. Even when I know it isn’t real now, I still have a fascination with thunder and rain. It makes you pay attention to it.

Lei Gong is not only a figure featured in Chinese legend; he is also taught to children as an invisible figure who judges them. It is interesting to see how the loud thunder in many cultures and legends always symbolizes judgment. But it is not hard to imagine having to come up with an explanation for loud bombing noise from the sky other than some omniscient beings.

College Ghosts

Age: 19

Date: 12/3/24

Language: English

Collector’s Name: Lia

Nationality: American

Occupation: Student

Primary Language: English

Residence: United States

Subject: I haven’t personally experienced any ghost stories myself, but there is a story in my dorm about some freshmen with spirits. Would that work?

Interviewer: Definitely. Could you tell me a little about it?

Subject: Sure. Okay, in August of the 90s, three freshman guys were roommates. Two of the guys were trying to join a fraternity, and the last roommate was a little bit different from the other two. Let’s call him Jake. Jake spent a lot of time in his room alone, was not that conversational, and secluded himself from the other roommates. One night, Jake randomly invited the other two roommates to partake in a haunted ritual to connect with spirits. The roommates were excited that Jake might finally begin to open up, so they agreed. 

Interviewer: Wait, so there wasn’t any sort of hesitation from either of the roommates about a haunted ritual they are only just hearing about? 

Subject: No, not at all, really. They are teenage boys who likely felt invincible and thought the whole thing wasn’t real. Jake started telling them about how to perform the ritual, which needed to take place in the haunted dorm room of the college. The three roommates walked over to this room that nobody stays in anymore, and messed with the lock to get in. Jake instructed them on how to begin the ritual, where each person would stand in one corner of the room with their eyes closed, leaving one corner of the room vacant. In increments, all of the boys would switch corners. They repeated this process on Jake’s command until being told to abruptly stop. Jake told them all to slowly open their eyes and shift their heads to the vacant corner. They all did as he instructed, and in the corner was a boy, one that looked just about their age. He was a little bit translucent, and his eyes had been scratched out from their sockets. There was dried blood all over his hands. The most notable thing about him, they say, is just how silent he was. His presence could take noise away from anything around him and leave this empty silence. Until he began to scream. He screamed the loudest any of the boys had ever heard, and all of the roommates covered their ears with their hands. He continued to scream with his piercing, angry voice and then started to walk towards the roommates. Immediately they all ran out of the room, closing it behind them. They returned to their dorm, trying to find somewhere that felt safer. They locked themselves inside of their room and sat down trying to catch their breath. Slowly, one another looked at each other, noticing that each of their eyes had scratches around it, and were slowly starting to swell. 

Interviewer: Did anyone else in the dorm building hear any of this?

Subject: It is a very well-known story, but that night nobody but the three roommates heard anything. Now, people who have a dorm room near the haunted one claim that every once and a while they will hear screams through their wall, but only one room can hear it at a time. Nobody really knows who that boy is, or what his story is. 

Haunted Houghton Mill of St. Ives

After asking my dad for some ghost stories of his childhood he remembered this specific one that he heard in primary school (elementary). It was based in his small village where he grew up, outside of Cambridge called St. Ives. It was based on a thousand year old Houghton Mill that was seen as a monument and preserved as a historic sight. The ghost story is a spooky story that the older kids would tell the younger kids on the bus to scare them and be funny. Haunting the kids, there was a sense of shaken up when walking past the mill in town.

GP “There was a story of the ladies who would mend the sacks for storing flour or grain at the Houghton Mill in Cambridgeshire, UK. It was a type of local legend that was passed down from the kids of the town to scare them into staying away from the watermill that was on the River Great Ouse, it was such a crucial hub for primarily grinding grain. The legend was based on the tasks of mending sacks and these women supposedly fell into the mill pond that powered the millwheel, they drowned and died. The reason they fell into the water was unclear and never confirmed but it was assumed that the women could have been caught off balance when they were working around the edge or a mishap on the structure. The story continues around the town that the mill is haunted by their spirits, and apparently the visitors and locals have heard some ghostly sounds around the mill and felt some eerie sensations like a ghost was present near the millpond. Being told this story in primary school led to my friends and I steering clear of the mill.”

Analyzing this haunted tale, I felt as though the idea of the ghosts presence is wildly seen through eerie feelings near the place of death or hearing sort of ghostly noises that would represent the souls that have died is such a common functionality of spirits reappearing in the real world. Hearing this story made me realize that ghost stories are passed down through ages and are told with a purpose, it was told to my dad in primary school from the older kids which would try to scare them into running past the old mill in town.

The Piper Piping

Speaking to my mother about ghosts and tales in Ireland led to one significant story that stood out to her as a child when she would visit the nearby school in Co. Donegal to play Irish football, better known as gaelic. The town Ballintra was renowned for the Pullan Caves on the Brown Hall Demesne estate. This story was passed down throughout the years to scare away the kids from intruding on the Brownhall House, my Mom’s older brothers would tell her and her sister these spooky stories to frighten them whenever they would travel down to Ballintra. My mom took this haunted legend seriously as a child and then later grew out of it which later led to less and less visits to the town Ballintra as she got older. 

GP “We would travel down to the Ballintra football pitch to either watch my brothers games or for my sisters and I’s games, the pitch was just on the outer parts of the Brown Hall Demesne forest. This forest had the Brown Hall house that had many caves in it and they were known as the Pullin Caves. The story started with a group of traveling pipers that went around Ireland from pub to pub performing gigs most nights, and one of their stops was in the town pub of Ballintra so they stayed in the Brown Hall house. The next morning after their gig one of the pipers went on a walk and wandered into one of the caves, he had his pipe and started playing it which made a very large echo that the rest of his piping band heard but it suddenly stopped. The piper that walked into the cave walked too far and never came back, he was named dead after being missing for so long. The last memory of him was the sound of his pipe, which lingered ever since he died in the cave. As time went on, the cave would make sounds of the pipe echoing and would happen more frequently on nights of full moons; it was the sound of the ghost of the piper trying to find his way out. The cave was then named the Piper’s Hole and everyone stays well away from the Pullin caves of Brown Hall Demesne but especially the Piper’s hole.”

After hearing this story and being able to connect with it on more of a deeper level, I realized that Ireland has many spooky traits to it due to the history that lies beneath the architecture and nature all around. Having visited Ballintra plenty of times, I noticed that the town is much more grim as some others stemming from the lack of lively-ness and having such a bland main street. Leading this ghost story to fit right into the town’s persona. Highlighting the functionality of music in ghost stories as well caught my attention, the idea of spirits playing an instrument that would represent their presence.

Water Ghost

AGE: 56
Date_of_performance: November 27, 2024
Informant Name: Jongsoo Park
Language: Korean
Collector’s name: Sunghun Park
Nationality: South Korean
Occupation: Businessman
Primary Language: Korean
Other language: English
Residence: Busan, South Korea

Main description:

JP: It was 27 years ago when I was serving in the military in Gangwon Province. Then, a serious rainy season came for a while. I thought that this rainy season would reduce work because it was early on my duty at that time. 

However, with a lot of serious rain, I started to have more things to do. There were even floods and casualties. My unit started to help local firefighters and help restore small villages. The first thing I had to do was find the missing person. While traveling with Sergeant Park on a boat, I found what appeared to be a human head among the reeds. But Sergeant Park kept saying no, in an uncharacteristically hard-line manner. 

Later, when I told the other firefighters about this, one of them asked where it was. The next day, the firefighter who asked where he was went missing during a search operation. In the midst of shock, Sergeant Park kept muttering that the body in the water could not stand upright, and that it could be a ‘water ghost’ who wanted to ascend by making another victim when he got close. After a few days, the village recovered normally, but the firefighter was not found. Years later, the area still experiences strange drowning once in a while. Even today, the incident and something in the water keep popping up in my mind every time I visit again. 

INFORMANT’S OPINION:

MP: Do you think the weird thing you witnessed during the finding missing person process was really a water ghost or do you think there’s a more substantial explanation?

JP: I’ve been thinking since it happened that it really was a water ghost. Given what I saw and the firefighter’s disappearance since I brought it up, I don’t think those two things can happen by accident. And even the Sergeant Park’s claim about the water ghost, I think what I saw that day was really a water ghost and why the firefighter who was going to check it went missing. 

PERSONAL INTERPRETATION: 

The story is deeply related to the ‘water ghost’ that has been discussed a lot since ancient times in Korea. These events, such as seeing a head among reeds, the disappearance of a firefighter, and the warning of Sergeant Park, are other supernatural phenomena that JP cannot understand. The core of many ghost stories is the soul trapped in a certain place for a certain reason, and repeated drownings in this area might be the proof of this. The story as a whole really suggests that JP has witnessed supernatural warnings linked to the local faith.