Category Archives: Legends

Narratives about belief.

Old Man List House

Nationality: American
Age: 50
Occupation: Teacher
Residence: Lakeville, CT
Performance Date: March 2013
Primary Language: English

“My older sisters would always tell me about this, this house in our town, a few blocks away. When they wanted to scare me they would talk about how this big businessman had lived in this nice mansion, but he had fallen on some hard times so he lost all his money. It didn’t take long before he went crazy and everyone was scared to go by his house because he would just sit on his porch and yell at anyone that walked by. They always told me about his red tie that he wore, even though he had lost his job he always wore the tie. I was so freaked out, I mean I was only seven or eight. But it gets scarier. They would put on their spooky voices and turn off the lights to tell me about how one night, he just lost it and killed his whole family, and left them in the dining room and disappeared, and they were still looking for him today, some people thought he was somehow still living in the house, either alive or as some kind of spirit. So because my sisters had told me this story, and it kind of circulated around our town, we would always walk by the house and dare each other to go into the abandoned house or get as close to it as possible or something like that.”

Informant Analysis: “Well when I grew up, came to understand that it was just a scary story, and I was actually watching TV one night and, saw that they had finally caught this criminal named John List, who had been on the run for years. As they described his crime, which was killing his whole family and leaving them in sleeping bags in the living room before disappearing, I got this horrible feeling that he was the old scary man from my town. Realizing that the story was based on something real (I’m sure my sisters added some false details) actually scared me more than the original story. He had haunted me for my whole childhood, and here he was on the TV.”

Analysis: This is another example of an urban legend that seems to extend far beyond childhood. The informant’s sisters were obviously trying to scare him by telling him about the scary house, and it’s unclear whether they knew the real story or not. This legend becomes a challenge for the informant and his friends, a way to prove themselves by going into the dark, abandoned house. The experience of seeing this mythical, almost ghostlike figure come to life as an actual criminal must have been jarring, as these urban legends and ghost stories usually remain abstract, so the danger is not immediate.

The Ghost of Alta Dena

Nationality: American
Age: 22
Occupation: Student
Residence: Pasadena
Performance Date: April 10 2013
Primary Language: English

There is a specific street in Alta Dena that is completely flat and rarely driven on. The street is out of the way from almost any house, so people infrequently drive along it. In the past, a terrible accident occurred in the middle of the road, and a man was killed. Since it took so long for the ambulance to get to the man and because the body was so mangled, the ghost of the man is known to haunt the street. It is said that if you drive to the middle of the street and put your car into park, then switch it to neutral, your car will begin to slowly move forward. The car starts to drive itself because the ghost of the man who was killed pushes the car. It only works if you are facing the street to the north because that is the direction the man was travelling at the time of the accident. It is said that he is still trying to get to his destination that is why he pushes the car.
In reality, the street is most likely not perfectly flat. Probably, the street has a slight decline to it that makes the car roll forward. However, the street does appear flat, and people continue to spread the story of the ghost who pushes the car forward.

Night Marchers

Nationality: Hawaiian, American
Age: 25
Occupation: Volleyball
Residence: Oahu
Performance Date: April 21 2013
Primary Language: English

Night Marchers are ancient Hawaiian warrior ghosts. They generally march around sunset or just before sunrise, but can march any time day or night. They were associated with the sound of drumming and the carrying of torches. They are known to walk the mountains and the beaches on all the islands of Hawaii. On each island, there are certain trails that the Night Marchers are most likely to be seen on. If you ever see them, you are supposed to lie down and don’t look at them. The reason you don’t want the Night Marchers to see you is because they will kill you if they do. Lying down is supposed to make you harder to see, and not looking at them is supposed to make them likely to look over at you. Night Marchers, however, would not harm you if one of the Night Marchers is a relative of yours.
Riley’s father and grandpa would tell him and his siblings and cousins about the Night Marchers whenever they went camping. Riley says that he has never seen any or hear any night marchers, but his grandpa swears that he has both heard the drums of the night watchers and saw their torches.
Whether or not the Night Marchers exist, they seem to represent to me the Hawaiian respect for the indigenous islanders. The Hawaiian warriors who died on the islands were fighting to protect their land from foreigners. The legend says that Night Marchers would not harm someone who saw them if one of their relatives was in the Night Marcher ranks. This seems to me to show that the people indigenous to Hawaii were respected, and everyone else who had come to the islands and were foreigners were still not welcome because the Night Marchers would still want vengeance on them.

Fiji Hold Down

Nationality: American
Age: 20
Occupation: Student
Residence: Laguna Beach
Performance Date: March 25 2013
Primary Language: English

Robbie’s family and his family friends used to go to Tavarua every year during Thanksgiving for a week. This island of Tavarua is a small island in Fiji that only takes about 10 minutes to walk all the way around. It is known for being very haunted. The main haunting is known as a “Hold Down.”
Robbie said that he and a big group of family and friends, about 40 people, were all out one night having dinner. The weather was super windy. By the time it was 10:30-11:00, everyone went back to their burrow to sleep. Robbie falls asleep not too long after. At exactly 2 am, Robbie randomly wakes up, without knowing what exactly woke him up. He said he can’t explain what did it, but it felt like he took shots of caffeine. He had a bunch of adrenaline: he was breathing heavily and his heart was pounding. He tried to calm himself down by walking around, and eventually lies in bed, attempting to close his eyes and fall back to sleep. At 2:10, he hears his sister scream at top of her lungs. Everyone in the family wakes up to see what has happened. Robbie’s sister is crying and sobbing, in a state of complete panic. She was saying that she was held down and paralyzed, stuck in a sleep position, all she could see were white images flashing through her eyes of her past memories. The family did not know what to make of this besides being a night terror of some sort. Eventually, they all go back to sleep.
When they woke up, they started asking around Tavarua island about the experience Roxy had at 2:10. People on the island said that it happens all the time, they even have a name for it: “hold down.” Robbie’s dad asks a maid about it. The maid said a Hold Down happened to her daughter at 1:50 in the morning that same night, so only twenty minutes a part.
The story behind the Hold Down, is that the island used to be a carnivorous island. Every animal and person who lived on the island would eat meat, and sometimes would cannibalize. It is said that many spirits of people who were cannibalized or improperly buried haunt the island. One woman in particular is associated with the Hold Down. She has been doing it to guests and people living on the island for years.

Tunnels Under Edwards Air Force Base

Nationality: Indian
Age: 24
Occupation: Designer
Residence: New Jersey
Performance Date: March 22, 2013
Primary Language: English

Contextual Data: My informant had read this on the Internet, and he shared it with me over Spring Break one night after we came back from New York City. We had been chatting about his car, and as we got home, he remembered this story that he had recently read on the Audi forum of which he was a part. He said he thought it was a crazy story and I asked him if I could record it for the archive. The following is an exact transcript of his story.

“So Edwards Air Force Base has this like, you know, long history of being like this kinda creepy place that, you know, has like a very sketchy military history. They do a lot of really secret, you know, testing and all this other stuff there that, uh… Very classified things, cutting edge stuff happens in Edwards Air Force Base—‘cause it’s in the middle of the desert, and um… whatever. So, uh, it’s also one of the largest bases, so they have a lot of ground, so there’s like, you know, there’s like random buildings and just things from the sixties and when they’re doing all this random testing like way out in the desert of the base that, you know, it’s just land that they own.

“Um… So, this one guy, you know, he’s in the Air Force and, um… I guess he was like on a patrol duty at the base, so they go to this one like place where pretty much nothing has happened since the sixties. It’s like an abandoned, uh, building — couple of buildings way out there. Um, so they get out of the car and, you know, they’re checking around on foot, and uh, they go to this one building and it’s got no doors or windows—anything, except for just one door in the front of it, right? And it’s made of concrete. Uh, it’s just got a single door. And… the guy, you know, just pulls the door—you know, the door handle to make sure it’s locked. Figured it’s definitely going to be locked, and it was unlocked. It was open. And, uh… The door opens and he looks at his buddy and he’s like ‘…Should we?’ And the other guy’s like, ‘Hell yes.’ [Laughs.] ‘Let’s do—Let’s go.’ So they walk inside and it’s just, um, one giant room in this building, right? There’s just the one door on the outside, one giant room, it’s all concrete, and there’s nothing but a set of stairs just going down in the middle of the room, right? And uh… They pull their flashlights out ‘cause there’s no lights, that, you know—no light switches or anything. And they… And so they pull out, you know, their flashlights and their pistols, you know, the way that they — you see them in movies. [Mimes with his hands in front of him, the “flashlight” on top in his left hand and the “pistol” below it, in his right.] They kind of hold it like this—one over the other. And they start going down this stairwell. Now it’s, you know, it’s daylight outside but it’s dark in this thing and they’re going down these stairs. And he says the stairs go down for…What he thinks is like a hundred feet. Like ten stories. He’s just going down these stairs and they’re just like—it’s just like this narrow stairwell they keep going down. It’s like a tunnel basically. Um, and you know, he’s like at this point things are getting—already feel very weird. It’s already really sketchy.

“Um, and they get to the bottom, and then it’s just this hallway that goes forward and they go forward in the hallway and there’s this door. And he looks at the other guy and uh, then they walk in. And he says all that’s in this room—again it’s like this one large concrete room. They’re now like, you know, he thinks like a hundred feet underground. There’s nothing but cameras on the walls, like near the ceiling. And in the middle of the room is this giant chair. [Mimes really wide with his hands], like metal chair. It’s got like wrist straps and feet straps—like ankle straps or whatever. And underneath the chair is a drain, like a metal drain. And the whole concrete floor, the whole place just kind of slopes gently down in the middle. So you don’t know like… What was there, but there, you know—could’ve been torture, whatever. But, um, he… At this point he’s getting like really weirded out, and there’s this other room on the side, and he looks in there. And um… There’s like these huge stretchers and these huge things that are bigger than they’re—than the ones that are meant for people. It’s literally like—and the chair is bigger than one that’s meant for people. You know, it’s like, very freaky. And then he…He talks to the other guy, and he—The other guys just points up and one of the cameras had just turned and was looking right at them. Um… So they just freaked out. He’s like, ‘We gotta go.’ And they just got way—you know they went all the way back upstairs. And as soon as they got back upstairs, the guy’s cellphone rings. And it’s like the base telling him they need to get back to base right now. And they didn’t explain why or whatever. But they’re just like, ‘You need to get back. We’ve called you like three times. Why was your cellphone off?’ He’s like, ‘It wasn’t off. I just didn’t have service.’ And they’re like, ‘What’d you mean you didn’t have service?’ He’s like, ‘Wha—Never mind.’ [Laughs.] And then that was it. He, like, never found out anything more about it.”

– End Transcript – 

When I asked my informant about the significance of this story, he alluded back to how he began the story: that Edwards Air Force Base has a history of being this “creepy” place, surrounded with all sorts of conspiracy theories. He was a little skeptical of this story — he first read it online on the forum where he actually finds information about his car; some guy had posted it  there as a first hand account. But he’d read some of the guy’s other posts, and he seemed like a respectable enough person, who had “his head screwed on right.” Given all the other things that my informant has heard about military bases — especially the remote ones out in the middle of the desert — he wouldn’t be surprised if such a place as the one described actually existed, which is one of the reasons why he found it interesting to share. But he doesn’t believe the larger conspiracies surrounding the base (i.e. that there were actual alien encounters there.) Beyond that, he just thinks that this is a fun, creepy story to tell, and he has shared it with a few other friends.

On it’s own, this story is more of a memorate than a legend, as it’s a personal account that contributes to the larger urban legends and conspiracy theories that surround Edwards AFB. There are many different stories about such bases and military sites having underground tunnels and being the sites of extra terrestrial encounters. Some people would therefore enjoy telling this story because they think it’s true, others because they think it validates the conspiracy theories, and others simply because it’s a great story to tell to spook people out. For my brother, it was a combination of the first and the last reason.