Category Archives: Legends

Narratives about belief.

Erik the Red

Nationality: Mestizo
Age: 20
Occupation: USC student
Residence: Los Angeles, California
Performance Date: 04/24/12
Primary Language: English
Language: Spanish

The following story told to me by my informant is a legend involving Erik the Red. She first heard this story around the age of 8-9.

“One of my favorite stories when I was a kid—I believe it was about Erik The Red—a Viking warlord… chief… I don’t know what you call it. A Viking leader. And one of these… he was leading this war party and one of his soldiers decided he didn’t like Erik being the leader anymore. He said Erik was weak and stupid and was not fit to lead the party. So they decided to have a contest between the two of them. And Erik said, I can fire my arrow through an oak tree and so the challenger walked up and buried his arrow deep deep into this giant oak tree. Erik fired his arrow and it went straight through an acorn and he said, he got it straight through the tree! The next challenge was to see who had the most courage. Because they just tried strength and now they tested courage. Eric thrust his arm into a fire until his arm hair started to curl and then he pulled it out. The challenger went in, stuck his arm into the fire until his arm hair started to curl and then he left it in longer and longer until his entire arm was burned and then he finally pulled it out. Erik turned to his men and said “who would you rather have, the man who is smart enough to shoot through a tree, or the man whose “courage” has left him crippled?” Erik the red continued being the leader and continued being a fantastic leader.”

This is a tale of brawns vs brains, and as my informant explained to me, she loves it specifically for this reason. It teaches that you don’t necessarily have to be the strongest or even the bravest to be a great leader, what is important is your intelligence and wit because these are things that can beat strength and bravery. Though Erik wasn’t the classic under-dog, this is still an encouraging story for “the little guy” who may feel inferior because they do not match up to the physical strength and size of their peers. Not only did Erik’s challenger get bested by Erik’s wit and intelligence, but his refusal to appear weak crippled him in the end.

 

Ghost House

Nationality: American
Age: 50
Occupation: Writer/ Teacher
Residence: Detroit, Michigan
Performance Date: 4/13/2012
Primary Language: English

Legend

“I didn’t grow up in Detroit. I lived in this small town outside of it.  It was really nice. All those big houses and really rich people.  There was this one family.  Dad was always out working. Two kids. The daughter had married and moved out.  The mom as home all the time and she got really depressed.  I’d met her once and she was very quiet.  I didn’t know it, but she was an alcoholic and eventually she drank herself to death. Her liver failed.  Her son was left alone.  During the summer, the Dad had to work. So he asked a friend of mine if he could look after his son.  My friend agreed, but he didn’t really look after the kid and we had parties in the house.  One day while we were there, we were telling ghost stories and my friend said, ‘I’ve got this weird one to tell you guys’.  A few nights ago, he had been in his room and he fell asleep.  As he was dreaming, he realized that he was outside of his body.  So he decided to walk through the house and when he came into the kitchen, the entire family of the house was in there—including the mother who had died.  My friend went up to her, and her face was bone white. She was dead.  The mother was holding this little baby.  My friend asked her if she wanted to go and she said, ‘I want to go, but somebody has to look after this baby.’  He woke up right after that.  We were all freaked out by the story.

About a year later, I remembered the story and I asked him about it.  He said that when the father got back from his trip, he told him about his dream.  The father had given him this strange look and said, ‘No one knows this, but my daughter had a baby who died of crib death in this house.’”

My informant is catholic and believed that the mother was trapped in the house to pay for her sins of drinking and leaving her son behind.  She had to take care of another child in the afterlife.  He also believed that the baby couldn’t go to heaven because it was so young and it still needed someone to take care of it.  He said that he liked the story because he liked to believe the stories of rich families with hidden pasts in those big houses.  “You never really know where all that money came from” he said.

My informant’s analysis of why the child and mother were in the house really corresponds well with ghost belief in the church.  A mother who sinned is punished, but the child who hadn’t been christen yet is trapped as well.  A baby is not really a member of the community until that moment and thus is in a state where it is vulnerable.

Roma origin Story

Nationality: Mexican, Portuguese, Roma, Gypsy
Age: 25
Occupation: Real Estate
Residence: Venice Beach, California
Performance Date: 4/24/2012
Primary Language: English

My informant learned this from her parents when she was a child. It is the origins of the Roma people

“The oldest stories come from Egypt. Gitano is how they say gypsy in Spain, so Gitano like hyptano. Like Egyptian.  They say that on the outskirts of Egypt there lived the mystery people. They had the knowledge of the past and future and could cure people.  They would be called in by the pharaoh if he needed soothsayers….so the Roma people became very powerful in the land. And people got jealous and so they drove them out into the desert and they continue to wander and continue to be a nomadic people.”

My informant believes that this is a very important story because the Roma people are nomadic and so it is important to know where they came from.

It is very important for this group to know where they come from, especially since they have been so split up over the centuries.  Nation states do not take kindly to nomadic people who wander over their borders and so the Roma people need to be strong in their identity.  This story also allows them to have always been outsiders with mysterious powers.  It’s very empowering for a people to know that they had all of this power before and could continue to use it.

The Mexican ghost who saved my life

Nationality: American; ethnicity Russian
Age: 21
Occupation: Student
Residence: Los Angeles
Performance Date: 4/23/12
Primary Language: English
Language: Russian, Spanish

Informant: “Well, you know Isaiah is Mexican, and his dad was born in Mexico [Is he fully Mexican?] He’s like 75% Mexican, which I know he’s like the whitest Mexican I know but you know [Where was he born?] Isaiah was born in the states but his father was born–actually I just recently found out he was the only one in his family to be born in a hospital, in Guadalajara, but they’re from Jalisco. And, I don’t remember how old Alex was–Alex is Isaiah’s dad–um, but they went back to visit in Mexico. And, they were, I wanna say like five people in the car? I know for sure it was Alex and some of his brothers and sisters, and I think Isaiah’s grandfather, and someone else. I don’t remember the specifics but I know for sure Alex was there. And they were driving on like a really back road cause they’re from Jalisco and there are a lot of really rural parts of Jalisco. And they were driving at night, and all of a sudden, they saw this old woman run out in front of them. And they swerved the car, and they all got out and looked for this lady, that they all saw and described in the exact same way, and they couldn’t find her at all.

[What did she look like?]

“I mean just sort of like a generic old woman with the kerchief thing and just very Mexican grandmother looking lady. And they all got out–I mean all of them saw the exact same thing–they all got out of the car and started looking for her. And they noticed that a few yards up the road they were traveling on dropped off to a cliff, and the way that they mark um that a road is closed in that part of Mexico is they light candles going towards where it drops off, and all the candles had been like burnt out. So they all think it was one of the protector spirits from Mexico. Cause they all–every single one of them saw the exact same thing–saw the exact same woman, you know? And if they had kept driving they would have gone off the cliff. And Alex said they all got back in the car and just were like, couldn’t even think of what to say to each other. Because they were so freaked out. But they would’ve driven off a cliff.”

[I would think that candles would always get blown out really easily.]

“Apparently they can, but this was probably… probably in the late seventies or the eighties.” [So there wasn’t a lot of infrastructure.] Yeah, especially because Jalisco is not the safest wealthiest part of Mexico, so. Actually, you know the sauce Tapatio? That’s what the people there are called, they’re called the Tapatios.”

 

There is not much information out there about protective spirits of Mexico. However Isaiah’s family was already familiar with the idea of their existence. These kinds of incidents tend to happen in the back roads and isolated countryside, which have an aura of mystery and possibility about them, separate from the logic of the industrial world. There is also more of a need for them here, where perils and uncertainty abound. The old woman, as a matronly figure, seems to fit the bill of protectiveness.

The Bell Witch is Photogenic

Nationality: American
Age: 22
Occupation: Student
Residence: Mississippi
Performance Date: 4/4/12
Primary Language: English

Informant: “So, my friends–have you guys seen An American Haunting?–okay, so it’s basically a story about the Bell Witch, and it’s based on a real story that took place in Tennessee, in a city that is the only city in the United States that’s certified haunted by the federal government. Basically everyone moved out of the city, it’s completely abandoned now. And there’s a legend that says that if you go there, um, and you’re around there at night, at 3 in the morning you’ll see the Bell Witch. So, uh, a friend of a friend went to that city with a few other guys and they were walking around taking photos and stuff, and they were going through the buildings and there’s all these satanic drawings on the walls of the buildings. At around 3 am, they uh, they’re still taking photos and they took a photo outside of the church. And one of the guys feels something on his arm, so then they’re like ‘nah man you’re just playing, you’re just joking around.’ And they go back, open the camera up, and look at the saved photos–and you can see the silhouette of a woman’s face right next to the guy’s shoulder. And he posted this photo on Facebook too. And I’ve seen the photo myself, like you can see the witch’s face. I’m dead serious. But it’s true, I’ve seen the photo.”