Category Archives: Legends

Narratives about belief.

The Coconut Tree

Nationality: Banh
Age: 17
Occupation: Student
Residence: Los Angeles, CA
Performance Date: April 25, 2012
Primary Language: English
Language: Vietnamese

Contextual data: My informant (my roommate) told me this story late at night when I asked him if he could think of any stories his parents had told him when he was younger. Another of our friends was present, and she was laughing for much of the performance. According to my roommate, his father told him this story about a coconut thief and two lovers–all of whom have horrible fates–as a joke when they were driving in the car a couple years ago. His father was goofing around and trying to make him laugh, so we can assume this story is usually told as an attempt to be funny. My informant’s father is from Vietnam, and he presumably heard this story there. The following is an exact record of our conversation:

Jackson (me): All right, why don’t you tell me that story that you just told me?

I (my informant): Ok, so once upon a time, there was a Vietnamese farmer. Within his backyard, or farm, or whatever you want to call it, he had a coconut tree. Umm, one day a thief decided that he wanted to steal some of the farmer’s coconuts, so he snuck into the backyard, climbed the really high tree, and . . . umm . . . used his knife to cut off a few coconuts, and put them . . . uhh . . . he tied them around his waist and held a few. And then, underneath the tree was a couple kissing, and when the thief had too many coconuts he accidentally dropped one and it fell onto the man’s head, and he bit off the girl’s tongue. So the girl eventually died of blood loss in her mouth, and the man died of concussion, from the coconut falling on his head from meters above the ground.

J: [Laughing]

I: And, ultimately, the thief was tried for burglary [laughing] and eventually put into jail. The end.

J: [Laughing] All right, do you remember who told you that story?

I: My dad.

J: Uhh, did he mean it as a joke, or like a—

I: I think . . . I think he was just like joking around, but it’s definitely a story that he heard in Vietnam at one point in his life.

J: Ok, so your dad’s from Vietnam?

I: Yeah, he moved over in the 70s—to the U.S. in the 70s.

J: Do you think that the story has a meaning behind it, or something like a moral?

I: Uhh . . . don’t kiss under a really high coconut tree?

[Both laughing]

I: Umm . . . pay attention to your surroundings. Like, if the farmer was actually paying attention, then the thief would have been caught before all this stuff happened and umm the couple would have avoided a tragic fate. And the thief shouldn’t have been so greedy as to grab so many coconuts and dropping them to the ground.

J: Does the story have any personal meaning for you?

I: [Laughing] Umm . . . don’t stand under a coconut tree . . . or any dangerous objects.

Even just judging by our reactions (and that of my other friend who was present), the story is meant to elicit laughter, but it does so through very dark humor. It’s all about people doing things with bad connotations–a thief stealing coconuts and a couple having a romantic rendezvous late at night–and then getting into trouble because of it. As is the nature of all contemporary legends, this story may or may not have actually occurred, but the details have undoubtedly changed as it has been passed on. I think my informant is right about the meaning behind the story; it’s about being aware of your surroundings, but, beyond that, I think it’s about not doing what you shouldn’t be doing. It’s definitely black comedy, and it’s entertaining to listen to, but, in the end, everyone has something bad happen to them almost as punishment for what they’re doing right before. And who knows? As a contemporary legend, it could have actually happened.

Goatman’s Bridge

Nationality: African-American
Age: 19
Occupation: Student
Residence: Los Angeles, CA
Performance Date: April 25, 2012
Primary Language: English

Additional informant data: My informant was born and raised in Northern Texas, about thirty minutes from Denton.

Contextual data: My informant told me this story when I asked about ghost stories from her hometown. She says she learned it from friends, when she was around 16 years old. She says she would tell this story if she was “telling someone where to go for fun,” and one time she and her friends actually made a trip to the place (though one friend got really scared so they didn’t get out of the car). The following is a description of the legend in her own words:

There’s a bridge in Denton, Texas called Goatman’s Bridge. If you park outside the bridge at night and honk your horn three times a goatman will appear. He’s half-goat half-man. I want to say that he screams, but I don’t remember. There’s the bridge, and then there’s this sort of cul-de-sac area around it, and if you park in that area then he appears in the entrance of the bridge. On an unrelated note, a lot of people have died there–I don’t think in the recent past, but a long time ago–and I don’t know how, but I know it happened. It’s in a really sketchy area.

This type of story is a common one, involving a haunted place and a summoning ritual (often including a 3x repetition of an action). My informant wasn’t sure about the historical background, and neither was I, but a little research showed that legend has it that there was a successful black goat herder who lived near the bridge and was hanged off the side by angry Klansmen. According to my informant, taking a trip to Goatman’s Bridge late at night is a fun and scary adventure, and it’s often a bonding experience, as everyone gets scared together.

Annotation: Seen in YouTube user SilkOlive’s documentary video at http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WIrnzzTmP0s.

Peas in the Lungs

Nationality: Mexican- American
Age: 65
Occupation: Business Owner
Residence: Fullerton, Ca
Performance Date: 4/21/2012
Primary Language: English
Language: Spanish

“Okay so, this man was eating peas, and he accidentally inhaled one, and the pea grew in his lung because it was using the carbon dioxide and nutrients in his lung to get bigger. He went to the doctor’s and they x-rayed him and saw the plant growing. He went to the hospital and the doctor operated on him and took it out, then fed him pea soup as a joke.”

My informant heard this urban legend from his cousin. It’s a pretty blatant message that one should eat slowly and chew their food carefully. This narrative sounds remarkably like the watermelon-seed-in-the-stomach story, and my informant made it quite clear that he didn’t believe a word of the it. He said that his cousin isn’t known for being particularly believable. However, upon further research, it seems that this story is actually true!

An article from ABC news.com states that two years ago a man named Ron Sevden from Massachusetts had a pea go down the wrong pipe and lived with it for a month before going to the doctors, who had to surgically remove it. They even really fed him something with peas in it!

Reference: Blackburn, Bradley. Pea Sprout Removed From Massachusetts Man’s Lung. Aug 11, 2010.  http://abcnews.go.com/blogs/headlines/2010/08/pea-sprout-removed-from-massachusetts-mans-lung/

Hanged Man on Halloween

Nationality: Mexican
Age: 35
Occupation: Graphic Designer
Residence: Lomita, Ca
Performance Date: 4/20/2012
Primary Language: English

When my informant was younger, she was told a story by her brother that he had apparently heard in school. It was an urban legend about a young man who had hung himself a night before Halloween in a tree in a nearby neighborhood. Apparently, since it was Halloween nobody took the body seriously, believing to be just another gruesome prop. A few days later people realized it wasn’t a prop thanks to both the smell and the birds coming to eat away at his body.

This legend is fairly disconcerting to my informant, who believes this legend to be real. When she had asked her father if it was real, he had replied in the positive, citing his cousin as a source. Apparently the boy it had happened to was the son of a distant relative. This story may or may not be true.

This story seems like a warning against complacency for a holiday that has become a mockery of what it used to be and still is for some people. The fear that some props used on this night may actually be flesh and blood instead of plastic and paint is deep seated in superstition, and that is why so many people really do get a good fright from haunted houses and the like.

It could also be seen as a warning against suicide, as the boy didn’t recieve a particularly pleasant death and his body was desecrated by the local wildlife and exposed to the elements for quite some time.

This story seems to hold a particular significance for my informant, who has told me previously that her best friend attempted to commit suicide when they were much younger, and that to this day he lies in a coma as a result.

Nude Bicyclist

Nationality: American
Age: Nineteen
Occupation: Student
Performance Date: 4/19/12
Primary Language: English

Transcript of interview with informant:

“If you can share this, like, um, there’s like a legend of sorts in my town–like it’s not a legend, but several people I knew, like, from different areas of my life all talked about–supposedly there’s this guy who like a town away would ride around naked on a bicycle and masturbate. And people have ran into him and are like ‘Oh, don’t go certain places at night because people have seen the masturbating bicyclist…guy.”

Informant lives in Santa Barbara. The reports as he’s heard them indicate the bicyclist resides in Montecito. If this has happened even once, let alone multiple times, it’s certainly no surprise that the story has proliferated due to its highly sexual and comedic nature.