Category Archives: Legends

Narratives about belief.

Exploding Toilets and A Corpse — Senior Prank Legend

Nationality: Japanese
Age: 17
Occupation: Student
Residence: Tustin, California
Performance Date: 2/24/12
Primary Language: English
Language: Chinese, Japanese

My informant goes to high school in Tustin, California, where he is currently a junior. A few months earlier, he had heard of a legend of a senior prank that had occurred perhaps ten or so years back, where they had flushed all the toilets at the school at the same exact time to see what would happen to the plumbing.

They had these stopwatches, right, and all these walkie talkies, and they pressed the stopwatches at the same time and flushed the toilets just as the timer went down to zero. They wanted to see if a pipe somewhere would explode I guess, but then, instead, two toilets just blew up. Uh, I think one was a female staff toilet, and the other was in one of the main guys’ bathrooms. The toilets just like, blew apart, all the porcelain and whatnot. Which was fine and all, except later when they were trying to clean up the exploded toilets, the fixer-upper guy found a hole in the wall of the bathroom and looked through it and there was uh, a dead body in there, like scrunched up and still fresh-looking, like a girl just crawled in there and curled into a ball and died or something. Anyway, he thought she was dead, but then he’s staring at her and he can’t move because he’s so freakin’ scared, and she turns her head towards him kind of, and she doesn’t have eyes, like they’re just sockets on her face, and in the sockets there’s one of those millipede things that comes crawling out. Anyway, the plumber guy told everyone but nobody really believed him because they checked later and it was gone, but still. And they fixed the toilets and stuff, but man. The guys’ bathroom is a freakin’ scary place.

No one knows where this legend originated from, although my informant said that his Latin teacher, who had worked at the school for two decades, does remember a senior prank where the seniors all flushed the toilets at once–though he does not remember anything happening as a consequence. “I’m pretty sure toilets don’t explode even if you flush a whole bunch of them at once,” My informant said, laughing, “but it makes sense that the stories spread because the bathrooms are freakin‘ disgusting here, like really bad. And it smells so much that we probably wouldn’t notice a corpse for a while.”

I feel like the legend is significant because it pits teenagers, most of whom think of themselves as invincible, against death, even if it is a very unrealistic and cinematic depiction of it. School is a place for boredom, for homework and tedious routine–to introduce a corpse into such a scene is jarring, and sets the entire nature of their everyday lives off-balance. That the legend became so widespread, however, is not surprising; people like a good scare, and school is a place of boring routine. Although my informant and his classmates probably thought this legend was very original, there are probably many, many legends of something similar to this in schools all across the world.

 

Uncle Colin and the Hurricane

Nationality: American
Age: 50
Occupation: Artist
Residence: New Hampshire
Performance Date: March 16, 2012
Primary Language: English
Language: Italian

My informant told me a story about his Uncle Colin and the story that his family tells about the 1954 hurricane that struck Cape Cod, MA:

“I have heard from a number of people that in the Cape Cod hurricane of 1954, the sea at Buzzards Bay rose as the Atlantic Ocean swelled. When it looked as if the rising inlet next to his house may rise further and wash his house away, my Uncle Colin went out to his fishing boat with a glass of milk and a baloney sandwich and said if it was going to get his house, he couldn’t stop it and he’d rather go down in his boat. So he rowed out to the boat in the storm and waited and ate. The water rose, but never reached the house and the boat never left the mooring.”

My informant said that each time he head the story it was slightly different, but the jist of it is the same. He particularly liked the story because he was named after this particular uncle, and therefore was proud of being associated with him. The story is also quite humorous, so he often re-tells it to family during gatherings and holidays.

From my point of view, this is a story about bravery. It shows the respect that a family has for its elders and their sometimes odd, but impressive actions. It also ties the family to the property in showing their devotion to it. Uncle Colin would not sit in his boat during a hurricane unless he deeply cared about the property he was willing to risk his life for. It can also be used to teach children the values of their family.

The Legend of Tom Cook and the Devil

Nationality: American
Age: 18
Occupation: Student
Residence: Massachusetts
Performance Date: March 15, 2012
Primary Language: English
Language: Spanish

My informant shared with me the local legend of Tom Cook from Westborough, Massachusetts

“Back in about the 1700s there was a clever thief named Tom Cook. He was not the type of thief that you would think, a Robin Hood of the town I guess you could say. He would steal from the rich and give to the poor. So he was a good thief. Anyway, he was not a villain. When Tom was a baby, he was very near death, so his mother made a deal with the devil in order to spare his life. She promised the Devil that Tom would serve him, and cause mischief in a life of thievery. However, since Tom was a good thief who gave away all his loot to those less-fortunate than him, the Devil felt cheater. One morning, when Tom was getting dressed, he heard a knock at the door. He went and opened it to find the Devil himself standing there. The Devil said that he was here to claim Tom’s soul. Tom then asked the Devil if before he took him, if he could finish getting dressed. The Devil, seeing no harm in the request, agreed. However, this was a trick, and for the rest of his life Tom never finished getting dressed. He always had one shoe missing, or a belt buckle un-done, or sometimes one suspender un-clipper. Because the Devil had agreed to wait until he was finished dressing, the Devil could never claim his soul, and Tom died in his old age, with his shirt un-buttoned, and his soul rose up to heaven instead of down to the Devil.”

My informant told me that she had heard this story on a tour of her town that her class took when she was in third grade. She always remembers the story because she thought that Tom was an extremely clever person for being able to out-smart the devil. She informed me that the story was extra-special because the house that Tom lived in still stands today, and they saw it on their tour. That made the legend even more believable to her, seeing the door that the Devil himself walked up to. She doesn’t really ever tell the story of Tom Cook to many people, only unless they make a comment about how the old house should be torn down.

I am from this town of Westborough, MA, and I remember going on the town tour that my informant described. I agree that what made the legend believable was actually seeing Tom Cook’s house. I remember it being light blue, with broken windows and an overgrown lawn. The roof had been caving in and it looked like the scariest house I had ever seen. This image made the legend so real because such a house is hard to imagine could still exist. Sadly, the house was town down this year, and with it, what I believe to be a great deal of the believability of the Tom Cook legend.

The story of Tom Cook appears in authored literature in:

Allen, Kristina Nilson. On the Beaten Path: Westborough, Massachusetts. Westborough Civic Club and Westborough Historical Society, 1984.

 

The Rice children kidnapping

Nationality: American
Age: 19
Occupation: Student
Residence: Massachusetts
Performance Date: March 13, 2012
Primary Language: English
Language: Spanish

My informant told me the story of the Rice children’s kidnapping in the town of Westborough, Massachusetts:

“Back in the 1700s when Westborough was young, the three Rice children were playing in a field. Indians came and killed one son, and kidnapped the other two. The children were raised by the Indians, and when they had grown one son returned to Westborough and his family while the other stayed and lived out his life with his new tribe. Today there is a large rock that sits on the spot of land next to the High School where the incident occurred. There is a plaque on the rock that tells the story. Sometimes, late at night, there is an eerie fog that can be seen around the rock.”

My informant first heard this legend from her mother, and then read it again on the rock. She tells it to people when they pass the rock on their way to school. She heard the part about the fog from her friend who lives near the rock and can see it from her bedroom window.

I found this to be an interesting piece of folklore because it is widely known in the town. I grew up in Westborough and the rock with the plaque keeps the legend alive because it is where kids hang out after school. You can’t help but read it as you sit on the boulder so the legend keeps getting revived. It is supposedly true since the town made an official marking to display the story, but the exact spot of the kidnapping is approximated. I also found it interesting that there was no apparent reason for the kidnapping. It represents the Native Americans in a negative light in that they seemingly randomly abducted/killed the children. It reflects upon the tension between the two ethnic groups at the time.

Cornell Halloween Legend

Nationality: American, Polish, Russian, a little bit of French
Age: 21
Occupation: Student
Residence: Ithaca, New York
Performance Date: March 2012
Primary Language: English
Language: None

“So, um, there’s a legend that, and I’m pretty sure it’s true, that one time on Halloween, the Engineers, it might not actually be the Engineers, I don’t know who did it, but I think it’s the Engineers because they’re the only ones smart enough to actually do something like this… one Halloween, they got a huge pumpkin on the top of the clock tower and no one really knows how they did it because the clock tower is pointy and really tall and has one hundred and sixty-one stairs. And so now, every year for Halloween, as tribute to that, Cornell lights the face of the clock tower orange and makes it look like a jack o’lantern… like makes a jack o’lantern face in it. I’ve heard the story from Orientation Leaders. I don’t remember if they said it was Engineers, but I think it is.”

 

The informant was very adamant that the group of students who supposedly pulled off this prank consisted of Engineers. Her tone was very insistent. This makes sense because she is an Engineering student. Her version of the legend reflects how highly she thinks of her own major at Cornell. It’s interesting how the school has turned this prank (or legend of a prank) into a folk tradition by lighting up the clock tower every year to look like a jack o’lantern. The school seems to greatly value the prank or (legend of the prank) and thus feels the need to keep this story alive through this annual, symbolic practice.