The Legend of Mae Nak

There was a couple in ancient times named P’ Mak and Mae Nak. P’ Mak was a soldier and had to go to war. He lost communication with Mae Nak for a really long time. During that time, Mae Nak was pregnant. Both Mae Nak and her son died in labor. Everybody in the town knew that Mae Nak died. Only P’ Mak didn’t know. P’ Mak came home from war and saw Mae Nak and their baby and was very happy. Everybody told him that Mae Nak and their baby died already, but P’ Mak didn’t believe them until one day Mae Nak was cooking som tum and dropped a lemon through the cracks of the wooden planks of the upper floor to the bottom floor, where P’ Mak was standing at the time. P’ Mak saw Mae Nak reach her arm from the top to the bottom floor to pick up the lemon. Now P’ Mak believed everyone that told him that Mae Nak died already. Mae Nak loved P’ Mak so much that she used all of her power to stay as a human and take care of her husband. P’Mak was scared and called witch doctors to help take away Mae Nak. None succeeded until one witch doctor came that was very skilled. This witch doctor was able to put Mae Nak’s spirit in a clay pot and seal the top with white linen tied tight with white thread and threw it in the river.

One day, a man was fishing and pulled up the net and saw the pot. The man wondered what was inside the pot and opened it. As soon as the man opened the pot, Mae Nak’s spirit came out and came back to haunt the town because Mae Nak was very mad that she was caught and thrown in the river. Mae Nak returned home and P’ Mak would hear her call his name “P’ Mak kaaa! P’ Mak kaaa!!” The people in the town have a statue of Mae Nak and still worship her today.

My mother remembers learning this story in her elementary school in Chaiyaphum, Thailand where she grew up. The school was in a temple by her house and the classes were taught by monks. The class read this story in a book for a history lesson. All the students were scared after learning about this legend, but my mom says she does not know why they were scared. They also turned this story into a joke amongst each other. For example, when someone dropped something far away and would have to get up to go get it, he or she would say a phrase along the lines of, “I wish I had long arms like Mae Nak.”

According to my mother and to Thai people, Mae Nak’s spirit still resides in Pakanong, which is an area in Bangkok, Thailand. People still worship her and pay respects to her at her statue or to pictures of her in their homes. The people living in that area give offerings to her, which often include Thai traditional outfits because she liked these beautiful outfits in her lifetime. Her story has also been adopted by other Thai books and films as well. There have been very many versions of the Mae Nak legend in movies throughout the decades. I have seen a couple of the movies and have also heard this story since I was young, maybe around the age of seven, from my parents. The story of Mae Nak is told as truth and in the form of a scary story.

Someone told me before that flashing your high beams at the traffic light turns it green because it like thinks you’re a cop. Then, one day, I like flashed my lights and like another friend in the car said that it used to be like they told me not to do it because like “urban legend” is that Bloods or Crypts used to have to like drive around at night with head lights off and whoever was nice enough to flash their high beams to remind them to turn his lights on had to be shot. So they would like get out of the car and shoot them. It was part of their initiation.

Suraj heard the part of the legend about flashing high beams at traffic lights from his sister because one time his sister was driving with her friend when they got stopped at a red light. Then her friend told her to try it. So she tried flashing the lights and it seemed to have worked. Suraj admitted that although he knows that the flashing lights story is not true, he still does it. He does not know why he continues to do it despite knowing that the truth is, as he claimed, the cops have a remote that can change the light if they are in an emergency. Suraj feels that when it works it is a coincidence and thinks that it is funny that he still tries flashing his high beams at red lights. This can also be considered superstition and shows that both cars and time are considered valuable. Since people are in cars often, a superstition appeared which involves cars. Also, people try this action because they are impatient and do not wish to waste time waiting at a red stop light.

The part about the gangs was, as stated in the above account, learned from his friend as he was in the act of flashing his high beams at the red light as he usually does. The reason Suraj decided to begin talking about car lights and to include this part to his story was because a girl living in the same dorm was walking around spreading a warning for everyone that MS13, a gang local to the Los Angeles area, was rear-ending targeted drivers and shooting them. It usually occurred when the gang members rear-ended a car and when the hit driver stopped and stepped out of the car, the gang members would shoot the victim. The girl spreading this warning that night said that she had a relative in the gang and, therefore, knew about this behavior ahead of time and felt that she should spread the word to encourage people to stay indoors and be safe that night.

Suraj expressed his thoughts on how he believed that the gang behavior with both the rear-ending and the flashing lights was stupid because innocent people get killed. Both parts to Suraj’s story can be considered FOAF legends or friend of a friend legends because they provoke discussion about belief to a certain extent, and Suraj heard each of them from a person who had been told about these occurrences. While Suraj learned all of this at his home in Richardson, Texas, these stories are known in other places as well, including southern California. The two gangs that Suraj mentioned, the Bloods and the Crypts, are from southern California. However, there are also many gangs in downtown Dallas, which is not too far from Richardson. These stories have diffused to many places in America because many places share the luxury of cars and the menace of gang activity.

Big Liz

Some place in Maryland – don’t ask me where, I don’t know – there’s this bridge where the story of Big Liz takes place. She was a slave girl during the Civil War and she would deliver like supplies to the like Confederate troops for her master like told her to do this. But she secretly helped the Union soldiers by telling them where the supplies were like gonna go so they could like steal them. So her master found out about this and wanted to kill her and so his plan was that he had a lot of money he wanted to hide like in case the Union soldiers took over his plantation. And so he brought Liz with him to go bury the money in this swamp like on the plantation. So he made her like bury it and right after she finished burying it he chopped her head off with a knife and he left her there and no one else like knew that she died or where the money was. And he ended up being killed during the war. And so, again, no one knew where the money was. So in order to “go find the money” you go to the bridge and you park on it and turn off your car, honk your horn three times and then wait and then your car won’t start and then Big Liz will appear like holding her head in her hands and she will lead you to where the money is hidden if you’re brave enough to go with her.

Jill heard this legend from her friend’s family when she was around the age of ten to twelve. They all lived at Frederick, Maryland, which is located about forty-five minutes away from Gettysburg and there are places related to the Civil War all around them such as museums and battlefields. Therefore, there were also numerous stories and legends revolving around deaths during the war including the deaths of slaves, plantation owners, and soldiers. She believes that the reason the location is that particular bridge is because the swamp in the story is supposed to be under or close by that bridge. She also mentioned that the bridge is probably an easier place for people to find instead of looking for a side of a street. Also, she added that bridges are scary.

However, Jill does not believe this legend of Big Liz. Yet, like the definition of legends suggests, the story of Big Liz invites discussions of belief. Many people around that area do believe that the story is true. Jill briefly retold a story about her friend’s parents playing a prank on the children relating to this story. Jill explained that her friend’s family and some of their friends were in the car one day and the parents pretended that the car would not start on the bridge. Then, the parents had someone run at the car and hit the window to scare the children. This all occurred right after the parents had told the legend to the children. The legend of Big Liz is terminus post quem of the Civil War.

There’s this place in Maryland – Burkittsville – and there’s this place called Spook Hill or sometimes it’s called Gravity Hill. So the legend I heard there was that there was this freak accident with kids on a bus when they went over like a railroad track that the bus was hit and like they all died. And since then anytime you park your car on the hill and put it in neutral it’s supposed to roll uphill. And as proof, if you put baby powder on the back bumper you can see hand prints after it rolls uphill as if the kids are pushing you to safety off the tracks.

Jill learned about this legend from her friend when she was about ten years old. They were having a conversation on myths and ghost stories and such when her friend told her this story. This story falls into the legends category because it invites discussion about belief. Jill does believe that the car will roll uphill, but she is not too sure about the story and does not know if it is true. She knows that many people often go to the hill to test it for themselves. She has not visited the site yet, but she really wants to go to test it for herself. She said that she might even sprinkle the baby powder on her bumper “for the heck of it.”

Also, Jill mentioned that she has recently heard other versions of the same story. The most popular version that she heard was that it was soldiers that had died by those railroad tracks. So when people parked their car there, the ghosts of the soldiers would push the car as if they were pushing a canon up the hill to achieve victory or pushing their fellow soldiers off the tracks to safety. There was no baby powder involved in this version. This makes sense because baby powder is easily associated and tied to children but is not usually connected to Civil War soldiers.

However, Jill has found that the version involving the children in the bus is also used for a hill in San Antonio, Texas. The soldier version is more popular around her house in Frederick, Maryland, which is logical because she lives about forty-five minutes away from Gettysburg and there are many Civil War museums and battlefields in her area. The different versions, or oicotypes, and locations prove that the story of this hill is folklore because there are multiple versions and variation. Also, the historic geographic method could be used to analyze the spread of this story from one region to another, in this case, across the country.

The existence of this particular hill has been acknowledged by a book called Weird Maryland: Your Travel Guide to Maryland’s Local Legends and Best Kept Secrets by Matt Lake, Mark Moran, and Mark Sceurman. This book describes different places in Maryland that are tied to strange occurrences and stories in Maryland. It explains that Spook Hill is a place that seems to defy gravity and the laws of physics. It mentions the hill’s ties to the Civil War, which is that the Battle of Crampton’s Gap was fought there. The book also discusses three possible explanations for the phenomenon, which include optical illusion, exception from the earth’s gravitational pull, and the legend of the soldiers.

Lake, Matt, Moran Mark, and Mark Sceurman. Weird Maryland: Your Travel Guide to Maryland’s Local Legends and Best Kept Secrets. New York: Sterling Company, Inc., 2006. 26 Apr. 2008 http://books.google.com/books?id=L0iv57e2mXEC&pg=PA185&lpg=PA185&dq=%22maryland%22+%22car%22+%22uphill%22&source=web&ots=vjK6KwmN4Y&sig=tRiHXpflN8x4epg54INsP4biWSk&hl=en#PPA185,M1.

When they were building Student Union back in the early 1900’s or whenever it was that it was being built, the architect had a certain way he wanted it to be built. He wanted the main entrance to open up towards Tommy Trojan, but the president at the time wanted a convenient entrance that he could park his car in front of, so he demanded that the front entrance of the building opened towards like Trousdale. The architect got mad and up at the top of the building there are little gargoyles like every like three spots in the design and right over the main entrance to the building he put, he made a gargoyle of a monkey “thumbing his nose,” which back then was the equivalent of sticking your middle finger out at someone.

Jill first heard this legend/prank when she flew from her home in Frederick, Maryland to the University of Southern California for a campus tour in January of 2006. At the time of this campus tour she was considering whether or not she wanted to apply to the school. She remembers the tour group laughing at the story and how she thought the story was funny. Upon reflection, Jill feels that this story along with the number of other stories similar to this one that gave fun facts and history of the campus made the tour cute and more personal. Although this particular story was not a big crucial factor in her decision to attend USC, it made the tour that day more enjoyable. Jill believes that tour was very well-done and that the tour guide had a good personality. She thinks her feeling about the tour guide’s personality was enhanced by the inclusion of these stories. Also, stories such as this monkey one and the rivalry between USC and UCLA made the campus seem like a more fun place to be. This story is terminus post quem the building of Student Union.

Below are pictures that I took of the monkey gargoyle on the Student Union building.