The Story of Tata Duende

“It’s a spirit I think, it has something to do with the jungle. It’s a boogeyman character. I was told this story by my father, as a bedtime type story. It was kind of creepy. He was a scary looking little man. I remember that to end the story each time, my father would say, ‘If the pen never bend, then the story never end.’”

Subject’s Analysis:

My friend Suzanne heard the story of Tata Duende several times throughout her childhood. She also mentioned that almost every story that her father told them somehow ended up working in the scary little man-creature into the thread. She said that it was a story used to discourage kids from getting into trouble. In the stories Tata Duende would always do harm to troublesome children. Her father heard the story growing up in Belize, and told it in Belizean Creole each time tweaking it slightly.

Collector’s Analysis:

I think that the story of Tata Duende is a perfect example of a boogeyman character that shows up in almost every culture. As we learned in class these characters exist mainly for the purpose of scaring children into good behavior. So I would say that this story definitely exists as a cautionary tale as well. I have had similar stories told to me before bed, and I feel that this experience is on that happens in almost every culture.

Urban Legend- “Charcoal Man”

Setting: This campfire story was told to me one night my roommates and I decided to tell scary stories we had encountered as a means of sharing various folklore stories with one another. Nichelle Megowan and I who were listening to Emily Intersimone’s camp fire ghost story called Charcoal Man.

Emily asking me: What are you doing for your folklore special? Is it ghost stories or what?

Me: No it’s any type of folklore.

Emily: Any type?

Me: Any type

Emily: Can campfire ghost stories count?

Me: Yes it can!

Emily: I think my dad made one up actually. Do you wanna hear it?

Me: Talk talk

Emily: I can’t do the scariness but um…

Me: Do your version it’s all a part of folklore. That’s a part of folklore.

Emily: Ok so um… My Dad would always tell this story from first person point of view and he’s from rural Northern California. So he was in the Boy Scouts so he would say, “well you know I went Boy Scout camping and there’s this area this highway where the highway curves on this mountain with a bunch or Redwoods in Humboldt County and when we’d drive this to my grandparents house we would go on this one curve in Humboldt and he would always be like, “Charcoal Man”. Charcoal Man. Have you ever heard of Charcoal Man.

Nichelle and I: No

Emily: See I think my Dad actually made it up. And umm… or it’s like a weird Humboldt county Boy Scout. So the legend goes…That in Humboldt county there’s this one curve in the road with a hill, and one night some teenagers were driving, you know, driving late. For whatever reason the car veers off the road into like down the heel through the hill through the redwoods and the car catches on fire

Nichelle interrupts and sings: To Grandmother’s house we go… sorry

Emily laughs and says, “Yeah I know we’re all going to go to grandmas and Charcoal Man… And so the car catches on fire and they all die in the car. Or it might have been just one guy but I think there were teenagers involved. Um so….because of this fiery death there was this monster called Charcoal Man who lives you know or like his ghost who lived in like Humboldt County. And um so Boy Scouts would go camping and they would say that you could hear noises in the night and they would open up their tent and there’d be burning footprints leading up to leading up to a tent that had caught on fire. And they’d be like, “Oh my God!” And they’d like douse the fire out there’d be these burning foot prints. My dad totally made this up. But um… so that was the legend basically and my Dad you know would tell these stories about how they just barely escaped from this man made of burning coal.

Me: Who would he tell?

Emily: He would tell our sisters my sisters and I around the campfire. When we’re camping he’d be like, “You know when I camped, you have to be careful of Charcoal Man and he would always tell us at the end of Charcoal Man that that… and it was really scary at the time but he would always tell us “you think that was scary just wait until you hear about Pancake Man”. And we were always like, “Who’s Pancake Man?” And we never heard about Pancake Man.

Me: I think your dad forgot about Pancake Man.

Emily: Or I think, I think there never was a Pancake man. I think he just made it up. And he would just always add that at the end.

This camp fire, urban legend is definitely derived from the Intersimone family that has mostly been passed down to siblings. This legend can be seen as a way of entertaining adolescent children who are naivety plays a crucial role in believing made up ghost stories. This legend perhaps can also confirm a child’s need to rely on parental security, especially in cases where a child is in a new environment, like the forest mentioned in the legend, and they need their mothers or fathers to feel a sense of security. I found this legend to also be another way of making his daughters laugh, allowing Emily’s dad to share a bonding time with his daughters. I found this legend to be quiet comical and unique. I have not heard any other rendition like the “Charcoal Man”. However, I am sure as this story spreads many versions will start take on various forms as it diffuses across different groups.

Legend

Nichelle’s interpretation of this story goes as follows:

“This was a story of my great grandfather. In 1932, there was this one island called Crete that had a curse on it. The curse came on the island 7 generations before. After so many years this curse was supposed to come into effect. When it did, all of the young women (girls who started their periods but weren’t married) got possessed and their possession didn’t become bad until night time. And so there weren’t enough priests to deal with all of the girls. So what they had to do was recruit all the college young men because they would have had religious training. So, what they did, they had to do this mass exorcism. So the priests were going to walk around all the houses and say the exorcism prayers. So what they needed the young men to do…the belief was “the devil could not step over a true Christian”. So they wanted the young men to lie down in front of the doorways of the bedrooms (Greek bedrooms don’t usually have windows so all they had to do was worry about the door). The priests told them, “If you never speak to the devil then you can’t become possessed.” So they lead girls into their room. The girl that my great grandfather was keeping in her room was very young but strikingly beautiful. So she gets in her bed and he lies down on the floor inside and the priest told him to say prayers to himself. First, everything’s normal. First she starts asking him, “Oh please Mr. can I have some water?” or “Can you come fix my blankets?” So, basically anything to get him to move. As the night goes on she gets more persistent and he can’t talk to her. It starts getting so bad he can’t even look at her anymore. So his eyes are closed and all of a sudden he hears movement. He opens his eyes. The devil attacks people mentally who are mentally weak that they can’t fend off everything because their mentally not strong enough. And that’s why mentally insane people can’t really be helped by medicine, psychiatry or anything. A lot of times the church believes they’re actually possessed. And you know and the thing is with possession a lot of the times people will be completely normal sometimes and all of sudden they’ll have these attacks. Ok so we were at the point where he hears movement and so he opens his eyes to see where it’s coming from and he’s looking around the room, he can’t its dark, he really can’t see that much but he realizes light is moving. And he looks up and he realizes the light that’s moving is the candle on the shelf in the corner and its zooming from corner to corner to corner to corner of all the rooms and the girls just sitting there peacefully in her bed. And this thing is zooming and zooming and zooming all around the room. And he closes his eyes again because he is scared and he just says his prayers over and over and over again. So eventually this stops…but she starts screaming bloody murder. And again he opens his eyes and no longer does she look young and beautiful but she looks old and scary and screaming and clutching her her her bed sheets and screaming and screaming. And he shuts his eyes again cuz he is in complete terror now. He like doesn’t know what to do but she like never leaves her bed. She’s like in her bed the whole time. So eventually, morning comes the girl is like she passes out eventually. But you know, he gets up apparently the curse is broken, the girls no longer have any symptoms and the island is peaceful forever more.”

I agree with Nichelle’s interpretation of her great grandfather’s story. This story seems to be of great importance to the Megowan family that even the intricate detail that was described in this legend ended up being passed down to three generations. Nichelle told the story as if she was reliving the moment herself; she spoke with great dynamics and animation in her voice. I have not heard of any other legend such as this. But I could imagine that this legend is used as a tool to cherish the Megowan and Greek culture where it would be important to pass down this legend from one generation to another as a means of holding onto family tradition. I could also see this legend as a method of group identification amongst younger kids and peers. For example, a young child who would tell this legend in the Megowan family may be accepted into the group of kids who are known for telling scariest stories at summer camp.

This legend also reflects the history and the people of the Greek culture in the 1930’s on the island of Crete. The Greek people described in this legend were all of religious affiliation besides the possessed girls, which shows that religious identity was an important identification of that particular time. The priests and college boys seemed to consistently be practicing religious doctrine, and sticking to religious doctrine was important to their lifestyle.

“Once this baby came out premature and died, so they called it the tuyul. Really scary looking and looks like a deformed baby midget. Myth was that the dukuns – witch doctors – would have these tuyuls to steal money, they would keep them in a jar. They liked two things: money and blood. That’s how they would feed. They’d rummage through bins and stuff and look for blood remains. So women’s pads and etc. etc. SICK”

This legend is something that my informant believes as true. She does not like to tell these stories as recounting them makes her feel scared and uncomfortable, likely because she considers these to be true and what I know as another common South East Asian custom, (having grown up in Singapore) is that you are not supposed to speak of any mythical creatures/spirits/ghosts as they become aware of they’re mentioned name and will one day appear in front of you. As far as the gore of this legend, I would like to point out that this style of gore is extremely common throughout South East Asian myths and legends. I would also like to point out another version of this story, which I had heard in 2002 :

“These ghosts would be kept in jars and feed on babies. Whoever was greedy for wealth and prosperity would either offer their own child or kidnap someone else’s to feed their child with. In order to get this creature to serve you, one would had to go up to the top of a deserted hill, and promise to sacrifice a living baby” This was from a Malay woman in her 70’s and had grown up in Malaysia.

I would also like to add from another source, the following aspect regarding the legend of the tuyul:

“You keep them in a jar under your bed together with a bottle of blood, and you can ask for whatever you want. When you go to sleep at night, they go out and get whatever it is you want but because these are evil beings, they do it by mischievous ways, such as theft”

The many different versions of this story underlines the characteristics of a legend and how they vary not only geographically but from culture to culture.