Category Archives: Legends

Narratives about belief.

Ghost Story – Santa Maria, California

Nationality: Mexican-American
Age: 18
Occupation: Student
Residence: Santa Maria
Performance Date: April 28, 2008
Primary Language: English

Ghost Story

The Haunted Auditorium – Santa Maria, CA

“My school is over 100 years-old and one of the original buildings is still standing: Ethel Pope Auditorium. I don’t know the exact year, ballpark—probably 50-60 years ago. There was play going on in the auditorium on a rainy night and on the way there, a high school girl performer got in a car crash and died on the way.

Somehow that night, she was still in the play, performing even though she was dead. Now sometimes during plays at night you can see her up on the catwalk above the stage, sometimes when you look up. You can see blood dripping off her head from the car crash.

I haven’t seen this, but here is definitely creepy shit going on in that building. Just weird things. There’s major temperature changes, hot some places cold in others. Then the lights will turn on and off sometimes and the doors would mysteriously open and close.  I think some of the people who run lights have seen stuff. Some people hear whispers or feel touches.

She’s not necessarily haunting; she’s just there. I’ll admit, it’s scary being in there by yourself. It’s just a huge empty building—there’s always weird stuff. It’s an eerie feeling. Girls for sure don’t go in there by themselves. Its fun to take other people to creep them out, though.”

Haunted house stories are always best when they’re local. I live near Santa Maria, and after telling me this story, Antonio has promised to take me to Ethel Pope.  Because of the details about the temperature changes and whispers, I’ll probably be on the lookout for them, and since all old buildings are drafty and make noises, I will surely be rewarded—and terrified.

The key to a story like this is the victim—given her age and gender, this story is all the more scary to me because I can relate to her. Also, because the speaker admitted his fear, the whole story becomes more real and scary. By saying girls “for sure don’t go in there by themselves” also hints at more danger that I could run into.

The only thing missing in this tale is a motive for the ghost to be hanging around the auditorium .

Legend – Korea

Nationality: Korean-American
Age: 21
Occupation: Student
Residence: Los Angeles, CA
Performance Date: May 1, 2008
Primary Language: English
Language: Korean

There was a boy who went to get an acupuncture treatment on the back of his neck. When it was over, the boy ended up with paralyzed legs. Apparently his doctor made a small mistake, and accidentally severed some very important nerves.

When I first heard this story, it was told as a true story—by a friend in Korea who claimed it happened to a friend of a friend of a friend of a friend…. However, after hearing several similar stories, I began to suspect it was a legend. It was the late 90’s and early 2000’s when I heard these stories in Korea. These stories were always told to me by my young peers—usually middle school and high school students. I never heard any mention of them on the news or by adults. These stories all involved acupuncture that went wrong—resulting in grave physical consequences, usually from damaged nerves. My cousin had told me a particularly gruesome version that she heard:

A girl was having acupuncture on her ear. When the needles were withdrawn, she noticed a tiny piece of thread poking out of one of the holes. Curious she pulled on it, when it snapped. She lost her vision.

Based on true stories or not, I think that these legends all express a certain uneasiness that Korean youths felt toward acupuncture—more broadly, an uneasiness with traditional medicine. I believe these legends show a conflict between western modes of thought and traditional Korean medicinal practices—especially the scary ones.

The performers of this legend were almost always in their teens—these were kids who grew up with a modern education, and taught westernized science; they were old enough to have a rudimentary understanding of the nervous system, and they were old enough to be able to begin questioning their parents’ beliefs. They were teenagers in a contradictory world; Korea is still so steeped in traditional beliefs and practices, yet in its race for economic competence, it has also modernized itself with ruthless speed. Outwardly, Western lifestyle and practices were so very quickly adopted, before the more intimate beliefs of the older generations were able to change, and it seems that this may have caused uneasiness among the young teenagers who were troubled by the incompatibility of western medicine and acupuncture. Therefore in their stories, a young person goes to have acupuncture to heal an ailment according to Eastern medicine. However, because of the mechanics of the nervous system as dictated by Western science, the unfortunate young victim suffers the loss of his legs of her eyes.

These stories were very scary, and while simple enough to often be taken as true. I must say that I have never allowed my mother to try her acupuncture kit on me. I never exactly feared for the loss of my limbs, yet I have never believed much good could come from piercing my body with needles.

Ghost Story – Miami, Florida

Nationality: American
Age: 17
Occupation: Student
Residence: Calabasas, CA
Performance Date: April 22, 2008
Primary Language: English
Language: Farsi, French

“My uncle in Miami used to manage one of the restaurants at the Biltmore Hotel in Coral Gables.  He told me once that Al Capone lived the ladder portion of his life in the penthouse, which was the thirteenth room on the thirteenth floor.  No one disturbed him and no one spoke to him.  Many people claimed to have seen him jump off his balcony, maybe it was an illusion but it really kind of foreshadowed his upcoming death.  That room was the last place Al Capone ever lived in.  It was a deluxe, luxurious room, but after his death, no one ever went in that room.  Decades later, the room is believed to be haunted.  When guests come into the room uninvited, supposedly the spirit of Al Capone starts to haunt them.  He turns the lights on and off, turns on the faucet and shower.  There is a spooky aura that surrounds this luxurious hotel.  Any slight event, like doors opening unexpectedly, makes people think it’s Al Capone’s ghost.  And so one summer, we were at the hotel for dinner one night and I went to use the bathroom.  All of a sudden, the doors blew open.  I know now that it was because of the wind, but at the time I was ten so I believed it was the spirit of Al Capone.”

Farbod, my brother, learned this ghost story from my uncle in Miami.  There have been many cases where guests at the hotel believe they have seen ghosts and spirits or just unusual happenings in the elevators and hotel rooms.

After doing some research I found that Al Capone, the Italian American gangster, actually died in 1947 of a cardiac arrest lead on by pneumonia. Since Al Capone lived in the time during the Prohibition, they set up a speakeasy on the thirteenth floor, which he did frequent numerous times throughout his life.  However, the actual story is that Capone’s friend, Fats Walsh, was murdered there.

The ghost story my brother was told clearly shows how a piece changes over time.  However, this ghost story is still widely believed in Miami and Coral Gables.  My uncle and cousins have stayed at Capone’s room, officially known as the “Al Capone Suite,” and they have all attested to strange occurrences, such as the shower turning on and off and strange noises at night.  It is hard to say what accounts for these strange actions, but for now, the ghost story of Al Capone is enough to explain them.

Contemporary Legend

Nationality: Canadian
Age: 20
Occupation: Student
Residence: Tustin, CA
Performance Date: April 28, 2008
Primary Language: English
Language: Spanish

“So there’s this urban legend.  So a girl was lying in her bead and she hears the faucet leaking.  So she gets up and closes the faucet.  She gets back in bed, but it keeps happening and she keeps getting up to shut it off.  Every time she gets back in bed, she puts her hand down towards the floor so that her dog can lick just to reassure her.  In the morning, she gets up and goes to the bathroom and she sees on the mirror “People lick too” written in blood and her dog is hanging from the shower head.”

Angie told me she heard this urban legend first when she was in middle school at a sleepover party.  However, she told me that she has heard this urban legend from different people throughout her life.  She says even though she has heard it from many people, the versions she has heard have not varied that much.

When she told this urban myth to me, her friend was there as well. I asked Angie if the story affected her in any way and what she thought of it and she answered by saying that it has not affected her and she has not really thought of it.  However, her friend noted that she gets scared and worried whenever she hears dripping water.  Angie said that she never realized this and began to think that the urban myth had a factor in that uneasiness.

I have also heard this urban legend before.  I have heard it from about five or six different people and I have never seen any major variations of the tale.  However, I have heard another tale that is similar to this.  In that tale, there are two roommates and in the middle of the night, one gets up to grab some books.  Since her roommate is sleeping, she does not want to turn on the lights.  She accidentally trips on something but moves on, grabs her books, and leaves.  The next morning, she comes back and finds that her roommate is dead and on the mirror, in blood, is written, “Aren’t you glad you didn’t turn on the lights?”

It seems that more and more people are sharing legends, like these, and they have even become a part of popular culture.  There was a movie, “Urban Legends”, and it illustrated one urban legend after another.  I have not seen the movie, but I heard that one of these two legends was depicted in the movie.

These stories are legends because they could be true and real.  They occur in the real world and questions people’s beliefs.  Some may believe in these legends while others may automatically disregard them.  Nonetheless, these legends “invite discussions about belief.”

Also seen in:  Brunvand, Jan Harold, Robert Loran Fleming, and Robert F. Boyd.  The Big Book of Urban Legends. New York: Paradox Press, 1994.

Contemporary Legend – Saint Louis, Missouri

Nationality: American
Occupation: Student
Residence: St. Louis, MO
Performance Date: April 28, 2008
Primary Language: English

“So in St. Louis, where I’m from, there was an actual exorcism.  Like the movie “The Exorcist” was based off of this one.  It happened to a little black boy who lived over the river in Illinois but it was performed in St. Louis.  It probably happened in the mid 1900’s, like in the ‘50’s and people say he still lives in the area.  It actually happened, like it was reported on T.V. for a long time and it was in all the newspapers.  But anyways, now anytime somebody brings up the movie “The Exorcist” or just anything about exorcism, everyone kind of brags that it actually happened in St. Louis.”

The exorcism Meredith is told me about was a real one; it was reported on the news for a long time. When I first heard it, I thought it was a legend and that it was something that could happen but really did not.  But she told me numerous times that it actually did happen and that the man, Roland Doe, is still living.

I consider this story to be folklore because it is a story that a group of people, the people from St. Louis, identifies to.  As Meredith stated, every time somebody mentions the movie “The Exorcist”, people from St. Louis jump to add that it happened in their hometown.  She also told me that the movie was actually based off of the exorcism that occurred in St. Louis.  She added that this exorcism was the only documented exorcism performed in the America.

Meredith said that she learned about this story when she was in elementary school and from her parents as well.  She thinks it is interesting and she said she would always bring it up when people talked about ghost stories or urban legends.

I believe that this story will become a piece of legend as time goes on.  The people who actually know this happened will pass, but the story will be passed on orally and some may even create variations of the story.  When I first heard this story, I was a little spooked out.  I had never heard of an exorcism that actually happened, and it happening relatively recently and in America was incomprehensible to me.  However, it was very interesting how Meredith openly she shared the story as if it was something she, and the other people of St. Louis, are proud of being associated with.