Category Archives: Legends

Narratives about belief.

Summoning a Plymouth Colonist Ghost through Song (Legend, Memorate)

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Collector: “Do you have any experiences with ghosts in your childhood?”

Informant: “Yeah, I was probably about 10 or 12 years old. I was in a town called Duxbury Massachusetts, which is right outside of Plymouth. In Duxbury, there is a little memorial park [for] one of the founding colonists on the Mayflower named Myles Standish he was a military general of Plymouth Colony. The cellar hole where his house used to stand, you can kinda walk down this cliff face to this beach. I was kickin’ it there with my buddies, swimming [in the water] and such, and the sun started to set. A friend of mine started telling this freaky ghost story he had heard on the internet. It was like a song that was starting to haunt people. He got the the end of the story and then started playing the song. The sun sets, it’s dusk, we look up at the cliff face and there’s this like dark pilgrim-looking figure standing up there and we started freaking out. We all saw it. It looked like someone was standing at the top of the cliff. So we [run] up the stairs and get to our bikes, we start peddling down the streets. That’s my ghost story.”

Context

The Informant is a 21-year-old male college student who grew up in Boston Massachusetts. As a child, he would visit Plymouth to see family and frequently heard legends about the land, its bloody history, and spirits who came back to haunt it. The informant’s friends summoned a colonist spirit by playing a song. 

Analysis

The Informant’s story is an example of a memorate because this spiritual encounter was a first-hand experience. The Friend’s “freaky ghost story” about a song was a legend that the group then decided to test. What intrigued me about the story was where the test took place. There was a memorial site on the land for a brutal colonist military general, Myles Standish. The English general was infamous for the ruthless slaughter of Neponset Band Natives in The Massacre at Wessagusset. Standish lured Natives into a small building where he stabbed and hung them. The general even (my Informant shared this with me during a different conversation) stuck a well-respected Neponset Band Warrior’s head on a pike to scare the Natives. The dead bodies did not get a proper “send-off” into the afterlife. According to our class lecture, some cultures believe that the absence of a ritual or funeral ceremony for the dead means spirits cannot transition into the afterlife. Instead, the spirits are condemned to haunting the land where they died. Plymouth is not only haunted by spirits but by its history. The story of Myles Standish delegitimizes the land and calls into question rightful ownership. This supports Professor Thompson’s commentary on why Americans do not encourage or embrace the practice of folklore. 

Miracle During Birth and Visit from an Angel (Memorate)

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Informant (talking to daughter): “When you were born, they took you away to check you. They did a scan and they said there were calcifications in your brain. I was really sad and really worried, plus you were premature— you were born early— so you were really tiny, you needed oxygen and all different things. But anyway, when I was in my bed in the hospital, I was crying because I was just sad and I had been worried about you and I was sleeping. In the middle of the night, I felt a smooth whisper of wind go across the side of my left cheek and a Voice said, “Trust and believe.” It woke me up out of my sleep and I was like, ‘Oh my god, oh my god,’ so I rang for the nurse and I said ‘Was somebody here in my room?’ The nurse said ‘No, nobody came into your room we’ve been sitting out here.’ And I said, ’But I heard somebody I heard a voice, I felt them.’ The nurse said this was the cancer ward prior and you’re not the first person who has felt things on this floor. So somebody was there and somebody wanted me to be okay. The next day, they took you in for scans again and the calcifications were gone.”

Context

The Informant is a 48-year-old Black-American woman who is having a conversation with her daughter about the girl’s birth. This story is from the Informant’s personal experience. Informant believes this was an interaction with an angel, rather than a “ghost” or “spirit.”

Analysis

Similar to other memorates I collected, this spiritual experience took place when the Informant was sleeping. The dream space seems to be a common realm for spiritual contact and connection. The Informant’s experience also took place during a significant life event (birth) and time of uncertainty (medical complication). During emotional turmoil, the words “trust and believe” communicate faith and signify guidance. This may be a reason why the Informant classifies the Voice as an “angel” rather than a “ghost “or “spirit.” The reversal of fortune shortly after, when the baby’s medical complications magically resolve, could be another reason why the Informant perceives this as a divine interaction. 

Suburban Legend

Text: “When I was younger, I would play with the kids my age in the neighborhood …”

“How old?”

“This was in middle school, I think I was like 5th or 6th grade, and the neighbor kids were around that age too. But yeah we would always go to my one friend’s house who had a trampoline in his backyard that we all loved. I remember it was right up against this section of woods behind my friend’s house. We would hang out there a lot but especially when we were younger, we would never be there after it got dark because one day the older kids in the neighborhood told us that there was a guy that lived in the woods. The story went that he lived there before the neighborhood was put up, and that he was upset that people were like… intruding on his land or something, Im not sure exactly. But anyway they said he would roam around the edges of the woods with a mask and machete, watching people waiting for a moment to like pop out and attack some kid. This had become this kind of known thing among the kids in the neighborhood. I remember one day my friends and I decided we would explore in the woods to see if we could spot him. We found this abandoned house and convinced ourselves that was where the guy lived. We totally believed it after that, and any time we heard a noise from the woods it would always freak us out. 

Context: My informant is a friend of mine who grew up in the suburbs. He tells the story of a masked murder in the woods of his childhood neighborhood, which he heard from the older kids on his street. He says that while he doesn’t believe it now, it was an integral part of growing up in his neighborhood, and that the story still gets told today.

Analysis: While my informant’s story may have been a tactic to scare younger children, I think the legend of the masked man in the woods has some interesting themes. For example, the fact that the story is based on the woods behind a childhood home. While the story may have been originally formed as a way to scare younger children, it also teaches kids to be aware of their surroundings and stay alert for strangers. Additionally, the fact that he and his friends later found a house in the woods, whether or not it was really occupied by a masked murderer, hints to the possibility that the original story tellers had at one point explored the woods themselves and used the same discovery to form the story. This could show a kind of rite of passage for kids in that neighborhood to both confront their fear of exploring the woods while satisfying a childhood curiosity for the unknown. 

Haunted Dorm story

“In my freshman dorm there was this kind of ghost story that would float around. It was one of those things where you didn’t really believe in it, but it was still kind of freaky to hear and share it. 

“Did you share it with people?”

“Oh yeah, everyone in the building knew it, and I think most people shared it. The story was that a while back there was a kid who died in the building during finals week, I forget exactly how the story said it happened. But anyways it was said that afterwards, every semester during finals week you would hear these weird noises coming from places that didn’t make sense, like right outside your window on the fourth floor, or students would get intense chills in their rooms. Some would even say they would catch glimpses of the dead kid turning a corner at the end of the hall or stairway.”

“Do you believe it?”

“It depends, it’s possible a kid died, but no I never really believed in the supernatural parts of it. I think the sleep deprivation of finals week and maybe excitement around spreading the story makes people think they see things but I’m not really sure.

Context: This is a legend my friend heard in his dorm while he was a freshman in college. He says that this story was spread around the freshman housing, and the excitement of being in an unfamiliar place added to the vitality of the story his opinion.

Analysis: I agree with my friend that the context around where/when this story was spread added to the impact of the story. As my friend said, the fact that it was a freshman dorm and everyone there is new to the school and in a liminal period of their life transitioning into college added to the believability. Additionally, the timing of finals week adds to the overall stress of students, making them more prone to attribute the supernatural to the natural. Further, this time of stress for the students could be a motivator to take their minds of the stress of school and exams in any way they could, like distracting themselves with the fun of sharing spooky stories with their new friends. 

Ma Ho Saddha Jataka

Nationality: Burmese

Primary Language: Burmese

Other Language(s): English

Age: 19

Occupation: Student

Residence: Baltimore, WA

Performance Date: 03/19/2024

Y.Y. has been my friend since Kindergarten, and is also a Burmese person who is originally from Yangon, Myanmar. He recounts the time P, his grandma told him a story that is a well known legend back home. Their relationship is very close knit, as his grandma would regularly tell him Burmese legends and superstitions that she has learned about. 

“When I was younger, maybe 13 or 14, my grandma told me about a legend about the Ma Ho Saddha, a scholar prodigy that is well known in the Buddhist community. He is also someone that became Buddha after his next few lives. In this story, a mother is traveling with her baby. She wanted to take a bath so she stopped by a river and left the baby on the shore momentarily. In Buddhism, there’s a type of ogre or ‘ogress’ as you know, called Belu Ma. They can shapeshift and such and they also like to feed on humans. This one Belu Ma that disguised herself as an extremely beautiful woman, and tried to take the baby. She picked up the baby and was about to leave, but the mother saw her and started arguing. She exclaimed that the baby was her child and why she was taking him. In response to this, the Belu Ma claimed that the baby was her child, and they started arguing in front of many other people who started to look at the loud scene. The people told them to go to the Ma Ho Saddha so that he can decide whose baby it is and resolve the problem. They went to him and he said that they should play a game. He told them to pull the child on either end of his limbs, and whoever is able to take the baby will be known as the mother. The two women did as they were told, but of course the baby started crying since it hurts. The true mom started to feel bad and let the baby go. The Belu Ma started celebrating and said that she was the mother but surprisingly, the Ma Ho Saddha stopped her. He said that no, she isn’t because the true mother would have stopped pulling since she would care for her child. And so he gave the baby to the real mother. I think my grandma told me this story mostly because she loves to share these types of legends; she even has a  subscription to a magazine on Burmese superstitions and legends! I think this was one of the stories that showed how knowledgeable and smart the Ma Ho Saddha was so I took it as a lesson showing how Buddha’s past life as a scholar was very wise.”

I personally found this story kind of creepy but also really interesting because of its twist. I think it’s possible that this story was used to spread Buddhism and preach about how Buddha was a very good and wise figure even in his previous lives. Since it is perceived as a true story that he was a prodigy scholar in his past life, it would only encourage people to live by Buddha’s morals. The series of stories about Ma Ho Saddha’s intelligence continues to prove that. I think this story also solidified people’s beliefs in Belu and Belu Ma (demons) which in turn can enforce people to pray often out of fear for the Belu.