Category Archives: Legends

Narratives about belief.

Urban Legend- Herobrine in Minecraft

Nationality: White
Age: 20
Occupation: College Student
Residence: Los Angeles, CA
Primary Language: English

Story:

Minecraft players have talked about this figure Herobrine, who basically looks like the character Steve but without eyeballs, for a few years. You summon Herobrine by making an altar our of gold, nether, and torches. It’s less common to see Herobrine himself – although some players have claimed to – but you can tell he’s been in an area in a number of ways. For example, the trees might have no leaves, you might see a random 2×2 tunnel, something you built could be on fire, he might put up signs with threatening messages … those are a few things that players have linked to him. Some people claim to have seen him even without spawning him using the altar; there are some blurry screenshots circulating online as proof, but it’s been debated whether those are edited or not. It’s most likely that if he’s real, he’s a glitch, based on the way he acts. But some people have started a rumor that Herobrine is the dead brother of Notch [the founder of Minecraft].

Context:

The informant, BN, is my classmate at USC. He is an avid Minecraft player, and came across this legend through posts on Reddit and YouTube related to the game.

Analysis:

Personally, I think Herobrine is real. Although I’ve never seen the ominous character himself, I have tried to spawn him in using the gold/nether altar – and soon thereafter I saw leafless trees, as well as a sign in front of my house in the game, saying “You will burn.”

The development and spread of the Herobrine legend shows the nature of the Minecraft community. The square-based universe of Minecraft is one adjacent to our real world, so it has its own folklore and urban legends. Players’ thoughts on whether Herobrine is real or not stem from their personal experiences with the game, as well as the YouTube and Twitch content they consume of it. This is similar to how many people’s belief in ghosts comes from their own perceived encounters with one, or convincing video content that someone else has interacted with/seen one. Plus, most Minecraft players belong to Gen Z and grew up with the game. This demographic was in their early teens when the Herobrine legend first originated and gained traction. This young age group is significantly more likely to believe a story about the paranormal, allowing the legend to take off and maintain relevance.

Hole in the Fence

CONTEXT: PK is a student who previously attended USC. This is a “scary story” of an
unexplained occurrence that happened before he was a student. When he moved into the location at which it occurred, he was told this story by a previous resident. PK views this story as entirely true and a staple of USC folklore. He believes the origin of the story to be from about half a decade before he left and heard this story from a past housemate who lived with someone who lived in the house at the assumed time of the story.

TEXT:
Back in the days of yore… Well, long, long, long ago in the history of USC, where students have lived for many, many years in a dwelling on Orchard Avenue, there was a strange occurrence. Since the house abutted an apartment building to the back there was a tall – twelve-foot-tall – chain-linked fence between the two properties. One ancient guy, supposedly, legend says, cut a hole in the fence for easier egress in the event of a fire, or other emergency. And, as soon as the property manager found out, they came in and they called a construction company, and they closed up the hole with zip ties. And life went on as normal, and two weeks later, they received another call, the property manager, that there was another hole in the fence. And they started to talk to the house, like, “Are you guys cutting a hole in the fence? Like, what’s going on?” And
they denied it because at first, they didn’t know what he was talking about. And so, this time they came back in with chain link, and they put chain links together to hold the fence together, and they put another layer of fence over it – the old fence – to be doubly as thick. You know, life went on as normal, and continued, and nothing out of the ordinary until one day when the electrician came, they found another hole in the back of the fence. And so, this time the property manager had to know, and they said, “You know, this is ridiculous. We don’t have any evidence that you guys are cutting a hole in the back of the fence but if this is you, you have to stop it.” And so, this time they put a metal cage over the fence. They put bars all the way over the fence, a half inch thick, steel bars going all the way across. And they thought that they solved it, they thought, “There’s no way they’re going to cut through this. This is ridiculous.” Sure enough, two weeks later, again, just like clockwork, there was a huge hole cut in the bars. It was actually that this time they were bent as if some giant baboon had ripped apart the half
inch steel bars. So, the property manager was like, “this is ridiculous.” And so, they put in a camera. They were like “We’re going to catch whoever is doing this.” They put in the camera, they replaced the metal bars, and this time they poured a one-foot-wide section of concrete, for the entire 30-foot-long property line, ten feet tall. And two weeks later, just again, nothing on the camera, and there was a hole blasted through the concrete, as if by dynamite, and that hole is still there to this day. You know, the obvious thought was that it was done by the guy who originally cut the hole in the fence, but there were twelve people living in the house at the time and nobody ever reported hearing a sound that would go with breaking a whole huge hole through concrete. The story has just been passed down generation to generation.
I think IM, who lived there many years ago, whispered the story to me one night.

ANALYSIS: This story seems to have been told to both entertain a new resident, and maybe make him a little uneasy in a new environment. New places often hold secrets that a new resident may not know about, and this story, and the way in which it was told capitalize on that feeling of uncertainty. It is not a particularly scary story, but it follows the structure of a scary story or urban legend, providing an explanation for a visible part of the house (the hole in the concrete). The word choice, drawing attention to how long ago it was supposed to occur, the strength of the barriers, and the reference to a creature like a baboon, are all comical in this situation, though an ancient place with a strong, unseen creature, seems more like the set up to a scary story. No one has been able to confirm any part of this story, other than that the hole is there. The use of dialogue is interesting, in light of this, because it is the narrator’s own
interpretation of how that conversation would probably go.

The Hook (Legend)

Nationality: American
Age: 18
Residence: Orinda, California
Performance Date: 4/2/23
Primary Language: English

Original Text: “It was my brothers friends and my friends in their basement and we would all have a sleepover, we would just put a ton of blankets on the floor and sleep down there…8 or 7 boys, and we would all tell ghost stories. I feel like the one classic story which was more of a joke because everyone would say it and knew it, was “The Hook”: This couple was sitting in a parked car listening to the radio and then it was like ‘Breaking News! A man has escaped from the insane asylum and is recognizable by his hook’. They got freaked out and the girl was like freaking out and the dude was scared. And then they hear a hook scratching against the car, and then the hook man kills them.” 

Context: The informant is 18 and grew up his whole life in the East Bay Area of Northern California, specifically Orinda, California. He was mainly friends with his older brother’s friends (a year older), so the boys he hung out with were generally slightly older than him. The informant says he was 9 or 10 when he heard this story. He says that the story was used as a running joke to scare each other by saying something like “It’s The Hook!” while everyone was trying to sleep — a “bonding joke”

Analysis: While this legendary hook man may seem like a silly kids story, it reveals a lot about the little 9-11 year old boys that were telling it. As the informant stated, it was a “bonding” joke/story that the whole group of boys knew, indicating their friendship and shared culture. If you don’t know the story, people can identify that you obviously aren’t in the group, which is one of the main draws of having folk stories like these. The element of a hook hand also could indicate a fascination with mutilation and harm, which young boys like these have not been exposed to in the same way that adults have. There is a sense of mystery and unknown that goes along with having a hand for a hook because the thought of that occurring to these boys is pretty unfathomable. The mention of a car and radio indicates that this version of the legend came about terminus post quem (or time after) when the cars with radios were widespread.

Boogeyman in the Basement (Legend)

Nationality: American
Age: college student
Residence: Los Angeles, California
Performance Date: 4/2/23
Primary Language: English

Original Text: “Have you heard people be like ‘Oh watch out for the Boogeyman!’ or whatever? Yeah, I feel like that is a very common legend, but on my dad’s side of the family, they live in like Nowheresville, Michigan [informant made a joke but the actual place is Utica, Michigan] they were always like ‘Oh don’t go down in the basement, the Boogeyman is there right now!’ like, ‘Go down there tomorrow’. And they would do this with just about anything. They have a farm so they would be like ‘Don’t go in the barn, the Boogeyman is there!’ or something. It’s something I took very seriously, and if someone told me about the Boogeyman in the context of my hometown in Florida I would be like ‘Oh that’s not real’ but then there in Michigan I was like ‘Oh this is real, it exists here, in my uncle’s basement’. I feel like in my head I had a whole visualization of what this guy looked like and what he was doing, and when people would tell me the Boogeyman was around I would sit there for like an hour in my seat and be like ‘Oh my Lord the Boogeyman is coming! He’s gonna get us!’. And I think this was around when I was like 4ish years old, but it went on for a while until I got to the point where I was like ‘Nah there ain’t no Boogeyman, why can’t I go down in the basement?’ The narrative my family sold me around it was like ‘He’s gonna get you cuz he knows who we are and we are friends, but he doesn’t know you so’.”

Context: The informant is a college student at the University of Southern California. The informant is from Florida but has family in Michigan. She describes that the Boogeyman was used by her uncle’s family to deter her from something or not allow her to be in a space the adults did not want her in. All the adults were in on the story.

Analysis: As the informant stated, the Boogeyman was a figure used by the adults in her family to keep her out of spaces she wasn’t allowed in, like the basement. Because the story of the Boogeyman was coming from an adult audience that the informant trusted, it’s likely that the story carried more legitimacy, pointing as to why it had such an effect on her. The informant also reveals how she was convinced the Boogeyman could only exist on her farm in Michigan and not in her larger hometown in Florida. A rural area with lots of open space and a lack of population compared to her hometown in Florida potentially was a strange shift for the informant and caused her to be wary of the unknown she faced. In this case, it would be plausible for a creature like the Boogeyman to be hiding in a place not familiar to her. The separation between the knowledge of the Boogeyman between the informant as a child and her adult family also indicates the hierarchy and age politics that exist between the two groups. Only adults would understand the subtext behind the “Boogeyman”, including them in that folk group.

Old Man Made Of Wax (Local Legend from Orinda, CA)

Nationality: American
Age: 18
Residence: Orinda, CA
Performance Date: 4/2/23
Primary Language: English

Original Text: “So at my local pool…Orinda Park Pool it was called, OPP. At the pool we would have ghost story night and we would tell the lore of the pool and ghost stories about it and the surrounding area and stuff. And so it used to be a big swimming hole, the pool, like a big lake and then they turned it into like a big pool for swimming and stuff. So there was like this red house within the closed community, right next to the pool and up the hill. People said there was an old man that lived there that was made of wax. And then they told the story of a kid who went in and the old man made of wax like yelled at him and told him to leave and never come back. So one time we went to the house to see if there was anyone there after swim practice when I was like 8 or something with my brothers friends, and we couldn’t get in cuz it was locked, but we looked through the window, but we couldn’t find anything. But we still told all our friends back at the pool we saw the man when we didn’t cuz it was funny.” 

Context: The informant would take lessons and swim at this pool every summer when he was a kid. He said it was super easy to walk from his house to the pool, and he even saw the red house the wax man lived in every day when going to school. He saw with his brother’s friends, and they were the first to introduce him to the story of the wax man around 8 years old. The informant said that the quest to find the wax man made the legendary to the younger kids at the pool, and was a fun bonding experience for their friend group.

Analysis: In this legend, we can see that because children are so removed from old age and dying, they might fear and associate old people with the unknown of death and the supernatural. Here, the informant and his friends have applied the supernatural trait of being made of wax to the scary old man. I would like to point out an interesting connection between the man being made of wax and this story circulating the hot summer at a pool. Perhaps there was a sense that the man had to stay in his red house because he would melt in the sun. The fact that this is a legend and a memorate allowed the informants friend group to form a bond around this particular version of the story. This becomes part of the groups folklore and distinguishes them from the younger kids at the pool.