Category Archives: Tales /märchen

Stories which are not regarded as possibly true.

The Lady of The Lake

‘ In the late 1800s, in the Adirondacks in upstate New York, there were what were called great Adirondack camps which were these big, elaborate, retreat type of things for wealthy families from New York City and they would spend a few months here during the summers. In one of these families at the campsites, there was a woman who went out onto Lake Placid to go kayaking. Legend has it that she never came back, and the family never found her or solved the mystery of where she was. But, in the late 1900s, at the base of Pulpit Rock, which is now a cliff jumping site, it is also the deepest part of Lake Placid, a team of divers were exploring this area. In the gloom of Lake Placid, there’s no sunlight that reaches the bottom in this part. It was completely dark, and the pair of divers had reached the bottom and found what seemed to be a mannequin… until they realized, there was a chain and anchor strapped to the “mannequin’s” legs, making them aware that this was in fact a real person. At the time, they didn’t know this was the woman who went kayaking decades before and never returned. But they found this woman at the bottom of Pulpit Rock… so, one of the divers went back up to the boat to call for help while the other stayed behind to keep the location of the body. Essentially, because there was no sunlight, and the mineral content of the water at that depth and temperature was just right, such that the skin was preserved almost perfectly, looking like a wax sculpture… But it freaked out the second diver so much that he decided to bring the body back to the surface because he didn’t want to stay there in the dark with this horrifying figure. When he starts bringing the woman up to the surface, the sunlight coming in, the temperature of the water growing warmer, and the changing mineral content caused her body to melt away in his arms… it disintegrates and falls apart. It fades into nothingness right in his hands. So now, in today’s world, when you are climbing out of the lake after cliff jumping, many people say they can feel the lady of the lake grabbing at their feet as they step onto their boats.’ – NZ

This story was told to NZ by his father, during their first family trip to his favorite place on earth, Lake Placid. He and his family went to their cottage up in the Adirondack Mountains and decided to spend their summer day cliff jumping at Pulpit Rock. As they hiked towards the rock his dad shared with him and his brother this legend of the Lady of the Lake. As a little boy, he was horrified of this ghost that lives beneath the water, but also curious as to wether or not he would feel the Lady of the Lake pulling at his ankles when he got back onto his boat. His curiosity got the best of him and nothing could hold him back from cliff jumping. Even to this day, every time NZ goes back he jumps in to try and feel the Lady of the Lake grabbing at him as he escapes the cold water. Now, whenever he takes his friends or family to this spot, he never fails to share and pass this legend onto them to add to their folklore repertoire.

I had never heard of this specific legend, but I have heard many similar ones in the area I grew up in. This piece of folklore offers a legendary tale, a ghost story meant to capture the imagination of those who heard it, a “enter if you dare” tale. It also follows the supernatural elements read in many folklore myths and legends, something that while you can’t prove that it exists, its been told and passed down so many times, there is no reason not to believe it. This legend allows for the local superstition to become tradition and a ritual storytelling experience for those who visit and families who are raised in this area. This story originated as an oral piece of folklore, one can imagine that it was even acted out around campfires in Lake Placid, in which performance is a key aspect of folklore. NZ also noted that he has heard multiple variations of this tale, as when they are passed down orally, they are often changed or even misremembered, thus altering the story for those who continue to share it. The Adirondacks have many myths and legends, and this tale only adds to the mysterious environment the Adirondacks have to many.

La Llorona

Context: 

My informant is a sibling of a friend.

La Llorona (also known as the weeping woman) is a very old legend that is a part of Mexican culture.

He said that “she is a woman who caught her husband cheating on her and in anger and hysteria decided to drown her children in the village river. After realizing what she did, she felt immense guilt and killed herself. Her ghost appears in a long, white dress that’s wet and she lingers around rivers or passes by the roads at night, crying for her children to return by saying, “Ay, mis hijos!” or “Oh, my children!” If you hear her cries it’s said that death awaits you or if you’re a child she will come steal you away”

He first heard this story as a child from his dad. He said “Children typically get told it (in a less graphic way) as a means to behave, but my father just told it to me as a regular scary story because I would ask him to tell me stories like that”. Like previously mentioned, he thinks it’s just a scare tactic to make children behave or to keep them safe away from rivers and lakes if they were to sneak off to play.

He also mentioned that he has a connection to this story because he is ethnically Mexican and that his dad had passed down this very popular story that’s been told for many years in Mexican culture. He does not believe in La Llorona but as a child he was scared of her.

Analysis:

La Llorona is a popular legend in Mexican culture. The legend of La Llorona is of a woman who, out of anger and sorrow, kills her own children. This story shows the message of guilt and unresolved anger. The woman takes out her own misery onto the innocent, and her ghost still haunts the earth with this heavy burden. This story could resonate to a lot of people, as some may not find peace in their past sorrows and past mistakes in their lives. La Llorona may seem to serve as a message to people who do not know how to support themselves after tragedy or something traumatic. It could also be to think about your actions and the consequences. La Llorona regrets what she has done with her children, as a result she is eternally punished by never being able to see her children again.

As a ghost, La Llorona haunts places that are similar to where her children drowned. She searches for them despite being the one to have killed them. The fear that strikes from her story is that she will take children. I think that this part of her story also comes across as a message to be careful of strangers.

To not see the soul

Nationality: Ethiopian/Italian

Primary Language: English

Age: 21

Occupation: Student

Residence: Los Angeles

Date: 2/20/2024

Text: “In Ethiopian culture, people are generally wary of foreigners and the lower class, believing many of them invoking the power of buda or demons to curse others. As such it is rude for these people to sustain eye contact, and they generally take effort to sustain eye contact with them as an attempt to curse them. They also believe these demon-invoking people to be capable of changing into hyenas and thus also avoid making eye contact with wild hyenas”

Context: This was told to him at a young age by his family and is a cultural aspect with spiritual components. He clarifies though that it is not something he participates in and personally believes in. Especially with the fact that he was mainly raised in the United States and it is not a social norm that is practiced.

 Analysis: This was an example of how heavily they believe in signs of misfortune and curses, even on a smaller scale not involving magic. I was able to draw parallels between the “tabooistic” belief of the evil eye, that by holding eye contact they can be inflicted with misfortune. Both stem from glaring and believe that one who is jealous, or in this case lower in stationary, they can evoke a curse to lessen your fortune.

The Lady in Flats

Nationality: American

Primary Language: English

Age: 51

Occupation: Chief Marketing Officer

Residence: Driggs, Idaho

Performance Date: November 24, 2023

Text:

“I was staying at this friend of a friend’s house near Georgetown, one of those little townhouses or whatever that have the entrances kind of underground, ya know? I thought it was a little weird, didn’t really know the people that well, but I had been driving for so long and it was so late, just had to get to bed. Whatever. The people weren’t staying there at the time, so it was just me in this townhouse. The whole thing was about three stories, and the layout was kind of funky. You have to kind of walk down from the street into the basement, and then walk up another set of stairs from there to get to the main floor and then again to the second. I ended up crashing in one of the guest rooms on that first floor, kind of tucked away into the corner of the building, and it was all hardwood. Like the whole place was all hardwood. Super loud to walk on, love it. Anyways. Went to bed that night, and sometime in the early morning, like 2 or 3, woke up to that same super loud footsteps on the hardwood. Well I was kind of awake, but not really awake. Like I couldn’t move at all, and I was looking through my eyelids and still seeing everything somehow. So I heard these shoes on the floor, and I look up and there’s this woman, just walking all around the bed in a circuit. And she had on these flats, and this kind of green looking pants suit, just clacking along the floor, around the bed, through the wall back behind the headboard, then back again on the other side. Fully formed too, she looked, like, full. Not wispy or ghostly at all. And she was walking this super fat golden retriever on a leash, just lapping around the bed. And the flats just kept slapping against the hardwood floor, super loud, and I couldn’t really get up at all, and I’m kind of starting to freak out. Cause I’m thinking, how did this person get in, middle of DC, only one lock on the door, random stranger in the house, nothing I can do, and for some reason they can magically walk through walls. After a while of her just kind of walking around in this little green pantsuit and these flats with her dog, she just sort of disappeared. Then I kind of drifted back to sleep eventually, got up as early as I could the next day and hightailed it out of there.”

Context:

AM is a 51 year old mother from a small town in central Connecticut. She was visiting her brother in the Georgetown Hospital in Washington DC when she experienced the events that she described above. At first skeptical of whether or not she had been visited by a paranormal entity, she became convinced entirely that the Lady in Flats was a ghost, upon finding no trace that anyone had been in the house, not even a single strand of dog hair or a scrape on the hardwood floors.

Analysis:

While AM may have been slightly inclined to believe in the supernatural before her experience in the D.C. Townhouse, I find that her encounter solidified her belief entirely. What I found to be particularly interesting is the description of the apparition as entirely solid, dissimilar from the usual physical characteristics that are ascribed to ghosts in the 21st century, such as translucence or appearing as a pale shade. While perhaps not exactly reminiscent of the modern day ghost, AM’s ghost did exhibit at least some of the physical qualities that were seen in a number of Japanese stories on the supernatural from the previous millennia, that same solidness described in the story. Another curious aspect of the story that appealed to me was the apparent lack of purpose of the ghost, neither malicious or helpful, rather, it was simply present. Furthermore, the liminal state of sleep paralysis lends itself as a perfect opportunity to experience the supernatural, a classic motif found throughout the majority of ghost stories.

The Most Haunted House In Oregon

Nationality: American

Primary Language: English

Age: 25

Occupation: Self-Employed

Residence: Jupiter, FL

Performance Date: November 11, 2023

Text:

“After I left Florida, I started just driving all over the country, reconnecting with all my old friends that I hadn’t seen in so long. I was actually all the way up in Canada at one point, before heading back down into the States through to Seattle for a bit. Anyways, I ended up with one of my friends from high school in Oregon. I let her book the AirBnB that we were going to stay at that night, and for whatever reason, she only looked at the availability without checking any of the reviews before she booked it. Definitely a mistake, will not be doing that again. So she books it, we’re driving, it’s super late at night, we’re both exhausted, get to the house, and immediately vibes are just off. The whole time we were driving up there the area was just weird, something just did not feel right at all. The house itself was this really big old timey inn, straight out of the colonial era. We walk in and this place is just deserted, like nobody there at all, no one working the front desk for check in. After ringing the bell a couple of times the guy comes and checks us in or whatever, and starts leading us up towards our room down this super long hallway. Super weird thing, there were all of these tables in the hallways that were just lined with these big containers of candy, and all kinds too. Naturally we just start munching on some sour strings, and the guy turns back at us, telling us not to eat any of the candy, that it’s there to appease the spirits. Jokingly, my friend asks him if the house was haunted or something, cause she thought he was trying to mess with us or something. He gave her the biggest ‘are you stupid’ look I’ve ever seen, and said ‘Only the most haunted house in Oregon’, then kept walking down the hallway. We both kind of looked at each other, looked back at him, and immediately started looking this place up on our phones. Sure enough, it was literally the most haunted AirBnB in all of Oregon according to all these reviews we read. It’s too late to try and find somewhere else to stay for the night, so we just decide to stick it out and hope that whatever ghosts might be there just leave us alone. I think I slept maybe like two hours that whole night. The whole time there were all of these banging and groaning sounds coming from all over the place like people were fighting, but we were literally the only guests there that night. And I could feel the floorboards all around the bend like bending, there were all these footstep noises throughout the whole thing, I even felt a hand running up and down my leg at one point. Same thing happened to my friend except it was on her face. It never really felt dangerous or malicious, but definitely weird. Super creepy, we ended up checking out as early as possible that next morning, haven’t been back to Oregon since.”

Context:

CM is a 25 year old woman who has recently embarked upon a continental road trip to explore and reconnect with old friends. While believing in the supernatural and the powers that they may (or may not) hold, CM has held a decidedly wary stance against haunting ghosts, preferring to hear or read about them rather than experience them firsthand. This story was told only a handful of weeks after the initial events transpired, allowing for a fresh telling undisturbed by the passing of time.

Analysis:

Part of me is curious as to whether or not there was really a ghost there at all, if it was a trick the CM’s mind played on her. There were no ghosts or paranormal activities before she learned that the house was haunted, yet suddenly after learning about all of the spirits said to linger around the house, she began experiencing some of the classic tropes of a haunted house. There were certainly a significant amount of classic motifs of traditional ghost stories in CM’s retelling, namely the sharp noises in the middle of the night and the creaking of the floorboards around the bed, which may help alleviate some of my suspicions. What I found to be particularly interesting was the feeling of being in actual contact with a paranormal entity, that whatever it may have been broke the physical barrier. While in some cultures the spirits of the restless dead (or undead) are ethereal, in a significant amount of others the ghosts of those who have passed can most certainly maintain a sense of corporealness that is absence in most modern day ideologies of ghosts. While a significant amount of ghost stories may involve spirits interacting with the physical plain by moving objects or perhaps a piece of furniture, there are perhaps only a select few where the spirit will make physical contact with a person.