Category Archives: Tales /märchen

Stories which are not regarded as possibly true.

The Ironic Suicide

Nationality: American
Age: 21
Occupation: Accounting Student
Residence: Los Angeles, California
Performance Date: 3/26/2018
Primary Language: English
Language: Mandarin

Item (direct transcription):

There was a legend, a tale, about a man who tried to commit suicide. And he tried to use three methods. Ironically, the three methods ended up canceling each other, and he ended up living. Here goes the tale. The tale goes like this:

He’s standing right at the edge of a bridge. [The informant uses a water bottle as a prop. He pushes it to the edge of a counter.] So already, you already know his first method of committing suicide: he’s going to hang himself. So he tries to hang himself. That’s method one. Method two is he wants to blow his brains out, so he has a pistol right by his side. And then in his other hand, he has a poison capsule. So, he has to do it very carefully.

First he puts the poison capsule inside his mouth, swallows it, waits a while, then he gets out the gun, then he jumps! And then, he tries to pull the trigger, but then, the rope yanks his head, and he ended up pulling the gun out of his mouth, but he still pulled the trigger. [He acts out all of these events.] The gun, the bullet breaks the rope, so he ends up not hanging himself and he ends up not shooting himself in the head. And because the water is so not-too-distant away from him, he doesn’t die from hitting the water. Now, the water is salty—it’s sea water, and he ends up—Ugh! [vomit noise]—swallowing a great gallon, half a gallon of salt water. And then he ends up throwing up the poison capsule that was in his stomach. So he ends up canceling out all his suicide methods, by using his suicide methods!

Background Information:

The informant first heard this tale in high school. He has remembered it and enjoys telling it because his audiences tend to respond well to it. In his opinion, the story has a captivating hook and a hilarious conclusion.

He does not believe that the story was true, because he finds it “outlandish.” Interestingly, the gender of the story’s character seems to influence that belief. The informant claims that men tend to kill themselves using simple and direct methods (e.g. jumping from a height or using a gun), whereas women are more likely to use complex and unreliable methods of suicide (e.g. inhaling carbon monoxide or overdosing on sleeping pills). Since the story’s character is a man, the informant finds it unlikely that he would use three methods of suicide, rather than just one.

Contextual Information:

The informant performs the tale in order to entertain an audience. He enhances the performance by acting out the story as he tells it.

Analysis:

The story uses the common Western storytelling motif of threes (i.e. three suicide methods).

The One Soul

Nationality: American
Age: 21
Occupation: Engineering Student
Residence: Los Angeles, California
Performance Date: 3/26/2018
Primary Language: English
Language: Bengali

Item (direct transcription):

There is a man. He has a family. He has a wife, a child, a newborn child. He’s going to work. He’s driving down the highway. Unfortunately a drunk driver hits him and kills him. He dies. On the spot. Instantly. So…um, he leaves behind a widow and his child. The widow is obviously very sad. But the man goes up into…um [motioning upward with his hands]…whereever.

He meets God. And God, so he wakes up, he sees this being around him. He assumes it’s God. He says, “Are you God?” And he says, “Yes, I am God.” Um, and then he says, “Am I dead.” He says, “Yeah, you’re dead.” And he says, “So am I going to heaven or hell?” He says, “Well, uh, not yet.” And then, um, the man asks, “What’s going to happen to my wife and my child?” And God says, “Your wife, um, she’s going to act very sad for a while, but… deep down she’s actually happy, because she’s actually been having an affair with somebody else, and this actually works out very well for her. [Laughs.] And your child will grow up having a very idyllic view of you. Um, he’ll think you were the perfect father, because you were never around. [Laughs again.] So that’s going to work out very well for him, too. But you on the other hand, you’re not going to heaven or hell.”

So then the man asks, “So what going to happen to me? Where am I gonna go?” And then God says, “You are going to be reborn as, uh… a village girl in China in the sixth century.” And this man says, “But wait! Isn’t it the twenty-first century? I died in 2018. What’s happening? Am I going back in time?” “Yes, exactly, you’re going back in time.” So the man says, “Wait, wait, wait. If I’m being reborn back in time, so how many, like, distinct souls are actually living on Earth right now?” And God says, “There’s only one soul on Earth, and it’s been you this whole time.” And the man says, “Wait, so you’re telling me that I was Adolf Hitler?” And God says, “Yes, you were Adolf Hitler. And all the Jews that he killed.” [Laughs.]

And, um, so yeah. He was basically everybody on Earth. So this obviously a very giant, big revelation to him. The man is just mind-blown and he asks, um, “So what’s the meaning of all this? Why did you create a planet? Why do I even exist?” And God says, “Um, well, I can tell you this because when you wake up as a newborn, you’re not gonna remember anything, so it doesn’t matter what I tell you. So, um, I created this world because, um, this, uh, this world is basically an egg. And you are one of me. You are basically just growing inside this egg. And one day, when you’re mature enough, you will become one of me. And when you do, you will break out of the shell of the egg and you will take your place among us.”

And then he wakes up as the village girl in China in the eighth century.

Background Information:

The informant read this tale on Quora, an online question-and-answer site. He liked the story because it “made [him] think.”

He says that the story is “as believable as any religion,” and he believes that the person who posted on Quora probably made it up himself or herself.

Contextual Information:

The informant performs the tale in order to provoke a philosophical debate. Since he claims the story is not true, yet the metaphysics presented in the story cannot be disproved, he uses it as a way of presenting agnostic beliefs.

Analysis:

This tale interesting in how it combines elements of various, usually unconnected mythologies. This eclecticism is probably by design, considering the tale’s purpose of revealing the folly of religion. At first, the story seems to be using a Abrahamic, monotheistic context, then the story later reveals a polytheistic context. The story also incorporates the concept of a “world egg,” which appears in Egyptian, Hindu, Zoroastrian, Finnish, and Chinese mythologies, among others.

See “Easter Eggs” (1967) by Venetia Newall, for more information on the place of eggs in mythology.

Poop Problems

Nationality: American
Age: 21
Occupation: Accounting Student
Residence: Los Angeles, California
Performance Date: 3/26/2018
Primary Language: English
Language: Mandarin

Item (direct transcription):

So, what happens is… a guy… he’s having some… poop problems. Okay? He goes to the doctor and he says, “Doctor, there’s something wrong. What happens is, when I eat an apple I literally poop out the apple I just ate. Like, whole, you know. Like, it’s a frickin’ apple, you know what I mean? I eat a doughnut, it’s still a doughnut. Okay? I eat a—You get what I mean, Doc?!”

The doctor’s like, “So, yeah, uhh, what’s the problem?”

He’s like, “I can’t poop! Think about it: I eat food and it just goes straight out, whole!”

So the doctor’s like, “Have you considered just eating poo?”

Background Information:

The informant first heard this joke from a friend in 6th grade.

Contextual Information:

Interestingly, the informant doesn’t believe that the joke would only be appropriate to tell between children. On the contrary, he believes that this joke is an example of cross-generational “toilet humor.” When he was younger, he enjoyed sharing this type of joke with his father.

Analysis:

The joke has the qualities of a typical children’s joke focusing on obscenity play and absurdity. Human excrement is often a good topic for children’s humor, since it lends itself to these categories.

Also, the joke is genuinely rather witty.

The Moon Festival Story

Nationality: American
Age: 21
Occupation: Accounting Student
Residence: Los Angeles, California
Performance Date: 3/26/2018
Primary Language: English
Language: Mandarin

Item (direct transcription):

So a long time ago… long, long time ago… very long time ago… there were twelve suns. When I say “suns,” I mean S-U-N-S, not S-O-N-S. So there were twelve glaringly hot suns a long time ago. So it was very hard to grow things for farmers. They were like, “Shoot, it’s so hot, we can’t grow anything.” So a fierce warrior came amongst them and then shot down eleven of those suns. With the eleven suns gone, he left one sun up there, so now there was only one sun. So you think that’s the end of the story, but it’s not the end of the story!

The fierce warrior was very loved by the people, because now they could grow food, and now people could live not-so-miserable lives. So they made him king. But that started a very bad regime. He was a very bad king. Because he could do anything. And then, one day—he had a girlfriend—and he was chatting with his girlfriend and was like, “You know, I wanna live forever.” So he asked his prime minister: “Find me the medicine that makes me live forever.” So the prime minister knew he had to find it, or else he would die.

So he goes and he scourges and he finds the medicine. It’s two pills. He goes back to the king, and he says, “Okay, here’s how it works. There’s two pills. If you eat one pill, you live forever, but if you eat two pills, you float to the moon.” And the king’s like, “Sounds good. You know, I could eat this pill now, but for the sake of the story, I won’t.” So then he goes to bed.

So he goes to bed, and his girlfriend overhears about these two pills and their qualities. And she knew in that moment that she could not let this man live forever, because there’ll be a bad king that lives forever. So she does the unspeakable. She eats two of the pills—stuffs them into her mouth—and immediately she starts floating towards the window. Before she left, she knew she needed company as she went to the moon, [clap] so she grabbed a bunny, and they floated to the sky. So the king started looking, like, “Where are you going?” And she said [in fading voice], “Try to be a good king.” And then the king’s girlfriend floated to the moon, and legend has it—because she lived forever—she’s still on the moon… with her bunny. And the king heard his girlfriend’s words and decided: “You know what? I should be a good king.” And that’s the end of the story.

Background Information:

The informant was taught this story by his “elders” in the Chinese community. He has heard the story many times from many different people.

The informant made it clear that he does not believe the story is true, and that he does not think the people who told it to him believed it was true. Thus, though it resembles a legend, to this informant the story is in fact a tale.

Interestingly, the informant does not believe that there is any meaning or moral to the story. When his elders taught him the story, it was presented as important not due to its truthfulness or meaning, but due to its ancientness. For that reason, he believes that the story is told simply for the sake of perpetuating a tradition from generation to generation.

Contextual Information:

This story is only told on the day of the Chinese Moon Festival, ostensibly to honor the king’s girlfriend’s sacrifice.

Analysis:

The tale serves as an interesting example of how a story can have different significances to different people at different times. Presumably, this story was at one time believed to be true or at least plausible. It is likely that some active and passive bearers of the story somewhere in the world still believe that it is true. For them, the story is a legend, or perhaps even a myth. However, due to the context in which the story was related to the informant, for him it is merely a tale.

Ghostly Body Press

Nationality: Taiwanese American
Age: 53
Occupation: Engineer
Residence: San Marino, CA
Performance Date: 3/30/18
Primary Language: English
Language: Mandarin (Chinese)

Interview:

“There was an Airbnb, short term rental house, in Hengchun where a grad student went there, and geology grad students frequently lived in this house to do their field study, and a few of them where they had feelings of pressure from ghosts.   Some felt like there were bodies laying on them, and they couldn’t move.  And it wasn’t just one.”

 

“And I had that experience before, where I couldn’t move but I was awake.  I figured it was something in my brain that my body hadn’t woken up yet but couldn’t move.  But it wasn’t the same experience.  It was rumors and stories from fellow grad students. In Taiwan it was called gui ya shen (ghost press body).”

 

Background:

According to my father, this was a common urban legend among the geology grad students.  This legend was told to him by upper classmen who also explained there was no known reason why the house was haunted. “Gui ya shen” is the term in Chinese culture that means sleep paralysis.  While my father has had his experience of sleep paralysis before, it seemed the case with the Airbnb, witnesses had felt like it was body pressure on them rather than not being able to move after falling asleep.

Analysis:

I thought the story was intriguing, because the experiences that had taken place were not explained easily with scientific knowledge.  While sleep paralysis requires that the victim was sleeping before it occurred, some reports of these events occurred for students while they were doing everyday tasks.   While the term “gui ya shen” does apply for sleep paralysis in Chinese culture, the symptoms that are listed do not match with the witness accounts from this Airbnb.