Category Archives: Rituals, festivals, holidays

Conversations with Spirits during Dreams (Memorate)

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Collector: “Have you ever been contacted by a spirit?” 

Informant: “With loved ones that I have lost, I have had experiences with them partially in the physical world and a lot in the metaphysical slash dream world. When our Nana died, I started having dreams about her and they felt immensely real. I’ll still have some every now and again. I’ve had experiences with my father’s grandfather who passed away. Immediately after he passed away, he came to me in a dream and told me things about myself, gifts that I had, and I felt like he was very at peace with his death. I only experienced him once, same with my great-grandmother. Two days prior to her physical death.” 

Collector: “What made this experience feel different than other dreams, your normal dreams?” 

Informant: “In these dreams, I felt paralyzed like another force was holding on to me. Almost like my soul was in a different place and then needed time to get back to my body. I found myself lying in bed. I heard the sound of static like a television channel. It grew louder. I grew more uneasy. My body felt celestial is the best way to put it.” 

Context

The Informant is a 26-year-old man. He’s had several spiritual interactions through intense dreams and episodes of sleep paralysis. Each interaction was with a deceased family member after or nearly before their time of passing. The Informant expressed he could have full-length conversations with the dead through this medium. 

Analysis

I found it interesting that the Informant’s spiritual interactions took place during vivid dreams. This reminded me of the article, “Ghostly Possession and Real Estate: The Dead in Contemporary Estonian Folklore” when the author Ülo Valk explains that, “visual and auditory experiences with spirits can also occur in dreamlike states.” (Valk 34) In this dream space, both parties could say their peace. These encounters also happened near the Spirit’s time of death. This could be interpreted as the Spirit “finishing business” with loved ones before moving on to the afterlife. Valk also notes that spiritual interactions commonly occur in transition periods where there are feelings of, “disorientation, uncertainty, discontinuity, [and] unrootedness.” (Valk 35) Those emotions are common during grief. For the Informant, these spiritual conversations helped both parties to emotionally move forward and find peace in their respective realms. 

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. 

Undie Run at Chapman University (College Traditions)

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Collector: “Do you participate in any specific rituals or festivals?”

Informant: “At Chapman, we have Undie Run the Wednesday night before finals week. Everyone meets up in the Piazza in like, just underwear or a bathing suit, like no clothes. I think it’s at like 12 o’clock, or 10– I don’t know I didn’t do it last semester—and everyone just runs around campus and the outskirts, and in the circle. It’s just Chapman students and there’s some faculty to supervise.”

Collector: “Why does this tradition take place?”

Informant: “To get drunk and let loose before finals. People drink at a pregame, not during the run.” 

Context

The informant is a female undergraduate student at Chapman University. The Piazza is a circular courtyard at the center of campus where many students gather for special events.

Analysis

This college tradition provides insight into American student culture and what they define as “letting go”– Indulging in alcohol, stripping into undergarments, and doing wild activities with comrades. The practice of the tradition signifies that these expressions are not appropriate for everyday life. This activity takes place at Midnight, a liminal time between day and night, almost like a magic hour where students don’t have to present themselves as polished and collegiate. A rebellious version of themselves can run wild at night but not in the day.

Festival of Lights in Downtown Riverside California

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Collector: “Did you participate in any specific rituals or festivals growing up?”

Informant: “I grew up attending the Festival of Lights in Downtown Riverside, California. It’s always around Christmas time. They cover the entire downtown city in Christmas lights. It’s beautiful. There are musicians, usually solo artists, that come out they’ll put a bucket right next to them to collect tips. There’s a guy who brings his dog with him every year while he plays banjo. There’s a lot of different vendors, like there’s one specific hot cocoa stand that’s usually there. I forget the name. Some people sell glow stick toys to kids. The crowd is mostly families and couples.”

Collector: “Is there a main ceremony or is it just seeing lights?”

Informant: “There is like a main ceremony where they turn all the lights on. You know, the first night that’s when it’s the most crowded. Everybody goes downtown and they wait for them to turn on the lights.”

Context

The informant is a twenty-year-old male from Riverside California. 

Analysis

I found the informant’s description of the Festival of Lights interesting, as I also grew up in Riverside but rarely participated in this downtown tradition. The Informant spoke fondly of the festival with warmth and smiled as he remembered small details from his childhood. I took the festival for granted, but his perspective made me see the tradition in a whole new light. The Informant feels very connected to the city of Riverside because he participated in community events annually. I felt disconnected from the community in my childhood, as I wasn’t involved in many hometown traditions. Local festivals have the power to create a sense of belonging in communities and build a strong emotional connection to a geographic location. 

Purim Jewish Religious Festival Celebration

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Collector: “In your childhood, have you participated in any specific rituals or festivals?”

Informant: “I did a lot of Jewish religious holidays as a kid. During Purim at my temple — Temple Israel of West Hollywood— we eat different religious foods. There’s a cookie called the Hamantash which is like a triangle-shaped shortbread, filled with jelly. It’s so good. And then you have to do certain prayers and like community activities. The celebration is obviously like about one of the many genocides of the Jewish people, we overcame that, let’s party. And part of it has to do with this woman named Esther. Basically, she had to disguise herself as like, not being a Jew. So part of the ritual is to dress up in costume. So it’s like the Jewish Halloween!”

Context

The informant is a female Jewish undergraduate student at the University of Southern California who grew up in Los Angeles. She regularly attends on-campus Jewish religious events at Hillel. 

Analysis

Learning more about my friend’s religious traditions showed me how different my religious celebrations are in comparison. The costume ritual stood out to me the most. To make a Purim feel like a distinctly special day, inverted social rules are applied. People are expected to dress differently than in their everyday life. The Hamantash cookies were another tradition that piqued my interest. Indulging in this treat is reserved/associated with this special holiday. In my religion, I can’t recall any treats that have the same significance.