Orb Watching Over Baby After Grandmother’s Death

Nationality: American
Age: 19
Occupation: USC Student
Residence: Los Angeles
Performance Date: 04/22/19
Primary Language: English

Context:

The subject is a white gender non-conforming individual from Brooklyn, New York. Before this, the subject and I discussed ghost stories for sometime and I asked them if they had ever had a ghostly experience. It was very hard for me to collect much that we think of traditional folklore, ghost stories or myths, but this piece stands in such stark contrast to that.

 

Piece:

“Oh, my mom. Alright, my mom used to say that one night she say like a giant light floating above my bed after my grandmother died. She thought it was my grandmother in orb form. Uuum, personal experience I don’t think I’ve ever had any, but my mom used to say that all the time. Cause it was right after my grandma died.”

 

Killer, a High School Folk Game, and Legends About It

Nationality: American
Age: 19
Occupation: USC Student
Residence: Los Angeles
Performance Date: 04/22/18
Primary Language: English

Context:

The subject is a white gender non-conforming individual from Brooklyn, New York.  They attended Hunter College High School, a specialized high school. Basically, it’s a public school and thus free, but one must test to get in. I also attended this school for sometime and also know the game. I have always been fascinated where the game comes from and have played similar, although less violent, versions elsewhere.

 

Piece:

“Killer is..uh.. So its like everyone’s on a team, I don’t know if this is how it started, but it’s how it ended, everyone is on a team. There’s like freshman girls, freshman boys, sophomore girls, sophomore boys. And you have to like assassinate — it keeps going beyond sophomore, its all. It’s not really separated by gender either, you can have sophomore mixed too, it’s whatever, there’s teams. I think that just happened because people do it in friend groups, so it’s like if your friend group is girls, if your friend group is boys, if your friend group is mixed. Um… There also were two junior girls teams, so yeah, I dunno, they end up with titles too. Like, uh, one year every team was named after a different album. So anyway Killer is uh, you have to kill — whichever team has a person still alive at the end of the game is the winner, so you have kill people on the other teams. And you do that with tracer guns, which have little plastic tracers inside them so pew pew [they mime finger guns]. Um, you shoot other people and if they get hit by the tracer then they’re dead. Um.. you kill a whole team, they’re out of the running. Whoever wins, wins the whole pot, which is usually like a thousand bucks. And there were like legends that like someone in the past had slept on the roof to avoid being killed because if you were like in the block of the school you can’t get killed. So he slept there the entire time and people brought him food and stuff. Uum, just slept on the roof. And there was another story were um, so this one kid was like “I know how I’m going to get this other person is I’m going to dress up as a homeless person, I’m going to disguise myself as a homeless person. I’m going to paint m-my tracer gun black. I’m gonna sit in the subway station, wait for him to show up”. So this guys stands up, pulls out his GUN and the police ALSO do that. And I dunno how it ended, he lived, everyone lived. I don’t think the police even shot, probably because the guy was whi… Nothing happened but like jesus christ, could you be stupider? I remember those were two big stories that got passed down from year to year. The administration were not a fan of it at all. They sent out emails every year being like “DON’T PLAY KILLER”, but it had not affect.

 

Abandoned Subway Entrance

Nationality: American
Age: 19
Occupation: USC Student
Residence: Los Angeles
Performance Date: 04/22/18
Primary Language: English

Context:

The subject is a white gender non-conforming individual from Brooklyn, New York. This legend is interesting because it begins online but then enters the real world.

 

Piece:

“There was an abandoned entry to the subway that was like near my house, it looks like all the other brownstones because it’s like.. But it’s boarded up, like all the windows are boarded up. And if you go in you can go — you can go from that building right into the train station which is wild because if you walk by it, you’re like “oh it’s another brownstone”, like you won’t even notice. I think I googled it, I think I was on the internet and was like New York City secrets and some sketchy website and I was like wow that’s right near where I live.

 

The Molepeople of New York

Nationality: American
Age: 19
Occupation: USC Student
Residence: Los Angeles
Performance Date: 04/22/18
Primary Language: English

 

Context:

The subject is a white gender non-conforming individual from Brooklyn, New York. This story shows New Yorkers fascination with the variety of worlds beneath their feet from subways to sewers. It also touches upon the homeless population which they interact it without much thought.

 

Piece:

“Oh there’s the molepeople. The molepeople are people who supposedly live in the subway tunnels, or under the subway tunnels? And they make a life for themselves down there, some people hype it up were they’re like “there’s a whole city down there”, but there probably not. There was actually, factually, people living in the Amtrak tunnel between 72nd and 125th?, no… I think so, on Riverside. There were people living in the tunnel there. They did sorta build a community, they had like, because there was construction happening there that got abandoned, so there were like tene-tenements? ish kinda were like construction workers were living, so there was community down there of 100 something people, people were in tents and stuff. And people were like “oh there’s a whole city underneath the subway”, probably isn’t true. It’s just a thing people say like “oh you know the molepeople, the city of people who live under the subwa

 

Throwing Spoons When Watching The Room

Nationality: American
Age: 19
Occupation: USC Student
Residence: Los Angeles
Performance Date: 04/22/18
Primary Language: English

The subject is a white gender non-conforming individual from Brooklyn, New York. The subject is a film student and also queer. They use ‘they’ pronouns. Before talking about this custom we had just discussed another midnight screening movie: The Rocky Horror Picture Show. So I asked if there were any other films with which people have customs. I find these midnight screenings fascinating as they are interacting with a piece of authored work but turning it into their own folk customs. While each place does similar things, there is always variety.

 

Piece:

“The Room, what’s interesting is there’s no shadow cast, there’s just people who yell at it. Oh you’re supposed to throw spoons, for The Room. Because, have you seen it? Ok so there’s spoons that like, he just has like pictures of spoons all over his house, like framed pictures of spoons. So every time you see a picture of a spoon, you’re supposed to throw spoons at the screen. There’s a point, oh yeah, these two guys go up and toss a football at the point in uh the movie where they go toss a football. Oh, there’s a bit where she orders a pizza, she orders a really complicated pizza and then when it comes in the movie, it’s just cheese. So I think they yell something like uh “hey thats not the pizza you ordered” or something like that.