QingMing Festival

Nationality: Taiwanese/Singaporean
Age: 21
Occupation: Student

Description: It is a Taiwanese holiday where people would visit the graves of their ancestors and loved ones. 

Background: It was considered a national holiday in Taiwan, where she lived.

Transcript:

BL: So there is a holiday in Taiwan called QingMingJie or QingMing Festival, some people call it Tomb-Sweeping day. It’s when we go to family burial grounds and we clean and decorate the graves and stuff.

Me: And it’s something you do every year.

BL: Yeah, it’s to honor and remember our ancestors and family. People also put stuff in front of the graves too, like food and flowers. Some people would also say prayers to the dead people. Oh we also burn paper, like burning paper money, we write things that we want our ancestors to have in the afterlife and burn the paper.

Me: I think my family does something similar.

BL: Yeah, but I think it’s more recognized in Taiwan because China used to not allow it. Like the cultural revolution and all that stuff.

My thoughts:

As said previously, the holiday was banned in China during the cultural revolution. I have heard about the holiday and participated in a few occasions. But I think this is a strong point of identity for Taiwan because of the banning of the festival, it is for this reason that it is a national holiday in Taiwan while it is a simple tradition in the mainland. Of course, the celebration and honoring of one’s ancestors is something that is consistently prevalent in Chinese and General East Asian culture. The main reason being the celebration of legacy and the immortality of the lineage. Someone is alive as long their ideas are passed on.

Money for Ghosts

Nationality: American/Chinese/Japanese
Age: 21
Occupation: Student

Description: On certain days, people will burn fake paper money next to the bonfire as a way to give the dead fortune in their afterlife.

Background: The ritual is something that the informants family frequently practices.

Transcript:

ML: So you know about the burning money for the dead right?

Me: Yes, but tell me how your family does it.

ML: I think most people do it in the same way. You go outdoors and they would usually have a metal basket thing that you light the fire in. Then your parents would give you paper and say that it’s money for people in the afterlife and stuff. Then you just burn the paper in the fire.

My thoughts:

This ritual is something that I know well. For my family, we would sometimes say prayers for the people in the afterlife, things like wishing them well and things like hoping they put the spirit money we give them to good use. The basket part is most likely for safety and cleanliness. I would assume ashes from a bonfire would be very harmful or at least a pain to clean without a container for it. The ritual is a way for people to both remember and come to terms with the loss of a loved one. There is also the component of wishing the departed well in the afterlife having belief in that there is an afterlife.

There’s No Right Answer

Nationality: USA
Age: 21
Occupation: Student
Residence: Los Angeles
Performance Date: 4/15/21
Primary Language: English

Main Piece

“There’s No Right Answer” is a long-drive car game that CD learned from his friends. It is typically played when on a road trip with a group of friends, ideally with an even number of people in the car. You are partnered with one other person in the car. The goal is for you and your partner to say the same word at the same time (there is a countdown so you say the words in sync.) However, no communication is allowed between you and your partner besides just saying the words. The partner pairs all alternate saying words until one of the pairs says the same word at the same time.

CD says “the only strategy is to try and be on the same page as the other person based on what you’ve said in the previous turns.”

Informant background

CD is a student at the University of Southern California. He is from Zionsville, ID.

Performance context

This story was told during a folklore collection event that I set up with a diversity of members from the USC men’s Ultimate Frisbee team. We were in a classic folklore collection setting: sharing drinks around a campfire, in a free flowing conversation.

Analysis

Road trip games seem like a typically American tradition – the idea of the car and the open road, even the road trip itself, are tied to American youth and freedom-loving culture. I wonder if non-American cultures have popular road trip games?

KKK Ghost Bridge

Nationality: USA
Age: 21
Occupation: Student
Residence: Los Angeles
Performance Date: 4/15/21
Primary Language: English

Main Piece

CD told me about a haunted bridge in his hometown of Zionsville, ID. The rumors would swirl around at his middle school, and a little bit at his high school:

“Back in the day, the KKK was pretty big in Indiana. Like, a town in southern Indiana is where the 2nd chapter started. There’s this bridge in town that doesn’t exist anymore because it got destroyed by a tractor a few years ago. It was a 30-40 yard long bridge; a backroad nobody really drives on.

Supposedly it’s haunted: If you drive your car there at night, and turn off all the lights, you’ll see things or hear voices. It’s haunted because the KKK would lynch people there. One of my friends said when they’d go there at night, they’d sit in their car, roll down their windows, and hear voices, indistinct whispering in the woods.

Someone who went, they were there long enough that there was fog on the windows, and there were handprints on the windows.”

Informant background

CD is a student at the University of Southern California. He is from Zionsville, ID.

Performance context

This story was told during a folklore collection event that I set up with a diversity of members from the USC men’s Ultimate Frisbee team. We were in a classic folklore collection setting: sharing drinks around a campfire, in a free flowing conversation.

Analysis

The “haunted place” rumors often involve some kind of action that you must do while at the place in order to bring out the haunting: in this case, turning off all your lights or rolling down your windows. This activity seems to legitimize the “legend quest” of going out and trying to see if the rumors are true or not, because it is more complicated than simply going there – you have to actively participate in the ritual once you arrive. CD’s haunted bridge seems like a typical example of a legend quest where the primary participants are teenagers (middle and high-school aged children.)

Murder on the Island

Nationality: USA
Age: 21
Occupation: Student
Residence: Los Angeles
Performance Date: 4/15/21
Primary Language: English

Main Piece

When JJ was growing up in Massachusetts, he used to go to a fishing camp that would take a day trip to a tiny island off the coast of New Hampshire. Every year, they would tell a “true story” about an abandoned red house on the island:

“A family used to live in that red house, with a wife and husband, and their maid. The husband made his living fishing from the island. The husband and wife would sleep upstairs, while the maid was downstairs. Once, the wife’s sister came to visit, and slept downstairs with the maid. There had been some longstanding conflict between the husband and the wife’s sister, since she hadn’t wanted her sister to marry him.

The maid woke up in the middle of the night to a scream. She found the wife’s sister dead in her room. She ran upstairs and woke up the husband and wife: “You sister’s dead! You have to get out of here!” The maid goes back down to check on the sister. The husband tries to help his wife escape through the second story window, but as soon as her head is out, her head got chopped off by an axe! Then the husband is freaking out. He runs downstairs and finds that the maid is dead, next to the wife’s sister.

He hops in his rowboat and starts trying to row to shore, but it’s the middle of the night, and it’s miles to shore. He starts rowing, he’s falling asleep, his hands are getting tired, he’s starting to let go of the oars. It’s winter so it’s freezing cold. He dips his hands into the water to freeze his hands to the oars. It works and he finally arrives to a city in New England, and goes to a hotel. He’s covered in blood trying to tell them what happened. His hands are completely frostbitten. They arrest him on the spot. He got convicted and sent to jail. Up until his death he denied it and said there was someone else on the island.

On his deathbed he admitted to murdering everyone.

Or so they say he confessed…”

Informant background

JJ is a student at the University of Southern California. He is from Newburyport, MA.

Performance context

This story was told during a folklore collection event that I set up with a diversity of members from the USC men’s Ultimate Frisbee team. We were in a classic folklore collection setting: sharing drinks around a campfire, in a free flowing conversation.

Analysis

JJ’s story, along with every scary story I collected for this project, professes to be a “true story.” While the plausibility of this is in question, the effect of even the plausibility of this story having happened causes an extra layer of fear and fascination for the story—especially since the story is almost always told while the listeners are actually at the site.