Heartbeat Bridge

Nationality: American
Age: 22
Occupation: UI/UX Desinger
Residence: Los Angeles, CA
Performance Date: April 30, 2021
Primary Language: English
Language: Japanese, Latin

The informant grew up in Omaha, Nebraska. Here, he tells the story of how a bridge in Nebraska received the name “Heartbeat” Bridge.

N: There’s a place in Portal, Nebraska just south of the Pillar, called the Hatchet House. It was a school house and there was a legend that a teacher there went crazy and chopped off all her student’s heads and put them all at each desk. And then took all of their hearts to a nearby bridge and threw them into the river. And that bridge is called Heartbeat Bridge, and as you walk across it the boards thumping below your feet sound like heartbeats. And it’s supposed to be the heartbeats of the dead children.

Thoughts:
The informant also told a similar story as to why a local creek was named “Rawhide Creek”. It seems that in this region, it’s important to remember tragedies, and in order to do that, the areas that tragedies happened in are named after them.

Haunted Quarry

Nationality: American
Age: 18
Occupation: Student
Residence: Chicago, IL
Performance Date: May 2nd, 2021
Primary Language: English

Background

The informant, Chase, is the brother of the interviewer. He grew up in Chicago, Illinois where he currently resides. 

Context

Chase tells the interviewer about a haunted quarry where he used to work.

Transcript 

“Every summer in high school I have worked at a kayaking company. In the center of town is this ancient quarry that they have filled with water so it looks like a small lake. I taught kayaking and paddle boarding lessons on the quarry. The company rented out these kayaks and paddle boards to anyone in town. So over the quarry is this big bridge that a lot of cars drive over. It is pretty busy. People at work always claimed that like sixty years ago this family was driving across the bridge, but the dad was drunk and speeding and accidentally drove their car off the bridge into the quarry. They say it was too deep to retrieve the car or people and if you were able to dive down deep enough you would still be able to see the car and their bodies. Sometimes, at night, you can see the ghosts of the family crying in the middle of the quarry. I personally have never seen any shit like that before, despite all my years working there. I do believe that someone could easily drive off the bridge, it kinda looks like an accident waiting to happen. But I don’t really believe that they didn’t retrieve the car or people’s bodies. It’s definitely a fun story to tell though.”

Thoughts

I too worked at the quarry throughout high school. I never had an encounter with the spirits like other people at worked described and I don’t really believe it either. I do agree that the story of someone driving off the bridge accidentally is probably true, but I can’t imagine the quarry is so deep they cannot retrieve the bodies. It is very interesting town lore though.

The Pocono Devil

Nationality: Latino, American, Jewish
Age: 23
Occupation: User Researcher
Residence: Los Angeles, California
Performance Date: May 2nd, 2021
Primary Language: English
Language: Spanish

As a child, the informant attended a summer camp in the Poconos in Pennsylvania. He tells the story of an urban legend that haunts the camp grounds– the Pocono Devil.

M: Pocono Devil? That is a story that I heard a couple of years ago when I went to camp in the Pocono mountains in Pennsylvania. There’s a story that I heard about a monster that lived in the woods. Basically, the story I always heard was that the camp opened in the 40s, and in the 50s, uh, there was a camper who got buried alive by his sister by the lake. 

And the story goes that that kid rose from the grave as the Pocono Devil, who’s a demon who stalks the woods looking for revenge on his sister. So you go into the woods, wearing, at night, wearing a Pine Forest T-shirt–Pine Forest is the name of the camp– the Pocono Devil will come after you thinking you’re his sister.

It might be a story that they told campers to make sure they didn’t go into the woods in the middle of the night, or something that older kids 30 years ago came up with to scare younger kids. 

There’s also this big, gnarled tree thing in the center of camp called the Ten Year Tree. Any person who’s either attended the camp for 10 years, or worked there for ten years, gets their name on a metal stamp bolted to the tree. And if you look for it, uh, right in the middle, there’s one for the Pocono Devil. 

Thoughts:

It’s classic for a summer camp to have haunting stories. Like the informant said, this story was probably either made to keep campers out of the woods at night to keep them safe or was made by older campers to freak out the younger ones. Either way, this story has very obviously become greatly entangled with the identity of the camp as they have a name plate in honor of it.

A story like this also helps increase the popularity of the camp. The name Pine Forest piggy backs on the story of the Pocono Devil, thus increasing the width of the camp’s brands reach as well as tempting kids to join next summer.

Miss Mary

Nationality: American
Age: 18
Occupation: Student
Residence: Chicago, IL
Performance Date: May 2nd, 2021
Primary Language: English

Background

The informant, Chase, is the brother of the interviewer. She grew up in Chicago, Illinois where he currently resides. 

Context

Chase tells the interviewer about a childhood rhyme they would sing on the playground.

Transcript 

“So this rhyme you would sing to your friends on the playground. It was always funny as kids because the words sound like they are about to be swear words, but then they are not. So no adults could get you in trouble for saying them because you didn’t actually say them. I learned it from you [interviewer] who learned it from our older cousin, Jordan.

The rhyme goes like this: ‘Miss Mary had a steamboat, Her steamboat had a bell. Miss Mary went to heaven, Her steamboat went to… Hell-o operator, give me number nine. If you disconnect me, I’ll kick you in the… Behind the refrigerator, there was a piece of glass.

Miss Mary sat upon it, and broke her little… Ask me no more questions, tell me no more lies.

The cows are in the pasture, eating chocolate pies, pies, pies. Miss Mary went to London, Miss Mary went to France. A french man pulled down Miss Mary’s underpants, pants, pants.’

I told all of my friends who thought it was the funniest thing. We would sing it all the time on the playground.

Thoughts

This is a very funny rhyme for kids. It is interesting how vast children’s folklore is and how quickly it can travel. My cousin who taught this to me is from Kentucky. All it took was one visit for Thanksgiving, and suddenly a rhyme kids in Kentucky sing made it all the way to a playground in Chicago.

BUCHE DE NOEL

Nationality: German-American
Age: 22
Occupation: Graduate Student
Residence: Vail, CO
Performance Date: April 27, 2021
Primary Language: English

MAIN PIECE:

Informant: Well at Christmas we’ll always have Buche de Noel… Which is a French dessert. It’s like, “Christmas log…” And it’s like a cake, and it’s like a roll, you know? Where you roll it up? And you decorate it to like resemble a log, and a lot of times it’ll have like marzipan… Like little marzipan mushrooooms, or little like eeeeelves, or something, and there’ll be like powdered sugar to be like snoooooow. And they’re just like super pretty. And we always do that. 

INFORMANTS RELATIONSHIP TO THE PIECE:

Informant: We’re not French, but we always do it. My mom did a year abroad in France, so she’s big on France. We go there a lot. All I know is it’s just like a traditional French dessert to have at Christmas. 

Interviewer: Do you make it or buy it?

Informant: We always buy it. We always do catering for Christmas. Cooking or baking is too much pressure. We wanna be like enjoying ourselves. Like for me, I really love baking, but if there’s a lot of people around, I like hate baking. I’ll be like, “Get out of my space. Like stop it. Like leave.”

REFLECTION:

Buche de Noel began as a tradition because it represented the burning of the Yule log, which is rooted in Pagan rituals. The tradition then evolved from the burning of a log to making and consuming a cake, which has then become cross-culturally adopted, with a German-American family making this French dessert part of their family tradition. This demonstrates how traditions can change over time and become adopted by new people and groups. The informant is attracted to this Christmas cake even without fully understanding its ritual context and history. Instead, she appreciates it for its aesthetic appearance and sweet taste. This is perhaps why, as Elliott Oring writes in Folk Groups and Folklore Genres: an Introduction, “food traditions are likely to be tenacious and survive when other aspects of culture are transformed or disappear” (35). One does not always have to know a food’s ritual context to appreciate its taste or appearance. Thus, food can be adopted by “outsiders.” Buche de Noel is now a part of the informant’s family tradition, and has taken on its own meaning within the Christmas traditions and rituals of her family––a meaning that is separate from the context and meaning it might have to a French family.

ANNOTATION:

Source cited above: Oring, Elliott. Folk Groups and Folklore Genres: an Introduction. Utah State University Press, 1986.