Tag Archives: california

Memorate: My Grandpa’s UFO Sighting

Context:

Informant J is a 73 year old Mexican-American man and is the collector’s grandfather. He is from San Jose, California, but his family moved there from parts of Texas and Mexico. For the majority of his life, J was a manager at a regional grocery store, and studied art in college with a focus in jewelry making. J is now retired and his hobbies include guitar playing, metal working, and reworking vintage cars.

Text:

(Please excuse typos, this is an unaltered text message from the informant): “I was fifteen years old and had just finished watching Superman on my grandfather’s television (he had one of the only color television on the block so I would frequent his house regularly). I lived caddy corner from them across the street so it only took a minute to get home. Upon reaching my house I stopped at my father’s 1959 surf green four door Oldsmobile which was parked in our driveway. It had a huge trunk like most cars of that era and I layer back on the trunk as was a regular occurrence. I was laying back on the trunk looking up at the stars when I saw a  pattern of five or six lights moving across the sky moving at a very fast rate of speed in a tight pattern. I was extremely frightened when the pattern of lights stopped for a few seconds and then split in different directions. I could not sleep with the lights off for at least a week and i was very reluctant to lay on that trunk to look up at the sky after that experience.”

Interpretation:

This was a story my grandpa had previously told me, and I asked him to write it out for this assignment. He claims that this was his own personal UFO sighting, and is the reason he believes in aliens now. It’s an interesting memorate, however, because he distinctly remembers watching Superman right before it happened. To me, that reads as inspiration for the story, something that may have convinced his brain that the stars moving in the sky were someone or something supernatural was moving, rather than a shooting star or a plane. My grandpa seemingly wanted to believe that whatever was in the sky was a UFO. It’s important to note, too, that this memorate made him reluctant to look up at the sky again for fear of seeing what he was convinced were aliens of some sort, and that he associated lying in the truck bed with that experience. I also wanted to mention that my grandpa specifically included details like the car’s make and color; it makes me think that those smaller bits of the story are what helps him to remember it.

Memorate: My Great-Grandparents’ Joaquin Murrieta Sighting

Context:

Informant J is a 73 year old Mexican-American man and is the collector’s grandfather. He is from San Jose, California, but his family moved there from parts of Texas and Mexico. For the majority of his life, J was a manager at a regional grocery store, and studied art in college with a focus in jewelry making. J is now retired and his hobbies include guitar playing, metal working, and reworking vintage cars.

Text:

(Please excuse typos, this is an unaltered text message from the informant): “My parents said they were just finishing up a picnic at Alumn Rock park on the East side of San Jose and were getting ready to head home when a man who looked like he had been dug up (his clothes was old and tattered and resembled clothes from the cowboy days. He came up to their car window and just stood there not saying a word but staring in a daze. They believe it was the ghost of Juan Murrieta who lived during the late 1900’s. He was famous for robbing people in that area of the park. My dad started the car and got the hell out of there! My parents were very scared and they were familiar with the legend of Juan Murrieta and never stopped talking about the incident!”

“Ps: The cowboy did have an old style revolver as well!”

Interpretation:

I’d like to note that people often confuse Juan and Joaquin Murrieta, and that my grandpa was almost certainly referring to the latter. I did some research after being told this story, as I hadn’t heard of either figure until now. Juan was a pioneer, whereas Joaquin is a Mexican figure commonly known as the Robin Hood of the West. More specifically, stories about Murrieta rose in California during the Gold Rush. I find it interesting that my great-grandparents claim to have seen Joaquin Murrieta, because they associated something strange with something they already knew about (ghosts), and their knowledge of it is heavily influenced by culture. Even though my family was Mexican-Texan, they had heard enough about this specifically Mexican-Californian legend in the little time that they lived there that they assumed the figure was him. What’s more, this story hints at a combination of folkloric beliefs, as my great-grandparents claim to have seen a kind of undead version of Joaquin Murrieta, who is more of a legend than a popular ghost. There are debates over whether he existed, but stories of seeing him are rarer. But my great-grandparents seem to have believed in ghosts in general, so this memorate only furthered their personal view of the world.

Ghost Neighbor in Rippon, CA

  1. Details
    1. Collected on 03/23/2024 
    2. Genre: Memorate
    3. Language: English 
    4. Nationality: Mexican
    5. Relationship to Informant: Friend’s Father 
  2. Text
    1. Summary
      1. When the informant was growing up, he and his brother would help out their older neighbor named Billy. The night that Billy died, his brother felt a strong presence over him that he believes was Billy’s spirit trying to tell him something. 
    2. Direct transcription of folklore:
      1. “In Rippon, where we grew up, there was a time when our next-door neighbor, Billy, died. That night – we didn’t know he had died – my brother felt a presence come over him and he couldn’t speak. Finally, he started screaming because he felt this presence – which was Billy. Later, we found out that he died at the time [my brother] felt the presence. Billy was older and his wife’s name was Nelly, and we would help them out. My dad would always send us over and ask if they needed anything, so if they had anything heavy they needed us to bring into their home we would help out or one time Billy fell off his horse and we had to go help him. They were great neighbors and we knew them. It wasn’t an evil presence, but it was something that came over him and he couldn’t speak. He wasn’t sure if Billy was trying to tell him something.”
  3. Context 
    1. This story was a personal experience from the informant that has become an oral tradition within his family. 
  4. Analysis 
    1. In this story, the informant’s brother felt the spirit of their neighbor trying to connect with him before they knew that the man had died. They believe that this presence was Billy’s attempt to communicate with them. This story indicates that there is a belief that spirits can attempt to contact the physical world during their passing to the afterlife. This story also expresses the cultural value of helping out neighbors and having a tight-knit community because it connects you to those around you. 

Haunted Bookstore in CA

Main Piece

Informant SF tells of their favorite recycled bookstore in downtown Campbell, CA. They associate it with being “full of old things,” and their family believes it to be haunted.

This specific familial legend comes from a time SF, her mother, and grandfather were all shopping at the story together when SF was about 16. Their grandpa, who believes in ghosts, “swore he saw a book fall off the shelf,” and when questioned by SF about the event, their Mom backed him up and affirmed she believed the store to be haunted.

As they had this discussion just outside of the store, all three began smelling cigarette smoke despite the fact that “no one was smoking.” They looked around and waited a while, but continued to smell it without finding a source. SF’s Mom and Grandpa both pointed to this as evidence for the bookstore being haunted, and they “never found out if someone was smoking.”

SF notes that she doesn’t know if she believes in ghosts, but if she did this is one she’d believe in, particularly because the store is “full of things people used to own.” They also found it odd that their Mom leaned into affirming that the place was haunted, as she “doesn’t really say that” about other places.

Interpretation

Informant’s Interpretation: SF attributes her family’s delineation of the space as haunted primarily to its status as a recycled bookstore. She notes that she believes haunting legends are much more common around/associated with items that have been owned by many people and have an unclear history.

Personal Interpretation: I agree with the interpretation above, and add that the impossibility of finding out the history of items / untraceable origins creates a stronger premise for ghost stories to arise. “Nobody really knows” is much more intrigue-invoking than a clear-cut explanation. I also found SF’s story to be indicative of how familial belief frequently strongly influences personal belief–SF noted she was more inclined to believe the space was haunted because she “believes what [her] family says.”

Background

Informant SF is a current student at USC pursuing a degree in Cinema and Media Studies. They grew up in San Jose, CA, and are very close with their parents, sisters, and grandparents. SF is white and Latine.

Family Christmas Cookie Making

Main Piece

“Every Christmas, our house becomes a ‘candy factory’ – at some point when I was growing up, my mom found recipes for chocolate fudge, peanut butter toffee fudge, and peppermint bark, tweaked some of them so they didn’t have quite as many sticks of butter and cups of sugar, and started making them to give to neighbors and family. My dad started bringing them to work to give to his coworkers too, and now it’s something everyone looks forward to getting from us each year. My brother and I started helping make them pretty early on, at least since I was in eighth grade, and it’s become a key Christmas tradition – responsibility, even – to share with our mom every year.”

Interpretation

Informant’s Interpretation: This tradition holds primary relevance to informant as a family tradition. She likes to spend the time with her mom, but notes that since the whole thing puts a stress on her mom, helping can sometimes “feel more like a duty than a fun cozy Christmas tradition.” However, she notes that she still heavily associates this with how her family celebrates Christmas and thus enjoys it.

Personal Interpretation: I find this to be a classic example of a family Christmas tradition–particularly so because other families recognize it as such and come to enforce the idea of the tradition from a slightly-external perspective. While associated with a religious holiday, I don’t see any particular direct connection to Christian tradition other than perhaps the origins of the types of cookies. That said, it feels pretty removed from any religious context and has more to do with the time of year and family-centric association than anything else.

Background

Informant is a 21 year old college student raised in Rancho Bernardo, California. She is female-presenting, white, and of European descent.