- Text: Ojai is a rural city in California, located to the northeast of Los Angeles. While the city is quaint and loveable, it is not without its share of daunting lore, the most famous of which may be the legend of the Char-Man. As the story goes, there is a unpopulated part of the city, a back road titled creek road where very little life is to be found. The area is windy, riddled with animals and generally desolate. On creek road there existed a single house which was host to a very grouchy old man. It’s not entirely known for what reason this old man was a grouch, but many suspect he grew bitter and spiteful after his son died. This grouchy old man always made a habit of yelling at passerby children who roamed through his neighborhood. One day, these same children decided that they wanted to prank the old man and get back at him for all the times he’d tried to yell at them or get them in trouble. These group of children had one of their dogs poop on a lawn. The kids scooped up the poop with a sock. They quietly snuck up to his house, and once they had arrived at the doormat they dropped the sock of poop, lighting it on fire. The children rang the doorbell aggressively and then ran as fast as their legs would allow. The children thought the old man would rush out and stomp out the flame, causing the feces to explode everywhere – but the old man was in a deep sleep. The fire caught hold of the house, burning the old man alive. He didn’t die though – the old man survived, disfigured and forever damaged. As the legend has it, the old man now resides around the creek road bridge, patiently waiting for bad children to come his way, allowing him the opportunity to exact his brutal revenge. In some iterations of the story, the char-man burnt because of wildfires that were started by children.
- Informants Context: Once you reached a certain age, probably sometime within middle school, you inevitably find out who the Char-Man is. It’s the most popular scary story of Ojai, or at least it was at my school. If you found yourself on a bus ride telling scary stories, the char-man came up. If you found yourself at a sleepover, trying to terrify some of your friends and say something gnarly, the char-man came up. If you wanted to scare a girl, bring up the char-man. All this aside, the biggest reason why young people came into contact with the char-man was because of a rite of passage event that basically everyone participated in at one point or another. Again, late middle school, probably early high school once you have a drivers license. The ritual is as follows – you drive to creek road after dark. You get on the bridge, get out of your car. Then, alongside your friends, you call out for the char-man. You usually just yell his name, sometimes people cry for help. I did this with my buddies after a night of drinking. In all honesty, we got out, quickly called his name and then got the hell out of there because it actually was pretty freaky. There’s not much light and it feels like you could actually get jumped at any moment. That’s usually the extent of most peoples stories. Every now and then though, you’ll have someone who comes back from the bridge and claims they saw a shadowy, deformed figure emerge from the forest, walking toward them. Tough to say what’s true. Ultimately, I think Char-Man just represents a rite of passage for young kids. It’s the kind of lore and event that everyone looks forward to participating in once in their life. Everyone bonds with their friends while it’s happening, you create lasting memories. You also quickly find out who is and isn’t a wuss. It’s something that unites a common sense of identity for the city. It’s a scary story, but it’s a scary story that we collectively own and know about with each other. There’s something very nice about that.
- Collectors Interpretation: The Char-Man is a clear example of folk legend storytelling at its most fun and pulp. It can clearly be defined as a legend as the story revolves around circumstances and locations that are part of our actual history and life. The entire thrill of the informants described rite of passage is dependent on them not truly knowing whether the story is real or not. Insofar as Char-Man fits into the greater values of the community of Ojai, the informant told me about one iteration where the old man burned from getting caught in a wildfire started by children. This speaks to dual values. Firstly, this wildfire variation could represent values in favor of environmental preservation. There is a traumatic communal history surrounding wildfires in Ojai, as there often with California locations. The Char-Man is a cautionary tale, a lingering shadow of the collective trauma that develops when people don’t take care of the environment. More obviously, the Char-Man is also clearly a folk legend that’s meant to inspire children into behaving. He is watching, embodying the lingering consequences of tomfoolery and hooligan behavior gone too far.
Fields
AGE: 22
Date_of_performance: May 9, 2025
Informant Name: (Confidential)
Language: English
Nationality: American
Occupation: Student
Primary Language: English
Residence: United States of America