Tag Archives: death

Yes/No Pencil Ritual

Nationality: American
Age: 24
Occupation: Student
Residence: Los Angeles
Performance Date: April 13th, 2013
Primary Language: English
Language: Cantonese

Informant Background: The informant is originally from Hong Kong. She now lives permanently in the United States but travels back once a year to visit her relatives in Hong Kong. She speaks both Cantonese and English. Her family practices many of the Chinese traditions, folk-beliefs, and superstitions. She celebrates many of the Chinese holidays through cooking of special “holiday food.”

 

Many grade school children play this game with a pencil. You can only use pencil. No mechanical pencils or pen. So first you would write on a piece of paper: “yes” and “no.” Then you put the paper on the table and then put the pencil in the middle of the paper. There are usually four people at each corner of the table. Then you call on the spirit into the pencil…After that you can ask the spirit questions about your life…you know something like: does he like me, will we be together, how long will we be together, am I going to pass this test, etc… But you can be cursed to die if you ask about how the spirit died or who the spirit is. It is okay to ask about their past life but never ask for the name or how he/she became a spirit. Sometimes more specific things can be written on the paper for different situations…I heard some news in Chinese newspaper where people die from this game because they ask the question they shouldn’t.

The informant stated that she played with her friends in middle school in Hong Kong, though she said that many adults play this game as well. She said she did it when she played the game nothing happened but she and her friends got very scared that she tore the paper into many pieces, broke the pencil, and ran away from the room as fast as they could.

 

I think this game challenges the idea of beliefs and the origin of ghosts and spirits. As seen by many other ghost stories, spirits usually arises from untraditional death or improper burial. In this case it is taboo and deathly to find the origin of the spirit. This game also reflects how people are unsure about the status of their lives; also trying to find answer to unanswerable questions in life. Not being able to ask how the spirit came to be also reflects the unknown origin of how ghost came to be.

The use of the pencil shows how the idea of ghost is most of the time associated with objects with no modern technology; how they are paused in certain time period.

The paper and the pencil reflect the idea of contagious magic how an object can possess power after certain rituals. In this case the informant and her friends destroyed those objects because they perceived those objects as having power after the rituals performed.

This dare is also similar to the idea of children folklore where there are underlying meanings, in the case the fear of the unknown. Similar to how female children conduct their Bloody Mary dare in groups as a bonding experience, this dare has a similar underlying purpose. It is a group bonding experience under the shared fearful experience, or bonded under the same curse. Similar to the Bloody Mary dare, the truth value is not as significant as the actions performed.

The dare as a ritual then turned into a legend through unofficial and official storytelling. The news about death from this game is then a memorate for the legend and keeps the ritual as an existing and ongoing legend.

Clock and Watch

Nationality: American
Age: 25
Occupation: Student
Residence: Los Angeles
Performance Date: April 13th, 2013
Primary Language: English
Language: Mandarin

Informant Background: The informant was born in rural parts of China called Hainan. She lived there with her grandparents where she attended elementary school. She moved to the United States when she was thirteen. She speaks both Chinese and English. She lives in Los Angeles with her mother but travels back to visit her relatives in Beijing and Hainan every year. She and her mother still practice a lot of Chinese traditions and celebrate Chinese holidays through special meals.

 

In Chinese you can’t say the word clock because in Chinese the word clock sounds the same as death. People usually point at the clock instead of saying it or called it “big watch,” “time,” “the time thing,” etc. If you end up saying the word then you have to apologize to the people around them for giving them bad luck.

The informant lives in the United States but still speak Chinese. She was taught about this ever since she can speak the language. It was emphasizing in the family and she found out it is practiced among her relatives and her friend’s family as well.

 

I think this is similar practice to the reason Chinese people avoid saying the word four because it sounds like they are saying death. Death, which is the unknown, is feared and avoided in everyday life. The idea of death is only mentioned and emphasized at funeral. The clock, in this case, has a nickname to avoid saying the actual word. Certain words that have overlapping sound are then muted for everyday life. The same way funeral rituals occur as a special event, words surrounding that particular event are prohibited to occur at any other time otherwise bad luck will enter your life. It is also similar to Western culture’s belief around the number thirteen where in a tall building floor 13 are eliminated.

I always find it peculiar that many everyday word and objects can have bad luck connotation through the way it sounds; also having to apologize for saying those words by mistake. This reinforces the idea of belief and how the truth value of it is irrelevant to whether or not it is practiced. Saying the word “four” or “clock” in Chinese would not bring bad luck but it would bring the belief of bad luck. I think that these traditions are carried through as accepted practice rather than the actual fear of the consequences.

I’m so hungry I could eat a corpse and chase the mourners

Nationality: Irish, Dutch
Age: 19
Occupation: Student
Residence: Mission Hills (San Diego), California
Performance Date: April 9, 2013
Primary Language: English
Language: None

Informant: “I’m so hungry I could eat a corpse and chase the mourners.”

 

The informant is a young man who comes from suburban Mission Hills, San Diego and describes himself as relatively “quiet and introverted” and “nerdy” as well as very involved in politics. The informant is a sophomore neuroscience major at USC and works in a neuroscience image and understanding lab, which focused on visual research.

The informant heard this metaphor when he was about 14 years old as a freshman in high school from a photography teacher. The informant described this teacher as very eccentric, with a “very unique” and hilarious personality who would say this metaphor in a very happy way. The informant says that because of this, he associates the saying with something positive and likes to use it himself. Additionally, the informant stated, “we had his class right before lunch and sometimes he would say ‘oooh (raised vocal inflection) I’m so hungry, I could eat a corpse and chase the mourners,’ and start hustling down the stairs.” The informant likes this saying because “it is just so bizarre ” and it just stuck in my mind because “he said it a lot and it was said in such a fantastic way.”

The informant does not know exactly what saying is suppose to mean, but the informant thinks that perhaps it means that the speaker is so hungry they could eat a corpse and then would still be hungry enough to chase the mourners to eat them as well. However, the informant also pointed out that “because there are mourners the corpse must still be fresh.” Ultimately, he thinks the saying is just supposed to be bizarre.

This is a somewhat unique variant of the “I’m so hungry I could eat a ___” folk metaphors. Typically the blank is filled with something like a cow, a horse, some other large animal, or a mass quantity of food such as 1000 hamburgers. This variant on the other hand, refers to cannibalism and death. The change in the normal usage is slightly disconcerting and creates a form of death-humor paradox as the metaphor becomes humorous when it is so unexpected.

Ocean Wake

Nationality: American
Age: 19
Occupation: College Student
Residence: Encinitas, CA
Performance Date: 3/24/2013
Primary Language: English

“When someone dies in Encinitas, I think it’s a Hawaiian thing too, as part of the wake, we all get on surfboards and paddle out to the ocean.  We get in a circle, and have leis… and we say a prayer or if the person wasn’t spiritual, say some nice words and talk about the person.  Then they have leis or flowers of some sort and you let them float away in the ocean.  It’s the same thing as scattering ashes, without the ashes.”

The informant has been a part of the ritual before, and she learned it from her father who is a part of the surfing community in Encinitas.

This wake ritual goes along with the community that it is practiced in.  The ritual draws from the geographical location near the ocean and the surfing community in the area.  It is a way for everyone to be a part of the celebration of the deceased person’s life, and  the floating leis give a more peaceful picture around the harsh reality of death.

Dia de los Muertos Altar

Nationality: American
Age: 18
Occupation: College student
Residence: San Francisco, CA
Performance Date: 4/30/2013
Primary Language: English
Language: Spanish

My friend is an animation major at the University of Southern California.  She has some Irish relatives and Mexican relatives.

My friend would celebrate Dia de Los Muertos (the Day of the Dead) by creating an altar for a loved one.  She said that traditionally, the altar had to have cempazuchitl (yellow marigolds) and candles.  The cempazuchitl bring about a festive look to the altar and indicate an air of celebration.  My friend said that Dia de los Muertos is much more about celebrating death and celebrating dead loved ones.

On Dia de Los Muertos, the spirits come out and their surviving loved ones put candles on their altars.  The candles then serve to “light the way” for the spirits to their loved ones.

This year in college, my friend had to adjust what she could put on the altar.  The setup became much more simplistic and focused on the cempazuchitl and the candles.  Each altar is supposed to be dedicated to loved ones – my friend dedicated her altar to her grandfather, but did not have a personal item of his in college.  The tradition is to put a personal item of the deceased one as a way to indicate the altar is for them.  As a substitute, my friend placed a photo of her grandfather on the altar.

I find it very interesting that this tradition of creating the altar revolves on the belief that the spirits are still a part of this world, and that those who are living have an obligation to maintain interactions with the dead.  The fact that my friend talked about having to simplify the altar also makes me believe that altars are usually a really vibrant arrangement.  Many of the elements of the altar visually reinforce the idea of celebration instead of mourning.  It also calls for a personal involvement from the altar maker.  The effect of dedicating the altar to a particular loved one is different from generally dedicating to the dead.

Kristin Congdon’s essay “Making Merry with Death,” included in Peter Narvaez’s collection Of Corpse, contains a version of this altar, which is part of the ofrenda (offering) in Dia de los Muertos:

Narváez, Peter. Of Corpse: Death and Humor in Folklore and Popular Culture. Logan, UT: Utah State UP, 2003. Print.