- Details
- Collected on 03/23/2024
- Genre: Memorate
- Language: English
- Nationality: Mexican-American
- Relationship to Informant: Friend’s Younger Sister
- Text
- Summary
- The informant’s cousin told her this ghost story about when he and a group of his friends decided to use a Ouija board in a cemetery in Mexico. One boy asked the Ouija board when he was going to die, and the Ouija board responded “soon.” A little while after, he begins to cry uncontrollably, and he starts walking away from the group. The informant’s cousin runs after him, but when he grab’s his friend he sees that he has no face. The friend snaps out of it, but has no memory of crying or walking away. They return to the group, and the other boys ask who they were talking to because they saw a third figure standing with the group. The cousin and his friend have no idea what they are talking about because they thought it was just the two of them. They decide to leave, but the boy who asked when he would die began having awful nightmares. About one month later, that boy commits suicide.
- Direct transcription of folklore:
- “So, this was told to us by our cousin on our mother’s side. Essentially, somewhere in Mexico they would go there with a couple friends every now and then to just hang out at the cemetery to spook each other out. One time, they invited girls because they wanted to scare the girls. So, they are there and it’s pretty late at night. They decide to pull out a Ouija board because they want to scare these girls. They had essentially already been hearing some spooky sounds in this cemetery, so the girls were already kind of spooked. They start doing the Ouija board, and it starts moving, and they are like ‘oh my gosh it’s actually moving.’ So, the girls are spooked, and they are like ‘we are actually going to leave…like this isn’t fun for us.’ So they leave, and the guys stay, and they are like ‘haha this is so funny bla bla bla bla bla.’ At some point, one of the friends – we will call him Rob – asks the Ouija board when he is going to die. The only thing the Ouija board says is ‘soon.’ So, everyone is like ‘ah, this is so scary … yada yada yada.’ But whatever, they keep playing because obviously they think it is more of a joke. At some point, the friend who asked that question starts uncontrollably crying. Everyone is like ‘what the h***?’ And Rob gets up, and he starts walking away. So, everyone’s like ‘oh maybe he is going to do something, who knows.’ So, two of the friends get up and they start walking over. The guy is walking pretty quickly, so they have to catch up. So, our cousin is the one that catches up to him and the other friend that was with him kind of like gives up. And he goes to talk to him and be like ‘hey man what’s up?’ and he turns him around and he has no face. And so then he freaks out and gets really spooked. Then Rob turns back around and then like turns again and then his face is back to normal. Rob is just like ‘oh my God, what’s going on’ and our cousin is freaking out that it was just in his head. So he’s like, ‘you just started crying’ and Rob remembers nothing of this. He doesn’t even remember how he got over there. So, they start walking back together kind of freaked out about the whole situation. When they catch up to the friend that started following but then kind of gave up and he was like ‘who was that guy that you guys were talking to?’ and they’re like ‘what guy?’ he’s like ‘there was a guy over there with you guys who was talking to you guys.’ They had no idea what happened, and decided to go home. As it turns out, Rob commits suicide a month later. Apparently, he was also plagued by nightmares that started right after that night in the graveyard.”
- Context
- The informant is a young woman in her early 20s who attends UCSB. This story was told to the informant by an older cousin on her mother’s side. It has become a family story, but it is told with a serious tone because it deals with serious topics.
- Analysis
- This story deals with scary subjects such as death and suicide, so it serves as a warning for young people to not mess with the spiritual world. The boy who asked the spirits when he would die ended up taking his own life, which tells the audience not to see death and ghosts as a joking matter because it can have real consequences. The ‘third figure’ that the friends saw is assumed to be the devil, or at least a spirit figure with very harmful intentions. “Spirits may appear in order to reinforce social norms, proper behavior, and traditional customs.” (Valk, 33) In this case, the spirits appear to reinforce proper behavior. Overall, this memorate is used to instruct others not to instigate contact with the devil or the spiritual world. It also tells listeners to take things seriously, because what started out as a joke ended up as a terrible experience with permanent harm.
- Summary
Tag Archives: devil
Beccaria Legends
‘In my little town of Beccaria in the central Pennsylvania mountains, we had a little church, and it was the center of our “so-called religious and social life” and so whatever happened in that church would be pretty powerful for me, even through my high school years as I think back on it. But what was a little different in this Evangelical culture that I grew up in was that every summer there would be something called “Evangelism Week”. There were these men who may not have even ever gone to seminary or bible school… But they had a certain amount of skill, and they were Evangelists. For one week we would go to church every night and they would preach. That preaching was always fire and brimstone… It was always how everybody in Beccaria was sinful, was bad, was going to go to hell for sure… everything that might be fun, like square dancing… or never mind any other kind of dancing… listening to country western music or wearing lipstick or makeup of any kind… having your hair permed or going to the movies… which was our main form of entertainment… That was all work of the devil. The devil was a very real kind of figure… a mystical evil legend and thing that was just ready to pop out in this 300-person population town. It was very real to me and very powerful to everyone in Beccaria. This has definitely affected me my whole life. I’m a very dutiful and prim person because of these tales told of the devil each Evangelism week. In the families that were pious, their children were damaged by that, like my cousins. I didn’t think about it as mystical when I was a kid, but it really was. But we would go… we would sit at it every year… every summer through high school. They would preach to us these tales in the pulpit and they would be very explosive, dynamic, and loud when they acted out these stories. It was always legends about the devil, nothing about Jesus or the “good parts of Christianity.” To think that I am almost 90 years old… it haunts me still… it’s as vivid to me as anything… it was the dark side.’ – VB
VB would hear these tales of the devil each summer growing up from groups of men who came to her little town of Beccaria, Pennsylvania. It was tradition for her family, and even her own parents grew up attending the same Evangelism week. This single week each summer practically dictated the way VB decided to live her life and how she wanted to raise her own children. The influence these tales and legends about the devil had on her practically consumed her whole childhood, and even decades later, she still thinks about it. She reminisced on the fact that after this week, she would refuse to go to any more Saturday night square dances, and even skip out on the Sunday afternoon movie showings, out of fear of damnation. It would take months for this influence to wear off before she would even consider going out to have a moment of fun. VB gave an anecdote that these preachings had a generational impact, her parents, grandparents, and even her cousins al felt affected by Evangelism week. As stated in the paraphrase of her story, she lives a dutiful life, raising her children to do so as well. However, she recalls that when her daughter married a “fun-loving” man, it truly changed a lot of her own perspective on religion and the way lives should be lived… allowing her to accept the fun times and move past the idea of entertainment being sinful.
My initial understanding of this story told by VB was that she grew up in a very small religious town, and with the Evangelism week was an opportunity for the church to instill fear into the townspeople to control their behaviors. This follows the stereotypes that I grew up learning about small “middle of nowhere” towns such as Beccaria Pennsylvania. However, a lot of religious folklore was present in Beccaria with this local tradition and annual ritual for the community. As folklore does, it brought the community together, sharing the same ideas and beliefs to all that would listen. Additionally, this story told by VB shows how oral tradition can shape beliefs of the entire community who listened, something folklore has been known to do. Additionally, much folklore has gestures and is performed, and as VB recalls, the preachers served a fiery sermon with animated gestures, practically making it into a performance. This folklore allowed the residents of Beccaria to shape their way of lives and have a collective experience together. While folklore is usually thought of in the sense of fairytales and mythical legends, it often can be used in a fear-mongering sense as it is here. Not only has this folklore been passed down from VB’s ancestors, but VB continued to spread this oral tradition to her own family, even though she was far from her hometown of Beccaria, no longer attending the Evangelism week.
The Devil is the Smurfs
Background: The informant was raised east of Los Angeles by a mother who was a practicing Jehovah’s Witness and was very active in the church. The informant was and is not religious herself, and her father was not a member of the church either. This was told to me in person.
Informant: I wasn’t allowed to watch the Smurfs as a child because my mom said they were demonic… but I don’t know if that’s folklore, that’s just my childhood.
Thoughts: I’d never heard of anything like this before, but I feel that anything that is viewed as demonic even though it isn’t specifically stated to be is very interesting to me. Looking into it, it also appears that this wasn’t just isolated to my informant and her mother. I found a book called Turmoil in the Toybox, written by Phil Phillips, who claims that many childhood books, shows, and toys have a satanic and demonic presence that are supposed to “program and influence the minds of our children towards the occult and witchcraft.” The show The Smurfs was included in this book, being branded as “undead corpses,” as they are “blue with black lips,” and the Lake Hamilton Bible Camp spreads the notion that children who have Smurf toys are more likely to be attacked by vampires. For more, there is a brief excerpt of the originally 90-minute long video interview between Phil Phillips, and Pastor Gary Greenwald included in this article:
Emmett, Neil. “‘Turmoil in the Toy Box’ Revisited.” Cartoon Brew, 23 Oct. 2013, https://www.cartoonbrew.com/ideas-commentary/turmoil-in-the-toy-box-revisited-90147.html.
Lajabless
BACKGROUND: My informant, OR, was born in the US. Her parents are both immigrants from Grenada. OR is always joking about Carribeans being a very superstitious people and this piece is just one story out of the many that OR told me about her family’s beliefs. OR had previously told me about soucouyants and this story is in a similar vein, depicting a seductive, villainous female/creature character.
CONTEXT: This piece is from a conversation with my friend to discuss the role of superstition in Caribbean culture.
OR: There’s also, um, Lajabless, which, I don’t even know how this is f-cking spelled. I think it comes from the French, like La Diablesse, like a female devil. She’s got — usually in like depiction the of her she’s got like this wide flopping, brim hat. One of her feet is normal, but I think the other one is like a goat hoof or a horse hoof or like a…
Me: She’s got a hoof.
OR: (laughs) Yeah she’s got a hoof. And the story is like, it’s mostly like an old wives’ text. The story is like some drunk asshole goes at night and sees this lady with her floppy brim hat and her skirt (which is covering her hoof) and flirts with her. Then Lajabless reveals her face under the hat and it’s like a skull face. (laughs) The — the guy’s like so freaked out. He like falls off of a cliff dies.
THOUGHTS: I think that a lot of cultures have a story of a female “seductress” leading to a man’s downfall. In biblical lore, Lilith is often portrayed as a sexual temptress. However, as the story goes, Lilith was only cast out of Eden because of her desire to be equal to Adam. I think a similar thread happens in this story. As OR tells it, Lajabless was minding her own business when a drunk and leery man makes an advance on her. It is interesting to me how women in legends are often painted as more villainous than they are when they are able to stand up to or retaliate against their male counterparts.
The Soucouyant
BACKGROUND: My informant, OR, was born in the US. Her parents are both immigrants from Grenada. OR is always joking about Carribeans being a very superstitious people and this piece is just one story out of the many that OR told me about her family’s beliefs. This story in particular stood out to OR because her parents always jokingly warn her brother to watch out for seductive soucouyants.
CONTEXT: This piece is from a conversation with my friend to discuss the role of superstition in Caribbean culture.
OR: Okay. So basically, um, the soucouyant is kind of like half vampire, half fireball.
Me: Fireball?
OR: She’s like a blood-sucking hag, essentially. I think other islands literally just call her the hag. She sucks your blood and… okay, she usually appears like, um, either a woman or like a reeeally sexy woman during the day. And then at night, she peels off her skin and puts it in a mortar and pestle and grinds it up. (laughs) And then she turns into a literal fireball and like runs around the sky at night and she can enter your home through like a keyhole or like any crevices, or if you like leave the windows cracked. So you gotta close the windows. And um, they say, if you want her to not come in your house, you have to drop, um, like rice outside your house and you have to drop a lot because basically, she will be counting the rice until morning. I think the Haitians actually call it the Lougarou, but in Grenada, Lugar is actually a totally different thing.
THOUGHTS: I really like this story for its specificity. The concept of a half-vampire half-hag half-skinless witch creature really says a lot about the specific fears and taboos of this community. The fact that this story was aimed at OR’s brother and not OR points to the fact that the Caribbean community may fear the control that women can possess over men. OR mentioned that the story is a variation of the European version of a vampire so I think the gender swap is notable in examing the significance of this story in Caribbean culture.
For another version of this legend, see: Simpson, George Eaton. “Loup Garou and Loa Tales from Northern Haiti.” The Journal of American Folklore, vol. 55, no. 218, 1942, pp. 219–227. JSTOR, www.jstor.org/stable/535864.