Tag Archives: devil

Sleep Paralysis and Devils

Nationality: Chinese-Korean
Age: 20
Occupation: Student
Residence: Diamond Bar, CA
Performance Date: 4/21/2014
Primary Language: English
Language: Chinese

Sleep Paralysis

The Informant:

My friend, was born in Diamond Bar, CA. He is the son of a pastor whose church is in Diamond Bar. He lives with his parents and three younger siblings, a sister and two brothers. His father is Chinese and his mother is Korean.

The Story:

The first time that this happened to me was when I was either a sophomore or a junior in high school. I was lying on my bed, obviously in the middle of my sleep, when all of a sudden I realized I couldn’t move. I couldn’t move my body, I couldn’t scream, there was no air in my lungs. I tried to scream but couldn’t and I started to freak out. All of a sudden… I felt super cold, from top, my head, down, to my feet. I don’t remember if I was outside the blankets or inside but regardless I felt the wind. Suddenly I felt a heavy weight on my chest, as if something was sitting on it, and a shadow on top of me. I don’t really remember what happened after that. All of these instances blur together after a while. This was the first time it happened. After that it happened on a weekly basis for at least a year. There are times when I know it’s coming. You just feel like you’re getting really tired, or sometimes you can just sense something is off, as if there’s something in your room with you. I’ve never seen anything in my room though, and it always happens at night. There’s nothing I could do except wait for it to pass… and I’m always alone when this happens.

The Analysis:

This is a different occurrence of the scissor lock that my other friend experienced. We talked about this in his room, and a couple other friends were present. As he continued to tell his story, our other friends slowly became quiet, and then silent. The way Trevor spoke was genuine and even though such an occurrence would be questionable, there was no doubt in his voice that this was true. In Trevor’s instance, this happens on a semi-regular basis, with the last one occurring a couple months ago. Before that, it happened once a week or once every other week. There is no basis for why he goes through the scissor lock so often, but his actions showed that he doesn’t get used to it, even though it’s happened numerous times. It is creepy that this has happened so many times that they all seem to blur into one for him. One aspect that was interesting is that he is a pastor’s kid. This was one difference I noticed between him and my other informant on this same topic – it is probable that his stronger faith or adherence to Christianity has an affect on these continual occurrences. Whether it is due to faith or not, I wondered if it was the devil’s doing, and led me to question the existence of the devil and it’s many forms.

 

Researchers have attempted to examine the causes of the scissor lock, dubbing it generally as sleep paralysis: http://link.springer.com/article/10.1023%2FB%3ADREM.0000005896.68083.ae

A different version of sleep paralysis from someone not religious can be found at: http://kerryonian.wordpress.com/2013/01/11/the-experience/

Lightning Is the Devil Getting Whipped

Nationality: Sudanese
Age: 21
Occupation: Student
Residence: Los Angeles, CA
Performance Date: 4/16/2013
Primary Language: English
Language: Arabic

Informant Bio: Informant is a friend and fellow business major.  He is a junior at the University of Southern California Marshall School of Business.  His family is from Sudan and they are Muslim.  Both he and his twin brother were educated in international schools.  He speaks Arabic and English.

 

Context: I was talking with the informant about traditions and rituals his family has.

 

Item: “Any time there is thunder during a lightning storm, every time you see a lightning crack it is the Devil getting whipped.  I don’t know why that is or where it came from, it’s more a, ‘don’t get scared by lightning, it’s just the Devil getting whipped’ kind of thing’.  My mother is the one who always says it”.

 

Analysis: This is an instance of people assigning meaning to a physical phenomena that they cannot explain.  It makes sense that an older figure (the mother) is the one who says this, as it is meant to comfort the children by using familiar (and acceptable) imagery.  It also allows people to feel a sense of connection and intimacy with God, as, lightning is a common and natural phenomena and for God to appear that many times implies he is watching over everyone.

Demon sighting

Nationality: Mexican-American
Age: 20
Occupation: Student
Residence: Los Angeles, CA
Performance Date: 4/28/12
Primary Language: English
Language: Spanish

This is a story about my informant’s Uncle Carlos.

“This one time, when he was a kid, uh, he was home alone. And in his room it was pitch black and he wakes up to the sound of someone whispering in his ear, like, ‘Carlos, look, look!’ At first he thought he was just, like, he was dreaming until he came to and he was, like, ‘Wait, what the hell is that?’ From his perspective, he turns around and from his doorway he sees, like, these two, these two diamond shaped eyes. And it’s, like, perched, like, you could see, like, there’s something perched, like, at the top of the corner, like, right there and he’s just kinda trying to wake up just kinda like, ‘What the hell?’ And the more he’s looking at it, the more he starts to feel like something’s literally looking right at him and there’s just, like, this eerie feeling, like, ‘What the hell is that?’ And, at this point, he’s just completely paralyzed, he has no— just out of pure fear. He doesn’t know what to do. And he manages to break out of the fear and turn on the light. Like, he gets up and turns on the light. For a solid three seconds, he saw this thing… The way he described it, it looked like a bat, a bat with—a brown bat with a lot of fur and this, just huge, just wing. You could see it flapping, like that, and it just it flapped and it went through, like, the hallway and it went back into the dark.” Laughs.

“And he got up and he looked at it and from the door, from the other um, doorway, he saw it perched there again. And from there, he, literally, just, he’s screaming, just turning on all the lights, every single light in the house and my grandparents finally get back and he’s probably thirteen, fourteen, and my grandparents, are like—having all the lights on in the house, in the middle of the night are you fucking crazy? So he comes—The way that my grandma told me, like, he—my grandma saw my uncle Carlos in the living room like this…”

(pulls knees to chest and wraps arms around shins )

“Just waiting for them to get back. And he was just, he felt it like, it was, like, in the house, just like staring at him. He had no idea what it was, but he said, like, ‘[informant’s name], it was this thing this, like a demon.’ And he didn’t know exactly what it was… you know, but, like, for him, there’s no bullshit. This, for him, it happened. It was there. You know, he still remembers it. And it was just really traumatizing.”

 

My informant seems to trust the word of his uncle Carlos and believes that this demon animal actually exists. My informant can’t explain how this could have happened, but his family is very open to the supernatural and he loves hearing about and sharing these stories.

This is a very specific example of an appearance of a demon. This is another common motif in legends about the devil.

The Legend of Tom Cook and the Devil

Nationality: American
Age: 18
Occupation: Student
Residence: Massachusetts
Performance Date: March 15, 2012
Primary Language: English
Language: Spanish

My informant shared with me the local legend of Tom Cook from Westborough, Massachusetts

“Back in about the 1700s there was a clever thief named Tom Cook. He was not the type of thief that you would think, a Robin Hood of the town I guess you could say. He would steal from the rich and give to the poor. So he was a good thief. Anyway, he was not a villain. When Tom was a baby, he was very near death, so his mother made a deal with the devil in order to spare his life. She promised the Devil that Tom would serve him, and cause mischief in a life of thievery. However, since Tom was a good thief who gave away all his loot to those less-fortunate than him, the Devil felt cheater. One morning, when Tom was getting dressed, he heard a knock at the door. He went and opened it to find the Devil himself standing there. The Devil said that he was here to claim Tom’s soul. Tom then asked the Devil if before he took him, if he could finish getting dressed. The Devil, seeing no harm in the request, agreed. However, this was a trick, and for the rest of his life Tom never finished getting dressed. He always had one shoe missing, or a belt buckle un-done, or sometimes one suspender un-clipper. Because the Devil had agreed to wait until he was finished dressing, the Devil could never claim his soul, and Tom died in his old age, with his shirt un-buttoned, and his soul rose up to heaven instead of down to the Devil.”

My informant told me that she had heard this story on a tour of her town that her class took when she was in third grade. She always remembers the story because she thought that Tom was an extremely clever person for being able to out-smart the devil. She informed me that the story was extra-special because the house that Tom lived in still stands today, and they saw it on their tour. That made the legend even more believable to her, seeing the door that the Devil himself walked up to. She doesn’t really ever tell the story of Tom Cook to many people, only unless they make a comment about how the old house should be torn down.

I am from this town of Westborough, MA, and I remember going on the town tour that my informant described. I agree that what made the legend believable was actually seeing Tom Cook’s house. I remember it being light blue, with broken windows and an overgrown lawn. The roof had been caving in and it looked like the scariest house I had ever seen. This image made the legend so real because such a house is hard to imagine could still exist. Sadly, the house was town down this year, and with it, what I believe to be a great deal of the believability of the Tom Cook legend.

The story of Tom Cook appears in authored literature in:

Allen, Kristina Nilson. On the Beaten Path: Westborough, Massachusetts. Westborough Civic Club and Westborough Historical Society, 1984.