Tag Archives: family story

The Green Hand: A Family’s Traditional Ghost Story

The informant heard this ghost story from his grandfather. The narrative is told each time the family visits their grandparents on a ranch in Wyoming during campfire night. It is a story that caused sleepless night for the young grandchildren, but as they grew up they came to appreciate the humor and entertainment value of the story as well, such as the chosen name of “Beaver Dick” and the occasional history lesson the ever-changing story included. Now, the story is told to entertain family events and to reminisce on family get-togethers and childhood memories. The story generally brings about positive nostalgic feelings and familial memories.

Here is the story as told: “There was two beaver hunters named Beaver Dick and Buffalo Bill. They used to go out all the time together to go hunt beavers to sell their skins and they did it all the time until one night they are camping out and they had a little too much to drink and they got in a big fight and during that big fight Beaver Dick decided to pull out his giant machete that he uses to kill the beavers and he grabs Buffalo Bill by the arm and chops his arms off but not Buffalo Bill is super mad at him so he tries to kill him but in the process, Beaver Dick kills Buffalo Bill. But now Beaver Dick doesn’t know what to do with Buffalo Bill, so he throws his body into the river – yes that river right next to the house – but he forgets to throw his hand in the river too. That night, he sleeps, and the next morning he packs out and takes all their skins and goes to another place to hunt more beavers. He has a pretty good day that day and catches a lot of beavers. He decides to camp out by that lake, and has a good dinner and a nice fire and goes to bed. But then, all of a sudden, in the middle of the night, he wakes up and hears scratching on his tent door (makes scratching noises by dragging nails on the chair he sits on). He thinks it might just be an animal, like a small squirrel or something, so he goes back in his tent and goes back to bed. But he hears it again (makes scratching noises again) and decides to go out and check out whatever it is. So he goes out and lights a gas lamp or oil lamp and shines it around, but doesn’t see anything. He goes back to the tent and tries to go to bed, but he hears something in his tent. He thinks it’s a squirrel or something that got in his tent, so he turns over to try to catch it and throw it out of his tent. But there he sees a green, rotten hand! The Green Hand jumps on top of him! Ahhh! The hand strangles him! (Makes strangled screaming noises) and strangles him and strangles him and strangles him until he dies!”

Campfire stories are told to cultivate community through group entertainment, which happens in this family context as well. The grandchild says that he and his family now reminisce on these story-time fires as good memories, which demonstrates that the community was strengthened through the telling of this story. Why it was a ghost story and not some other story is likely due to entertainment value for the adults of telling scary stories and seeing the kids believe their fearsome legends. Fear brings people closer together as well, so that is a reason to (slightly) scare the children perhaps. This culture clearly values family bonding as they get together to tell stories around a fire each year, which is more often than most American extended families see each other. The culture also clearly finds a sort of fantasy and entertainment in the stories of the American Frontier as that is where the story is based: old beaver trappers in the newfound West.

Falling Rock

DC is a 53-year-old white woman who currently lives in Texas but was born in rural Montana. 

DC- You know when you’re driving down the road and you see the yellow caution signs that say ‘loose gravel’ or ‘falling rock’. When I was young, my parents used to tell us that Falling Rock was an angry Native American because we lived with a lot of Indigenous people. They would say that he would jump out and throw boulders at passing cars. I believe that I was in like late elementary school and I used to tell my friends about the legendary Falling Rock.

Me- Do you have any other details you can think about the story? Did your parents ever have a reason as to why he was angry and throwing rocks?

DC- He was angry because the land was taken. That’s all I can remember. My parents would tell us to be quiet and make us look for him when we saw signs. They always told us that as long as we don’t bother him he won’t bother us. His wife’s name was Loose Gravel. I think he also had kids named like boulders on the road or something.

Analysis

The Falling Rock story has many different interesting aspects to examine. Firstly, this tale perpetrates many negative stereotypes towards Native Americans. While I don’t think it was DC’s parent’s goal to be hateful towards Indigenous people, equating important tribal names to the likes of signs found on the sides of roads is disrespectful and harmful, as well as spreading the idea that Native people are angry and violent.  DC and her family were not doing this on purpose, they considered themselves to be good allies and friends with many Indigenous people in their town. This goes to show that unconscious biases exist in everyone, and we need to make an active effort to be aware of the ways we may perpetuate harm without realizing it. An important part of being a good ally is being able to see where you have done wrong and improve from it. While DC heard this story as a young child and would tell others the tale then, as she has grown and become aware of the negative connotations of the story, she no longer spreads it, not even to her own children. 

While DC’s family may unconsciously have been spreading harmful stereotypes, this story also served to educate their children in some ways. Through the story, we can see that DC’s parents had at least a basic understanding of the ways that Native Americans had been unfairly treated, and were trying to teach their children. While it’s not as thorough as the education one may get in class, it still teaches the audience that Natives are valid in their anger because of the cruel way Americans have treated them in the past. They were taught to respect their anger and boundaries and understand their pain, at least slightly. While the story still holds many harmful beliefs, it is important to think through all the ways this story may have impacted its young, White audience. While it may have unfortunately further engrained a few stereotypes, it also helped them better understand the Native’s pain and history. 

Looking past the race dynamics, this story exemplifies many of the ways that similar stories begin and spread. It takes something as simple as a road sign to begin such an oral tradition. Every family has thought of ways to entertain, or quiet, their children on long car rides. Legends are much easier to create than one might imagine, they are being made all around you at every moment. 

Curiosity Buried The Man

Context: S is a Peruvian man in his early 60s. S spent around the first 13 years living inside of Peru before moving to Germany where he lived until his late 20s when he moved to California. Although having lived in California for most of his life now, he still has a close connection to Peru and Germany through his family. This piece was collected during a phone call.

Intv: “Can you think of any stories that came from somewhere local?”

S: “There was this one story about a guy who was buried alive.”

Intv: “Oh my gosh, like someone who you knew?”

S: “Not me personally, and I’m not really sure, I used to think it was someone my family knew, but I can’t be sure. Anyways, There was this guy, who was terrified of being buried alive.”

Intv: “I mean, I would be scared too if it had happened to me.” 

S: “Oh yes, but for him, it just was all he thought about, he would wake up in the middle of the night because of nightmares about it. One day he decided he couldn’t take it anymore, and he went to his family with a series of rules and tests to make sure if he died, that he was dead. They were supposed to use a mirror to see if he was breathing, wait three days, and a number of different things. So of course all of his family promised him that they would do it, and make sure he was dead. But the man keeps wondering, what if, what if, so he decides to test it and fakes his death, with the plan to reveal himself before being buried. However, and this is what I can’t remember so well, but something happens, I believe the coffin lid closes on his head and knocks him out, and he ends up buried alive.”

Analysis: Being buried alive is likely something that everyone fears, making this story immediately relatable. I think that’s intentional as it’s trying to convey an important message, something that is behind a large number of folklore tales, like how the boy who cried wolf teaches one not to fib and lie. This story, however, is more like a long version of the phrase “curiosity killed the cat.” It’s a cautionary tale regarding unhealthy obsessive pursuits. 

Buried Alive

This story um… is from our Paine side of the family and it goes back to I believe around 1727, the year 1727. And we had a relative named William Winston and. . . he wasn’t a wealthy man, but he worked hard, but he was relatively poor. And he lived up in Northern Virginia and he met a woman who he fell deeply in love with. She was. . .she became his paramour. She was all he had hoped for in a mate and he decided this is going to be the woman that. . . I. . . I am going to marry, and her name was Sarah Dabney. And, so he started courting her as they did back in that day, and the courting process went on for quite a while. Um. . . long enough for him to save up a lot of the money that he had and he had made from work in order to buy her what was going to be one of the most beautiful rings that anyone in Northern Virginia had ever seen as an engagement ring. And. . .they were going to get married in mid spring, and it had been a terrible winter, and William Winston lived in a small, small house. You know back then it was probably a shack. But, the poor weather continued and it snowed and then the snow to rain and sleet for quite a while but he and Sarah went ahead and got married. I think it was. . . late. . . late April of 1727 if I am correct on the date, and word got out that she had this incredible engagement ring that he had gotten for her that was (you know) a sign of their betrothal. And, the word got out. . . and she fell sick with pneumonia and he thought um she became really really sick and. . . to the point to where the doctors pronounced her dead. And this was like a month. . . this was not long after they had been married. And he was devastated, he was totally traumatized. And he buried her . . . I guess he buried her in a somewhat shallow grave and the word had gotten out that his wife who had this beautiful ring. . . that this–this laborer who had married a woman and given her this just almost priceless wedding ring–that she had died.

And  three–I guess they would have been equivalent to highway men,robbers, grave robbers–after she had been buried, they dug her up, and because the ring fit so tightly on her finger that they couldn’t slide it off of her finger, and they cut her finger off! Well he was back in his home, and they dug her up in this dark and stormy night, and he’s (you know) probably sitting at his little table in his little shack with the candle flickering and the wind howling and the rain beating and the roof leaking and you know just crying into his hands. . . and there was a scratching at the door! And he’s– and he (you know) he’s just just sobbing and the scratching continued and it got louder and louder and louder and he finally realized somebody or something is scratching at my door! And he got up and he went to the door and he opened the door and there was Sarah and she hadn’t died, she had been buried alive! When they dug her up and cut the ring off of her finger it. . . it. . . it resuscitated her enough, along with the oxygen that she was able to breathe again. . . and that’s the story. And they lived happily ever after after that.

The Floating Lady

Nationality: American
Age: 19
Occupation: Student
Residence: Arizona
Performance Date: 4/10/22
Primary Language: English

Background: My informant is a 19 year old girl with Mexican heritage. She describes this paranormal experience that happened to her great grandmother in the 1970’s and again years later. When her grandmother tells this story to the family, everyone becomes a little uncomfortable. 

S: In the early 70’s, my great grandmother lived on a lemon tree farm that she had used to provide for her family. She says that the farm was vast, there were certain places on her farm where you could look and see nothing but tall lemon trees. One night when my grandmother was playing outside, she came back inside crying to my great grandmother about a lady standing in the orchard and staring at her. My great grandmother went to the front door of the house and looked out to see what my grandma was talking about. She saw a lady standing outside staring into the house. My grandma says that this would not have been strange usually, as where she was located in Mexico got extremely hot and it was not uncommon for people to go to her orchard and cool off under her trees. But she noticed that this lady had been levitating a couple inches off of the ground and says she became terrified. She saw the same lady many years later a second time when she had immigrated to California. My mother had been very young at the time and was helping my great grandmother babysit her cousins since their parents went out for the night. The babies had all fallen asleep so my mother went to her room to go to sleep herself. My great grandmother was leaving the kitchen to go to her room when she noticed a figure standing over one of the babies. She initially thought it was my mother messing with babies, so she started yelling at her to stop. This yelling made the figure turn around and she saw an old woman staring back at her. My grandmother then says that woman went to the living room window, opened it and crawled out all while my great grandmother was screaming at her. She had thought she was dealing with a kidnapping situation at first, until she reflected on the events and she recalled that the lady had been slightly floating off of the ground just like the lady she had seen many years ago in Mexico. My great grandma, she’s no stranger to paranormal events. She even claims that one night when she was washing dishes, she felt someone roughly tap her shoulder twice, so rough that it made her drop the dish she was holding into the sink. But when she turned around nothing was there. My great grandmother is now in her eighties and tells the story with just as much fear as she did when she was young. 

Me: Is there any reason why she thinks this happened to her?

S: She thinks it could be a bad omen. My grandma, the one who first saw the lady outside when she was a girl, got into a really bad car accident and she’s had schizophrenia ever since. And when she appeared the second time, the cousin she was looking over ended up losing his future baby when it was barely a month old. So my grandma believes that the floating lady’s appearance signals that something bad will happen to them. 

My thoughts: It appears to me that many times, paranormal superstitions and omens, especially ghosts, may be localized to a small folk group, especially the familial level. It’s not uncommon both through the grapevine and in the media that there are cases in which a specific entity follows a person or family around and can latch on to them, sometimes over generations, and sometimes localized to a specific town or house. This speaks to the belief that ghosts may exist outside of time but are made real through their liminal connection to the living world. I believe that stories with ghost attachments are common in cultures that emphasize familial bonds such as Mexico because they are more likely to perceive connection as something important and real that can transcend the boundaries of the living realm, as evidenced by the tradition of El Dia de los Muertos. Even if the supernatural connection is a negative thing, such as in the story above, the paranormal experience still serves as a form of wisdom and warning to those who can perceive it.