Tag Archives: ghost story

El Cucuy

Nationality: Mexican
Age: 30
Occupation: Lead Associate of Operations, Chase
Residence: Laguna Niguel
Performance Date: 4/14/2021
Primary Language: English
Language: Spanish

–Informant Info–
Nationality: United States of America
Age: 30
Occupation: Lead Associate of Operations, Chase Bank
Residence: Laguna Niguel, CA
Date of Performance/Collection: 4/19/2021
Primary Language: English
Other Language(s): Spanish

Main Piece:

The following conversation is transcribed from a conversation between me (HS) and my co-worker/informant (MR).

HS: So tell me about El Cucuy.

MR: El Cucuy was a lot like other legends that my friends and parents used to scare me when I was little. A lot like La Mano Peluda, my parents would say things like, “El Cucuy is going to come and get you!” When I was really little, probably 5 or 6, I would be scared to get clothes out of my closet at night because that’s where I was told El Cucuy was waiting to get me and eat me. I honestly don’t even know anything about El Cucuy, he was kind of just like a boogeyman type thing that I use now to scare kids into behaving.

MR: *Googles El Cucuy on her phone for the first time*

MR: Oh wow. This story is crazy weird. Hahahaha. Apparently, a father was cursed after forgetting that he left his kids locked in the closet while their barn burned down, so all his kids were killed. After years of looking for his kids in other families’ closets, he grew an appetite for them? That makes no sense but it’s nice to finally know where the story of El Cucuy came from after all these years.

Background:

My informant is my co-worker from my job. She is essentially my supervisor and she enjoys helping me to practice my Spanish and telling me a lot about her culture and heritage. She was raised in a Spanish-speaking household by two parents who both immigrated to the United States from Mexico. She comes from a devout Catholic family and has taught me a lot of traditions that I didn’t know pertain to Catholicism, seeing as to the fact that I myself was raised in a Catholic family. She also knows a lot of Mexican urban legends and ghost stories from her childhood.

Context:

This story was brought up while having a general discussion with my co-worker about her culture and traditions. We had just finished talking about La Mano Peluda and other legends such as El Chupacabra. She had told me about these traditions before but I asked her to go more in-depth for the sake of the collection project. We were sitting next to each other on the teller line at work and we would chat in-between customers. In a lot of the audio recordings, you can hear us having a conversation and then stopping abruptly because a customer walks in.

Thoughts:

Something that I found interesting, and I don’t know if this applies on a broader scale, is that there was a significant difference in my coworker’s response to talking about El Cucuy as opposed to other legends. In the case of La Mano Peluda, she recited many childhood experiences where she was genuinely afraid of it, along with talking about her scare-filled experiences of searching for El Chupacabra. She was not as passionate or enthusiastic about El Cucuy, perhaps because the legend wasn’t as effective at scaring her as a child or because it wasn’t used by her parents as much. Regardless, El Cucuy is a typical urban legend. My coworker’s comment on how El Cucuy is similar to the boogeyman made me realize that, like many other legends, it is part of a global pattern of stories made up to scare children into behaving.

To see how El Cucuy links with these other boogeyman stories, read:

Hayes, Joe., and Honorio. Robledo. El Cucuy! : a Bogeyman Cuento . 1st ed., Cinco Puntos Press, 2001.

The Ghost of Rose Gilbert

Nationality: American
Age: 19
Occupation: Student
Residence: Los Angeles, CA
Performance Date: April 29 2021
Primary Language: English

“At my high school, there was this teacher who taught literally since the school was founded. Um, her name was Rose Gilbert, she taught English, she married like a billionaire, still ended up teaching, reached the age of retirement, still kept on teaching, her husband died and left her so much money and she donated a bunch of it back to the school — um, our, we have a pool named after her, we have a theatre named after her. And she was the inspiration for, um, Maz in the most recent, uh what’s it called, Star Wars movies because JJ Abrams went to Pali High. But a lot of people think…oh, and then she died. She died in like 2011. And a lot of people think that her old classroom is haunted, myself included. I’ve seen it with my own eyes. Um, I had my 11th grade AP Lang class in her old classroom, um, in the A building, and um all the doors and windows were closed and all of a sudden a bunch of papers just flew off the desk! A bunch of books sort of fell off of shelves, and we were like “Oh that…that’s Ms. Gilbert! She is…she’s not happy with us!” Um, yeah. People called her Mama Rose. She’s a…she’s a…a big presence at my high school.”

Notes: People love a ghost story, and it’s made more real when it’s the ghost of someone in the community. I do have a question, however. What’s her unfinished business, the reason most ghosts in ghost stories stay? Is she not done teaching English? Or is Pali simply not ready to give up Mrs. Gilbert, even though she taught there for 60 years?

It’s a fascinating case study of how communities will cling to people long after their departure.

Personal Ghost Story

Nationality: Chinese American
Age: 19
Occupation: Student
Residence: Pasadena, CA
Primary Language: English

Text/Interview:

DS: “One summer, I was visiting family in Brazil. There are lots of storms there over the summer. One night there was torrential rain. However, it was not the rain that woke me up. Instead, I arose to a little rattling noise. As I came to, the room filled with fog. My room started to get really cold and I saw this demonic figure in the corner of the room. The figure was dark and skeletal. I could feel its evil aura and was completely petrified. I couldn’t move. The figure slowly crept closer and closer until he was right at the head of my bed. The sheets went flying right as thunder struck and he vanished into thin air.”

Context:

DS has family who lives in Brazil. According to him, the house he was staying in was extremely old and the architecture is not quite safe. As a result, he believes that someone either died in the house over its long history or someone died during its construction. Either way, DS knows that there is an evil spirit that haunts that house in Brazil and it is seeking revenge.

Personal Opinion:

While I do not know the validity of the story, I believe that DS saw what he claims to have seen. Encounters with evil spirits are not too uncommon and a rainstorm would be a perfect time for one to strike. Spirits are liminal figures who are neither alive nor dead. Thunderstorms are a liminal time between two sunny days. There is a great in between and I would not be too surprised if this is when spirits roam in Brazil.

The Blue Light

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Nationality: American
Age: 80
Occupation: Retired, Former Museum Curator
Residence: Kelseyville, California
Performance Date: April 26, 2021
Primary Language: English

Background:

My informant for this piece grew up in rural, northern Wisconsin. I know from personal experience that living in an isolated area such as this one can cause serious boredom, especially during adolescence. Because of this, people who grow up away from the city often make their own fun, creating games and exploring the landscape. Occasionally, in the dark of night, strange things tend to occur.

Context:

As a teenager, looking for “the Blue Light” was both an exciting pastime and rite of passage in my informant’s hometown; everyone knew about it. On late nights, those individuals who thought themselves daring enough would go out in an attempt to experience the lore themselves. Luckily–although I may never get to experience it myself–I was able to live this tradition vicariously while he told me about it during an over-the-phone interview for the USC folklore archives.

Main Piece:

“When we were in high school… It was called the blue light. And there was a bridge on a country road, and you would go park on the bridge at night and people would go there all the time. And if you look out off the bridge sometimes people would see a blue light moving through the woods, and I saw it once, and my friends did too. The rumor was that there was an old farmer who hung himself off the bridge and his ghost haunted those woods.”

Analysis:

A few years ago, I remember hearing about some kind of phenomenon similar to the Blue Light that was supposedly proven false. Instead, these strange colors that people were seeing in the woods at night were reasoned to be the release of natural gas from a swamp, which would have a luminescent glow for a few seconds before dissipating. While this seems a more likely explanation, it hasn’t stopped the legend hunters who, apparently, continue to go out in search of the Blue Light even to this day. Though I would like to believe in the story and to pursue the Blue Light for myself, this continued interest in the phenomenon as the embodiment of a ghost is probably due to the human tendency of belief perseverance. In other words, teens in that region may have been given the information to know that the Blue light is probably just swamp gas, but they continue to believe in the story because it’s what they’ve always known.

For a Similar Narrative, See:

Carlisle, John. “Mysterious Light Draws Thrill Seekers to a U.P. Forest.” Detroit Free Press, 9 July 2018, eu.freep.com/story/news/columnists/john-carlisle/2016/09/04/mysterious-paulding-light-upper-peninsula-michigan/89275134.

My Mother’s Favorite Ghost Story

Nationality: Singaporean
Age: 56
Occupation: Homemaker
Residence: Singapore
Performance Date: 04/27/2021
Primary Language: English

Context

This is a tale that my mother often told me and my sister when we were children. Tales like these are common especially during the Hungry Ghost Month or Ghost Festival. The Ghost Festival takes place on the fifteenth day of the seventh month of the lunar calendar and is a time to pay respect to one’s deceased ancestors. The term ‘jie’ refers to my elder sister.

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Performance

The following is transcribed from a conversation between me, (M), and my mother, the interviewee (I).

M: Can you tell me the ghost story that you always tell jie and me when we were younger?

I: Which one?

M: The one I hated the most.

(I laughs)

I: Yes. So, you used to get a lot of bruises on your arms and legs when you were younger.

M: Why did I get so many bruises?

I: You just ran around a lot I think. But so, I used to tell you that whenever you get a bruise and you don’t know why, it’s because you did something wrong that day, and there’s a ghost living under your bed that comes out during the Hungry Ghost Month and pinches you in your sleep. And you get one pinch for every wrongdoing.

M: That’s terrifying. Why did you tell jie and I that story?

I: It was funny, you girls always get so scared. It also wasn’t real, and I didn’t think you girls would believe me.

M: What things would we do wrong that would warrant the story?

I: Small things like picking up your clothes or finishing your food.

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Analysis

This story has always frightened me as a child, but today I can look back and laugh at the tale and also understand where this myth comes from. The myth of a ghost pinching children at night for their wrong behavior is to encourage good behavior. The behaviors that were encouraged were never significant things of not hurting someone or not lying, they were often smaller things like finishing all the food of your plate or learning to tie your shoelaces properly. I think with smaller behaviors, it’s often harder to justify because there isn’t huge moral reasoning behind it. And thus it can be easier to come up with a myth and use fear to get children to behave well.