Tag Archives: Legend Quest

 The Cult Next Door

Context:  “So basically there used to be a cult right on [a local street] before they left because the police were investigating them. Even though The Cult [the name used to describe the complex they used to inhabit]  is abandoned, most of [the local kids] still think that some people live there. [Other kids] even said they actually saw people inside one time. What me and my friends used to do is we’d drive there at night and ding dong ditch them. One time [a friend of his] threw a rock through a window.”

Analysis: This legend is the informant’s (and my) town’s local legend. To the kids who still live there, the Cult acts like a modern rendition of a haunted house. Local kids, especially teenagers who just got their driver’s license, will go there to cause mischief and test their mettle in a scary environment. Also, just like many haunted houses, the cult remains locally infamous due to the horrors that happened within. “The Cult” was a conservative Christian sect called the Institute in Basic Life Principles that fled after allegations of sexual abuse. Locally, it is widely believed that the group took in young orphans and runaways and sexually abused them. It exists as a nasty stain on an otherwise peaceful town. In my opinion, it is this juxtaposition between peaceful town and horrifying abuse that draws so many kids seeking to partake in legend quests.  

Also, it is almost universally accepted amongst the local teenagers that people are still living in The Cult. Every now and then, kids will claim to have seen members of the cult hiding within, peeking out from windows or waiting behind the door for them to try and knock. While it is likely just kids trying to appear brave and impress their friends, these cultists act as a modern, disenchanted spin on revenants and vampires. Vampires and revenants in folklore are manifestations of unfinished business on Earth. To those who believe in them, evil doesn’t just leave the world in something as simple as death. It festers and propels a corpse to take up life and exact its will. In the case of The Cult, it is hard to just accept that something as evil as a cult of alleged sexual abusers and pedophiles can just leave its sins behind entirely and flee town. Just like the revenants, there is a folk belief in this town that The Cult is still inhabited by these evil, scary people who have returned after the organization’s “death” to haunt that property forever.

Bloody Mary Legend

Text: Okay, so in my elementary school in the bathroom, if you went in Bloody Mary was supposedly on the wall, like if you stared at a certain spot. And so people got really scared and didn’t want to go to the bathroom. I guess you stared for a certain, I don’t remember, like a number of seconds and a certain tile. It was like a tiled wall. So then all of a sudden you were supposed to see it.

Context:

Informant is a freshman at USC studying Themed Entertainment. She recounts her experience in the cafeteria while drinking a cup of coffee and snacking on some hash browns. She is slightly fidgeting and scatter-brained during the conversation.

“The elementary school I grew up in was in Redlands, CA. I learned about the Bloody Mary thing from just people talking about it. I feel like I wasn’t really convinced, but I had a friend that was so scared that I guess I got a little scared because she’d never go to the bathroom alone. She’d be like you have to go to the bathroom with me. And I was like, Okay. I felt kind of silly, to be honest, because I didn’t see anything when they made you look. So I was kind of just like this is weird. I’m pretty sure it didn’t start in our elementary school. I haven’t researched it, but it just came from somewhere else.”

Analysis: This folk narrative is an example of legend, a story in our world that might be true. This Bloody Mary Legend confronts people with what they believe. Even if some do not fully believe like the informant, they can still participate in the legend because of the aesthetic to belief. This legend was prevalent with young kids because children are high on the continuum context or more likely to believe than others. There is also a sort of legend quest involved with this legend because a ritual must be practiced in order to discover the legend. However, because the legend quest comes with a risk of being endangered, the legend is still able to be proved or disproved.

The Hidden Floor of the Middle School

Nationality: China
Primary Language: Mandarin
Other language(s): English, French
Age: 18
Occupation: Student
Residence: Beijing
Performance Date: Nov.28, 2023

Tags: #Schoolghost #teenagers #Suicide #Legendquest

One of my friend told me about the north building of his middle school. The North Building has eight floors above ground and three below ground. However, it is said that there is a haunted B4 that is permanently closed. It is said that in the 2000s, a student fell from an upper floor, crashed through the ventilation shaft on the ground, fell to the B4 level, and died. So the school sealed B4 forever. In the stairwell leading to the basement, down to B3, there is still a staircase to go down, but it is locked by a huge iron fence. People are said to have broken in, heard cries and screams in the area, and seen bloody handprints on the walls.

Context: This is a story told by my friend. This story is usually told to freshmen by senior students when they first enter the school. These teenagers often have a curious mindset and explore in school, telling and boasting about their adventures and original supernatural stories in an exaggerated tone

Personal Thought: The tragedy of the students falling from the building should be real. I have read about it in the local newspapers and media. However B4’s ghost stories may have been concocted by students seeking excitement and boldness. I’m not sure about the existence of that floor, but if it exists, it’s probably just a regular equipment room and storage room. However, the ghost story has become a part of campus culture, inspiring generations of students to run stairwell expeditions and legend quests. This kind of exploration also made me know many new classmates and formed deep friendship with them. The story itself, to a certain extent, also reminds students not to climb outside the window mischievously to prevent the danger of falling.

Arkansas Legend Quest

Text:

“There’s this light, it’s in this town like thirty minutes north of us, it’s in the middle of nowhere on a field. The story is that there was a conductor on a train and this railroad goes along the side of this road, and apparently a conductor fell off and his head got cut off and he looks for his head every night, and that’s why you see a light on the railroad. If you drive out there you’ll see a light floating above the road, and apparently if it touches your car then your car will turn off. So all of our parents have stories about it, like how they’ve gone and seen the light. I don’t know if they’re actually true. But my friends went one time, I didn’t go cause it was during Covid, but they went and I was on facetime with them when it happened. And my friend N, they were on the road and she just started crying like sobbing, and she like never cries. Cause she swore that she saw it, and then they all started screaming because apparently it was coming towards the car, and that’s when they pulled out and left. I’ve been before and nothing happened.” 

Context:

GR is a 19-year-old college student from a small town in northern Arkansas. He was in high school when this story was told, and he’d been hearing the stories about the railroad since he was a little kid. His parents and adults in his town would tell him their experiences of seeing the light, and he doesn’t know if they were making it up to scare him or not. Research shows that this legend is a popular one that can be found online, called the Gurdon Lights in Gurdon Arkansas. He says that his town and a lot of northern Akansas have a lot of hauntings and ghost stories, supposedly because the granite rocks in the ground are a conductor for spirits according to legend. 

Analysis: 

This story is an example of legend questing, where a group of people go out to look for a legend and try to insert themselves into it. It’s also an example of a memorate, where someone’s existing experience fits into the pre established legend. Legend questing is especially popular amongst young people. There might be a multitude of reasons for that. Young people are still figuring themselves out, figuring out what the story of their life is going to be, so it can be compelling to insert themselves into a legendary story that already exists. Since they’re young, they’re supposedly further away from death, so seeking out ghosts and graphic stories about death can both be them putting to use the immortality they feel they have, and also interacting with the concept of death that is both scary and unfamiliar. In certain cultures and in older people, ghost stories are often comforting and warm, such as a visit from a family member. The ghost stories young people tell though, at least in America, are often graphic and tragic and scary, because that’s how they view death to be. They’re both interested in this concept that is so far away, and terrified of this concept that is actually so near, and this fear and interest manifests into young people seeking out ghosts. I also believe that young people seek out legend quests more often because children are raised on fairy tales and magical figures like the Easter Bunny, Tooth Fairy, Santa. They are raised being told that magic is, in some ways, real. As teenagers and young adults they’re expected to separate themselves from the childish idea that magic is real, but there’s a small part of everyone that still wishes that the mystical might be real. 

I also think that Arkansas might be a large hub for supernatural stories because it’s still quite a rural area, there aren’t as many large and prominent cities as there are in other states. While Christianity began spreading around cities, rural areas continued worshiping their own pagan gods. Christianity then decided to paint rural areas as places where the Devil lives, and declare the people who live there as Devil worshipers. This idea has made us see nature and the wild as areas prone to the influence of the devil, so these wide spans of nature secluded from everyone else are seen to be areas more likely to have hauntings and ghosts. Rural town populations in Arkansas have a largely Christian population now, so they might be more inclined to look at the isolated, wild areas near them (such as abandoned train tracks) as scary places of the Devil.

The legend of Green Mist in Chino Hills

Nationality: USA
Age: 53
Occupation: Soccer Coach
Residence: Lafayette, CA
Performance Date: 4/4
Primary Language: English

Context:
The performer is a 53 year old male who grew up in Chino Hills. At a family dinner, he told the story about the place he grew up to his three kids, his wife, and a guest.

Text:
A green eerie mist that would cover the ground in chino hills. Chino hills “Hill of Hope” cult compound. This was a real place located deep in the hills and very hard to get to. We had to off road and hike in. It was a fenced compound with guards. There were also rumors of military experiment. I heard about that since I was a kid and I read about an article couple years ago confirming the rumor. But when I was little, no one knows what was happening there and all the young people like to drive up there to do like a dare or something. It’s almost like all the kids have to do it… before they graduate from high school or something. It was really creepy, like straight out of a horror movie. It’s not like that anymore…… They stop experimenting there for couple decades now.

Analysis:
Legends often happen around military-related locations because the secrecy involved could provoke wild imagination. It is also possible that the military base fueled the rumors in order to keep people away from the area. The rumor of a cult in the midst of green eerie mist on top of unknown military experiments also makes the place even more strange and mysterious. This legend was used to keep people out of certain places, but it made people want to challenge the legend more. The legend also developed a legend quest that associates with it and it usually takes place on the verge of transitioning from childhood and adulthood.