Tag Archives: legend

New York was Purchased for $24

Text:

The island of Manhattan was purchased from the Native Americans who inhabited the land for twenty-four dollars worth of goods. When the Dutch came across the Atlantic and into the Americas, land was so cheap they were able to purchase the land in exchange for some goods. 

Context

The informant grew up in the city of Manhattan and remembers talking about this myth inside of their elementary school classroom. They talk of how everyone who tells this story chopped the low price to inflation. The informant believed that twenty-four dollars was a lot back then. He believed that the craziest part of the story is how crazy inflation is rather than the abuse of power that took place. I then pulled out an inflation calculator, and $24 dollars when the Dutch first landed in New York is worth about $2,000 now. Pennies in comparison to the vast amounts of wealth the Dutch had at the time. The informant now views this myth in a different light. Before, they saw the story had a connotation of “wow, the dollar used to go so far”. Now they see the story as exposing how “Native Americans were totally robbed”. 

Analysis

This myth is really interesting given how time can really affect the impact it will have on people who hear it. Because the informant heard this story as a child, it carried with it a sense of innocence. As he has gotten older and Americans have begun to recognize the brutality of colonization, the story very quickly changes tone. What was once a fun little tidbit about the city is now a scar that has been passed down generations. This is a story that could be about the abuse of power on the colonizers part, native Americans being gullible and stupid, or that both parties had the best intentions in mind and everyone was happy after the exchange. The implications of this founding myth can vary widely from person to person. This is also a wonderful example of how the lines between myth and legend are often blurred. Although this is a founding story for the island of Manhattan, it is likely untrue.

Hotel Cecil and Elisa Lam

Nationality: USA and Mexico
Age: 20
Occupation: Student
Residence: San Diego
Performance Date: 4/5
Primary Language: English
Language: Spanish

Context:
The informant is a 20 year old female college student at USC. The performance took place in her dorm room.

Text:
Informant: About 10 years ago, there was a girl who died in a hotel right around here in downtown LA. The footage of her acting weirdly in the elevator was all over the Internet. Some people said that she was possessed by demon and other said that she’s crazy. Her body was later found in the water tank at the hotel couple months later. I don’t really know if they’ve figured out what happened to her, but people said that the hotel has been haunted ever since.

Analysis:
The death of Elisa Lam is one of the famous unsolved mystery that happened in Los Angeles. The legend of haunted places often occurred after peculiar death or suicide. Because of the Internet, the legend has spread worldwide. The building has been renovated into affordable housing complex to help the local unhoused population, though most of the rooms remain empty (https://www.latimes.com/california/cecil-hotel-housing-vouchers-latt-123). The history of the hotel is extremely bothering, see link https://thecrimewire.com/multifarious/Los-Angeles-Cecil-Hotel. The video mentioned by informant, see link https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3TjVBpyTeZM (trigger warning: unsettling scene)

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.

The Secret under the Tarpaulin

Nationality: Taiwan
Age: 20
Occupation: Student
Residence: Taipei
Performance Date: 4/4
Primary Language: Chinese
Language: English

Context:
The informant is a 20 year old female who went to Shipai elementary school in Taipei, Taiwan. The interview was conducted through a video call. Shipai Elementary school is a public elementary school in Beitou District. It’s directly next to Shipai Junior High School.

Text:
Informant: I remember when I was third grade, my classmate at the time asked me if I have heard about the rumors. I asked her, “What rumors?” She said that people are saying there was a dead body under the tarpaulin at the corner of the school. I asked her where exactly was she talking about. It was an empty space between the first grade building and the third grade building, next to the wall that separates the elementary school and the Junior High School. We, and other kids, decided to check it out during the long recess. We ran downstairs to the place and saw this huge tarpaulin with blue and white stripes. The tarpaulin was covering a lump on the ground, so we know there is something underneath. None of us were brave enough to approach the thing, let along uncover it. I remember we were all standing there, 10 meters away from the tarpaulin, and a squirrel ran across the tarpaulin and we all started screaming. That was that. There was another time I walked past it and a corner of the thing underneath was out. It was just a pile of wood. We don’t really know who started a rumor and we don’t really know if it was a pile of wood when we first saw it, but that corner of the school always feel weird to me. I don’t really know why though. After I started junior high, people were talking about how some bad kids would hide there, on the other side of the wall, and smoke, maybe that’s why.

Analysis:
This legend that circled among kids around early 2010s in a particular local school shows how a simple trivial unknown thing can become the greatest mystery through imagination. The informant’s later revelation drew a conclusion to her early legend quest and she may have found the logical explanation as of why the legend appear in the first place. There is a chance that the school teachers were trying to keep the young kids away from that space by making up the rumors in order to shelter them from exposure to bad substance.

“GPS and Cemetery are a bad combo.”

Nationality: Taiwan
Age: 50
Occupation: Housewife
Residence: Taiwan
Performance Date: 4/1/2023
Primary Language: Chinese
Language: English

Context:
Informant is a 50 year-old Taiwanese woman and this is her memorate happened on a camping trip. The interview was conducted through a facetime call.

Text:
Informant: It was during summer a couple years ago. I took the kids on a camping trip about an hour away from the city. One of my sister’s kids said that she had something earlier that day and asked us to pick her up at a nearby train station. We arrived at the site in the afternoon and by the time I was supposed to pick her up, it was pitch black outside. There was a cemetery on the side of the road at about halfway between the train station and the camping site. I remembered it because we saw that earlier when we were heading to the site. I remembered setting the GPS map to the train station and I took a quick glance at where the route would be, nothing unusual, just one big straight road that leads to the town where the station is. I started driving and as I was approaching where the cemetery is located, the map start asking me to turn right. There is one small muddy road cutting through the cemetery and the GPS kept asking me to go through there, but it makes no sense at all because the station should be straight ahead down the big road. The closer I got to the intersection, the more I felt weird about the entire situation. The street lights were flickering and glowing in a strange tone and I just felt this uncanny feeling that the something is trying to pull me into the cemetery, down that road. I didn’t dare to look through the passenger window because I was convinced that I might see things that I shouldn’t see. As I drove past and away from the intersection that I was asked to turn by the GPS, the street lights seemed to go back to the normal, dimmed, warm-yellow tone and the strange feeling went away. Anyways, that is why you should always have a basic sense of where you are going and don’t fully rely on GPS. God knows what would have happened if I had just followed the GPS.

Analysis:
The memorate demonstrates the common Taiwanese belief of the existence of ghosts. Cemetery are usually seen as a cursed or bad place where the wandering spirits or hostile ghosts will try to haunt or harm someone, either out of fun or malicious intention. In Taiwan, you often heard that GPS or other technologies involving energy wave passing through air and space often malfunction when the device is near the cemetery. The scientific explanation of this is still unclear. This type of experience therefore was explained way by the common belief of ghost.