Tag Archives: memorate

Donna Maria’s Enchanted Gardens (Sawfar)

Nationality: Lebanese
Age: 68
Occupation: Seamstress
Residence: Lebanon
Performance Date: April 4, 2023
Primary Language: Arabic
Language: English

My informant is a family member in Lebanon that has lived in the mountains for her entire life which plays a large role in this important narrative that has “become part of her identity forever.”

Narrative:

Wedding at Donna Maria Sursock Gardens

My informant states that they “lived in a village named Sawfar, far into the mountains of Lebanon. Although, it wasn’t different to many other villages, on top of our mountain stood a castle that belonged to our beloved Donna Maria.” The woman who was known to be “the most generous and beautiful of all” lived in a small castle built by her husband, Albert to live out her fairytale dreams. However, after the passing or disappearance of the family for some unknown reason, the castle was “torn apart by the militia in 1975 and left in ruins.” My informant describes her childhood on the open castle grounds as magical and “some of the best moments of [her] life” even in it’s fractured state. After many years, weddings had begun to take place in the castle gardens and some describe “seeing Donna peering from the balcony, sending her wishes to the newlyweds and then it became a tradition, blessing each couple that keeps her memory alive.” The music of the weddings “erupted through the valleys, filling the mountains with the magic of Donna’s castle” However, the informant describes playing in the grounds once as a child and revealing part of the house that had been covered, “it was a dungeon filled with unknown bones. Nobody had known until [she] found it and it became a horror, even Donna may have had a darkness to her and skeletons in her basement”. 

Context:

She states that this became known to the entire village but the weddings never stopped, because it would tamper the ‘magic’ that Donna had given them. Her story and castle history was passed on for generations as children were even brought to learn about Donna and her past as “she is a vital part of Sawfar history” It has become an integral part of her family history and her children’s lives as she says “even though I never met Donna, her descendants and their ground are a big part of my upbringing in making me the person I am today” The castle is not only grounds for the descendants of Donna Maria but the rest of the village to enjoy and pass the joy that the bricks and gardens brought to others.

Analysis:

The narrative that my informant presents seems to be a pivotal part of her upbringing in the village as she had lived through most of the experiences at the Donna Maria castle. The element of the fairytale castle on top of the mountain allowed Donna and her family to thrive and incorporated that into the village. When the story was described, the informant said she passed it on to her children and brought them to the castle grounds to experience it. This allows the children to gain a sense of what their heritage is and a glamorized version of a story such as a castle encourages the learning of their culture and gain a patriotic view of their country and specifically the village. Adults are able to have a stable grounding in their village, even in unfortunate circumstances such as wars and attacks on their homes, they are able to look to the withered castle, with so much mixed history, and see it still standing. The castle represents the hope of what their village was, what it still is and what it will continue to be as the beauty of the story and the gardens is presented to residents of the village, their descendants and tourists who hope to see the history of what brought this village together. The ‘ghost’ of Donna Maria symbolises the blessing of eternal life, especially for married couples and children that still have growth to come as they not only learn about her beauty but also the dungeons that lie beneath her gardens. At times when married women struggled with events in their lives, they regret not getting married at the blessed grounds and being led by Donna who seems to have been viewed not only as a privileged woman but a queen atop the village that was a guiding light in the darkness of wars in Lebanon. Even after all the trials and tribulations that the entire country experienced, Donna’s damaged castle stood as a landmark in the people’s hearts and identities.

Old Man Made Of Wax (Local Legend from Orinda, CA)

Nationality: American
Age: 18
Residence: Orinda, CA
Performance Date: 4/2/23
Primary Language: English

Original Text: “So at my local pool…Orinda Park Pool it was called, OPP. At the pool we would have ghost story night and we would tell the lore of the pool and ghost stories about it and the surrounding area and stuff. And so it used to be a big swimming hole, the pool, like a big lake and then they turned it into like a big pool for swimming and stuff. So there was like this red house within the closed community, right next to the pool and up the hill. People said there was an old man that lived there that was made of wax. And then they told the story of a kid who went in and the old man made of wax like yelled at him and told him to leave and never come back. So one time we went to the house to see if there was anyone there after swim practice when I was like 8 or something with my brothers friends, and we couldn’t get in cuz it was locked, but we looked through the window, but we couldn’t find anything. But we still told all our friends back at the pool we saw the man when we didn’t cuz it was funny.” 

Context: The informant would take lessons and swim at this pool every summer when he was a kid. He said it was super easy to walk from his house to the pool, and he even saw the red house the wax man lived in every day when going to school. He saw with his brother’s friends, and they were the first to introduce him to the story of the wax man around 8 years old. The informant said that the quest to find the wax man made the legendary to the younger kids at the pool, and was a fun bonding experience for their friend group.

Analysis: In this legend, we can see that because children are so removed from old age and dying, they might fear and associate old people with the unknown of death and the supernatural. Here, the informant and his friends have applied the supernatural trait of being made of wax to the scary old man. I would like to point out an interesting connection between the man being made of wax and this story circulating the hot summer at a pool. Perhaps there was a sense that the man had to stay in his red house because he would melt in the sun. The fact that this is a legend and a memorate allowed the informants friend group to form a bond around this particular version of the story. This becomes part of the groups folklore and distinguishes them from the younger kids at the pool.

Hearing the Murders of Charles Manson


Text:

Growing up in Los Angeles during the 60s. I would run and play around the city when I was living with my dad. One night, I was out with some friends, and we were up to no good playing inside a small canyon that split up a local neighborhood. We then heard a toe-curling scream from somewhere off in the distance. The type of scream where you know something really bad just happened. We totally freaked out, we quickly fled the area. 

This was something I was too scared to reveal to my dad. I honestly had many questions in regards to what I heard. I had trouble coming to terms with the fact that I heard something terrible that night. My friends and I were too scared to go into that part of the city again.

This sat with me and my friends for months after the incident until Charles Manson’s name was published across every news outlet in the area. We were right next to the murders the night they took place. I remember the day I found this out better than the night I heard the screams. I’m guessing because I was so scared. I remember my friend coming to my house, sweating. I couldn’t tell if he was excited, nervous, or relieved. Definitely some combination of every emotion possible. For us to be so close to such a notorious murder, it really makes you question your own safety. Especially at such a young age.

Context:

The informant grew up in LA and has lived there their entire life. The informant originally couldn’t remember his age at the time of the memorate, but after some research, he can now confirm that he was six years old at the time. The young age does leave some room for the possibility that his account is some type of misconception, but they stand by what happened. At the time, he was the youngest of the group of kids who heard the scream, so the older kids have kind of acted as a piece of evidence for the informant as they have gotten older and their memory of the situation has become blurry.

Analysis:

I have heard this memorate countless times as I have grown up. I have always believed the informant when I have heard this story, but it is something that shocks me to this day. I can imagine the lasting impact that this can have on somebody. The informant definitely uses this story as a cautionary tale. Something that I have heard when I am being warned about the unknown harms this world can bring forward. Memorants are special because they are often unexplainable incidents that are later explained with legendary means. There is no proof that the informant heard the murders that night, but associating the scream with the Manson murders has allowed this story to live on for so long.

The Crushed Lady

Nationality: Chinese-American
Age: 19
Occupation: Student
Residence: Los Angeles, CA
Performance Date: March 26, 2023
Primary Language: English
Language: Chinese

Text: “So, my mom told me this story. Back when she was younger, she worked on this project in China, and they had to knock down a mountain to do it. But the mountain is a village and people dug out holes in the mountain to live there. So, the people had to flatten the mountain, but one of the construction workers accidentally flattened a woman. And legend has it, people say, the man suddenly switched up and started talking in the woman’s voice. He said, in a woman’s voice, “Who just flattened me?” and then he would switch back to his own voice and the two voices began to have a conversation. They eventually started talking about how they would get together: the woman said that because he flattened her no one would date her, but the man told her that he would. This was terrifying to everyone who saw it, so they took him to a hospital, but no one could help him there. Then they took him to a shaman who couldn’t do anything either. Finally, they went to a butcher who took out two really big knives and hit them against the ground, telling the spirit of the woman to get out, after which the woman finally left and stopped talking. Afterwards, the man snapped out of it and had no idea what happened.”   

Context: The informant is a 19-year old Chinese-American student who heard this story from her mother a few months ago, who was present at the time and place in which it took place. She would not disclose the location where the story took place out of fear that the story was cursed and something bad might happen to her if she revealed any more details. 

Analysis: This supposed firsthand account expresses some very interesting attitudes towards ghosts. In spite of the perceived curse surrounding this story, and how terrified the informant recalls her mother being when she told it to her, I cannot help but wonder if the story would have been even more terrifying and difficult to digest had the woman just been crushed, an innocent life, accidentally and irreversibly taken. Ülo Valk describes that ghosts can be a way for people to process difficult, confusing, and upsetting realities. Perhaps, this ghost story was actually an attempt to assuage the horror of sudden death that the story describes by having the woman live on in the consciousness of the man that killed her. It is also fascinating to consider how the woman’s spirit was removed from the body of the man. Both a hospital and a shaman–traditional sources of healing in most societies–were useless in helping him. It was, as a matter of fact, a butcher, a known facilitator of death, quite the opposite of healing, that was able to successfully exorcize the woman’s spirit. Perhaps, the butcher is symbolic of the very reality that the story refuses to acknowledge: the acceptance of death. I believe the subliminal message in this legend is that death is a harsh, blunt reality, and despite our attempts to lessen its blow by conjuring up spirits or magical awakenings, that reality will never change, and we can only fully heal once we have accepted it in its purest form. This belief may also be rooted in Chinese Buddhist practices where the belief in samsara (traditionally a Sanskrit term), continuous death and rebirth, is widely accepted. According to samsara, no one truly dies, your spirit merely transfers from one form to another, and this story may represent a malfunction in that process, hence why it is viewed as cursed. 

“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.