Tag Archives: Monster

Reach Out and Grab ‘ya!

Nationality: American

Age: 19

Occupation: Retail

Residence: Raymore, MO

Performance Date: November 30, 2024

Primary Language: English

Language: English

MAIN DESCRIPTION

Q: “When’s a time you felt different? Outside of the ordinary? A strange occurrence?”

A: “When I was a kid, you know this already, that area right in front of the stairs. I’d get that feeling, almost like sleep paralysis, y’know? Like, um, where you can feel you’re awake but can’t move. I used to run by the stairs and something would reach out and grab me. I was a kid, I think it was nothing. But, y’know when you look up at a popcorn ceiling and can see pictures? When I looked at the carpet, in the shadows and all, I felt like I could see things. Figures and hands. And I could feel the hallway getting longer and pulling me in.”

INFORMANT’S OPINION

Q: “So, as you said, you don’t believe this was anything more than a dream?”

A: “I doubt it. I mean, it’s unsettling now but like, I was also a kid.”

PERSONAL INTERPRETATION

When analyzing his story, sleep paralysis seems most likely. Especially since he named it. Seeing things when he was awake could have just been the fear following the dreams. I suppose they could also have been some sort of sign the dreams were valid and there was danger near. An angry spirit would make sense, but isn’t a home-run conclusion because he grew out of these occurrences. The spirit could be unique to a child’s eyes. Regardless, he can’t say for sure whether it was a dream. The undecided nature of his response reveals the mystery and the possibility that this could be an angry spirit. However, spirits like this don’t just disappear unless something is done to them. So it feels unlikely he’d randomly stop experiencing paranormal activity and strange dreams forever while living in the same house to this day.

Beware The Douen

Douen are mythical creatures with backwards feet that live in the forest and are supposedly the lost souls of children. If a Douen learns a child’s name they are able to call out to the child in their parents voices to lure them into the forest. The backwards footprints confuse both the children and anyone looking for the children. The children are never seen again.

The informant told me this story while we were talking about working in the entertainment industry. C told me that he loved the industry because of its diversity and community. I originally asked about the folklore of the industry but once I said the word “folklore” his face lit up and he told me this story. While working on the show “Saint X”, one of the Dominican crew members told him this legend of the Douen. It stuck with C because of the physical description of the creature, with the backwards feet.

The Douen, although not well known in America, is a piece of Caribbean folklore that seemingly resonated with C. The only physical description that my informant gave me was the backwards feet, implying the rest of the creature is fairly humanoid. I believe this resonated with my informant because of the common proverb in American culture “stranger danger”. The danger of the Douen is directed towards children, emphasizing their ability to be easily manipulated or tricked, which echos the same warning as “stranger danger”. The detail of the Douen needing to know the child’s name is interesting because it serves as a warning against sharing personal information with anyone/anything. It also could stem from magical folklore, where using or knowing someones name can be considered powerful.

Korean story: The Leg Lump and the Monster

Nationality: Korean
Primary Language: Korean
Age: 68
Occupation: retired, former pastor
Residence: Seoul, South Korea
Performance Date: 24 March 2024

Tags: legs, lump, monster, greed, shrewd, lie

Text:

Once upon a time, there was a man with a huge lump on his leg. One night, he went out on a walk near the forests, singing a tune along the way. A monster came by, entranced by the man’s singing, and asked the man where the singing was coming from. The man, being keen and knowledgeable of the monster’s evil nature, knew that the monster just wanted the singing ability for himself, so the man lied and said that the singing was coming from the lump. The monster then magically took the lump away from his leg and scurried off. The man was very happy since he didn’t have a lump on his leg anymore, and news of the events traveled through the neighborhood. One particularly greedy neighbor also had a lump on his leg, and hearing the story made him mad and jealous, so he sought out to do the same thing so his lump would also be removed. Thus the following night, the greedy neighbor went out to the woods, singing his own tune. The same monster arrived and again asked where the singing was coming from, and the greedy neighbor lied that it was coming from his lump, just as the other man had done. The monster, however, had already realized the other man’s trickery, so in a rage, he cursed the greedy neighbor and gave him yet another lump on his leg that burdened him further.

Context:

H. is a born and raised South Korean citizen, and has had experience with telling stories through giving sermons in his church. This was simply one of the stories he told me when I was young in Korea.

Analysis:

This is a very typical aesop one would see in a Korean storybook for children, which is probably where H. got it from. The aspects of being shrewd and able to read a situation as well as not being greedy are pretty common lessons that still hold up in modern Korean society.

The Faceless Ghost

Nationality: United States
Age: 21
Occupation: Student
Residence: Los Angeles
Performance Date: 4/5/2023
Primary Language: English

Text

“This happened back in 2021 and it was when me and my friend were having our own dorming experience up in Santa Barbara. One night my friend woke to a man-like voice. We had curtains in the room dividing the room, and she saw a hand grabbing a curtain. At first, she thought it was me but she looked over and I was asleep. She called my name to wake me up and told me that she saw someone’s hand on the curtain. I said I didn’t see anything and I went back to sleep. She later said that the ghost showed his face and it didn’t even look like a person. It was a really tall figure, almost like monster-ish. It looked at her and it said one word and the one word it said was “shoe.” We didn’t know if that meant a real shoe or shoo, get away. This freaked her out and she started crying and woke me up again. The next day she was so scared and she said that we needed to sage the house. I got an incense-type stick and I lit it and walked through the house and asked any ghosts to leave the house. She didn’t see anything after this.”

Context

The informant was a person in the story. The informant wasn’t the one who saw the ghost but she helped participate in preventing the ghost from coming back by sageing the room. The informant was in the same room as the ghost and the informant’s friend originally thought that the ghost’s hand was the informant’s hand. The informant stated that she felt uneasy being in the same room as a ghost. The informant says that her friend is susceptible to paranormal activity and that’s why the ghost was there. The informant noted that it was just her and her friend in the house.

Analysis

I didn’t know what to make of this story so I started by researching what a ghost pulling back a curtain could mean. This action is open to interpretation but one of the most popular ways to interpret this is that it’s a way that ghosts are saying they want to make contact with the living. The other thing to note is that the ghost didn’t have a face. Faceless ghosts may represent a fear of the unknown or a sense of loss/disconnect from oneself or others. A faceless ghost may also mean that the person died without receiving justice. The faceless appearance is a sign of their anger. This appearance is usually associated with fear and dread of the unknown. 

The informant stated that this happened in 2021, which was still the COVID-19 time. A lot of people were feeling uneasy leaving the period of quarantine and starting to get back to life as we knew it. There were a lot of unknowns at this point. I’m not sure if this is related to what the informant and her friend were feeling at the time but it could be a possibility. Maybe this is why the ghost was faceless. 

The informant’s friend described the ghost as monstrous and tall. This may tie into how sometimes a faceless appearance may be a sign of anger. If I saw this ghost I would probably think of either anger or fear. Maybe the friend was fearful because she was away from home. It’s hard to say what the ghost meant but the ghost’s appearance is very intriguing. 

The Ogapoga

Informant AJ is a freshman at a university in the Canadian province of British Columbia whose family lives in San Jose, California. AJ moved to BC for the first time in August of 2022 to begin university.

Text:

“It’s a little unfamiliar to me but I’ve heard a few people talk about it here and there and seeing the statue posted downtown. It seems to be a creature in the Okanagan Lake just a few miles down south of the university. And there’s some sea creature that does something, I’m not very sure. I would say it looks like a sea dragon, kind of like a snake.”

Context:

“We have a little statue of it downtown and some people will take pictures of that and ride it for fun. I heard somebody mention it and they were like, ‘You’ve never heard of Ogopogo?!’ The lake is one of the biggest attractions here in Kelowna, so I’m sure that’s a fun story that people who live here can tell visitors.”

Analysis:

Because the Ogopogo has a statue in downtown Kelowna, the legend of the Ogopogo has taken on an aspect of capitalist appeal as the city utilizes the legend as a tourist attraction, representing an example of folklorismus. However, the Ogopogo traces its roots to stories from the Interior Salish First Nation people of a lake spirit known as the N’ha-a-itk. In this sense, the Ogopogo also carries a mythic nature, but as the story passed through the generations and through the colonization of North America, monetary interests grabbed hold of this myth and transformed it into the tourist attraction AJ knows it as. When he first moved to Kelowna, BC, there was a big reaction when AJ announced that he wasn’t aware of the Ogopogo, indicating its strong public appeal. Yet, the manner in which he learned about the Ogopogo, through visits to the statue in downtown Kelowna, indicate the weakening of the traditional myth of the Ogopogo.