Tag Archives: possession

Burmese Possession Story – Memorate

Text:

My mother’s mother (my grandma) was a very spiritual person, and susceptible to being possessed. Strangely enough, her father (my great-grandfather) had a few encounters with ghosts as well. Let’s call him GG for short. GG was a Burmese citizen, and grew up in the time after World War II. He worked for the government in a British building (Burma was a British colony until 1948). During the war, Burma was invaded by Japanese armies but freed by British armies. Lots of Burmese soldiers and citizens were said to have perished in the buildings where GG worked, and were therefore rumored to be haunted. GG was sleeping in a four-post bed, but there was no sheet or cover draped between them. In the middle of the night, he saw an Indian man wearing only a sarong (a cloth wrap, like pants) climbing down one of the four bed posts towards him. The man strangles GG and they fight. GG claims the experience was much more real and vivid than any dream he’d ever had. 

Context:

My mother heard this story and others from her mother and from GG’s wife, her grandmother. My grandmother obviously believes in ghosts and spirits, having been possessed by them herself. My mother definitely believes they exist but is unsure of their connection to some sort of afterlife. My mother also definitely believes that certain places can be haunted – she told me a similar story of a house she lived in with a long staircase to reach the front door. Multiple people one day heard a knock and someone begging for a doctor, but there was no one there when they opened the door (and not enough time had passed for them to run back down the stairs). The building she lived in was said to be haunted.

Analysis:

Spirits and impossible-to-explain phenomena are common in my family’s Burmese stories. They compound on each other to reinforce the belief that spirits do exist, and that places can be haunted. This is especially true when multiple people witness the same supernatural event, like the invisible knocker. These particular ghost stories of my great-grandfather also serve a secondary purpose – to remind my family of the atrocities that happened to Burmese citizens during World War II. It’s strange to hear about the British people being the good guys in Burma, but in this case they were. Being a British colony, my grandparents (and to some extent my mother) were forced to learn English in school, along with British history and customs. The fact that it was the ghost of an Indian man and not a Burmese man could mean anything or nothing at all. My mother did tell me that Indian citizens often crossed the border to Burma in search of better living conditions and better work opportunities. Unfortunately, they were often met with discrimination and had to pretend to be Burmese to be accepted.

Light as a Feather, Stiff as a Board — Memorate

Age: 20
Occupation: Student
Residence: Los Angeles, CA
Performance Date: April 2, 2023
Primary Language: English

Text

“My mom told me this story of when she was playing ‘light as a feather, stiff as a board’ during a high school slumber party. Right as they began to lift a girl, she had a seizure. It was the first time she ever had one, and she was later diagnosed with epilepsy. 

“Since they all went to a Catholic high school and their parents were devout Catholics, the sleepover was immediately disbanded, perhaps out of fear they had conjured some sort of demonic spirit or something. Ever since hearing this story as a kid, I have never participated in those sorts of activities at sleepovers.”

Context

SR is a 20 year-old college student from Thousand Oaks, CA. Her family is Catholic and has Italian roots.

‘Light as a feather, stiff as a board’ is a levitation game played at girls’ slumber parties. It is a sort of ritual that embodies the liminal space between life and death as one girl is chosen to ‘die’ and the others must lift her up. There are certain things to be recited that supposedly make the girl’s body light enough to be lifted or rise on its own, depending on versions of the game.

SR’s mother told her this story to warn her against playing the game. Since the ritual attempts to draw upon some dark magic or power, a Catholic family would not want their kids engaging in such practices.

Analysis

This story is an example of a memorate, a personal experience that gets interpreted into an existing legendary structure. SR noted the Catholic upbringings of all the girls at the sleepover, meaning they all had a degree of belief in the devil and demonic forces; perhaps they had been told stories of possessions and exorcisms as this is something commonly done in Catholic teaching against the devil.

Thus, when something scary happened to their friend, this belief system offered a framework through which to understand the experience. 

This game being performed in the context of a sleepover highlights how belief is a social process. SR’s mother played the game in high school, a liminal time when a child is beginning the transition into adulthood and thus experimenting with belief. Legend questing/tripping is something done within peer groups at this time in an attempt to see if a legend is true.

Many beliefs are acquired from social sources in narrative form. Thus, SR hearing this story from her own mother makes it especially memorable and believable. Regardless of the truth value of the story, the legend is strong enough to discourage SR from doing any ‘legend tripping’ of her own, as she said she never participated in these activities after hearing her mom’s story.

Skin-walkers of New Mexico

Context: H is a  23 year old American, born in California and lived there until moving to Denver Colorado for College. After spending nearly five years in Denver he moved to New Mexico where he currently lives and has lived for the past two years. This entry was collected over a Zoom call. 

Intv: “So a few years ago you moved out to New Mexico, have you heard any folklore from out there?”

H: “Oh yeah, people talk about these things called skinwalkers out here. I’ve been here for two years, and my first job out here was cooking for a diner up in the woods, in the national forest here. Which there’s not a lot of in New Mexico, but there are some forests. So I cooked out there, and I’d often hear about this old folklore of these things called skinwalkers. I think it comes from some of the native communities out here, but I’d be lying if I said I knew that for sure. I’ve just heard it mostly in conversation out here, a lot of the people, especially people who live out in some of the towns near the woods, like Cedar Crest, Tijeras, Madrid, and Edgewood, just like very much believe in these things. They all have a handful of stories of times when they’ve seen these things… I haven’t seen one of these things, but the legend is they’re kinda like these possessed animals, or kinda like shapeless amorphous things, that cause bad luck. There’s definitely a negative connotation, but most of the stories I’ve heard are like ‘I saw a deer stand up on its hind legs and look right at me.’ When I was working at the diner, everyone out there, very much believed it, and I know one of my coworkers who lived out in Edgewood. If you drive 30 minutes towards me you’re in the middle of the city, 20 minutes the other way and it’s the middle of nowhere, that’s where they went. They saw what they thought was a deer, but weren’t sure because it didn’t look much like an animal they had seen just standing in the middle of the street. They drove around it and tried not to look at it, because you’re also not supposed to look right at them, which obviously adds to the, you know, purposely not looking at something that’s supposed to be really strange adds to it. It’s just a really common thing to hear about out here, especially out of the city which is most of New Mexico. Lots of wild stories, lots of wolves or deer standing on hind legs and doing things wolves don’t do, oftentimes they can speak too. I haven’t heard a lot of folklore in New Mexico, but stories of skinwalkers are everywhere.”  

Analysis: While being a very spooky and interesting story, the theory that these “skinwalkers” are animals experiencing some sort of prion disease is quite high. Either way, if you were walking across the frontier in America in the 1800s and something with a prion disease is near you, coming up with a monster absolutely makes the most sense, as there wouldn’t have been any other possible way to explain what one saw. I believe that’s what we’re hearing about when it comes to skinwalkers but I couldn’t say for certain. To read more about Skinwalkers, see “Sacred Evil: The Dark Side of Life Along the San Juan.” McPherson, Robert S. “The Dark Side of Life Along the San Juan.” Dinéjí Na`Natin: Navajo Traditional Teachings and History, University Press of Colorado, 2012, pp. 72–99. 

Durgashtmi – Ghost Festival

Nationality: Indian
Age: 23
Occupation: Marketing
Residence: France
Primary Language: English

There is a festival in India called Durgaashtmi, and what happens is that ghost enter the human body – ghosts like past spirits. They enter the body because maybe they haven’t gone to heaven or something like that. Like they haven’t found piece in their life or death. On the festival day these spirits want to show that they are still around and need peace, so their enter some women’s bodies, and these women become uncontrollable. So people say that they have supernatural powers or force or energy and totally become crazy. That happens in India – you can watch videos and stuff. Sometimes they chain these kind of people up. So all these Indian priests come and try to provide peace to the spirits by saying mantras in Sanskrit. And basically these mantras are supposed to get the ghost out of their body. Many priests believe the ghosts are a ghost of this goddess called Durga. She is considered to be a mother figure that’s super angry that won’t go out off your body. Some people also die from this process because they get so crazy and start to drink blood and stuff. It’s a very weird festival, at the end of the day they try to get the ghosts to quit the bodies of the people and the people aren’t dead yet.

Context: [informant] The main aim of the festival is to provide peace to the spirits and get them out of the world of the living. And this is of course scary also, because if Google Durgaashmi ghost you can find that girls are really.. I don’t know… like there are really ghosts coming in the bodies.

Thoughts: Seemingly possessed people are a phenomenon all over the world, and I think it can be looked at from many different lenses. Psychologists might call it psychosis, and religious people might call it possession. Regardless, it is very interesting that India has created a festival around 

White Things: An Account of Demon Possession

Nationality: Indian
Age: 52
Occupation: Homemaker
Residence: Mumbai, India
Performance Date: 28/04/2021
Primary Language: English
Language: Hindi

The Interviewer will be referred to as ‘I’, and the informant as ‘S’. Explanations and translations for Hindi words will be italicised and in parentheses. The Informant is a 52-year-old Punjabi mother, born and raised in North India.

S: We’ve had a possession in our own family! If you talk to mama (the informant’s mother), her own sister died… she was like that. She was a very bright, bright, exceptionally bright kid. I think she was just younger than mama, the second born. She was in college, one of those typical toppers, this and that, very bright. And… now I don’t know too much, but there was a family gathering, and it was like, “kisi ne kuchh khila diya hai,” (someone has fed her something) because she was… [she acts it out, makes a face by crossing her eyes and rolling them back, making a strained noise] like, as if she was possessed at times, she was acting crazy. And, I think she got… I don’t exactly know how she went, but she went (died). She was in college when she went, so young. I don’t remember exactly how, but I remember that this whole thing, I remember as a personal thing, I was always told this, we all were, in the family, because sometimes mama would tell us she was still around because her going wasn’t peaceful, not content, she would… like, feel the spirit sometimes.

I: Was this pre-partition or post?

S: Post, post. This was mama’s younger sister. She died when she was in college, but she was born pre-partition. See, what they said to us was that one of the relatives who was jealous had fed her something, haan (yes), that’s why they told us, “Safed cheez kisi se mat lo.” (Don’t take anything white from anyone.) Even when we were little, mama always told us, be careful of things people offer you, but never accept something that is white. She specified that. Like kheer (a white staple dish, like a sweet rice pudding), so never take kheer from anyone. Jaadu tona (Urdu and Punjabi for witchery, sorcery), is what it’s called in Punjabi, where someone’s fed you something, or you’ve ingested something, you’re spelled and then you act differently like you’re possessed or cursed, under nazar (bad luck, evil). You do weird things, then, act like you’re… you know, crazy, so you dance, or tremble, or shake, sometimes make weird noises. This story became, kind of… a teaching, a lesson for us, even though nobody really knows the whole story, not even mama.

Analysis:

Within Indian culture, the idea of nazar is common, something you need to caution everyone about and physically ward off—a method of warding off nazar is detailed, in part, in “The Lemon-Chilli Bad Luck Repellent” (http://uscfolklorearc.wpenginepowered.com/the-lemon-chilli-bad-luck-repellent), and a method used to ward off demon possession is detailed in “Don’t Kick the Watermelon!” (http://uscfolklorearc.wpenginepowered.com/don’t-kick-the-watermelon!)—whenever it’s suspected to have fallen upon someone. Simultaneously, the act of “behaving weirdly” is often generalised and exaggerated, the concern can be misplaced when put down to nazar or possession. This is why I asked the question about the partition: the partition was a turbulent time, after finally gaining independence from their colonizers after centuries, having to uproot and move from one region, now in Pakistan, to another, in modern India, through all the trials and tribulations of the time… well, it would have been very traumatic for anyone, especially a child. Therefore, I wanted to ask that question to bring another idea into play: the idea of untreated and un-recognised trauma, manifesting as this “weird behaviour”, being thought of as possession or nazar, leading to an early, unexplained death… it’s a grim thought, but that sequence of events is familiar, even without the supernatural explanation and course of action. However, this woman’s story is now a lesson to the children and adults of this family, a mysterious thing, the story being exaggerated and mystified further with time, while also being a lesson to not take things, especially white things (a common superstition), from anyone, rooted in a folk belief that these invite nazar, or even witchery. The evil eye, or nazar, is also observed in ancient Mesopotamian and Egyptian ideology and texts, where they used incantations to ward off negative spirits and witchery, resulting in odd behaviour or sickness. [For more on this, see: “MESOPOTAMIA AND EGYPT.” Beware the Evil Eye: The Evil Eye in the Bible and the Ancient World: -Volume 1 Introduction, Mesopotamia, and Egypt, by John H. Elliot, 1st ed., The Lutterworth Press, Cambridge, 2016, pp. 77–104. JSTOR, https://www.jstor.org/stable/j.ctt1cgf2hs.9.]