Tag Archives: road spirits

The mountain ghost! Trip which turned haunted

Age: 75
Performance Date: 04/10/2026

Context: My grandfather did his K-12 studies at a boarding school in India. His school was in a remote location, and it was built on top of a hill. Right below the hill was a graveyard, and a famous legend had its way around campus – whenever children of his school would go out for an excursion and return late at night, they’d see a woman with a veil selling corn, late at night, by the roadside along the mountainous curves. As his school was on top of a hill, people had to be careful when driving around the corners of the mountain, especially at night, to avoid accidents. Residents would call this ghost the “corn seller” as she and her family had died due to an accident on this road. The story is that one day, a group of young boys was driving a super-fast car on these narrow roads. Suddenly, they saw a truck coming from the front. As there was no time for them to brake, the boys took a sharp turn towards the side to save themselves, but unfortunately ran over the corn seller’s canopy, killing her and her two-year-old child.

Story: Let us call my grander D for the story. His school allowed these excursions only for students in high school. Excursions were two-day-long trips from Saturday morning to Sunday night, and the students would travel during the nighttime to attend school on Monday. D had heard many stories of his seniors spotting this corn seller when coming back to school from the city. This time it was D’s turn.

D, as usual, left campus on Saturday morning. On the way down, he was vigilant to find the corn seller and bust the legend, but to his surprise, there was no canopy or woman selling corn. As his trip came to an end, D told me all his friends were super tired, yet they were trying to scare each other by pretending that they saw the women.  

Suddenly, the bus got a flat tire as they were about to reach the hostel, right after they passed the graveyard. It was around 10 pm, and all the children went silent. However, the bus driver was confident and let D and his friends come out of the bus to help him fix the flat tire. Most of the children were either sleepy or too scared to come out of the bus, but D and a couple of his friends decided to step out and help the driver. 

As the bus driver started to repair the puncture, D did not have anything to do. As he and one of his friends (let’s call him V) started talking to each other, paying almost no attention to the flat tire. Suddenly, they saw a deer. It was not moving, but its eyes shone like a diamond. For some reason, it caught their attention. Being young boys, they wanted to see what it was. D told me, “I was not sure if it was a deer, a dog, or some other wild animal, though the eyes looked like those of a deer.” Without thinking much, D and his friend V moved towards this weird creature.

The headlights from the bus barely reached that part of the jungle/road. As they stood there, both heard a faint voice from behind, “Bhutta le lo” ( which means please buy corn in English). V looked at D and said laughingly, “Did you hear that?” Before D could respond, the voice came again, this time sharper than before, as if the person was much closer. D and V slowly turned their heads for a brief second, and though they saw a faint figure on the other side of the road, they moved towards the bus. 

They were merely 200 meters away from the bus, but when they came back, the driver asked where you guys were and why you were both sweating. Both together said, “Kuch Nahi, we were just checking if we could get a lift, that’s why we went a little forward.”  They both did not share this with anyone at school, but now, when they think about it, they still do not know what exactly it was. Did they see the corn seller, or was it just their mind telling them that you are tired?

Their Thoughts: D brings this story almost every time we have a celebration at our house. He says that this incident made me believe in ghosts, and even since he never dared to be curious about spirits or haunted things in general.  He told me, “I still remember not being able to sleep at night, and the next morning when I met V, he too was in a similar situation.

My thoughts: I think D was tired, but if the story is true, then in my analysis, the ghost was wanted and was there to help people by scaring them to not stay on the road, as it was not safe due to the narrow roads. She was there not to scare people, but in reality to save their lives as they were standing on an accident-prone road.

Rolling Calf

Nationality: American
Age: 18
Occupation: Student & artist
Residence: Tucson, AZ & Los Angeles, CA (college)
Performance Date: 4/19/2018
Primary Language: English
Language: Farsi

Panteha’s mom is from Jamaica, and taught her many legends and folk beliefs from Jamaican folklore. The following is a description Panteha shared with me of one such legend:

“There’s like this legend [in Jamaica] that you’ll be like driving on the road and you’ll hit like, a baby cow and then you like, die the next week…It’s called the rolling calf. It’s like, so hard to explain ’cause the way people talk about it, it’s like it’s a normal thing. But like…If you encounter this animal you’re like, doomed to die. But then a way to get rid of the curse is you’re supposed to like, find a crossroads and stick a knife in it, which doesnt work now cause like, the roads are paved…

I have this distinct memory, I was like five, and we were driving- it was like, pitch black, late as fuck at night and like, literally people in Jamaica plan so they like, don’t have to be driving on these roads after it gets dark, ’cause it’s like, there’s so many folkloric tales and also like, actual crime. But like, we were driving and there’s this place that’s like, right in between Ocho Rios, which is kind of a beach location, and Sav-la-Mar, which is the rural place where my mom grew up. Um and it’s like, right nestled in the middle of nowhere and it’s like this rest stop kind of place, but they have the best Jamaican patty. So we’re like, okay, we’ll stop there, it’ll be great. And it was like, there was like no one there, we were the only people there, and it’s crazy ’cause it’s like, you’re in the middle of the jungle driving on this tiny dirt road, and then all of a sudden it’s like, this neon bright light, so it’s kinda crazy. So we stopped there and my uncle, um, Uncle Paul, was freaking out. He was like, ‘we should not be stopping! We should not be getting out of the fucking car!’ He was like, talking about the rolling calf and he was like, throwing handfuls of coins behind him as we walked and I was like, really amused by it but like, my mom and her sisters were like, really clearly stressed out.”

This piece of folklore incorporates elements of both the contemporary legend and traditional magical practices, such as using coins to ward off evil spirits. It has likely persisted as a commonly believed legend because of other dangers posed by driving in rural areas late at night, and may serve as a stylized means of discouraging people from going out in unsafe environments.

El Paso Trans-mountain Road

Nationality: United States/Mexico
Age: 21
Occupation: Research Assistant
Residence: El Paso,TX /Los Angeles, CA
Performance Date: 3/30/17
Primary Language: English
Language: Spanish

Main Piece:

The Participant is marked as BH. I am marked as LJ.

LJ: Can you tell me some history about El Paso?

BH: Oh, so…in El Paso there are a stretch of mountains called the Franklin Mountains. And these happen to be the end of the Rocky Mountains which stretch all through the united states. And what is interesting about these mountains it is said that you’re not supposed drive on this road on the Trans-mountain road–which literally cuts through the mountains. So you’re not supposed to drive on this road after midnight. One because there are a lot of accidents and two there is folklore of ghosts on the road. Either hitching for rides or a monk that walks around with a donkey–well he’s a friar, with a donkey haha. And he’s in search of the treasure that supposedly exists in the mountains.

Context:

I had visited the participant and her family in El Paso, Texas in March. This was recorded after.

Background:

The participant is a fourth year student at the University of Southern California. She is a firm believer in religion and likes “scary stories,” including television shows and hearing about hauntings. She grew up primarily in El Paso, Texas with her mom and two sisters.

Analysis:

This shows part of the great history that El Paso has. There is so much from Native American groups to the Mexican-American war to the waves of immigration that it sees coming in from Cuidad Juarez. It was obvious that there were more stories to these mountains, but I stuck with this one.

The monk/friar in search for treasure is actually a little funny. The ideals of a monk, as I understand them, are to denounce worldly possessions, so for the monk to be looking for treasure so long after his death is almost incredulous. However, perhaps this began as him looking for something else, or it could have been a result of period when the church was not trusted by the peoples of El Paso.

These stories open paths that need further exploration to make full sense of them.

Biker Bell

Nationality: Mexican, Scandinavian, French Canadian
Age: 18
Occupation: Student
Residence: Beaumont, California
Performance Date: March 28, 2013
Primary Language: English
Language: Spanish

Informant: “Among bikers that is just something you don’t do and also it is popular to get a little iron bell. They’re like these tiny little bells that you just attach to the front of your bike and normally other people buy them for you and you just put them on there before you ride otherwise its not as safe I guess. Its just weird little things in the biker culture I guess.”

 

The informant is from Beaumont, California and lives in a family where motorcycles are very common, “everybody in my family, especially my dad and my grandfather, are bikers.” Moreover, the informant said, “I like grew up in a garage pretty much. That’s what my dad does and my dads dad. My dad, he’s a welder, and he builds and rides his own bikes and he has a lot. I don’t know how many he has. He does old ones though, like the ones from the 30s and 40s and then my grandpa was the leader of the Vagos when biker gangs were huge.”

The informant said that she first learned about this lore when she was a young girl because putting a bell on a motorbike is family tradition, “whenever my dad would get a new bike he would get a bell for it.” However, the informant said that you need to get a bell as a gift; you cannot go buy one on your own. The bell should be low to the ground and is usually attached with leather, though people use different things like zip ties etc. When put on a motorcycle, the folk belief states that the bell will ensure a safe ride. As someone who comes from a family of bikers, she is aware that many things can happen to bikers if they are going to go on a ride for an extended period of time. Thus, there is an incentive to have the loved one return safely, so you give them a bell. Furthermore, the informant and her family do believe in the paranormal so she figures putting a bell on the bike can’t hurt.

After doing some research online, I found these bells can be called, Ride Bells, Karma Bells, Gremlin Bells, and Guardian (Angel) bells, among others. The most popular names were the Karma and Gremlin Bell.

The practice of putting a bell on a motorcycle comes from an old legend regarding road gremlins or evil road spirits. The bell will scare away these creatures, and it prevents them from causing harm to you and your bike. The gremlin’s are said to cause many different problems such as mechanical problems like causing turn signals to malfunction, the battery to die etc, as well as small items in the road and problems caused by other motorcyclists.

Apparently, some people who do not believe in the tradition still give bells as a gesture of good will, and others find the bell represents that “someone cares about you.” Thus, it seems that the tradition has moved from just chasing away road spirits to a gesture of concern and kindness for a loved one.

Lastly, there are actually a few companies based around the sale of Gremlin bells, so the practice seems to be quite common.

Below are some images of Biker Bells