Tag Archives: spirits

A Tame Sort of Trance

Nationality: American
Age: 61
Occupation: Salesman
Residence: Southern California
Performance Date: March 24, 2018
Primary Language: English

During high-school, my dad studied abroad in Brazil for a year. He stayed with a family of Lebanese immigrants who showed him both Brazilian and Lebanese traditions, and always included him in everything. Growing up, I heard tons of stories from his time there. The Brazilian stories were relatively tame – beaches, clubs, schools, etc. But the Lebanese culture was of particular interest.

Driving home from lunch one sunny afternoon, I ask him and my mom if they have any stories that I could use for my folklore project.

“I was just thinking about my experiences when I was a teenager in Brazil with a family of Lebanese immigrants who were Druze, and had the belief of many paths to the mountaintop. But they also had a uh.. a spiritualist element. And after I’d been there several months, they let me go to a family ceremony which was on a Sunday. One of the uncles would go into a trance and kind of channel spirits and try to get insight into some of the issues facing the family. So he would stand there and close his eyes, and appear to be communing with the spirits. And everybody would be quiet and sitting around, um, and then he would speak to them. But that was all in Arabic so I didn’t understand a word. Um.. But other than that, then they would say he’s asking about some problems we’re having with the business or this or that, and he would get some direction. They…they had these kind of sessions where one or more of them would kind of be in a sort of trance-like state. So I remember viewing that and thinking that was sort of interesting.”

Whenever I think of communing with the spirits, I picture ouji boards or fire-and-brimstone preachers in the deep south flailing around with snakes on their arms. I picture people getting real serious and asking about life’s deeper questions. It’s quite funny to picture this fairly frequent occurrence, where a member of the family would go into a trance and just ask advice for everyday problems. Obviously, the whole thing was treated seriously, as my dad had to earn a certain amount of trust before he was allowed to attend. But even so, there’s a lightness to it that is not normally associated with channeling spirits.

 

Duppies

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 folkloric figures called “duppies”:

“So duppies are like, they’re like spirits…so there’s like good duppies and bad duppies. So like a duppy is basically like, someone’s soul that’s still stuck on earth and has been basically just like causing trouble. And there can be like, good duppies that like, they can give you good luck or whatever. But like, obviously no one talks about that; all they do is talk about the bad duppies. And my mom used to do this like, really scary voice when she was talking about it–she was like, ‘duppies sound like this! they sound like this,’ it’s like when Danny’s doing the ‘red rum’ [in The Shining]. They’re supposed to have these crazy like, nasally voices…

You know how like uh, like you have a day where you wake up and you stub your toe and burn your tongue on coffee and like, all these small little things happen? That’s supposedly like, bad duppies just like causing shit for you. And so when that would happen like, literally eating a spoonful of salt is supposed to stop that. So like, I remember like, one specific morning when I was really young, I fell out of bed and like hurt my ankle and like whatever, like burnt my tongue and tripped andy mom was like trying to force me to eat a whole-ass spoonful of salt and I was like, “no,” like I’m not gonna do that. Um and then, ugh, what else…My mom actually didn’t tell me this cause I think she um, didn’t wanna tell me cause I was like a little kid, but I heard from one of my uncles that like, you can shame a duppy or like, scare away a duppy by like, shamelessly exposing your genitals.”

Many cultures hold a belief in malicious or irksome spirits of some kind, which cause trouble for the living but can usually be warded off with certain practices or precautions. Salt often figures prominently in magical remedies for evil spirits’ acts, across cultures. In Jamaica, as in many Caribbean and Latin American countries, West African and indigenous mystical practices coexist with Christianity. Panteha’s mom is an observant Christian, but simultaneously maintains a belief in folk beliefs like that of the duppies.

Removing Evil Spirits from a Beauty Salon

Nationality: American/Bosnia-Herzegovina
Age: 54
Occupation: Owner of a Beauty Salon
Residence: New York, NY
Performance Date: 4/10/17
Primary Language: English
Language: Serbian

Nationality: American / Bosnia-Herzegovina

Primary Language: English

Other Language(s): Serbian

Age: 54

Residence: New York City, USA

Performance Date: April 10, 2017 (via Skype)

 

 

Sania is a 54- year old women born and raised in Bosnia-Herzegovina and emigrated to the United States over 34 years ago.  She is the owner of a beauty salon in New York City.

 

Many more people are realizing (and I have come strongly to believe) that energy, good and bad can affect everything in life, from health to work. A few years ago, my salon was having trouble with my website, e-commerce, phone lines, and we couldn’t figure it out. One particular day, my website crashed, for no reason, and the back up company said they had never seen this before, and lost their file as well. I told a friend who is also a famous photographer, and he brought in some energy healers.  They basically walk around the salon to check out every corner, mirrors, etc.  They then took my energy to be at the same sequence as me.. and little did they know there was an acquaintance who basically tried to steal my identity. They cleansed the mirrors, cleansed the windows (I was directly facing the church, which wasn’t good).. and used sage and diamonds and other jewels to cleanse the place. They told me my website would be running within a few hours.. sure enough that night my daughter called so excited because the pages of my website went up. By morning everything was running. Phone lines running well, etc. Now they come every few months to make sure things are ok. The last visit, they noticed one of the mirrors had something bothersome and they placed a card over the mirror (from a distance), and then my LOCKED French Doors flew open.  This never happens even if they were somewhat open! They said people look into this mirror when entering, and people carry all kinds of energy. It can be intentional or accidental. But good to use sage, at the very least for cleansing. These women are scholars from Brown, and I believe Harvard. I have become a believer, and they helped many people I have referred them to.

 

 

 

Thoughts about the piece:

This informant is a sophisticated American business owner that relates her success to her respect for old traditions. A similar Native American practice is described here: https://www.mindbodygreen.com/0-17875/a-sage-smudging-ritual-to-cleanse-your-aura-clear-your-space.html

 

 

 

 

‘Animas’ Ghosts in Rural Mexico

Nationality: Mexican-American
Age: Middle-Aged
Occupation: Retired
Residence: Los Angeles, CA, USA
Performance Date: April 23, 2017
Primary Language: English
Language: Spanish

“People talk so much about ‘animas,’ like means ‘spirits,’ about the point when they die, they come back.

 

So… My grandma always was telling us, ‘Oh, I feel like, umm… A ghost, an anima, that comes with me every night. I feel it here, walking. I saw her walking.’ My grandma said it was a… a… woman.

 

So, sometimes, at home, when we were at home, we hear womans, old womans, walking to us, too. Because we believe what my grandma says, and we were thinking ‘Oh, it’s true what my grandma said. There’s someone walking at night near to us!’

 

And also when we were not sleep before 11:00 p.m., we were, umm… we were in our bed, six girls in the same room, and suddenly outside we started hearing a horse. Ehh… We can hear the, it looks like a humongous horse, it comes from outside the window, and we hear the noises, and we hear that the… chew… horse, very strong about the horse. And so many people in our village talk about that. And we said, ‘oh my god, that is a scary!’ So we don’t open doors and we went to sleep very fast, because we were afraid to this man on the horse.

 

And then also, about the, umm… The money. We hear that where is there flame on the floor, there is some money, too. So some people starts… scraping the dirt in this place, so some people, what they found was, uhh… bones from some skeleton or from some other people, so… they said if you see this, this flame, it can be a dead man or a, or a… golden pot.

 

So it was, uhh… it was kind of… strange? But it, it was like that.”

 

Analysis: Much like her husband’s ghost story, the informant’s ghost story is notable for its apparently-widespread belief in an otherwise deeply religious culture that would normally reject the existence of such spirits. And yet, the presence of ghosts is considered a normal enough occurrence that they may enter and live inside of houses without too much hubbub. Also worth noting is the expansion on the flaming ground concept from the informant’s husband’s story. Evidently, flaming ground that signifies good or bad luck is a common belief. Additionally, the chance to discover a long-lost skeleton may be related to the ghosts of people that the informant claimed to have run into first-hand, as it would appear that being buried far away from anything in particular may trigger a spirit’s restlessness from improper burial, a taboo in Judeo-Christian culture.

Taiwanese Summer Tradition

Nationality: Dual Citizenship: Taiwan, United States
Age: 19
Occupation: Student
Residence: Taipei, Tawian
Performance Date: 4/23/16
Primary Language: Chinese
Language: English, Japanese, Taiwanese

Text

During Summer, which is usually August, there’s this thing, which is.. Um.. we believe that the doors between Ying and Yang, which is between heaven and..um….. Earth and hell will open, so all the three, um…. worlds will open together and become one on Earth. So it’s like, it’s kind of the concept of purgatory opening on Earth.. It’s kind of weird. But then, at this time, usually ancestors will come back, ghosts will come back, and especially those who has no relatives or those who does not have people…. to respect them after their death. So, those are ghosts with bad intentions, and people do fear them and respect them at the same time. So, during this whole month, usually people go to temples. They pray for them. They pray that one day they can leave purgatory and go up to heaven. And they’ll bring food and, um, basically.. pray for them. So, that’s what we do during the whole summer and, at the end of August, the door will close again and we hope that those that we prayed for, and we gave food for, will go up to heaven.

Background

The informant said that she learned Taiwanese traditions from her grandparents, or it was talked about at her school (there would be stories in their textbooks about them). She emphasized that it is very important to her that she learns these traditions and keeps them up, even though some of them conflict with her own religious beliefs, because they are part of her cultural heritage. She said that it makes her sad when she sees Taiwanese-Americans who do not know or practice any Taiwanese traditions, because they are missing out on something that is a part of who they are and helps to define them.

Thoughts

Outside of simply being widely practiced in Taiwan, this tradition seemed deeply rooted in Chinese and Taiwanese beliefs about ancestors and respect. It makes sense, then, why this tradition is so important to the informant, who is from Taiwan, but is currently going to school in the U.S. and plans to live in the U.S. in the future. Carrying on this tradition seems to be a way for her to keep her connection to her Taiwanese identity, even though she now lives outside of that country.