Tag Archives: Superstition

Rally Cap

Folklore:
Flipping a baseball cap inside out to bring on a rally of good plays in a baseball game. The action can be performed by players or the fans in the stand.

Context:
The informant was a baseball player in Santa Clarita, CA. During games, he or his teammates would perform this ritual to try and help bring good luck or spur on a rally where a lot of good events would happen in quick succession like “a guy gets a hit, a guy walks, a double and they score… a lot of them go with quick bursts of runs.” The informant noted the rally cap “is trying to initate a hot streak,” to get the game on their side and moving.

Analysis:
The ritual is intending to bring good luck and try and spur on the team into a favorable position. The informant noted in the interview that baseball is a game of rhythm that is hard to hold and keep it going. The team aspect and the harder rhythm makes supersitions common to try and create a favorable outcome for the game and the team.

No Hitter Superstition

Folklore: Don’t talk about a no hitter game in baseball until the 7th inning or else the game will change.

Context:
The informant was a baseball player and noted how it was bad luck to talk about a no hitter game until it reaches the 7th inning. They noted it may not always be the 7th inning, but “there is a certain inning” in which it becomes okay to talk about it. In fear of “the baseball gods” or the game turning following speaking it into existence. The informant noted how the game is reliant on rhythm and keeping the rhythm of the game.

Analysis:
The folklore is a superstition meant to try and control the affects of a game and not ruin good luck. The event of a no hitter game is a rare one, which tends to create a ritual to help the rare event continue. The community creates these rituals to help take part in the event as a community by trying to help their players or team through performing or preventing certain things for their team for the desired outcome.

Dunkin Ghost

Folklore:
At a Dunkin’ Donuts near USC, there is a Dunkin Ghost that haunts which causes random acts of high jinx during odd hours of service.

Context:
The informant works at the Dunkin Donuts near USC and told a story about their experiences with the Dunkin Ghost. “My story is about my job at Dunkin… I have been working at Dunkin for 2 years now… I don’t know how long the Dunkin Ghost has been a thing… a beeper would go off with no one entering…moved the trash can to the middle lobby… very heavy and knew that they didn’t move it… the alarm didn’t go off and it showed no one on camera.” The ghost was used to explain weird happenings around the store.

Analysis:
The folklore tends to be used as an explanation for things without explanation or for things that are done outside of expectation. It is a folklore shared within a service and work community which are held to certain expectations and rules. The explanation of the Dunkin Ghost is able to explain away the weird happenings or happenings that don’t meet those rules. Though in some cases, the ghost is used to explain happenings that don’t have a reasonable explanation.

Forbidden Forest

Age: 18

Q: Before we begin, who and where did you first hear about this story?

A: I saw it in this old tv show I can’t remember the name of years ago and I was watching at night. 

Story: There’s two really poor people in this village that faces a gloomy forest. They are a mother and son and this forest was believed to be cursed, holding spirits that would cause the death of anyone who goes inside. Despite this, the mother and son decided to go into the forest out of desperation for a source of food as they had been starving. When they went in, the had unexpectedly found tons of food and told all the villagers, but the villagers were skeptical but the mother and son ignored it. Instead they ate the food and went home, but that night the villagers claimed they saw a green haze wandering into their home that night. The next day, the villagers found the mother dead and the son barely surviving looking so pale it was like he had no blood left in him. The son’s last words were to never go into the forest again, reiterating what the villagers had said to them before that it was both evil and cursed. 

Q: And what do you think about this story?

A: I think it was a very common ghost story I’ve heard throughout the years. It was from a tv show so I don’t think it’s really a true one, but I’d say it could be scary. 

Interviewer’s thoughts on the story: This story, much like the teller said, is a very classic cautionary tale about ignoring warnings and desperation.  I think it does a good job showing how the mother and son were pushed into a dangerous decision because of their situation, which makes what happens to them more tragic than just a simple “they should have known better.” The mysterious green haze adds a creepy, supernatural element that reinforces the idea that the forest is truly cursed, not just a rumor and overall I would say would be classified as a ghost story. 

Don’t Touch the Cross

Age: 18

Context: The following story was told on April 28th, 2026, in my dorm room to me by the informant, who is one of my close friends (I apologize for the amount of “likes”).

NB: “Okay. Um, in my house, there’s a cross from my grandpa’s grave that’s hung up on a door frame leading up to the stairwell. My mom and my grandma always told us never to touch it, never to disrespect it, or play with it because we used to throw like balls in the house, like just to entertain ourselves. And, um, they were, like, for real, like, listen, you can mess up everything else. You can knock over vases, whatnot. But one thing you cannot do is touch that cross and we’re like, okay. So when I was four, my oldest sister, I think she was about like 17 at the time. Thought it would be funny to take the cross off the door frame for a bit.”

Me: “Why would she do that?”

NB: “No, actually, it’s just like, she was like rebellious and like she just like didn’t believe in that stuff. So she just wanted to mess around and stuff. Um, and then somehow she lost it, and we couldn’t find it for about a week. But during that week, just horrible things happened. Everyone in my family who lived there at the time got really sick. My parents, my sister and I got into a really bad car accident. It was totaled, and my dad had to go to physical therapy after because he was in a lot of pain. My oldest sister got cheated on and dumped that week. There was a lot of bad energy in that house, I would say. It felt much gloomier and dark. Everyone was just really depressed and everyone had trouble sleeping, and for some reason at night, there was a lot of noise around our house. I don’t know if it was just…”

Me: “Wait, sorry, whose cross was it?”

NB: “It was my real grandpa’s. Not my Step Grandpa. Yeah, it was my real grandpa’s cross that was on his grave.”

Me: “And he also lived in the house?”

NB: “Yeah, he also did. I think he was like a part of like building that house or something before he passed away.”

Me: “Oh, [redacted]”

NB: “Um, and yeah, everyone just had trouble sleeping because, um, I remember the wind being like really powerful. I remember. But this is like a common thing in my house. We, uh, most of us have like experienced hearing whispers and hearing like children running and stuff like that. But we never understood why, because no, I don’t think anyone lived in that house previous to us, so… and it wasn’t our neighbors, because we live in a duplex and like, we know when our neighbors are like making noise and stuff, like the difference between our neighbors making noise and then us like hearing stuff going on and like, we’ve established that…that week especially, like, there was just so much going on that, like, there is no way It was our neighbors. And eventually, my mom found the cross when she was cleaning, hung it back up, and it was kind of weird how, like, everything just went back to normal. Yeah, my dad’s pain went away pretty quickly. Um, we all got better, like, from our sicknesses overnight. We were in so much better moods, and I just really don’t know what happened. It’s kind of blurry. I’m pretty sure there’s probably more that happened, but I was like so young at the time that I just don’t remember everything to the fullest, but that’s, yeah, one of my earliest memories.”

Me: “So, what do you think? Like, do you think it was, like, your grandpa’s, like, spirit, or it was, like, another spirit? like bad karma?”

NB: “Well mind you, like, that cross was at the funeral at his, like, grave for, like, a while. I’m thinking that maybe other spirits like latched onto it. Maybe bad spirits latch onto it, and just like, I don’t know why we took it. I don’t know why we have it in our house. I don’t know why we decided to hang it up. But, um, because of that, we just can’t take it down. It’s like kind of like Annabelle, like we can’t.”

Me: “Yeah, you can’t”

NB: “We actually can’t mess with it. So now it’s just hanging and yeah. I don’t know. Maybe that’s another reason why I have like weird stuff going on in my house and like paranormal stuff going on, but, um, yeah, it’s really weird.”

Personal thoughts and analysis: This was probably my favorite story im submitting because it’s either supernatural or the most insane coincidence of all time. Both are equally fascinating to me. Initially I interpreted it as the informants Grandpa maybe being a vengeful spirit so it was interesting to hear the informants take that a spirit may have latched onto the cross itself which makes more sense because both sides of the informants family were affected. The story follows a typical trope in ghost stories of some sort of family curse and it was interesting to see a twist on that, that the family curse in this case may be coming from outside the family. I also think it’s interesting that the informant comes from a multi-religious background and so it might have something to do with religious tensions between their families. Im also curious as to how the informants mom and grandma knew that the cross shouldn’t have been messed with. Overall a very interesting story.