Tag Archives: Teenagers

The Hidden Floor of the Middle School

Nationality: China
Primary Language: Mandarin
Other language(s): English, French
Age: 18
Occupation: Student
Residence: Beijing
Performance Date: Nov.28, 2023

Tags: #Schoolghost #teenagers #Suicide #Legendquest

One of my friend told me about the north building of his middle school. The North Building has eight floors above ground and three below ground. However, it is said that there is a haunted B4 that is permanently closed. It is said that in the 2000s, a student fell from an upper floor, crashed through the ventilation shaft on the ground, fell to the B4 level, and died. So the school sealed B4 forever. In the stairwell leading to the basement, down to B3, there is still a staircase to go down, but it is locked by a huge iron fence. People are said to have broken in, heard cries and screams in the area, and seen bloody handprints on the walls.

Context: This is a story told by my friend. This story is usually told to freshmen by senior students when they first enter the school. These teenagers often have a curious mindset and explore in school, telling and boasting about their adventures and original supernatural stories in an exaggerated tone

Personal Thought: The tragedy of the students falling from the building should be real. I have read about it in the local newspapers and media. However B4’s ghost stories may have been concocted by students seeking excitement and boldness. I’m not sure about the existence of that floor, but if it exists, it’s probably just a regular equipment room and storage room. However, the ghost story has become a part of campus culture, inspiring generations of students to run stairwell expeditions and legend quests. This kind of exploration also made me know many new classmates and formed deep friendship with them. The story itself, to a certain extent, also reminds students not to climb outside the window mischievously to prevent the danger of falling.

Arkansas Legend Quest

Text:

“There’s this light, it’s in this town like thirty minutes north of us, it’s in the middle of nowhere on a field. The story is that there was a conductor on a train and this railroad goes along the side of this road, and apparently a conductor fell off and his head got cut off and he looks for his head every night, and that’s why you see a light on the railroad. If you drive out there you’ll see a light floating above the road, and apparently if it touches your car then your car will turn off. So all of our parents have stories about it, like how they’ve gone and seen the light. I don’t know if they’re actually true. But my friends went one time, I didn’t go cause it was during Covid, but they went and I was on facetime with them when it happened. And my friend N, they were on the road and she just started crying like sobbing, and she like never cries. Cause she swore that she saw it, and then they all started screaming because apparently it was coming towards the car, and that’s when they pulled out and left. I’ve been before and nothing happened.” 

Context:

GR is a 19-year-old college student from a small town in northern Arkansas. He was in high school when this story was told, and he’d been hearing the stories about the railroad since he was a little kid. His parents and adults in his town would tell him their experiences of seeing the light, and he doesn’t know if they were making it up to scare him or not. Research shows that this legend is a popular one that can be found online, called the Gurdon Lights in Gurdon Arkansas. He says that his town and a lot of northern Akansas have a lot of hauntings and ghost stories, supposedly because the granite rocks in the ground are a conductor for spirits according to legend. 

Analysis: 

This story is an example of legend questing, where a group of people go out to look for a legend and try to insert themselves into it. It’s also an example of a memorate, where someone’s existing experience fits into the pre established legend. Legend questing is especially popular amongst young people. There might be a multitude of reasons for that. Young people are still figuring themselves out, figuring out what the story of their life is going to be, so it can be compelling to insert themselves into a legendary story that already exists. Since they’re young, they’re supposedly further away from death, so seeking out ghosts and graphic stories about death can both be them putting to use the immortality they feel they have, and also interacting with the concept of death that is both scary and unfamiliar. In certain cultures and in older people, ghost stories are often comforting and warm, such as a visit from a family member. The ghost stories young people tell though, at least in America, are often graphic and tragic and scary, because that’s how they view death to be. They’re both interested in this concept that is so far away, and terrified of this concept that is actually so near, and this fear and interest manifests into young people seeking out ghosts. I also believe that young people seek out legend quests more often because children are raised on fairy tales and magical figures like the Easter Bunny, Tooth Fairy, Santa. They are raised being told that magic is, in some ways, real. As teenagers and young adults they’re expected to separate themselves from the childish idea that magic is real, but there’s a small part of everyone that still wishes that the mystical might be real. 

I also think that Arkansas might be a large hub for supernatural stories because it’s still quite a rural area, there aren’t as many large and prominent cities as there are in other states. While Christianity began spreading around cities, rural areas continued worshiping their own pagan gods. Christianity then decided to paint rural areas as places where the Devil lives, and declare the people who live there as Devil worshipers. This idea has made us see nature and the wild as areas prone to the influence of the devil, so these wide spans of nature secluded from everyone else are seen to be areas more likely to have hauntings and ghosts. Rural town populations in Arkansas have a largely Christian population now, so they might be more inclined to look at the isolated, wild areas near them (such as abandoned train tracks) as scary places of the Devil.

The Legend of the Hook

Nationality: American
Age: 63
Occupation: Entrepreneur
Residence: Aubrey, TX
Performance Date: March 26, 2023
Primary Language: English

Text:

Informant: “The story happens in a small town, and there’s a small darkened road that teenagers would go down and park along to kiss and make out. So, the story follows these two teenagers who are parked alongside the road and start to get a little amorous…”

Collector: “Do we know anything about the identities of the two teenagers?”

Informant: “They were just two young kids from the local high school that haven’t been dating for long; they’re very innocent and new to the dating scene, so the whole situation is exciting for them. Anyhow, they’re out, things are starting to get hot and heavy, but they hear some noises out in the woods. The guy rolls down the window and asks, “Hey, is anybody out there? Do you need help?” There’s no response, so they just go back to making out. A few minutes go by, and they hear the same noises again, and the kid rolls down the window and again asks if anyone’s out there. The girl tells him, “Why don’t you go out and take a look?” and so he goes out and looks around the car and sees nothing. He gets back in and rolls up the window, but they hear yet another noise, and this time it sounds even closer, so they start to get concerned. They realize how late it is and decide to head home, and on the way home, they turn on the radio. On the radio they hear that a mass murderer had just escaped from a nearby mental institution and was on the loose. The broadcast described the man as having one defining feature: a hook for one of his hands. And so they’re like, “Oh, well, at least we’re out of that area.” So they drive home, and when they stop in front of the house, the guy gets out to open the door for her, and there on her door handle is a hook.”

Context: The informant is a 63 year-old man who was told this story by his grandmother as a teenager when she was cautioning him against staying out late at night. The informant said that the legend accurately referenced a mental hospital that was close to where he lived as a boy in upstate New York. He explained that the moral is that you can be much closer to danger than you think, and that you should trust your instincts whenever you feel like something isn’t right.

Analysis: Legends can function as a powerful social tool, and this story is a prime example of the kinds of effects that they can have. Legends typically intersect with both reality and some supernatural or extraordinary element(s), which can blend together to become powerful persuasive devices. In this case, this story was used to scare teenagers into behaving responsibly, and I will attempt to analyze how it does so, taking into account the distinctive western context that it is situated in. Teenagers often have a reputation for being fearless and reckless in their behavior, and many American teens, especially, are heavily influenced by the American education system, which arguably prioritizes rational thought and critical inquiry and de-emphasizes superstition and blind adherence to belief. As a result, it is reinforced in many American teens and adolescents with traditional schooling to be skeptical of fantastical monsters and stories. Thus, in an attempt to use storytelling as a method of persuasion for teens, it helps to incorporate some tangible aspect of reality for credence, which legends as a narrative form tend to have. Therefore, in teens, the legend would seem to be particularly effective over myths and tales, which are understood by most at their age as not factually true. The manipulation of reality in “The Hook” is particularly effective here, referencing a real location–a mental asylum–where criminals were really known to be held, in order to give the story a greater rhetorical weight and degree of plausibility. The supernatural element, a deranged man from the asylum, blends so seamlessly with the factual details of the story that I see how it would be highly useful in persuading a skeptical, rebellious teenager (as my informant once was) into avoiding staying out late at night.

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.

That’s So Camp

Nationality: USA
Occupation: Student
Performance Date: Feb. 22, 2023
Primary Language: English
Language: Chinese

CONTEXT:

A is one of my best friends. She is a senior in high school from my hometown. She enjoys writing poetry as well as knitting.

The context of this piece was during a facetime call in which I asked her to share some pieces of folklore with me, and she referred to this collection as “camp.” I asked her to elaborate on the phrase for the collection and to explain its meaning. 

TEXT:

Me: “Where would you say you got ‘camp’ from?”

A: “I like it a little bit when people don’t initially understand what the hell I’m talking about. And that was one of the phrases where if I said it, people would just be like, ‘What the hell does that even mean?’ I just like things that are very subjective to interpretation. And ‘that’s so camp,’ depending on how I say it, is just something that can be very subjective and it can be an insult or a compliment or just an observation. I’m pretty sure it was after an award ceremony, maybe the Met Gala and the theme was ‘camp.’ That was years ago and I remember being like, ‘That is such a good definition,’ I need to start using that and now I think it’s a staple of my vocabulary.”

Me: “What does it mean to you?”

A: “I feel like it’s very hard to describe verbally. I would say camp is when you can tell someone is trying to do something where there’s a very large amount of effort present, and the execution is more questionable. So like, sometimes outfits are camp in that sometimes they’re good because they’re camp and sometimes they’re bad because they’re camp and it’s just about how you sort of pull it off.”

ANALYSIS:

I also use this term — “camp” tends to refer to things that are a little weird or off-putting, but not always necessarily in a bad way. For example, things that are eccentric are camp. Anything that is camp also tends to be somewhat amusing. They can be artificial or self-consciously ironic. In a sense, it refers to things that are so bad they are good because of the intention. Today, there almost seems to be a revitalization of the appreciation for things that aren’t perfect, and even more so, things that are intentionally imperfect. Irony, especially amongst the younger generation, has taken hold as a point of appreciation. There seems to also be a lack of desire for people to point out that one thing is absolutely cool or uncool, and “camp” is a way to fit in between that. With such a loose definition, it’s easier to judge ambiguously, which can serve a good purpose at a time when our statements are much more highly scrutinized.