Tag Archives: unknown death

Lake Monster

Age: 19

Interviewee:

This story was told by my father when both of us were swimming in a lake in my hometown, a town in China. My dad told me that there was a lake monster who dwelled in this lake. This lake monster will punish travelers who have done something evil recently, and the way that the monster acts out this, sort of, punishment, is that they will kill them in the water. According to my father, victims often described that something held on to their legs and pulled them down to the deep water. They were either killed or deeply injured.

Interviewer: Does this monster only haunt you if you have done something wrong? And if you are a morally good person, it will not haunt you?
Interviewee: According to the myth, yes.

Interviewer: Has this story been used to explain, or was it proved to be “real” in any real incidents?
Interviewee: Yes. A few years ago, a person in my hometown died in that lake, and his family explained this as him being killed by the water monster. That day, he went to swim in the lake near a reservoir. When they found the deceased person, folks in my hometown believed it was the lake monster who caused his death. While scientifically speaking, it’s seaweeds. He couldn’t really swim well, and it was wild water, so some seaweeds must have trapped him from the bottom.

Interviewer: When you’re swimming in the lake, are you scared of the monster?
Interviewee: No. Cuz I didn’t do anything bad (laughs).

Context:

In the words of the interviewee: “This story was shared by my father, a middle-aged man who grew up in a small town in China. He told it to me while we were actually swimming together in the very lake he was describing—it’s a lake in the wild, without much protection and very close to nature.”


Analysis:

  • Vernacular transmission: This story was told to the informant by his father when they were swimming in a local lake in his hometown. The monster is very specific to that lake. The way the informant’s father tells him of this monster legend makes it very vernacular—informal, local to their hometown, a small town in China.
  • Moral story and cautionary tale: This legend serves the purpose of “education” under Bascom’s functionalist framework. The informant’s father, by telling this legend, educates the informant to be a good person and live with integrity—when being asked if he was scared, the interviewee said he wasn’t scared “because he hasn’t done bad things.” This mirrors exactly what this legend is used for—to caution people not to do morally bad things, or they will get into trouble. Thus, certain moral ideologies are reinforced by telling a scary story. This makes this legend a mixture of a cautionary tale and a moral story.

The Killing Doll

Nationality: Korean
Age: 20
Occupation: Student
Residence: Mission Viejo, CA
Performance Date: 3/14/2014
Primary Language: English
Language: Korean

The Killing Doll

The Informant:

My friend, was born in South Korea. She came the States at a young age, before beginning elementary school. She told this story near a campfire that my friends and I held before spring break.

The Story:

I heard this when I was in elementary school, in the third grade I think. A family friend told me this story, she was a couple years older, in middle school as I recall.

“When I was younger, my family was taking care of a friend’s dog. A day before the dog came, my sister and I visited a garage sale down the street. My sister decided to purchase a doll. It looked like a regular doll except for the fact that it had four fingers straight and the thumb was curled toward the palm. We didn’t think much of the strange hands and brought the doll back home. The next day my whole family decided to go out and locked the dog in the room, and it happened to be in the room with the doll, so that it would not tear up the house. When the entire family came back the dog wasn’t breathing so we took him to the vet and it was pronounced dead. It was only later when we came back home that we realized the doll only had three fingers outstretched.

We had a weird feeling about the doll so the next day we decided to return it.”

The Analysis:

I questioned her about this story because I personally heard a similar one in my childhood. The story centers on the strange doll and implies that it somehow kills a living force a night after someone or something is spent in the same room as it. How the death occurs remains unknown.