The ceremony of the talking devil is the kind of urban legend where you have to carry out a ceremony to have your wish fulfilled. This makes me think that maybe the story of this ceremony is something circulated through schools. It’s very simple, it’s very easy for this kind of story to spread parasitically in schools at the high school level or below. Because “students” are “powerless” in society, and this leads them to become dependent on wishful thinking.
For those who have already entered the workforce, it’s a bit childish to try put hopes for one’s desires on a ceremony. If it’s too hard to realize that desire, then that’s just too disappointing.
So I went to high schools to ask about the urban legend regarding the talking demon. I was originally afraid that the students would think, “There’s a strange middle-aged man here, maybe he’s some kind of pervert.” But luckily that didn’t happen. And as it turns out, there were many different versions of the urban legend about the talking demon!
For example, I heard the most basic version, that if you’re having some kind of difficulty common in schools, such as that if you’re getting bad grades, if you were rejected by the person you like, the talking demon will appear to you. For students, it seems like these are what they think of as pressing issues.
What’s also quite interesting is that many of the oral versions of this urban legend reflect a fundamental characteristic of urban legends: the friend of a friend. That they heard this from the friend of a friend. They would say that such-and-such student from such-and-such class had participated in the ceremony of the talking demon and became…different afterward. That they would suddenly transfer schools or that their grades suddenly became very good.
Something else I noticed is that many of the details about the ceremony itself were very similar. The shared characteristics of this ceremony were all quite high. Such as that after you receive the invite, you can go to a secret room, and that there’s a room with a table and eight chairs there…it’s eight people who are invited to the ceremony every time.
But where urban legends are concerned, the details of where the ceremony are fundamentally important. That the details of this ceremony have spread is quite unexpected.
I’ve decided to continue collecting oral versions of this story.