Oddity Hunter's Blog

 

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. 

This isn’t a famous urban legend, but it’s spread quite widely among those interested in urban legends. 

As the story goes, when people are facing difficulties, they might receive an invitation to participate in a “ceremony for the talking demon.” If you can survive to the end of the ceremony, the demon will help you fulfill your desires. 

Truthfully speaking, this kind of urban legend isn’t rare, that if you carry out a certain ceremony, your wish can be fulfilled, or that if you carry out a certain ceremony, you can know the future. Some versions of this urban legend can be dangerous. 

But what’s dangerous about the “ceremony for the talking demon”? If the conditions for having your wish fulfilled are that you have to survive to the end of the ceremony, that means that there is the possibility you might die during the ceremony. 

Why is it that the demon will help you? This part is hard for me to believe. After all, in the present, belief in demons and ghosts is weaker and weaker…maybe there’s something behind this story worth investigating.

Received a birthday gift

It’s really unexpected to receive a gift. But I really like it. I…feel so happy! Let me post a picture for everyone to see. 

Photo by Pixabay on Pexels.com

On the Chinese language Wikipedia for “campus legends,” there’s even an urban legend listed that in St. Viator’s Lake on the campus of St. Viator Catholic High School in Taichung, there is hidden a sister sword of King Arthur’s “promised victory sword”. 

I couldn’t help but think that this was so funny! I Googled “promised victory sword”, only for this to come up as “Excalibur” in the “Fate” series of Japanese RPGs. So the person who came up with this urban legend didn’t know the name “Excalibur” or even “sword in the stone”. I asked my friend who went to St. Viator, he hadn’t heard of this urban legend either. 

This kind of thing is obviously some kind of hoax. It’s very easy to just laugh it off. But I’m very curious as to how this urban legend began? I looked it up and it turns out, there’s a very detailed version of this urban legend, explaining why the “sword in the lake” would end up in a middle school. Of course, we don’t have to take the historical narrative claimed by the story seriously, anyone can tell it’s fake. 

But more seriously, we can talk about why this urban legend would appear in St. Viator Catholic High School. For a “sword in the lake,’ there has to be a “lake.” 

For this kind of story that you know is made up at a glance (Maybe using the term “promised victory sword” makes it more convincing), it’s very difficult for the story to spread elsewhere. As for the lake, this is a medium for the story to appear on a campus. Like you have the story about the female ghost who asks you the time because she drowned herself in the lake. 

The first time I heard this kind of story was regarding “the women with the lantern” on the campus of Tamkang University. The story goes that two lovers were planning on eloping, but when it came to when they were going to meet, the man didn’t appear. So the woman threw herself into the lake on campus. After that, each dawn at 12 AM, the woman will appear waiting for  her lover, asking “What time is it now?”

I originally thought that this was an urban legend specific to Tamkang University. Who would have thought that I later learned that there’s a similar urban legend about Drunken Moon Lake on the campus of National Taiwan University and Cheng Kung Lake on the campus of National Tsing Hua University? This has also led to derivative versions, such as that the clock tower by Cheng Kung Lake was built because the woman keppt asking questions about the time. 

This story even spread to the Chinese University of Hong Kong. It’s hard to figure out at this point which version is the earliest, but these stories all have a shared point–the lake. These stories spread based on their similar structural basis, and so it’s easier to believe that it’s real.

Has everyone heard about the urban legend about the girl in the basement? It’s an urban legend from the past few years. Some people also describe it as a ghost story, but I believe that this is a story which is very much worth investigating. 

For readers who haven’t heard of this, I’ll explain the story briefly. Supposedly “the girl in the basement” appears in the basement of schools, much like how Hanako is supposed to appear in the bathroom of schools. But what’s different from other scary stories is that the girl in the basement doesn’t do anything, she just appears there. 

In different versions of the story, she’ll appear and ask people, “Who killed me?” or “Have you seen my mother?” and things like that. Just if you run into the girl in the underground room, you won’t be killed, and nothing bad will happen to you. The story ends usually with the witness running out of the basement. 

This makes me feel somewhat confused here. Nothing too scary happens, so why has this urban legend spread so widely? The most interesting part is that with the spread of this urban legend online, there’s even an image that goes with it. And it’s not just one picture. Which is to say, if this isn’t a fake picture, these are photos taken by eyewitnesses, or are ghost pictures. I’ve posted the picture you see most often below. 

Though these are all taken in different places, these are all the same person. The same person or the same face. It’s hard not to think of another urban legend, “This man”. The legend goes that many people encountered a man who looks the same in their dreams. 

But that “This man” always looks like the same man is the main point, the main structural similarity of this story. For the girl in the basement, this isn’t necessary. Like in certain folk legends, we might just know that a specific ghost or spirit appears, but you don’t know what they necessarily look like. 

“Appearances”–this may be something we only began to place great value on after the development of photography. Even  with there being so many urban legends, it’s very unusual for an urban legend to have these specific elements. Why is “the girl in the basement” different? I’ve decided to investigate this. 

When discussing the differences between contemporary urban legends and traditional stories about ghosts, I raised the duplication and replication of urban legends before, which makes it easy for them to spread parasitically. But it’s not just urban legends that spread on the basis ofstructural similarities. This has long existed in human society. It’s just that transportation was not as easy and information did not spread as easily, so dissemination was not as wide.

What are structural similarities? For example, location. I raised the structural similarities between schools. That schools are manmade structures may cause us to overlook something, which is simply shared location. 

In stories about ghosts and demons, there’s something about the place where they appear. For example, mountain demons, or the Môo-sîn-á are said to appear on mountains. Water ghosts are said to appear by the water. This can also be said to be a structural similarity. 

Thinking about it like that, urban legends are still a variety of folk tale or folklore. They are fundamentally the same. But putting it that way, the spread of these stories begin from humans themselves. Whether this is folklore or urban legends, these are stories of human themselves. 

There are some stories which I guess count as urban legends. Since I heard them when I was very young, I never expected them to continue to spread to today! In an era which has seen  a explosion in available information, in which more and more things rapidly fade away, this is hard to imagine. 

Well, I won’t talk too much about that. Let me first talk about the versions of the legend I heard when I was small. 

A group of friends had a sleep-over. They slept in a Japanese style room together. One of them, well, I guess you could call him the main character. The main character heard a strange noise in the dead of night. He got up to check it out and found that one of his friends was pacing back and forth holding a watermelon knife. The main character felt very afraid and was afraid to say anything, so he just secretly watched his friend. 

His friend was holding the watermelon knife  in one hand and with the other hand, he would rub the head of of their friends. Then he would shake his head, and move onto someone else and rub the head of another one of them. After he felt all of their heads, he seemed dissatisfied, so put away the watermelon knife and went back to sleep.

The second day, the main character couldn’t help but ask his friend why he got up in the night. His friend said, “I didn’t. I slept very well last night. I even had a strange dream, I dreamt that I was looking for a good watermelon in a watermelon field. But I didn’t find any good watermelons, the watermelons were all very strangely shaped, so I gave up.”

Actually, when I first heard this story, it wasn’t really as an urban legend, it was more as black humor. This person thought his friends’ heads were watermelons and nearly decapitated them. It’s kind of scary, but also sort of funny. Of course, this wouldn’t be a joke if he had actually tried to cut off their heads, then it wouldn’t be a joke, it would be a scary story. 

What surprises me is that, although this doesn’t seem to be based on any specific story or incident, the story continues to be spread even now. And there’s a version which is a scary story! Why I would say that this is an urban legend is because it has become so widespread that I think it must reflect some kind of fundamental fear, as expressed in a contemporary form. 

For example, sleepwalking. In premodern times, sleepwalking must have been thought to be possession by some kind of ghost, demon, or supernatural entity! But in modern times, we all know that sleepwalking is a natural phenomenon. And so what is scary is a natural phenomenon. Because nobody can be sure what kind of behavior they’ll have when sleepwalking. 

The disconnect between people and their behavior, this makes people afraid. I believe that is one of the reasons for the spread of this urban legend. 

The term urban legend became popular in the 1980s (I mean in America). Let’s put that aside for now. Today, urban legends primarily spread through the Internet and mass media. I remember when I was small, hearing an urban legend about the “Hanako” in the school bathroom. But thinking about it, isn’t it strange? Hanako is a Japanese urban legend, so why would she appear in school bathrooms in Taiwan?

Apart from mass media (For example, in Taiwan, we all read Japanese manga like Hell Teacher Nube when we’re small), what is similar is “structural similarities.” It’s not that Hanako appears in any bathroom, it’s that she appears in in school bathrooms. To turn this around, so long as it’s any school bathroom, it might be Hanako that appears. 

The spread of urban legends reflects the phenomenon of “structural similarities.” This did not exist in premodern societies, but the shared structural similarities you see across modern  societies allows for the phenomenon of duplication, making it easier and easier for urban legends to spread. 

For example, everyone has heard the urban legend that “there used to be a cemetery on the school grounds”, right? It’s not just there being a cemetery on the school grounds, there are also other versions, like there being a execution grounds, a jail, or others. This can be seen as the spread of similar urban legends parasitically. 

Returning to the example of the school bathroom, outside of Hanako, there are many similar urban legends. Like about being unable to open the bathroom door because someone killed themselves in the bathroom stall in the past. 

Or the urban legend about a high school student flushing a fetus down the toilet. This reflects poor sex education, with girls panicking after having a period for the first time, becoming afraid of dying, and this giving rise to an urban legend related to childbirth. 

If you realize the “structural similarities” between urban legends…there’s much to discuss regarding urban legends. 

Though we always talk about “urban legends”, it seems as though they’re different from legends about traditional ghosts and spirits. But urban legends are still just a form of folklore, so we can say that “urban legend” is just a form of classification. Taking this point of view, there’s not too big a difference between urban legends and traditional folk stories, or stories about ghosts and spirits.

To put it bluntly, if we really want to look at this closely, I don’t think there’s too much of a difference. Just after modernization, many people no longer believe that legends, folk tales, or ghost stories exist, or that these myths have been disproven. As such, urban legends need to be classified as a new category of understanding by humans. 

So from my perspective, even if it’s about “ghosts”, as long as it’s modern and takes place in an urban setting, we can think of this as an “urban legend.” Because urban legends reflect the contemporary modernization of legends, not that they are fundamentally different from traditional folktales. 

However, I believe that “modernization” has led urban legends to have different characteristics, such as the increasing similarity of urban legends internationally. (Maybe not too different from how city landscapes across the world all look similar if you’re looking down from a tall skyscraper). With the increasing similarity of cities across the world, it becomes more easy for the urban legends composed out of such landscapes to spread from city to city, almost like the spread of a parasitic organism. 

Another important difference is the waning of belief in gods and deities. To use the example of folk religion in Taiwan, if you have a haunting by a ghost or demon, you can ask a god to exorcise the. But after modernity, people gradually don’t believe in gods. So who can exorcise ghosts and demons? Modern ghosts–well, I may have said just now that if they appear in cities, they can be thought of as urban legends, seeing as “ghost” is a traditional category that you can ask a god to exorcise. But what about “urban legends” born out of “modern” times? Is it that you can no longer exorcise them?

You can explain it this way. Why is it that in Japanese urban legends, you’ll have “unresolved” or “unanswered” scary stories? Like the story of Aka Manto–the Red Cape–in Japan, who asks you if you want red paper or blue paper on the toilet. No matter what you chose, he’ll kill you.  Or the legend of Mary’s Telephone. If you pick up the telephone, you can’t escape.

The story of the Devil Fish–also known as the fish with the human face–in Taiwan is similar.  Although there was only one case of this story, with the media spreading the story, this caused everyone knew the story. If you hear the Devil Fish talking to you, you have no way of solving the mystery, you can only wait for an unfortunate fate. This why these stories are scary. That there’s no “cure” or way to solve the “riddle” of these scary stories, I believe this is a special characteristic of urban legends

Hi everyone, I’m Oddity Hunter. I’m someone who loves urban legends. Although fewer and fewer people use blogs, this is a place for me to write down my thoughts about urban legends. Once in awhile, I’ll write about personal things here as well! But there won’t be too much of that. 

Anyway, I hope this can be a place for us to discuss urban legends together. If you hear about any interesting urban legends, give me a heads up!