Monthly Archives: June 2020

Joint Rush Parties

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Title: Joint Rush Parties

General Information about Item:

  • Customary Folklore
  • Informant: E.W. ’22
  • Date Collected: 05/22/2020

Informant Data:

  • E.W. is a female Dartmouth Student. She is affiliated.

Contextual Data:

  • Cultural Context: Fraternities and Sororities at Dartmouth both partake in rush and bid night parties. These are parties for the new members of their respective houses. Sometimes a Fraternity and Sorority will together throw a joint party for their new members.
  • Social Context: The celebration of new members of a house is usually some form of social gathering. The combining of two different houses for a social gathering meant for the new members is a common social practice.

Item:

  • The joint parties of a Fraternity and Sorority refer to parties thrown by two houses together to celebrate their new class of members. These are therefore much larger and grander than celebrations done just by members of the house themselves. 

Collector’s Comments:

  • I found this to be a cool tradition as it mixes the somewhat separate processes of rushing a Fraternity versus a Sorority.

Collector’s Name: Charlie Wade

Tags/Keywords:

  • Customary Lore
  • Celebrations
  • Fraternity/Sorority

House Families

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Title: House Families

General Information about Item:

  • Customary Folklore
  • Informant: R.C. ’22
  • Date Collected: 05/19/2020

Informant Data:

  • R.C. is a male student at Dartmouth College. He is affiliated.

Contextual Data:

  • Cultural Context: Families are small units of close individuals. The adoption of this technique into fraternity culture serves a similar purpose.
  • Social Context: House families are smaller groups in the house new members are sorted in to. These act as smaller and closer social groups for the new members in the house.

Item:

  • This specific fraternity gives its new members “families” within its members. These families consist of one to two new members and a handful of older members to serve as a resource during and after the rush process.

Collector’s Comments:

  • I found these families to be an interesting and useful way to help new members during the rush process. They stay families for life, long after active membership in the fraternity ends. In this specific example, the family the informant was in was easily dated back to Dartmouth alumni from 2014.

Collector’s Name: Charlie Wade

Tags/Keywords:

  • Customary Lore
  • Family
  • Social

Slenderman Meme

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Title: Slenderman Meme

General information about item:

  • Slenderman 
  • Meme
  • Informant: memeshappen.com
  • Date collected: 5/25/20

Informant Data: memeshappen.com is a social platform for easily generating and sharing memes. It is a very easy way for memes to go viral throughout social media. These memes are posted anonymously so there is no way to discover the exact informant.

Social context: I discovered this meme on May 25, 2020. Memes of Slenderman have become a very common occurrence. Although the majority of the memes tend to reference Slenderman a lack of facial features.

Cultural context: Slenderman is known to get inside the head of his victims causing them to do things that they are not truly in control of. That’s why when this meme suggests that Slenderman told me to eat the last cookie from the cookie jar, it is deferring the blame to Slenderman cause they claim to not have been in control of their actions.

Item: (Pictured Above)

Collector’s Name: David Gallagher

Tags/keywords:

  • Slenderman 
  • Cookie jar
  • Meme 
  • Funny

Slenderman Movie

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Title: Slenderman Movie  

General information about item:

  • Slenderman
  • Movie Trailer
  • Youtube
  • Informant’s Name: Michael Gallagher 
  • Date Collected: 5/25/2020

Informant Data: Michael Gallagher was born on October 29, 1964 and is originally from Pittsburgh Pennsylvania. He attended the University of Pittsburgh where he studied mechanical engineering. He is married with two kids.

Social Context: I interviewed Michael on May 25, 2020 after he watched the Slenderman movie trailer on youtube. Michael did not know too much about the folklore of Slenderman prior to watching this trailer.

Cultural Context: The trailer emphasizes the “spooky” woods and the plot seems to be based around finding a missing little girl. The line “people do not just go missing” at the beginning of the trailer is particularly striking

Item: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ySy8mcceTno 

Informant’s Response: “It seems that this would make for a good movie. I did not know much about Slenderman prior to watching this trailer. While the trailer did not seem to show very much of slenderman himself, it showed how he got into the minds of his victims, like a virus. It would certainly scare me to watch this movie and I am interested to read through your final collection project to learn more about the folklore behind Slenderman.” 

Collector’s Name: David Gallagher 

Tags/Keywords:

  • Slenderman 
  • Movie Trailer
  • Youtube 
  • Interview

Slenderman Tales

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Title: Slenderman Tales 

General Information about item: 

  • Slenderman 
  • Language: English
  • Personal Folklore 
  • Informant: (Myself) David Gallagher 
  • Date Collected: 5/24/2020

Informant Data: David was born on October 25, 1997 in a Philadelpha suburb known as Downingtown. He is currently a senior at Dartmouth College where he is studying Government. 

Social Context: David first heard about the Mythical Creature slenderman when he was 12 years old. He has a sister who is eight years older than him and always tried to scare him. 

Cultural Context: Slenderman is often depicted as a tall man with no face who stalks his prey in the woods. He generally targets children and is thought to use a knive as a weapon. He has extremely long arms. David’s house in Downingtown is located near the forest and he and his sister often hang out in the backyard near the woods. 

Item: Kayla saying to David “David you better not get too close to the woods, or Slenderman will come out and get you”

Informant’s response: David avoided going near the forest for several months. Any time a ball was kicked into the woods David would refuse to go and get it for fear that Slenderman would attack him.

Collector’s Name: David Gallagher 

Tags/Keywords: 

  • Slenderman
  • Personal Folklore
  • Older Sister
  • Scared

8 Pages Video Game

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Title: 8 Pages Video Game

General Information about item:

  • Slenderman 
  • Language: English
  • Slender: The Eight Pages 
  • Video Game 
  • Informant: T.B.
  •  Collected: 5/23/2020

Informant Data: T.B is 20 years old and currently a student at Dartmouth College.

Social Context: Once the craze of Slenderman became viral, graphic artists and video game engineers created 1st person horror games based on Slenderman. One of the most successful games was “8 Pages”.  

Cultural Context: The video game was released in 2012 to depict the quasi-folklore meme character known as Slenderman. It is a survival game that plays off of Slenderman’s reputation of abducting children in dark mysterious settings. The extreme popularity of it lead to a multitude of Youtube videos and recognition further spreading the folklore of Slenderman.

Item: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Slender:_The_Eight_Pages 

Informant Comments: “This was a game my cousin and I would play at midnight in front of the computer screen together. I can remember how scared we got when Slenderman would pop  up on the computer monitor after static noise would play to show he was getting closer, but the real fear came after we turned the game off. We never even thought about going into the woods after the sun went down ever again and would fall asleep under the blankets scared of Slenderman.” 

Collector’s Name: David Gallagher 

Tags/ Keywords: 

  • Slenderman
  • Slenderman: The Eight Pages 
  • Video Game

The Slenderman Crime

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Title: The Slenderman Crime  

General Information about item

  • Slenderman 
  • Language: English
  • Washington Post Article 
  • Informant: Marwa Eltagouri
  • Date Collected: 5/23/2020

Informant Data: Marwa Eltagouri is a general assignment reporter out of Washington, DC. She attended Syracuse University where she got her BA in Magazine Journalism and Political Science. Eltagouri worked with the Washington Post until 2018, where she covered several stories on crime. 

Social Context: I found this article on May 23, 2020, through the Washington Post’s website. Eltagouri has written several crime stories so the attempted murder was by Morgan Geyser was of particular interest to her. 

Cultural Context: The Washington post article titled “A teen stabbed her friend to impress ‘Slender Man’ — and will spend 40 years in a mental hospital” depicts a murder attempt from 2014. Morgan Geyser and Anissa Weier stabbed their classmate Payton Leutner 17 times in an attempt to impress the mythical creature “Slender Man”. The two girls read about Slenderman online and felt compelled to commit the crime in order to protect themselves and their families. 

Item: https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/true-crime/wp/2018/02/01/a-teen-stabbed-her-friend-to-impress-slender-man-and-will-spend-40-years-in-a-mental-hospital/ 

Collector’s Name: David Gallagher 

Tags/ Keywords:

  • Slenderman 
  • Washington Post 
  • News Article
  • Attempted Murder

Slenderman Still Image

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Title: Slenderman Still Image

General Information about item:

  • Slenderman
  • Image
  • Informant: G.B.
  • Date Collected 05/21/2020

Informant Data: G.B. is a 25 year old male with a college degree. He currently lives in New Jersey.

Social context: I interviewed G.B. on May 22, 2020 over FaceTime. I showed him an image of Slenderman with a young girl and asked for his comments and interpretations. 

Cultural Context: In many of the versions of Slenderman he often targets young children and the setting often takes place in the woods. Many of the images of Slenderman have him situated in a frame with children or he is a lone figure standing among trees. 

Item: (Image Pictured Above)

Informant Comments: 

“The image of Slenderman is different than how I imagined because he doesn’t have the blades coming from his back”

Collectors Comments:

The numerous depictions of Slenderman make for varying interpretations because each story puts a slight twist on the modern horror character. For instance, I think of Slenderman as the one in this picture. 

Collectors Name: Thomas Bryan

Tags/Keywords

  • Slenderman
  • Image
  • Something Awful Forum 

 

If someone sweeps under your feet, you’ll never get married

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“If someone sweeps under your feet, you’ll never get married”

Kelly Bugg

Fredonia, KY

May 20, 2020

 

 

Informant Data:

Kelly Bugg is my mother. She was born in 1961 in Fredonia, KY to a family of farmers who had been farming on the same land for generations. Kelly grew up in an extremely small, rural town and has lived there for the majority of her life, surrounded by other rural family members and friends.

 

Contextual Data:

I collected this folklore by asking Kelly for examples of Southern Superstitions. I can remember times when she has directly used this superstition on me. When someone is working to clean the house, the rest of the house is also to be working to help clean the house. I believe that the saying, “If someone sweeps under your feet, you’ll never get married” is said by the person who is sweeping in order to motivate the lazy person to get up and help.

 

Item:

If you let someone sweep under your feet, you’ll never get married.

 

Transcript:

 

My grandmother had all kinds of sayings and one of them was “if you let someone sweep under your feet, you’ll never get married.” I’m not sure why this is it but.

 

Jack Walker

314 JD Bugg rd

Fredonia, KY 42411

RUSS 13 20S

Fraternity House Song

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General Information about Item:

  • Verbal folklore
  • Informant R.C.
  • Date Collected: 05/18/2020

Informant Data:

  • The informant is a current Dartmouth student. He is a member of the class of 2022 and is affiliated.

Contextual Data:

  • Cultural Context: When rushing a fraternity, there is a sense of pride and community associated with the house and its members. Members are seen as “brothers” and the house is the “home” of its members. The singing of a song honors these two traditions.
  • Social Context: The collective act of singing together has always been associated with the idea of community. The singing of a house song is a social activity new and old members participate in to foster this principle.

Item:

  • There is a song made up by the fraternity members, that is sung to honor the house and its members. This is meant to help new members feel welcomed during the rush process (or directly after).

 

Collector’s Comments:

  • The use of a song to help new members feel part of a new community is not uncommon. I thought it was interesting to see the same type of welcoming folklore displayed in this process.

Collector’s Name: Charlie Wade

Tags/Keywords:

  • Verbal Folklore
  • Fraternity Rush
  • New Members