Author Archives: f002cct

Killer Train Ride

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General Information about Item:

  • Verbal lore, legend
  • Language: English
  • Country of Origin: United States
  • Informant: Sai Mupparaju
  • Date Collected: 3/8/2018

Informant Data:

  • Sai Mupparaju is a female Dartmouth student in the class of 2018. She is majoring in Neuroscience and minoring in Religion. She intends on pursuing a career in medicine. She was born in Hyderabad, India but she grew up in Atlanta, GA. She has no siblings. She has visited Disney World in Orlando, Florida around five times with her family. She loves Disney and her favorite Disney movie is Aladdin. When she was at the park, she would try to find the park characters, Aladdin and Jasmine. Sai would stay at a hotel not on the Disney World premises during her visits to the park. She is not a Disney Vacations Club Member.

 

Contextual Data:

  • Cultural Context: In Disney World, there is a popular roller coaster called Big Thunder Mountain Railroad. Big Thunder Mountain Railroad is a fast and jerky roller coaster with small drops in Frontierland. Before starting the ride, the ride operators tell visitors to keep their arms and legs inside the vehicle at all times. However, during the ride, it is pretty common to see people raising their hands out of excitement
  • Social Context: The informant heard about a mysterious death that occurred on this ride during her first trip to Disney World. While Sai and her family were waiting in line, other park visitors were discussing why the ride is often shut down for maintenance. The park visitors claim that the ride operators always try to take extra precaution with this ride after the tragic death that occurred on it. Sai shared the story about the mysterious death with her friends and family back home in Atlanta.


Item:

  • There is a legend about a high schooler who went on Big Thunder Mountain Railroad and died. There is a portion of the ride that involves a drop inside a cave and there was supposedly a loose cable hanging down from the ceiling. The boy was very tall and the loose cable caught on the visitor’s neck, resulting in immediate death.

Transcript:

  • “When I was waiting in line for the ride, I heard some people whispering about why the ride had shut down. They said that Disney takes extra precautions after the death that happened a while back. They talked about how a high school boy was killed by a loose cable that was hanging in the tunnel portion of the ride.”

Collector’s Comments:

  • This legend was one of the scarier folklore items that I heard. I know this ride is constantly shut down for maintenance so hearing about this mysterious death put the pieces together for me. I know that a lot of ride malfunctions are not disclosed to the public so this is an interesting story because some park visitors have heard it, but it is unclear where it originated from.

Collector’s Name: Meghana Reddy

Tags/Keywords:

  • Verbal Lore
  • Legend
  • Killer Train Ride

 

Cinderella’s Ghost

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General Information about Item:

  • Verbal lore, legend
  • Language: English
  • Country of Origin: United States
  • Informant: Sarina Kothari
  • Date Collected: 2/23/2018

Informant Data:

  • Sarina Kothari is a female Dartmouth student in the class of 2021. She is majoring in Mathematics and Biology. She intends on pursuing a career in medicine. She was born in Philadelphia, PA, but she grew up in Orlando, FL. She has one younger brother. She has visited Disney World in Orlando, Florida twelve times with her family and sometimes her friends. She loves Disney and her favorite Disney movie is Beauty and the Beast. When she is at the park, she tries to find the park characters, Mickey and Minnie Mouse.  Sarina would stay at home during her visits to Disney World. She is not a Disney Vacations Club Member.

 

Contextual Data:

  • Cultural Context: One of the most iconic attractions at Disney World is Cinderella’s castle. It is the central attraction in Magic Kingdom and many park visitors take photos in front of the castle to document their trip. The inside of the castle contains a store and a luxury suite for elite Disney customers. Most park visitors use the castle’s tunnel to get to other rides within the park. Very few people spend time inside the castle itself.
  • Social Context: The informant first heard of this legend from her friends in high school. She mentioned how the legend was passed between teenagers who lived in Orlando because they knew a lot about the Disney parks since they visited them so often. Whenever Sarina visits the park with a new friend, she tells them the legend as they walk through Cinderella’s castle.


Item:

  • There is a legend that individuals who enter through a giant wooden door on the left side of Cinderella’s castle will come upon a giant bookshelf. If an individual stares long enough at the bookshelf, the individual will see Cinderella’s ghost run past him or her.

Transcript:

  • “During my freshman year of high school, I remember a couple of my friends were talking about their trip to Disney World. They mentioned some old scary story about Cinderella’s ghost. They said that you could find her ghost if you go through a wooden door on the left side of Cinderella’s castle and then stare at some bookshelf for a long enough time. Many people claim that the ghost-like figure is wearing a ball gown so people think that it is Cinderella’s ghost.”

Collector’s Comments:

  • This legend was something I heard about before from other people who frequently visited the parks, but I never knew the details about it. I knew that the castle was supposed to have hidden rooms and be haunted. It was fascinating to hear this specific story that involves a ghost that resides in the castle.  

Collector’s Name: Meghana Reddy

Tags/Keywords:

  • Verbal Lore
  • Legend
  • Cinderella’s Ghost

“Andy’s Coming!”

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General Information about Item:

  • Customary lore, game
  • Language: English
  • Country of Origin: United States
  • Informant: Nandita Kasireddy
  • Date Collected: 2/23/2018

Informant Data:

  • Nandita Kasireddy is a female Dartmouth student in the class of 2021. She is majoring in Neuroscience. She intends on pursuing a career in medicine. She grew up in Bow, NH. She has one older sister. She has visited Disney World in Orlando, Florida five times with her family. She loves Disney and her favorite Disney movie is the Little Mermaid. When she is at the park, she tries to find the park characters, Ariel, Jasmine, and Minnie Mouse.  Nandita would stay on the park premises during her visits to Disney World. She is also a Disney Vacations Club Member.

 

Contextual Data:

  • Cultural Context: Toy Story is a popular Disney movie that features toys that come to life when their owner, Andy, is not present. The main characters in the movies are Buzz Lightyear, Woody, and Jessie. In the movie, all the toys talk and go on adventures together when their human owners are not present. If a human is coming, they fall to the ground and pretend that they are “only” toys and not alive. The main characters from the movie can often be found in Magic Kingdom at Disney World. At the Disney parks, the employees, who are dressed up as the Disney characters, have a specific set of rules that they must follow to maintain a certain authenticity for park visitors. The Disney employees’ jobs are to make sure that they appear as true to character as possible when interacting with park visitors.  
  • Social context: The informant first participated in this game when she visited Disney World for her second time in 2011. Nandita and her older sister decided to yell the phrase “Andy’s coming!” when they saw the Toy Story character, Buzz Lightyear, in Magic Kingdom. Nandita and her sister were active participants in this game, but they learned the rules of the game by watching other park visitors partake in it.


Item:

  • The informant states that when any park visitor yells the phrase “Andy’s coming!” at the park, the Toy Story characters, in proximity, will drop to the ground to pretend that they are inanimate objects. This is a type of folklore game. The main rule in the game is Toy Story characters must drop to the ground and pretend that they are not alive when a park visitor yells the phrase, “Andy’s coming!” If the rule is broken, the park employees will face some negative consequences. This is a game that all park visitors can participate in.

Transcript:

  • “My sister and I just came out of the Buzz Lightyear ride in Tomorrowland, and we saw Buzz and Woody. We had heard from other park visitors about what happens when you yell the phrase, “Andy’s Coming!” We decided to try it out and it was super funny cause once we yelled the phrase, both Buzz and Woody dropped to the ground, and they got up only as we were leaving.”

Collector’s Comments:

  • This item was unique to me because I usually go Disneyland and I have not heard about this game. I wonder if it holds true in California parks or if it is more of a tradition in Orlando. My little brother loves Buzz Lightyear so we always try to take a picture with him, but now I want to try yelling this phrase and see what happens.  

Collector’s Name: Meghana Reddy

Tags/Keywords:

  • Customary Lore
  • Folklore Game
  • “Andy’s Coming!”

Teenage Idiocy on Tom Sawyer Island

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General Information about Item:

  • Customary lore, magic superstition
  • Language: English
  • Country of Origin: United States
  • Informant: Sally Stires Korsh
  • Date Collected: 2/25/2018

Informant Data:

  • Sally Korsh is a retired commercial Real Estate lawyer who lives in Weston, Connecticut. She was born in Pasadena, California and grew up in the greater Los Angeles metropolis area. As a child and teenager, Sally visited Disneyland approximately 15 times due to her geographic proximity to the park in the 1960s and 1970s. She attended college at the University of California at Santa Barbara and law school at Loyola Law School in Los Angeles. As a young adult, she visited Disneyland rarely. Her interest in Disney and visits to the parks were renewed upon her 1992 marriage to Kevin Korsh and the birth of their daughters, Johanna and Karina. Although Sally and Kevin moved to Connecticut shortly before the birth of their daughters, her parent’s lingering physical proximity to Disneyland resulted in approximately ten more visits to the park as a young mother with her family in the early 2000s. Her lifelong hobbies include Golden Retriever adoption and nature conservation.

Contextual Data:

  • Cultural Context: Tom Sawyer Island is an artificial island in Disneyland. It features scenes and character references to the Mark Twain novel, The Adventures of Tom Sawyer. Visitors are transported around the island on a railroad car. It was rebranded in 2007 to combine Tom Sawyer’s fictional universe with elements from the Pirates of the Caribbean movie franchise. In the 1960s and the 1970s, the island featured a settler’s cabin that was supposedly set on fire by Native American animatronics. The informant alleges that these Native American animatronics had the capacity to dance. These simplistic portrayals of Native Americans on Tom Sawyer Island were gradually removed in the late 1970s and 1980s.
  • Social context: The interviewee first observed this superstition as a young teenager during one of her many visits to the Disneyland parks in the 1960s and 1970s with her peers from school. The superstition became a popular and risky ritual among her male Middle School and High School classmates.


Item:

  • The informant alleges that many teenage boys she knew believed in the following magic superstition: if they were able to escape the confines of the railroad car on Tom Sawyer Island and dance with the Native American animatronics, they would get a girlfriend.
  • The following is a transcript of the legend as it was told to the collector in February 2018. Some words and phrases have been omitted from the original to allow for easy reading.

Transcript:

  • “A bunch of kids thought the greatest and most rebellious thing ever was hopping off the rail car on Tom Sawyer Island and going off to dance with the Native Americans. It was considered a pretty legendary accomplishment if you managed to pull it off without getting caught. One of my friends even told me the boys at my school said the idea behind it was that if you could pull the stunt off, you would get a girlfriend from all the attention.”

Informant’s Comments:

  • “This didn’t work for me, believe me.”

Collector’s Comments:

  • This item interested me as an example of how much our culture has changed since the late 1960s. I found it interesting to learn that at this time, such reductionist portrayals of Native Americans were the norm and kids joked around with them as a part of their lore.

Collector’s Name: Karina Korsh

Tags/Keywords:

  • Customary Lore
  • Magic Superstition
  • Teenage Idiocy on Tom Sawyer Island

Pirates of the Caribbean Skeletons

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General Information about Item:

  • Verbal lore, legend
  • Language: English
  • Country of Origin: United States
  • Informant: J.H. ’19
  • Date Collected: 3/1/18

Informant Data:

  • J.H. is a female Dartmouth student in the class of 2019. She is majoring in Neuroscience and Asian and Middle Eastern Studies. She intends on pursuing a career in public health or medicine and is a licensed Emergency Medical Technician. She grew up in Ohio. She has two younger siblings, one brother two years younger than her and one sister four years younger than her. She visited Disney World in Orlando, Florida with her family one time in the mid-2000s.

Contextual Data:

  • Cultural Context: The Pirates of the Caribbean is a ride in the Magic Kingdom park at Disney World. It places its riders in a raft-like vehicle and maneuvers them along a fake river as they pass animatronic pirates who tell tales of their exploits. The pirates stand upon various intricate sets that depict their seafaring lifestyle. Some of these sets include skeletons. The ride actually opened at the Magic Kingdom in 1973, modeled after a similar ride at Disneyland. The ride served as inspiration for the extremely successful Pirates of the Caribbean movie franchise of the 2000s.  
  • Social Context: The informant first heard of this legend from her mother during her only trip to Disney World in the mid-2000s. She does not know from whom or how her mother learned of the legend, but assumes her mother likely heard it from a friend. The informant retells this legend in social situations with friends during which someone brings up the Pirates movie franchise or the ride at the Disney parks.

Item:

  • This legend alleges that the skeletons within the sets of the Pirates of the Caribbean ride are real human bones, and not fake moldings. This constitutes a legend since it is grounded in presumed historical fact, takes place in the contemporary human world, and features human characters (both dead and alive).
  • The following is a transcript of the legend as it was told to the collector in February 2018. Some words and phrases have been omitted from the original to allow for easy reading.

Transcript:

 

  • “So when we went to Disney [World] my little brother really wanted to go on the Pirates of the Caribbean ride since it was sometime after the first movie came out. He loved Jack Sparrow. So we were on the ride and passing this weird sort of grotto and my mother leaned over and told me, ‘You know I once heard that those skeletons are from real humans.’ And I had to agree with her – I was young, but the skeletons looked scary real. That’s just a fun and freaky tidbit I like to bring up when my friends talk about the parks.”

 

Informant’s Comments:

  • “I’d really love to go back as an adult and investigate this once and for all.”

Collector’s Comments:

  • My inspiration for this project topic came from seeing online lists of alleged dark Disney park secrets, but I’d actually never heard of this one before!

Collector’s Name: Karina Korsh

Tags/Keywords:

  • Verbal Lore
  • Legend
  • Pirates of the Caribbean Skeletons

Hats and Princesses, Or Else: a Conversion Superstition

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The photograph above features the informant’s two children on a visit to Disneyland 2001 or 2002 upon completion of their conversion superstition – avoiding bad luck by finding Ariel and getting their hats!

General Information about Item:

  • Customary lore, conversion superstition
  • Language: English
  • Country of Origin: United States
  • Informant: Kevin Korsh
  • Date Collected: 2/25/18

Informant Data:

  • Kevin Korsh is a retired commercial Real Estate lawyer who lives in Weston, Connecticut. He was born in Brooklyn, New York and grew up in Scarsdale, New York (a part of the greater New York City metropolitan area). He attended Amherst College in Amherst, Massachusetts and then Stanford Law School in Palo Alto, California. He first lived in proximity to Disneyland when he moved to Los Angeles after law school. In this period, he married California native Sally Korsh and fathered two daughters, Johanna and Karina. He never visited either Disney park as a child or young adult but visited around ten times as a young father with his family in the early 2000s

Contextual Data:

  • Cultural Context: Main Street USA at Disneyland, the area at the entrance to the park, features numerous stores that offer custom Disneyland memorabilia. One of these services is an embroidery station at which visitors can have hats or shirts embroidered with their names, slogans, and Disney characters of their choice. One of the park’s other main attractions lies in the opportunity to meet and take photos with human impersonators of various Disney characters. These include all of the traditional princesses that are featured in Disney films and some more contemporary characters. In the early 2000s, Disneyland had yet to extensively organize and advertise opportunities for families to meet and take photos with Disney characters. This required visitors to act a bit intrepidly, wandering the park and the recreations of landscapes from various Disney films in an area called Fantasyland to seek out the character of their choice. This included Ariel, the main character from the Disney classic The Little Mermaid.
  • Social Context: This superstition was developed among the folklore group of the Korsh family over the course of around ten visits to Disneyland in the early 2000s. While the superstition is told in the same way by both the Korsh parents and Korsh children, it has different meanings based on the age of the performer.

Item:

  • The following superstition takes the form of a conversion superstition (if A, then B, unless C). If the Korsh family visited Disneyland, they would have bad luck if the children didn’t get embroidered hats and got to meet Ariel.
    • According to the informant, ‘bad luck’ for the parents signified the likely tears and temper tantrums of their children if they didn’t get their hats and didn’t meet Ariel on that trip. As health-conscious parents, the superstition also had a protection-oriented purpose in making sure our faces were safe from the sun under hats.
    • The informant believes that ‘bad luck’ for the children meant more of a fear of supernatural curses and omens that took after the ones they observed in Disney adaptations of fairy tales.
  • The following is a transcript of the superstition as it was told to the collector in February 2018. Some words and phrases have been omitted from the original to allow for easy reading.

Transcript:

  • “You [the interviewer] and Jojo [Johanna] had an extremely particular set of requirements for what constituted a successful Disney trip way back when. If you two did not get to buy custom embroidered hats, you’d throw a fit. If you two did not get to meet Ariel, you’d throw a fit. If neither of these were possible, the trip was a disaster. It felt like you two genuinely believed the world would fall apart magically if we weren’t able to do either. It was frustrating, but endearing. Seriously – they didn’t even organize meet and greets with the princesses back then. We’d wander Fantasyland for hours hoping we’d happen upon Ariel. But you know me and your mom – we were okay with it as long as we had sunscreen and those hats kept the sun off your face.

Informant’s Comments:

  • “I love you both, but I’m pretty glad we’ve moved on from those days. Although those hats were definitely cheaper than the crazy phones and clothes you spend your money on now.”

Collector’s Comments:

  • I really appreciated hearing this story in full from my father. Although I have vague memories of meeting Ariel and watching my hat be embroidered at Disneyland, I don’t have the capacity to recall the attitudes I brought towards my trips to Disneyland when I was so young. It was particularly interesting to discover how the same superstition had different significances to me and my sister vs. my parents. They feared more practical and health-related concerns, while we were young kiddos who genuinely thought we were entering our favorite fairy tale and irrationally feared what would happen if we couldn’t.

Collector’s Name: Karina Korsh

Tags/Keywords:

  • Customary Lore
  • Superstition
  • Hats and Princesses, or else: a Conversion Superstition

Tragedy on the Matterhorn

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General Information about Item:

  • Verbal lore, legend
  • Language: English
  • Country of Origin: United States
  • Informant: Sally Stires Korsh
  • Date Collected: 2/25/2018

Informant Data:

  • Sally Korsh is a retired commercial Real Estate lawyer who lives in Weston, Connecticut. She was born in Pasadena, California and grew up in the greater Los Angeles metropolitan area. As a child and teenager, Sally visited Disneyland approximately fifteen times due to her geographic proximity to the park in the 1960s and 1970s. She attended college at the University of California at Santa Barbara and law school at Loyola Law School in Los Angeles. As a young adult, she visited Disneyland rarely. Her interest in Disney and visits to the parks were renewed upon her 1992 marriage to Kevin Korsh and the birth of their daughters, Johanna and Karina. Although Sally and Kevin moved to Connecticut shortly before the birth of their daughters, her parent’s lingering physical proximity to Disneyland resulted in approximately ten more visits to the park as a young mother with her family in the early 2000s. Her lifelong hobbies include Golden Retriever adoption and nature conservation.

Contextual Data:

  • Cultural Context: the Matterhorn is a steel roller coaster at the Disneyland park in Anaheim, California. Its physical appearance is based on that of the Matterhorn, a mountain in the European Alps.
  • Social Context: The interviewee first heard this legend as a young teenager during one of her many visits to the Disneyland parks in the 1960s and 1970s. A friend first informed her of this legend. As the legend has persisted in the informant’s memory over the following decades, she told it to her friends and then children as a cautionary warning about personal conduct on the Matterhorn. She performs this folklore in the proximity of the Matterhorn.


Item:

  • The Tragedy on the Matterhorn is a legend of a park visitor’s death on the Matterhorn roller coaster that presumably occurred at some point during the 1960s, based on the informant’s first recollection of the lore. Since it is grounded in presumed historical fact and features human characters in the contemporary human world, it can be classified as a legend.
  • The following is a transcript of the legend as it was told to the collector in February 2018. Some words and phrases have been omitted from the original to allow for easy reading.

Transcript:

  • “Well, going to the park [Disneyland] was pretty popular with me and my friends in Middle School and High School. On one of those visits I got a little spooked by this story my friend told me. As we were in line for the Matterhorn, he told me that somebody once was decapitated on the ride by trying to stand up and raise their arms on the roller coaster. It freaked me out a bit and I was always sure to keep my hands by my sides every time I went on it from then on. And you know that when you [the collector] were finally tall enough to go on it I told you this story and held you pretty darn closely to make sure everything was all right. You [the interviewer] were pretty young!”

Informant’s Comments:

  • Sally affirms her love for roller coasters and assures that although she always is worried about being safe, she will always love the Matterhorn.

Collector’s Comments:

  • The collector would also like to affirm that although this lore does serve as a needed cautionary tale for safety on roller coasters, the Matterhorn is indeed a thrilling and positive attraction at Disneyland.

Collector’s Name: Karina Korsh

Tags/Keywords:

  • Verbal Lore
  • Legend
  • Tragedy on the Matterhorn