Tag Archives: Charms

Charms

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Title: Charms

General Information about Item:

Customary Folklore: Superstition

Language – English

Country of origin – America

Informant Data:

Brandon Henthrone is 27 years old and from Southern Missouri. He currently lives in South Carolina. His military experience started when he was 18 years old when he joined the Navy Seals. He became a Coremen in the navy after that and has been doing combat medicine since then. He had one combat deployment in the middle east.

Contextual Data:

This superstition was presented in the line of duty to Brandon.  He was kicked out of a vehicle for consuming these charms, and he was informed by the person that kicked him out that the charms were known to be dangerous.  This superstition also involves a fear of getting killed in combat, which is a common theme among military superstitions.

Item:

Charms: Consuming charms candy that can be found in an MRE(Meal Ready-to-Eat) is believed to put you and those around you in danger.

Associated file (a video, audio, or image file):

Transcript of Associated File:

Brandon: Every combat vet knows, charms, charms are bad juju man. Charms get you blown up. Charms get you shot. Charms are the worst things ever. If you come in contact with charms, anything, throw it away, get it as far away from you as possible. I legitimately…so when I heard about it, I just got to division, I was this E3, didn’t know anything, I was out in the field, and they were like, you know, I had just opened up an MRE(Meal Ready-to-Eat), legitimately it had the charms candies in it; I was like, “ah dude these things are awesome.” One of the sergeants literally Spartan kicked me out of the truck because he was like, “you do not know how bad those things are for anybody”. What made it worse, what truly made me believe in them being very superstitious and very bad was the fact that on our trip back, we had 3 maybe 4 trucks break down out of the 8 trucks that we had. All of the trucks were perfectly PM’d, everything was great, but it came down to it, and they were like it’s the f**king charms. They were like doc you f**ked everything up so that’s why I say charms are the devil, and that is probably the only superstition that I truly believe in. Probably really the only one that me personally have heard of. I’ve only experienced what the Marines have experienced, and charms is, to me, the only one that’s out there.

Cole: What is like a charm physically?

Brandon: So charms…have you ever had a Blow Pop?

Cole: Yeah

Brandon: So that is made by the company…if you look on a Blow Pop, it says charms, but inside an MRE, there is these little jelly candies, they don’t put them in there any more, but back in the day they used to. They were little red, yellow, purple candies, and they tasted really good, they really did but they brought bad juju to you. So I did my best to stay away.

Informant’s Comments:

He says this is the only true superstition he believes in because he witnessed the superstition working first-hand.

Collector’s Comments:

This is another example of a superstition that results in the threat of being killed.

Collector’s Name: 

Matt Girouard

Tags/Keywords:

Charms, Superstition, Military, MRE, Meal Ready-to-Eat

Dog Tags

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Title: Dog Tags

Informant info: Michael Rodriguez. Informant attends Dartmouth College in Hanover, NH as a United States Army Veteran. Informant enlisted in the Army in 2003 and was a member of the 1st Battalion 8th Marines Bravo Company, which is an infantry military unit. He was stationed out of camp Lejeune North Carolina. Informant served in Iraq from June 2004 to December 2004. He was awarded a Purple Heart. He was from a military family, as well. Informant is 31 years old.

Type of lore: Material Lore, Superstition, Charms

Language: English

Country of Origin: USA

Social / Cultural Context: Informant was asked if there were any charms that he had while in the military or related to the military. Informant said that he carried around his own dog tags along with dog tags from his great grandfather from when he served. He claims that they were good luck charms.

Associated file:

Dog Tags

Transcript: “Uh, kind of. I mean i still have… I usually wear like I mean I have my dog tag my identification tag. I have my great grandfather’s from World War II.”

Informant’s comments: This was his first thought when i mentioned charms and he seemed to think his great grandfather’s and his own dog tags were charms.

Collector’s comments: These could be scene as contactor contagion because he carried around both dog tags in the hopes of having good luck like his great grandfather.

Tags/Keywords: Charms, Dog tags, Military

Say “No” to the Charms

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Title: Say “No” to the Charms

Informant info: Informant name is Jason Laackmann. Jason is twenty-eight years old and attends Dartmouth College in Hanover, NH as a United States Army Veteran. Jason served in the Army for five years in active duty and continues to serve in the Minnesota National Guard. The locations in which he has served are Fort Bend, Georgia, Fort Riley, Kansas, and overseas in Eastern Afghanistan.

Type of lore: Customary Folklore, Superstition

Language: English

Country of Origin: USA

Social / Cultural Context: Jason was interviewed at Dartmouth College. He was asked to talk about any superstitions he may recall during his time in the army. Informant did not state how he obtained the meals regarding this superstition, but focuses more on the content of the meal rather than the way in which he received them.

Associated File: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=E6KcnEdk7Q4 (start at 2:38)

Transcript:  [I have recorded the item exactly how it was told to me in the interview]: Um, so one of the things that you do is, uh, when you’re in the woods, if you get a piece of candy called a charm, you, you throw it away immediately, you never open it. Because that’s you know, gonna bring rain and you never want to train when it’s raining. It’s, it’s a terrible feeling, ‘cause you don’t want to be cold and you don’t want to be wet, and you definitely don’t want to have a combination of the two.

Informant’s comments: Jason stated that it seems funny when you hear about it for the first time or when you don’t know much about it, but to them it’s something they take seriously, especially since these charms are considered to bring bad luck rather than good.

Collector’s comments: Jason chuckled when telling the story, but I could also sense how feared the charms were during his time in the Army.

Never Eat the Charms

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Title: Never Eat the Charms

Informant info: Informant requested to remain anonymous. Informant attends Dartmouth College in Hanover, NH as a United States Army Veteran. Informant enlisted in the Army in 2005 and was a member of the Army Infantry 10th Mountain Division of Fort Drum, New York. Informant served in Iraq from 2006 to 2007. Informant is 28 years old.

Type of lore: Customary Folklore, Superstition, Contagious Magic

Language: English

Country of Origin: USA

Social / Cultural Context: Informant was interviewed at Dartmouth College. Informant was asked about certain superstitions or rituals that they had experienced during their time in the military. Informant explained that contained in their MREs (meals ready to eat) there are various different foods like dried sausages and peanut butter and crackers. There are also rainbow colored candies, however, you are not allowed to eat them. If you eat them it will bring very bad luck upon you like rain or getting hit by an IED (improvised explosion device).

Associated file: Informant requested to remain completely anonymous.

Transcript:  [I have recorded the item exactly how it was told to me in the interview]: So in the army you eat MREs. They’re like these… they come in these big heavy-duty plastic like round-like packages. And inside them are these like various dried and dehydrated, non-perishable foods that can survive the end of the world. Uh, they’ll have all kinds of things like these weird beef patties and raviolis and packets of cheese and peanut butter—peanut butter is like priceless—uh but one of the things in there is the charms. And you’re thinking like lucky charms but they’re just called charms. And they’re in like, they’re like these square rainbow colored candies um and I have no idea what they taste like because I have never eaten the charms. Um and uh you’re not supposed to eat the charms. You know they’re like the devils temptation. Have this sweet treat of wonderful goodness to make yourself feel better. But you can’t do it because it will rain terrible, terrible luck upon you. Like, uh, really bad weather. Or uh, you might go out on patrol and get hit by an IED, uh just all kinds of shit storms so just like don’t eat the charms. Everyone will freak out on you and say what are you doing? I’ve seen people get completely like dog piled for even like joking about eating the charms. They’re like lifesavers or jolly ranchers. They look more like jolly ranchers. But I wouldn’t know what they taste like because I’ve never eaten them. I mean I’ve eaten jolly ranchers just not charms because they’re evil.

Informant’s comments: During the informants response he commented on MREs which is an abbreviation of meals ready to eat. Informant told me that the following is a common superstition across all branches of the military. Informant also noted that they have witnessed people get punched and tackled for eating them.

Collector’s comments: Due to informants request to remain anonymous, I attempted to include various displays of emotions within the interview using parenthesis.