Little Fears IRL!

[Pieter van Hiel]

Someone sent me a link to an story that appeared in a Miami paper about 5 years ago, about homeless children generating their own mythology.

http://miaminewtimes.com/issues/1997-06-05/feature.html/page1.html

Some interesting stuff, that.

Is Bloody Mary in Little Fears? She seems to be a rather pervasive character. Heck, when I was in the 3rd and 4th grade, older students would hold younger kids down and "put them in a trance" by making them stare at the sky. The stated intention of these trances was to make the children meet Bloody Mary - who in our own little world was the ghost of a nurse who died in the school in WWI. (The school was supposedly a converted WWI hospital.)

I've since heard the name and variations on the myth in a number of places - most common of course being the "Say Bloody Mary three times in front of a mirror in a dark room and she'll come and kill you" story.

[Levekius]

Speaking of Little Fears, I was wondering if another edition was planned or something? The LGS hasn't stored it for quite awhile and I was wondering why...

I'm gonna go read that story now :)

[BlightCrawler]

Originally posted by Pieter van Hiel
Is Bloody Mary in Little Fears?

I don't think so (but I don't have the book on hand). Although, it certainly fits the game.

This is a cool article for those who haven't read it (I know it popped up in the White Wolf newsgroup a few weeks ago)

[Max S.]

That's some really neat stuff.

Makes me wonder if it's an April Fool's thing.

[Pieter van Hiel]

Originally posted by Max S.
That's some really neat stuff.

Makes me wonder if it's an April Fool's thing.

I don't think so - it's five years old, so far as I can tell. It also doesn't smack of a newspaper April Fool's joke - in that, well, it's not very funny.

[Alex]

No, it's not an April fools thing. It actually gets posted here about once a month.

- Alex

[Jason L Blair]

Originally posted by Levekius
Speaking of Little Fears, I was wondering if another edition was planned or something? The LGS hasn't stored it for quite awhile and I was wondering why...


Little Fears is still available from the distributors and Wizard's Attic. As far as a second edition, it's always a possibility. ;)

[NPC Jeb]

Has anyone ever read or heard of anything else like this article? It's five years old at this point, and has gotten around enough that Clive Barker has optioned a script based off the article for a movie (pretty much the only thing I could turn up on it).

I mean, this seems like a bonanza to the field of folklore, there should be papers galore on this stuff. Are there? I also couldn't find anything else on the subject from Lynda Evans, the author of the piece. The rest of her beat (as available on the web), appears to be related to investigating Washington banking commitees, though related in some ways

http://www.bankrate.com/ndaq/news/pf/19990115.asp?prodtype=bank

http://www.bankrate.com/brm/news/bank/19990122.asp

She also seems to have won an alternative news award for a piece entitled "Death in the Sand", but I didn't find a copy of that online.

So are there authors who have written about this kind of thing? Not the individual parts (like La Llorona) but the idea of kids having such a complex shared alternative set of stories?

P.S. I'm not saying this couldn't happen. And I'm not trying to whitewash it because it's an unpleasant read. I'm just suspicious because its the same article, again and again.

[Random Nerd]

Originally posted by Alex
No, it's not an April fools thing. It actually gets posted here about once a month.

Here?

Myths over Miami gets posted everywhere about once a month.

Forums, mailing lists, you name it.

[Levekius]

Originally posted by Jason L Blair



Little Fears is still available from the distributors and Wizard's Attic. As far as a second edition, it's always a possibility. ;)

You big teaser :D

With my freaking luck, the day I'm going to buy it, I will come home and find out you just announced a super-mega-hardcover-work-of-art-limited-get-it-while-it-last-edition ;)

[Justin Bacon]

NPC Jeb wrote:
Has anyone ever read or heard of anything else like this article?

You aren't the only one. And, frankly, at this point I'm rather suspicious that the whole thing is a fraud. If it was isolated to a few Miami shelters, I could believe that more detailed research has not been done -- or has not found attention on the Web. But according to the article, this mythology is shared by children in shelters across the country. Where's the follow-up reporting? Where's the scholastic research?

An article which has generated enough attention to garner a movie option should have also generated enough attention receive additional coverage.

Instead: Nothing.

JB

[NPC Jeb]

It's a tough call. On the one hand, there is nothing, per se, to suggest it isn't true. And I can't imagine a much more difficult (on a variety of levels) group of storytellers to try to study than homeless kids.

(Except for maybe combatants in a warzone. I've always wondered what folklore emerges, especially when US troops go up against irregulars. On the one side, you've got a 14 year old kid with an Ak-47 and maybe some shoes. On the other, you've got guys who are airlifted in under cover of dark, are highly trained, armored, and can see in the dark. If any of the crazier exoskeleton or nanogear projects pan out, they'll also be able to jump onto roof tops and become invisible. Kind of makes a weird sense out of stereotypical movie-style human sacrifices: kill an American or two, and a bunch of superpowered invisible nocturnal demons will show up)

On the other hand, the singular nature of the article does feel a little ... cooked. But like I said, there is nothing to back up such a harsh allegation. If no one else has tackled something so potentially interesting and enlightening, that I just don't get.

[Pieter van Hiel]

Originally posted by Justin Bacon
NPC Jeb wrote:


You aren't the only one. And, frankly, at this point I'm rather suspicious that the whole thing is a fraud. If it was isolated to a few Miami shelters, I could believe that more detailed research has not been done -- or has not found attention on the Web. But according to the article, this mythology is shared by children in shelters across the country. Where's the follow-up reporting? Where's the scholastic research?
JB

Speaking as a former street ministry coordinator for the Salvation Army in a Canadian city, I would much of it does ring true. Street kids, even young ones, can be surprisingly eloquent considering their lack of education.

The younger kids I dealt with also tended to share their own little mythos specific to the city - vampires lived in the old train station, a particularly schizophrenic street woman was actually a ghost, etc. However, it was pretty clear that they simply believed these things because older kids had told them so. And the older kids were obviously just telling them these things to scare them and get a laugh.

Speaking as a newspaper reporter, well, it's obvious there are a few places where the writer has edited things to make it a better story, and I suspect some of the kids may simply be amalgams of several different children. But I don't feel it is necessarily untrue. Miami is the same city wherein religious murals of Elian Gonzales started appearing within a matter of weeks - certainly the immigrant communities are chock fulla mystic thinkers.

I've never seen this article before - does it really get linked up here every month?

[SteveD]

You're right, it is odd there's no follow up. But that could be because nobody's got around to studying it more yet. It's not that uncommon to have anthropological stories go untouched because nobody wants to do the legwork. I once read a book about a guy who spent a week as a homeless guy and he pointed out that nobody else in Australia had done this (become homeless for a book or research), most likely because it's a really shitty (not to mention dangerous) thing to do.

There have been similar studies/stories done, too. I remember reading a long magazine article about the children of war, which took a detailed look at the twins in Bangladesh. These nine or ten year old kids were treated like angels, and if they led you into battle, you could not lose and bullets bounced off them. And if they looked you in the face, bullets would bounce off you too. Again, a few years ago, again little follow up, again perhaps because nobody wants to join a teen Bangladesh army for months.

Would you want to?

Cheers,
Steve

[Gareth-Michael Skarka]

Yes, this gets posted about once a month. It was pointed out to me right after I finished UnderWorld, and fits perfectly with our presentation of both the homeless, and the nature of urban legends. It will be cited as source material in the forthcoming second edition.

As far as follow-ups go, there have been similar stories mentioned--- in Jennifer Toth's MOLE PEOPLE, for example, about the subterranean homeless in NYC.

Nobody has gone into it in more detail, though...but I have to ask why they'd bother. What is cool to gamers isn't necessarily of interest to the rest of the world. Think about it like this: why should anyone bother to collect the stories that kids tell eachother? Especially when:

a) the kids in question are homeless---a group that historically isn't very communicative with outsiders

b) somebody else has already done it, even if only for an article.

That second point is a deceptively large one: the only folks who would be likely to follow up on something like this are academics (sociologists, for example), and in my experience, academics are not too fond of expanding upon someone else's work when they can break new ground and make a name for themselves instead.

...and, given the fact that Lynda Edwards has sold the option to film, it's not in her best interests to pursue a follow-up at this point. Others could do it, but given that they'd be basing it off of her original article, the rights to which are under option, she'd have a case to legally block their efforts, since they would diffuse the value of her option....and that's a pretty big can of worms to open, especially for something of only marginal interest (for the reasons I listed above).

My opinion, of course.

GMS

[Forum Administrator]

Originally posted by NPC Jeb
So are there authors who have written about this kind of thing? Not the individual parts (like La Llorona) but the idea of kids having such a complex shared alternative set of stories?
One of Peter Jackson's past films is Heavenly Creatures, a very good film about a strange murder that occurred in New Zealand some time ago. The girls involved shared a rich fantasy existence of the steam-tunnel variety, which ultimately led to the murder. While not widespread, it's the same sort of thing. Webpage on the made-up world:

http://www.geocities.com/Hollywood/Studio/faq2/Section_3/3.1.12-3.1.13.html

and the murder itself:

http://library.christchurch.org.nz/Heritage/ParkerHulme/

and more on Borovnia:

http://www.domusaurea.org/borovnia/index2.html

[NPC Jeb]

Originally posted by Gareth-Michael Skarka

a) the kids in question are homeless---a group that historically isn't very communicative with outsiders



Agreed. And probably why there is at least some controversy concerning The Mole People. I've heard criticisms of its accuracy as well, and while running down info on this story, ran across a point by point article that cast doubt on the research in that book. I merely skimmed it, as I haven't read The Mole People, but I have to assume that with such a difficult study group, a researcher, and particularly a journalist, might be the object of skepticism.



b) somebody else has already done it, even if only for an article.

That second point is a deceptively large one: the only folks who would be likely to follow up on something like this are academics (sociologists, for example), and in my experience, academics are not too fond of expanding upon someone else's work when they can break new ground and make a name for themselves instead.



I would disagree. This is exactly the sort of thing that would spur most grad students, at least, into action if they were in a position to study it. A news article is one thing, but dissertation is a completely different matter. And if the article is even remotely accurate, there is room enough for several studies on this topic. Just from the folklore perspective, there has to be a lot here on transmission in a modern urban environment (vs. the tired "urban legends" bit). Who knows what a sociologist could do with this in terms of the social networks these kids are in, stuff that might actually have practical applications, etc.




...and, given the fact that Lynda Edwards has sold the option to film, it's not in her best interests to pursue a follow-up at this point.



If you are basing that off of my post, I may have misrepresented by omission. The press release on the movie deal mentioned the article as inspiration for a script by a screenwriter that was sold. I have no clue if the original author herself was involved, or how it worked out legally

[NPC Jeb]

Pieter and Kuma, thanks for the info.

SteveD: The movement around those twins was classic revitalization stuff. That same pattern appears again and again, complete with the bulletproof magic. A friend of mine has referred to it as his favorite bit in the field of anthropology, since it is the closest we come to being a predictive science.

[Gareth-Michael Skarka]

Originally posted by NPC Jeb
If you are basing that off of my post, I may have misrepresented by omission. The press release on the movie deal mentioned the article as inspiration for a script by a screenwriter that was sold. I have no clue if the original author herself was involved, or how it worked out legally

No, I'm basing that off my own research into the subject....

from Variety:

"'Bloody' pickup for Touchstone
by Cathy Dunkley and Greg Hernandez

The Walt Disney Co.'s Touchstone Pictures paid $350,000 against $750,000 to pick up the dark psychological thriller pitch "Bloody Mary" by Silvio Horta ("Urban Legend"). "Hellraiser" creator Clive Barker will produce.

Horta will write the script, which was optioned from a nonfiction article in the Miami New Times three years ago. The article written by Lynda Edwards, deals with the urban legend of Bloody Mary, a monstrous, vengrful bogeywoman who snatches the souls of children and lives in the supernatural plane between reality and illusion.

Although other films have been based on a similar type of urban legend, the project has been described as more sophisticated than such horror fims as "Candyman" and "Hellraiser" and deals with a theme similar to "The Sixth Sense." The story explores the way human imagination deals with fear.

The project was pitched by Horta and Barker's Seraphim Films executives Joe Daley and Renee Rosen to Mark Vahradian, executive vp production at Buena Vista Motion Picture Group, which oversees the Touchstone label. "

GMS

[NPC Jeb]

Thanks, I must not have seen that report of the deal.

[Jesse Scoble]

Originally posted by Pieter van Hiel
Is Bloody Mary in Little Fears? She seems to be a rather pervasive character. Heck, when I was in the 3rd and 4th grade,

She may not be in Little Fears, but she does make an appearance in the dark, magic streets of Silver Age Sentinels...

(along the lines of Alan Moore's _Swamp Thing_ stories, or some of the darker _Sandman_ tales of Gaiman).

cheers,
JS

[NPC 123]

Originally posted by Justin Bacon
I could believe that more detailed research has not been done -- or has not found attention on the Web... Where's the follow-up reporting? Where's the scholastic research?

Actually there is a lot of attention to things like this -- it just isn't all that big and tends to not be "hot" enough to get on the web often. At schools like UCLA, where they have a Folk Lore department, people write their letter soup papers about this stuff. There are dozens of them, you just have to find them. Most of them are published only in the UCLA archives, or in small academic journals that give most web-surfers and RPGers nose bleeds.

It is there, just because you haven't seen more on it doesn't mean the work isn't being done on it. It's just being done in quiet corners of academia that get ignored for sexier things like incest studies and gener-relations.

[NPC Jeb]

Originally posted by NPC 123


It's just being done in quiet corners of academia that get ignored for sexier things like incest studies and gener-relations.

Bitter much? :)

Seriously, why the bias against stuff like this? Not political enough? Is it the supernatural elements?

[NPC 123]

Originally posted by NPC Jeb
Bitter much? :)

Not really, I'm not in that boat. I just know people who are.

[/b]Seriously, why the bias against stuff like this? Not political enough? Is it the supernatural elements? [/B]

It's a combination of things. First are those already brought up by other posters -- working in areas where a lot of this goes down is difficult and dangerous. These stories form in high crime areas, at best, or war areas. They also are generally formed by a closed community that normally won't trust outsiders. Getting an "in" for research on something like that can be excruciatingly hard -- as normally the kids won't trust you enough to tell you the truth. (Which is my big doubt about the accuracy of the Myths article).

Also important is the "what is important to RPGers isn't important to most folks." Really, RPGers may love myth and folk lore and how they exist on the streets and in the minds of children -- but most people, even most academics, don't care. Very few universities have Folk Lore departments anymore, and all that I know of are minor departments or off-shoots of others (usually subsumed under English or Religious Studies). Why do a paper that no one will read and that won't get you a job?

[NPC Jeb]

Now, if these were Latin american kids, anthropologists would be all over it. Reminds me of a really good article in Current Anthropology a few years ago on the myths, themes, and potential realities behind stories of organlegging.

But I hear what you're saying. I've applied to present a paper on Spanish colonial use of ceramic vessels at the American Anthropology meetings this fall. But I really wanted to shirk my responsibilities, and present a paper on the historical development of the crashed saucer legend and the Roswell Incident. I probably would have, but my department has gotten all pissy about moving students along (a laudable goal, but better done with actual advising and aid instead of department-wide threats of expulsion on a semester-by-semester basis) as of late.

[Jesse Scoble]

Originally posted by NPC Jeb
Now, if these were Latin american kids, anthropologists would be all over it.

Actually, a lot of them are - there's specific reference to Mexican immigrants (children of migrant workers) who first used the term La Llorona (the crying woman), as well as to a Nicaraguan kid ... I find the mix of Carribean, Asian, and Latin American very interesting, throughout the piece.

Current Anthropology a few years ago on the myths, themes, and potential realities behind stories of organlegging.

Do your remember the title of the article? I'd love to check it out.

shirk my responsibilities, and present a paper on the historical development of the crashed saucer legend and the Roswell Incident.

Dude! That would have been so much cooler...:)

cheers,
JS

[NPC Jeb]

Originally posted by Jesse Scoble


Dude! That would have been so much cooler...:)



Absolutely. But until I'm more solidly into the meat of my dissertation research, I had best leave the side projects alone. The real bummer is that the meetings are here this year (so I don't have to travel), and the AAA meetings are known for their wacky papers. Some friends of mine went to symposium on "The Anthropology of disgust" last year. They were particularly grossed out by the paper on consumption porm (ala Cartman's mom in the South Park movie)

Here's the article. It interested me when I read it, but I'm no specialist in the subject so ...

Author:
Scheper-Hughes, Nancy.
Title:
The global traffic in human organs / Nancy Scheper-Hughes.
In:
Current Anthropology -- Chicago, ISSN 0011-3204 v. 41, no. 2, 2000. pp. 191-224.
Subjects:
Transplantation of organs, tissues, etc.
Organ trafficking--Moral and ethical aspects.
Sale of organs, tissues, etc.
Globalization.
Bellagio Task Force on Organ Transplantation.
Organs (Anatomy)--Economic aspects.
Body, Human--Cultural aspects.

[Justin Bacon]

Originally posted by Pieter van Hiel


Speaking as a former street ministry coordinator for the Salvation Army in a Canadian city, I would much of it does ring true. Street kids, even young ones, can be surprisingly eloquent considering their lack of education.

That's not really what I find questionable: That kids in Miami have invented stories to tell one another is very believable. I find it doubtful, however, that this is a shared mythos from one end of the country to the other.

Justin Bacon
triad3204@aol.com

[NPC 123]

Originally posted by Justin Bacon
That's not really what I find questionable: That kids in Miami have invented stories to tell one another is very believable. I find it doubtful, however, that this is a shared mythos from one end of the country to the other.

I think, in that area, the Myths article is vastly overstated, yes. Kids across the country may have similar myths, developed from similar sources (La Llonda and the Blue Lady being old folk lore that's been in the southern portions of the US for a hundred plus years), but the "one myth" idea doesn't hold up all that well.

[Qusoor]

I sent this to a friend of mine who is a professor, who then sent it to Bill Ellis, the Penn State professor who is quoted in the article. When the fact-checkers called him to check the quote, he informed them he'd been misquoted. This apparently happened a lot in the article, so that publication dropped it, and it got published by a less thorough venue.

He believes that the majority of the article comes from a single kid, and that these stories are not widespread, even in the Miami area.

So to repeat--it's a crock. So the next time you see someone bring this article up, tell people it's BS.