Kelsey LundFollow

Date Collected

Fall 11-20-2017

Place item was collected

Logan, Utah

Informant

Gabi Emery

Point of Discovery/Informant Bio

Gabi is a student here at USU. Her family lives in Florida and she has family here in Utah and Wyoming. She is a very social person and is always with her friends. She is a Kappa Delta and lives at the Kappa Delta house with twenty-three other girls. She is a good friend of mine and was willing to help me find some stories to document. Gabi is the kind of person who is always willing to help and is always listening to people. She is a Global Communications major and can speak Tagalog. She served an LDS mission in the Philippines.

Context

I collected this story from Gabi at Chili’s restaurant. She had mentioned to me earlier that she had a story she heard from our friend Haley that was related to folklore. She understands a small portion of what folklore is because I have been talking about the introductory class that I was taking. The setting at Chili’s was loud and difficult to understand each other at times, but Gabi is the one who brought it up and wanted to talk about it then. We were with her boyfriend Kengo and our friend Lauren Romero. Our friend Haley in which this story comes from is a girl who can be superstitious. Haley almost always has a question on her mind or a story to tell. She is a very social person who loves to talk to and easy to talk with. She is the kind of girl who is very trusting of people and the things they tell her. Hearing this story didn’t surprise us, but instead was amusing.

Text

Me: Okay Gabi [inaudible]

Gabi: So, Haley was telling me that in like first grade or something, her friend told her that when you’re in the bathroom alone, a baby doll, or like a doll will come out of the sink drain and like capture you. And so she was always scared to go to the bathroom alone because she didn’t want to be captured by the doll and if like, she said that you had to get these like monies to like go to the bathroom for some reason.

Me: That’s weird, like at her school?

G: Yea like you had to earn them, like if you were good you’d get money. So she said after her friend told her that, she would [laughing], she was too scared to go alone so she would use her money to buy her and her friend a ticket to the bathroom [laughs]. That’s it. So then I was like “That’s why girls always go to the bathroom together, or else they’ll get kidnapped by the doll!”

Me: So you just had to go to the bathroom? Like there wasn’t anything to it?

G: Well if you’re alone and someone else is in the stall then you’re okay.

Texture

The story was told in response to us both going to the bathroom. This incident may have sparked the memory of the “doll” that could come. At first, she needed to take a minute to think about the story and the way she wanted to tell it. She was able to tell the story and get the details she wanted in there. After the story was done, so was her storytelling. In remembering the story, she found parts of it humorous because of her knowledge of the personality of Haley. The story had an intriguing element to it because we all know Haley and understand her personality. We can see the likelihood of her using fake money to buy her and her friend a ticket to the bathroom. The common understanding of the main character gave the story more value and each of us could laugh and enjoy the story.

Course

Introduction to Folklore/ English 2210

Instructor

Dr. Lynne S. McNeill

Semester and year

Fall 2017

Theme

G7: People Known for Supernatural or Supernormal Power

EAD Number

2.4.4.14

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