Item 4
Source:
This was collected by me (Elise Suarez) in an informal Zoom interview with my friends and fellow IU students: Emilyann (Emily) Long, Cassie Ruch, Allyson McBride, and Harrison Sutton. The interview took place on Sunday, March 21, 2021 at 7:00 p.m. This legend was told by Cassie Ruch, a senior.
Text:
The Abortion Doctor on Jordan Avenue
Cassie: Our Career Development building was not always the Career Development building…
Elise: Where is that at?
Cassie: On North Jordan Avenue? Used to be the home for Phi Kappa Tau? It’s supposedly…the building stood as the original student health center and was a place where lots of unsafe, unsanitary, illegal abortions were happening. Um, after years of this the doctor began to go mad and claimed he was always hearing sounds of loud crying in the halls. He eventually ended up killing himself, uh, in the building. That building was torn down and is now the Career Development Center. Um, it’s next to Phi Kappa Tau. Uh, supposedly the frat brothers have, uh, held séances and hear infants crying and women screaming in pain. The ghost of the doctor himself is said to still be there too.
Emily: This sounds like anti-abortion propaganda. Like, ‘Don’t get an abortion or you’ll hear your crying infant that you killed.’ [laughs nervously]
Texture and Context:
This legend was told in an informal setting. This informality can be seen in some of the language used by the informant, Cassie, such as “uh” and the unsureness of the location that the legend was taking place in. It is also seen in Emily’s immediate take on what the legend means in her opinion. The bluntness and joking tone used when discussing this otherwise scary legend demonstrates that this is being told by a group of friends rather than a more formal setting such as class.
In its immediate context, the legend was told after some further discussion on the previous legends, a telling of legends by myself in order to further spark some ideas, and very brief discussion on my one of my informant’s failed “legend trip” to find the “Woman in Black,” (unfortunately, the informant did not retell the legend herself, as the entire group had already heard the general story of the woman and did not have interest in having it be repeated). Cassie had read this legend somewhere on the internet prior to this interview and was recalling the details from that. No one else in the group had heard this legend before, aside from myself, as I had encountered it in previous archival research.
Interpretation:
This legend focuses on the concept of genre. Cassie mentions that it is heavily associated with the Phi Kappa Tau fraternity, making it a part of “Greeklore.” In later discussion about the legend, Cassie offered her interpretation that perhaps the séance done by the fraternity brothers was a form of “hazing” to scare the new pledges. The legend is also in the genre of supernatural legends, as it is also heavily focused on ghosts who either have some sort of unfinished business or some form of trauma (ie. the women and the doctor).
This legend also deals with performance to some extent. It is told solely to scare people, whether it be new pledges in a fraternity or girls walking home late at night. This idea was briefly mentioned by Emily at the end of the transcription, and Harrison later agreed with her, stating that “Like what Emily said, it’s supposed to scare you away from abortion.” Later in our discussion, members of the group offered that it is told perhaps to prevent college-aged women from going through with an abortion, but also to warn fraternity boys about the repercussions of not practicing safe-sex. Further, it could be told to encourage these fraternity members to “step up” if an unplanned pregnancy occurs, rather than encouraging the woman to terminate. These possible interpretations are made likely through the performance of the legend and the groups in which it is often told to.