Item 5
Source:
This video was collected from TikTok. User @bobbiecurtislee uploaded on March 15, 2021.
Text:
Unofficial title: “Urban Legends From Illinois,” from her channel’s series officially titled “Urban Legends From Each State”
Transcription:
“Welcome back to ‘Urban Legends From Each State’ part 13. In the 1890s, a butcher named Hermann opened up his own shop in Palos Park. Hermann had a short temper and was known for bullying his young apprentice that he was mentoring. One day, a large shipment of beef came in and Hermann asked his apprentice to take it to the basement. But on his way down there, he tripped and fell and snapped his neck. Worried that the locals would pin the death on him, Hermann hung the apprentice’s body on a meat hook to deal with later. Eventually, Hermann disposed of the body by butchering it and selling the meat to the locals. He even took some home to enjoy it himself. Hermann’s business began to boom and people were saying they had never tasted better meat. But once there was nothing left of the apprentice’s body, Hermann started to wonder how he was gonna keep up business. So he started luring homeless people and children into his shop, butchering them, and selling their meat to the public. When people found out that this is what he was doing, they dragged him out of his shop and decapitated him on the lawn. Hermann’s head and body were buried separate, and it’s now believed that if they were ever to reunite, Hermann’s spirit would come back in search of his next victim.”
Texture:
This TikTok contains video, photographic images, and text. The video and voiceover are of the user telling a legend that comes from Illinois. The images she displays behind her are various images of butcher shops and butcher tools, as the story discusses a butcher, in addition to other stock images relevant to the legend. On screen, she does provide the text of the legend, and it appears in the exact words that she is verbally saying. This aids her audience who may be hard of hearing or who simply wish to read along with her. She also provides a text that contains a trigger warning about some of the graphic imagery seen in the story, allowing users who do not wish to hear the content to scroll to a different video before she tells the story.
Purpose:
Though this is the only legend in this list that does not appear to have originated on the internet, the internet is a major mode of transmission for this legend. The purpose of this particular video in this context is to highlight community. TikTok can be a community for people who have various interests, and this particular video is only one demonstration of that. The videos that this creator does in this series about urban legends in the United States are done by request. Meaning, if someone comments requesting her to do a particular state next, she will do it if it receives more “likes” than comments requesting other states. This shows that she listens to the community of people who follow her, in addition to showing their mutually beneficial relationship. She gets followers, “likes,” and views for listening to her community, and they receive the content that they want rather than receiving whatever she wishes to post. This video was a response video to someone’s comment specifically requesting the state of Illinois, further demonstrating the presence and importance of community on TikTok.
Relevance to Folklore and Folklore Studies:
This item is extremely relevant to folkloric studies. As previously mentioned, it highlights the fact that there are communities within the app. This video and other videos in the series deal with interpersonal interactions on TikTok, and it is not unique in this fact—many creators, regardless of follower count, have built their own communities on TikTok. This is no different from other avenues that have already been examined in folkloric studies, such as YouTube, Twitter, celebrity fandoms, etc.
Additionally, this is yet another example of folklore as a living, breathing, adaptable force. People still care about these legends. They care enough that the people who tell them, such as @bonniecurtislee, from whom this legend was collected, gain millions of followers. These accounts have people requesting to hear certain legends on a daily basis. This alone shows that oral narratives are not dying out, they are simply changing and becoming accessible to wider audiences.
The wider distribution of these legends is also particularly fascinating. Just 20 or so years ago, it would have been fairly unlikely for one to hear of certain legends, such as this one, unless they were from that particular area, knew someone who was, or were studying it as a folklorist themselves. This wider distribution makes these legends more accessible, sparks interest in the field of folklore, and allows for oral narratives to spread in new ways. Likely, a person takes a legend they hear on the internet, and somehow communicates it to their friend or coworker, who then communicates it to someone else, and the cycle goes on from there. Items such as this allow us to have a more open mind about the ways in which folklore can be transmitted and to examine the small ways that we live folklore every day. Once TikTok breaks the triviality barrier that many people set up, it’s societal significance will be highlighted. After all, people call folklore trivial all the time, and one only has to look deeper to realize that this is not the case.
Concluding Thoughts
A common thread throughout this collection is that each item is an urban legend collected from TikTok. The particular accounts from which they were collected are known to tell urban legends, and most of their videos surround the topic. Originally, the aim for this collection was to gather only legends that also had their origins on the internet, but this shifted as I found some of these TikToks highlighted important issues like community and transmission. All of these urban legends are frightening in some way, with none of them being humorous. I found this collection interesting simply due to the heavy amount of interest in these accounts, as you can see by how many followers and “likes” that these people receive. Due to the short nature of the videos, I did not expect some of these urban legend videos to be as detailed or as well-received as they were.
Something that I found was relevant to Trevor Blank’s book, The Last Laugh, was the impact that social media and pop culture can have on individuals. For example, the communities built around these TikTok accounts are smaller-scale versions of the communities built around celebrities, as Blank discusses. Additionally, this collection could be put in discussion with Blank’s conversation on how people portray themselves online, as some of these creators’ entire social media presence is around discussing urban legends and scary topics.