It’s happening again… again. Give it up for Bloody Mary.

You have already been acquainted with the drill: I look up a popular American cryptid/folktale (e.g., Bloody Mary) on three foreign language Wikipedia pages and summarize the results (including the requisite [sic]-implied Google Translate nuggets).

You try to match each of the three versions to the Wikipedia site on which you believe it have originated.

If you want to. Otherwise, proceed straight to the answers. There’s no reward for right answers, creative problem solving techniques or subtle attempts at blackmail. And if there were, it would be something plagued by poorly welded corner seams and filled with molten lava, and nobody would want it.

If you’re somehow unfamiliar with the general ghost-in-the-mirror slumber party exploits of Bloody Mary, read this English-language Wikipedia article

As David Bowie once crooned, “Let’s dance!”:

Your Language Choices:
a.) Italian
b.) Japanese
c.) German

Bloody Mary:

1. This language’s Bloody Mary entry is little more than a single-paragraph blurb that identifies the ritual as a courage test, mentions the optional use of candles and explains that the ghost is often summoned via the “rearview mirror of a car where there was associated in his lifetime, in which case at least one person has walked up it turned out to talk with her, but once.” The related links, however, guide readers to a page about a different legend – the legend of “Anne toilet.” According to the story, Anne was a young woman who was killed in the bathroom of her school and subsequently began haunting other school bathrooms. Supposedly, “in a certain school toilets should not everyone in a certain way and call Anne [ reply comes back from the shot. ‘ Wearing a red skirt , the most famous figure of the girl bobbed hair.”

2. On this language’s Wikipedia, the legend behind the familiar sleepover game goes thusly: there was a girl of 14 who died in an unspecified, but almost certainly tragic, accident. Her mother went so insane in the grief-coping center of her membrane that she “attacked on his arm a wire connected to a bell outside the coffin and the ground.” Mary’s mother swore she could hear the bell jingling, over and over again, resounding in her skull like some horrific parody of Christmas. Finally, she persuaded her already devestated husband to dig up their daughter’s coffin. “As soon as it was opened in horror as their parents saw that Mary had tried to open the coffin and had pulled all the nails against the wall to exit. But now Mary had died and the parents went mad with grief that he killed their daughter.” The page goes on to explain that in America, Bloody Mary is usually described as a girl killed in a car accident or “a girl buried alive by his own beliefs are so many parents.”

3. This language’s Wikipedia site doesn’t even have a page for Bloody Mary, but instead, after automatically sending users to a page about the cocktail, redirects folklore researchers to a catch-all page about Bogey figures throughout the world. Aside from an easily missed nod to Bloody M., the page features descriptions of Hakemann, “A hybrid of man and fish. Attracts swimmers children drown in water with a hook to it and be eaten by him,“ Schneider with the Shear, “which cuts the disobedient child,“ and Stranger, “a bright green pants and a black coat in appearance.“ (more…)

It’s happening again. This time, though, it’s all about the Mothman.

You have already been acquainted, albeit briefly, with the drill: I look up a popular American cryptid (e.g., the Mothman) on three foreign language Wikipedia pages and summarize the results (including the requisite [sic]-implied Google Translate nuggets). You try to match each of the three versions to the Wikipedia site on which you believe it originated.

If you want to. Otherwise, proceed straight to the answers. There’s no reward for right answers, good effort or savvy investment advice. And if there were, it would be something packed with asbestos and covered in blood, and nobody would want it.

(If you’re unfamiliar with the standard American telling of the Mothman, read this English-language Wikipedia article.

As a jazz-dancing midget in a Twin Peaks dream sequence once said, “Let’s rock!”:

Your Language Choices:

a.) Russian
b.) Japanese
c.) German

Mothman:

1. After repeatedly referring to Point Pleasant’s red-eyed antagonist as “man-moth,” this brief account of the flying humanoid’s spooky spree ends with several possible real-world explanations, including the popular notion that the man-moth was a misidentified bird and a theory that “in the 60-s test of a new type of weapon that causes hallucinations in humans.” The page’s final hypothesis, titled “hypothesis of genetic errors,” makes the lofty suggestion that the man-moth “appeared during the experiment in a secret lab, and ran all three of these creatures, which then allegedly capture.” The page also cites a supposed 1980 “New York Times” article that described three New Yorkers’ encounter with a creature similar to the man-moth. “Witnesses said that he had a hard face.”

2. This Wikipedia’s Mothman page admits there’s a possibility that, given the creature’s occasional linkage to cattle-mutilating aliens, the Mothman “may be a Vampire To act or he would be a Rite been invoked with animal blood.“ The page also recounts a thrilling Illinoisan Mothman encounter: “1951 being the correct description of the Mothman, was allegedly seen on Chicago, and this flying.“ One day later? The Chicago Earthquake. Coincidence? This Wikipedia article says, “No way!“ – “Allegedly wanted the Mothman help people to get out of their houses to safer outside.“ Chief among this page‘s rational explanations for the winged, bird-taloned monstrosity? Some kind of bear.

3. Chock full of familiar Mothman history and wholly unfamiliar possible explanations, this site lovingly refers to the creature as the “Mossman” (occasionally, “Mosman”) and explains that “Many of the witnesses, but did not see a moment Mossman, Mossman was face to remember is not much more, with glaring red eyes shine.” The page’s subsequent list of Mothman theories includes the “Curse of indigenous theory,” which claims that there’s an “interesting and conformity” between legends of the Thunderbird and Point Pleasant’s “area onceIndian, Shawnee TribeCurse”; and the “Pet Alien Theory,” which identifies the Mossman as “the idea of animals for experiments on Earth.”

ANSWERS AFTER THE JUMP!
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A couple weeks back I wrote a series of posts about Kuchisake-onna, Japan’s infamous slit-mouthed woman. For the third installment, fearing that, owing to my relative ignorance of Japanese culture, I was woefully misrepresenting/misinterpreting an important folktale, I used Google translate to read authentic (and grammatically butchered) versions of the tale on the Japanese-language Wikipedia site. Then I looked up the Japanese take on the Jersey Devil. Why? To make myself feel better about butchering the country’s canonical urban legends (or, as I’m sure I would have argued at the time, to revel in the inherent mutability of oral tradition that exists between cultures, even in a media-saturated, post-post-modern age). I was not disappointed. The Japanese version, or, more accurately, understanding, of the Jersey Devil was awesomely nutty and involved a bunch of kids finding a big, crazy egg in the forest. Probably they thought they were hatching a Yoshi.

Anyway, I thought it would be a fun to look at the story of the Jersey Devil on three other international Wikipedia pages, summarize the results (including the requisite [sic]-implied Google Translate nuggets) and have you folks try to match each of the three versions to the Wikipedia site on which you believe it originated.

If you want to. Otherwise, just, you know, go straight to the answers. There isn’t a prize anything. And if there were, it would be something undead or coconut flavored or both, and nobody would want it.

(If you’re unfamiliar with the standard American telling of the Jersey Devil, here’s a Wayback Machine link for you)

Okay! (Rubs hands together creepily) Here we go:

Your Language Choices:

a.) Russian
b.) Italian
c.) German

1.) This version of the legend states that the devil’s mother was a witch who abandoned her malformed 13th child in the swamps of New Jersey, where the “beast of a humanoid form would become malignant over time.” This account also adds this unfamiliar detail: “In 1740, The local priests exorcise these marshes, preventing the monster to kill people, but exorcism last hundred years, and according to local stories the Jersey Devil continued to feed on men.” Also, apparently “from 1909 his popularity grew, over time it was believed that this was a Chupacabras From unnatural speed.”

2.) This Wikipedia site’s only entry for “Jersey Devil” is for the season 1 “X-Files” episode of the same name. Though most of the page is devoted to summarizing the episode (“Mulder, alone watching a dark alley near the forest, where according to Jack roamed the forest devil.”), there is a footnote containing this summary of the Jersey Devil story: “The legend of ‘The Devil Jersey’ known since the XVIII century, descriptions of the creature vary, but most of it ‘sees’ as a stealth, sneaking up on the cattle and attack him.”

3.) Easily the most thorough of the three entries in question, this language’s Wikipedia page offers the standard Mother Leeds version of the story, along with a variant in which the devil’s birth was the result of a gypsy curse, and a version in which “the devil is originally been a human child, who locked his mother in the cellar. According to another tale of the Jersey Devil was at the door, knocked three times and is said to have asked his mother to let him in, but the mother did not want a devil and sent him away.“ The page goes on to cite the frequent comparisons of the Jersey Devil to El Chupacabra, but imediately puts the kibosh on the possibility of any real connection, stating that “The Chupacabra is not traditionally depicted as a biped,“ and helpfully reminding readers that “the devil has never been described as prickly.“

ANSWERS AFTER THE JUMP

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