I have a weird one that haunted expat circles in China in the '00s and deep into the '10s. It has to do with Santa Claus candles.
No, really.
The story went like this: a group of people were in a “western-oriented” restaurant in which each table had these Santa Claus shaped candles. They were there for their weekly get-together but this time they stayed a very long time and the candle burned down to the end. And what did they see at the bottom of the candle? A little metal box with a grill. A microphone! Someone had planted a microphone at their table to spy on them and they caught them in the act!
Now the thing is, the first time I heard this story I heard it as a first-person story. “We” were in a restaurant and “I” saw the electronic module at the bottom of the Santa Claus candle. I was very new to China at the time so I still had my paranoid schizophrenic glasses on and I believed it.
Then, two years later, while I was travelling in a city in another province, I got together with some local expats. Who told the same story to me. Every detail was the same. It was a Santa Claus candle. They’d stayed later than usual. The candle burned down to the point you could see a little metal box with a grill. I did some checking, and there was definitely no link between the people I was talking to and the people who’d first told me the story.
Fast forward another two or three years … and I get the story again. And again in the same year, different place. And again the next year.
Each time it was a story told in the first person with identical details, told in the same way, with little to no variance. And at no point could I ascertain any link between these people, so this had to have been a story that had been circulating widely for a very long time. Yet each time I encountered it, the story was identical and told as a first-person story, stretching credulity for a large number of reasons.
I genuinely have no idea. If only one or two of them had gone the “personal story” route I might have actually believed the tale. But one person after another reporting it as “I did/saw this” just baffles me. I don’t know if it’s confabulation or some kind of leg-pulling exercise.
Sort of? Except it’s not like a rite of passage. You just occasionally, for at least 15 years, stumbled over someone who would swear that it happened to them. At least the drop bear gag is so frequent you know it’s a joke pretty quickly.
I have found that doing so is counter-productive most times. (When it is productive, it’s productive in the sense of a little fact to remember for future ambushes.) People get very, very, very defensive when you point out that they’re probably confabulating and that their memory is flawed and likely deeply fooled.
Oh that’s interesting. I never would have presented the question as challenging their memory because it never even occurred to me that they may genuinely believe what they were saying. Is it your experience that they do actually sell to believe that story happened directly to themselves?
It’s a well-researched phenomenon, actually, confabulation is. There’s even some evidence that a particular part of the brain does it. Our memories are actually kind of shitty. Things that get repeated often enough turn into “truth” if not quickly corrected when they show up. (This is how in the '80s, during the Satanic Panic, memories of “Satanic abuse” that would be physically impossible were generated and held by the unfortunate victims of unscrupulous lawyers and psychologists.) And once there, it’s “confrontational” to face them with reality.
So I’m pretty sure the people I talked to believed the story after repeating it likely dozens to hundreds of times.
I have a weird one that haunted expat circles in China in the '00s and deep into the '10s. It has to do with Santa Claus candles.
No, really.
The story went like this: a group of people were in a “western-oriented” restaurant in which each table had these Santa Claus shaped candles. They were there for their weekly get-together but this time they stayed a very long time and the candle burned down to the end. And what did they see at the bottom of the candle? A little metal box with a grill. A microphone! Someone had planted a microphone at their table to spy on them and they caught them in the act!
Now the thing is, the first time I heard this story I heard it as a first-person story. “We” were in a restaurant and “I” saw the electronic module at the bottom of the Santa Claus candle. I was very new to China at the time so I still had my paranoid schizophrenic glasses on and I believed it.
Then, two years later, while I was travelling in a city in another province, I got together with some local expats. Who told the same story to me. Every detail was the same. It was a Santa Claus candle. They’d stayed later than usual. The candle burned down to the point you could see a little metal box with a grill. I did some checking, and there was definitely no link between the people I was talking to and the people who’d first told me the story.
Fast forward another two or three years … and I get the story again. And again in the same year, different place. And again the next year.
Each time it was a story told in the first person with identical details, told in the same way, with little to no variance. And at no point could I ascertain any link between these people, so this had to have been a story that had been circulating widely for a very long time. Yet each time I encountered it, the story was identical and told as a first-person story, stretching credulity for a large number of reasons.
Crikey what an unusual story! With no twists in the tale or deviation at all. Why do you think they all tell it as first person?
I genuinely have no idea. If only one or two of them had gone the “personal story” route I might have actually believed the tale. But one person after another reporting it as “I did/saw this” just baffles me. I don’t know if it’s confabulation or some kind of leg-pulling exercise.
It’s the Chinese expat version of drop bears, then?
Sort of? Except it’s not like a rite of passage. You just occasionally, for at least 15 years, stumbled over someone who would swear that it happened to them. At least the drop bear gag is so frequent you know it’s a joke pretty quickly.
Did you ever challenge them on it? Point out that you’d heard an identical story from multiple other people? If so, how did they react?
I have found that doing so is counter-productive most times. (When it is productive, it’s productive in the sense of a little fact to remember for future ambushes.) People get very, very, very defensive when you point out that they’re probably confabulating and that their memory is flawed and likely deeply fooled.
Oh that’s interesting. I never would have presented the question as challenging their memory because it never even occurred to me that they may genuinely believe what they were saying. Is it your experience that they do actually sell to believe that story happened directly to themselves?
It’s a well-researched phenomenon, actually, confabulation is. There’s even some evidence that a particular part of the brain does it. Our memories are actually kind of shitty. Things that get repeated often enough turn into “truth” if not quickly corrected when they show up. (This is how in the '80s, during the Satanic Panic, memories of “Satanic abuse” that would be physically impossible were generated and held by the unfortunate victims of unscrupulous lawyers and psychologists.) And once there, it’s “confrontational” to face them with reality.
So I’m pretty sure the people I talked to believed the story after repeating it likely dozens to hundreds of times.
Ah of course leg pulling would make sense