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Using Urban Legends

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Hapax Legomenon

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About a year and a half ago I learned about the supremely creepy elevator game. It can be found here > http://hakei1211.blog.fc2.com/blog-entry-6.html. I've seen it on many blogs and it mostly seems to be copied and pasted, and they claim that it's Korean and was translated from a Korean site.

I've written a part of a story where a character describes their experience playing the elevator game. It's a bit different than described in these directions but it's the same idea. Would this be infringement on anything? I'd guess it'd be similar to using "Bloody Mary", but I don't know, especially because it's obviously modern and apparently translated.
 

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You should probably research it to be sure, but if the elevator game isn't branded, and it isn't something that first appeared in a specific book, TV show, or movie, then it's probably all right to use it in your story. There are so many urban legends, ghost stories, oral traditions, superstitions (we used to stay up half the night swapping many of these tales back and forth at slumber parties and girl-scout camping trips when I was a kid, and I'll bet my nieces do the same now) and so on that are just part of the cultural fabric. No one owns them as far as I know.
 
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Mr Flibble

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I have no idea what the elevator game is (or bloody mary come to that) so it wouldn't bother me in the slightest

It probably wouldn't if I knew them and you gave it a new twist

If you give it your own spin you should be fine
 
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Hapax Legomenon

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Yeah, I was thinking that, Roxx, but then I saw that Slender Man, which I thought was public domain, is, actually, not. There's a problem now with telling the difference between local urban legends and "creepypasta" -- scary stories on the internet, that can claim to be based off of urban legends and stuff -- which instead does have an original author who should have the copyright.
 

Roxxsmom

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I have no idea what the elevator game is (or bloody mary come to that) so it wouldn't bother me in the slightest

It probably wouldn't if I knew them and you gave it a new twist

If you give it your own spin you should be fine

I never heard of the elevator game either, but the bloody mary thing entails going into a bathroom or other room that has a mirror, turning off the light, and saying "I don't believe in Bloody Mary" over and over until your reflection turns into a corpse face.

Never worked for me. If you're into dark bathroom mirror games, wint o' green lifesavers are much more entertaining (they make green sparks if you chew with your mouth open, at least they did when I was a kid).
 
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Hapax Legomenon

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Yeah, "Bloody Mary". There's a lot of different versions of that.

However there's a form of creepypasta called "ritual", which outlines a certain type of ritual that does a certain creepy thing... like talk to ghosts or meet some kind of awful being or something. I suppose what leads me to believe the "Elevator Game" is more authentic is that the end is not extremely gory like most creepypastas. But then I guess online Korean writers of creepy things might be more subtle. There's at least one film on youtube about the elevator game as well.

I am however wondering about how apparently one "cannot copyright an idea." If someone writes out a spooky ritual that is their own invention, and someone else writes a story based on said spooky ritual but does not actually reference the text involved, is this infringing on copyright? I mean, technically a spooky ritual is a method, and methods fall under patent law, don't they...?
 
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neandermagnon

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If you change the instructions and instead of having a girl come in make it an old man or something else happen (e.g. the elevator controls going a bit haywire for a few moments) then it's a lot different from the original. There's no copyright on ideas, and I would have thought that an elevator taking you to another world when you do the right set of actions is an idea. The specific sequence of actions may be someone else's copyright.

Also, you could bring other kinds of actions into it, i.e. not just a sequence of button pressing. Maybe things like closing your eyes and turning three times, or saying certain magic words.
 

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Unrelated, but being in an elevator that doesn't stop at the correct floor, then plummets when I punch the button again, is a nightmare I've had off and on for most of my life.

Amazing that I have no phobia of the things in my waking life, except for the glass kind that operate on the outside of tall buildings. Those creep me out.
 

Once!

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Lifts/ elevators are inherently scary. You are trapped with strangers in a tiny box over a very long drop. Lots of scope for stories there. I'd definitely change the instructions though. Use the premise as a starting point not a blue print.

The film Devil comes to mind.
 

Hapax Legomenon

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If you change the instructions and instead of having a girl come in make it an old man or something else happen (e.g. the elevator controls going a bit haywire for a few moments) then it's a lot different from the original. There's no copyright on ideas, and I would have thought that an elevator taking you to another world when you do the right set of actions is an idea. The specific sequence of actions may be someone else's copyright.

Also, you could bring other kinds of actions into it, i.e. not just a sequence of button pressing. Maybe things like closing your eyes and turning three times, or saying certain magic words.

That it's a special sequence is the most important part because it's related to a similar ritual in the story that I did make up that involves tuning a certain sequence of frequencies into a radio. The guy doesn't mention any specific combinations but mentions that there are about a half-dozen of them that get to different places and that you need twelve floors to do it.

I guess there are a few key differences, though, like the fact that the place you end up actually is sparsely populated, and that to get there you effectively have to "trade" with someone/something already there, who is the "person" who gets onto the elevator with you near the end... This is the explanation as to why there are all these not-people running around a college campus at the beginning of semesters, because every semester some number of students live in tall buildings for the first time and have a chance to try it.
 
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Jamesaritchie

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I never heard of the elevator game either, but the bloody mary thing entails going into a bathroom or other room that has a mirror, turning off the light, and saying "I don't believe in Bloody Mary" over and over until your reflection turns into a corpse face.

Never worked for me. If you're into dark bathroom mirror games, wint o' green lifesavers are much more entertaining (they make green sparks if you chew with your mouth open, at least they did when I was a kid).

That's not the way the Bloody Mary game works around here. There must be regional differences, though I think I saw something like you describe in a movie. Here, you have to be alone in teh bathroom with no light on, no light at all visible, so doing it at night is best.

You spin around twelve times, saying her name each time. On the thirteenth spin, you flip on the light, look in the mirror and say her name one more time. Then Bloody Mary will, at some point during the next three days and nights, try to kill you. If you're lucky, yu wake up one morning with unexplained scractes on your face, neck, chest, or back. Then you know she tried and failed.

If nothing at all happens, either Bloody Mary likes you, or you have less than a year to live, and Bloody Mary wants to see you die in some horrible way.

You'd be amazed by how many people around here say they don't believe in such nonsense, but who will not play the game for love or money. They simply will not do it because, believe or disbelieve, they say there's no point in taking chances. Other takes it very seriously, and refuse to be anywhere around the game, or people who play it.
 

Lily Kyrkogrimr

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You'd be amazed by how many people around here say they don't believe in such nonsense, but who will not play the game for love or money. They simply will not do it because, believe or disbelieve, they say there's no point in taking chances. Other takes it very seriously, and refuse to be anywhere around the game, or people who play it.

I kind of fit into that category, in that the logical, analytical part of my brain tells me that ghost stories, the supernatural, monsters, etc don't exist or aren't real. Would I choose to participate? Probably not, purely because my imagination is so fertile I can pretty much guarantee I'd freak myself out... besides, I'm not arrogant enough to think I know everything, and I'd really rather not find out I'm wrong with something like Bloody Mary :p

Hapax Legomenon; I've never heard of/read about the elevator game, but it certainly has a lot of creepy potential, and it sounds like you've come up with an interesting way to use it :) I couldn't say if there are copyright issues though. As people have said already; if it's an urban legend, it's probably fair game. If it's something that was written for something specific (book, film, tv show) then not so much.
 

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Lifts/ elevators are inherently scary. You are trapped with strangers in a tiny box over a very long drop. Lots of scope for stories there. I'd definitely change the instructions though. Use the premise as a starting point not a blue print.

The film Devil comes to mind.

Can't argue that. Of course, you could also take it in a completely different direction: https://www.cs.cmu.edu/~jbruce/humor/elevator_fun.html
 

Hapax Legomenon

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As I have found a few websites listing different directions translated from either Japanese and Korean and a couple short films on the matter, I think it is a real urban legend. If it's not, then it seems like a mistake many people have made, at least.
 
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