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Any weird legends in your area?

Posted by ThriftShopRomantic • 7/15/08 • Subscribe to this Discussion [RSS] • Report This Topic
Tags: bigfoot, everglades, humor, legend, myths, nessie, skunk ape

Local legends say that down in the Florida Everglades, on the way to my dad's place, lurks the Skunk Ape...

Whose slogan is (and this makes me laugh every time)--

"The Southernmost BigFoot in the U.S.A"

He is called the Skunk Ape because he's a bit... shall we say... malodorous.

(You can check out my plan for helping the Skunk Ape clean up his act here: cabbages-n-kings.blogspot.com/2008/07/southernmost-bigfoot-in-usa.html

Anyone else have a local myth or legend you care to share?

I figure, given BC has folks from all over the world, there might be some fun ones.

User Comments

7/15/08

crpitt

/sigh

writes another thing on notepad

[reply]
1. 7/15/08
  
  ThriftShopRomantic
  
  Sorry, Claire! At least you'll have more post ideas than you know what to do with.
7/15/08

alexmcone

Legends. Hmm. Ghosts and vampires will do ?

[reply]
1. 7/15/08
  
  ThriftShopRomantic
  
  Sure, if there's some sort of local story you know of.
  
  This thread isn't legend-biased.
2. 7/15/08
  
  alexmcone
  
  Well there was this old, ruined and uninhabited castle close to where I used to live. It was said to be haunted by a "yekshi" which is (guys you'll like this) a female vampire.
  
  Now the myth of the "yekshi" is that she is a woman who has died of a gruesome death and is not happy that she's dead. So ... what she does is go out at night dressed in a very provocative sari (traditional Indian dress for women) and seduce men to their death. Apparently these vampires are extremely voluptuous and sexy that it's hard not to fall in their charms.
  
  I lived there during those turbulent and lustful teenage years and I cannot tell you how much I wanted to be seduced by one of those!
3. 7/15/08
  
  ThriftShopRomantic
  
  How disappointed are the guys to learn the yekshi is actually a horrible crone with good makeover and fashion tips?
4. 7/15/08
  
  alexmcone
  
  Do not destroy the myth for me. I have a good idea of what she would look like.
  
  Salma Hayek, or Scarlett Johansawhatshername for instance.
5. 7/15/08
  
  ThriftShopRomantic
  
  (hangs head) I'm sorry. I will not mess with your teenage fantasy.
7/15/08

Manictastic

There's a rumour in my town that there's a crazy man living in my house. I'm scared now since I'm the only person in here.

[reply]
1. 7/15/08
  
  ThriftShopRomantic
  
  Mani-- Did you hear that?
  
  I think the maniac is coming from INSIDE THE HOUSE!
2. 7/15/08
  
  Manictastic
  
  Goes check the curtains to look for weird shoes underneath it. If I don't come back, call 911. I might know what YOU did last summer, lol
3. 7/15/08
  
  ThriftShopRomantic
  
  Nah, I don't get that kinda vacation.
7/15/08

Shiley

Mothman which I know nothing about. I just kind of roll my eyes.

When I live in Cleveland I lived around the corner of the bridge where the torso murders happened.
www.trutv.com/library/crime/serial_killers/unsolved/kingsbury/index_1.html
So, there is an Elliot Ness/ Al Capone connection. That bridge gave me creeps before I knew about the murders.

[reply]
1. 7/15/08
  
  ThriftShopRomantic
  
  Ah, yes-- Mothman. Those are some weird, weird stories! Strange electrical currents, staticy phone calls-- red eyes at the window, the bridge collapse-- none of it ties together very well, but the film sure made it creepy.
7/15/08

dlowe

ARE YOU KIDDING ME? I live in Austin!!!

The only difference here is the legends are real:
Stevie Ray Vaughn
Congress Street Bridge Bats
Kinky Friedman
UT Clock tower (all sorts of legends about that)

There are also legends about the Clay Pit restaurant in downtown being haunted. The building is real old and there is a dining area downstairs with metal rings hangin from the wall where they used to chain up slaves.

Austin is certainly weird.

[reply]
1. 7/15/08
  
  ThriftShopRomantic
  
  My city, Pittsburgh, has a lot of similar haunting-style rumors about the local playhouse.
7/15/08

CrotchetyOldMan

We have our own magazine devoted to it

[reply]
1. 7/15/08
  
  dlowe
  
  So do we, its called the Austin Statesman. (ok, that joke was pretty esoteric. Appy Polly Loggys)
2. 7/15/08
  
  alexmcone
  
  Jersey Devil ... I remember soaking up info about that bad boy
3. 7/15/08
  
  ThriftShopRomantic
  
  Ah, yes, the Jersey Devil. I recall taking a school bus ride down to Great Adventure for a field trip, us driving through the pine barrens, and all the kids scanning the woods for the Jersey Devil.
7/15/08

CrotchetyOldMan

The Jersey Devil is probably our most famous. The 13th child of the 13th born on the 13th or something like that.

He currently works at the Carvel in Metuchen.

[reply]
1. 7/15/08
  
  ThriftShopRomantic
  
  That would explain the service at Carvel.
2. 7/15/08
  
  CrotchetyOldMan
  
  You know something's up when your Fudgie the Whale bursts into flames.
3. 7/15/08
  
  ThriftShopRomantic
  
  And the Cookie McPuss is upsidedown and has a 666 on it in chocolate chips.
7/15/08

CrotchetyOldMan

Jenn, the Weird NJ magazine has branched out into a series of magazines, TV shows, and books. Weird US, and various states. If you ever make it over to Barnes and Noble, check one out. Very interesting reading.

[reply]
7/15/08

kdawg68

There was a local legend of a witch back in my hometown named "Pig Woman" - who purportedly would attack people saying her name at a spooky little bridge. "Pig Woman Bridge" it was called.

Strangely, all the trees seemed to bed away from the bridge, so the saying was that they were 'bending away from evil.'

Edit:
Oh my god - This story is actaully on the internet!

books.google.com/books?id=L0iv57e2mXEC&pg=PA52&lpg=PA52&dq=pig+woman+bridge...

[reply]
1. 7/15/08
  
  ThriftShopRomantic
  
  There feels like a bit of a Monty Python skit lurking here, Kdawg.
  
  Pig Woman leaps out at unsuspecting travelers...
  
  "Did you say Pig Woman?"
  
  "No, no, no... I said, er, twig woman-- TWIG woman... you're very svelte, aren't you?"
2. 7/15/08
  
  kdawg68
  
  LOL - it does. What's weird is this - I actually had an encounter similar to the first hand account on page 2 of that link.
  
  We went up there drinking and making fun of the legend - and we heard something running after us through the woods.
  
  It is an inherently creepy place. Most likely it was a deer and our imaginations were running amok (not to mention our cognitive skills were thus dulled from the Rolling Rock and Bud Ice....why the hell we drank that stuff is another story).
  
  Suffice to say, I never went back to Pig Woman Bridge.
3. 7/15/08
  
  ThriftShopRomantic
  
  Heh, makes you wonder, too, how often other kids went up there to scare the ham out of people drinking around Pig Woman Bridge.
4. 7/15/08
  
  kdawg68
  
  It's in the middle of nowhere. Do I detect that you don't believe a mutant half woman/half pig creature sits and waits to haunt travellers in cars passing through? Where's your proof she doesn't exist?
7/15/08

Dukepro25

The Frogman - He lives in the canyon and hides in the bushes, waiting for people to breakdown on the side of the road. He takes them away never to be seen again.

A Haunted Nunnery - There's a old nunnery up in the canyon. I guess there were some murders there and people say that to this day, you can hear the voices of the dead people screaming out.

[reply]
1. 7/15/08
  
  ThriftShopRomantic
  
  How many kids, I imagine, have nightmares about the frogman?!
2. 7/15/08
  
  Dukepro25
  
  lol
  
  I have no idea.
7/15/08

ender

around this pit of an area, there's just the one big legend: Belle Gunness, the first female serial killer in the U.S. think internet dating predator - except this was early 1900s and she put her ads in the norwegian newsletters in chicago to lure men with no family and with money out to her farm, where she killed them, buried them and claimed they'd either never shown up or that they'd already left.

then, her farmhouse mysteriously burned down. in the basement, they found the bodies of her children laid out ... and a female body without a head.

there's a forensic anthropologist who is now trying to ascertain if the headless body really was belle, or if she faked her death. the exhumation of belle's casket earlier this summer, unfortunately, only created more problems as there were extra children's bones in the coffin and no one knows how those got there!

the prevailing theory is that belle killed another woman, left her body to be burned up (decapitated her to confuse the identity issue) and then moved out to California. the theory goes that Esther Carlson in LA killed a man in a similar way to Belle and many suspected that she was actually Belle Gunness - but Carlson died before her case could come to trial.

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Belle_Gunness

[reply]
1. 7/15/08
  
  kdawg68
  
  pig woman would totally kick Belle's arse.
2. 7/15/08
  
  alexmcone
  
  Wow. That's some woman.
3. 7/15/08
  
  ThriftShopRomantic
  
  Some Belle Gunness could have still been out there, taunting teenagers with a hook for a hand and...
  
  Oh wait. Sorry. That's Urban Legend.
4. 7/15/08
  
  ender
  
  trust me, belle would fry up pig woman. particularly since belle regularly butchered hogs on her farm. (good cover up for the rest of the butchering she did!)
5. 7/15/08
  
  kdawg68
  
  but pig woman's half woman (actually she's a member of the DuPont family - notorious for their inbreeding in an attempt to keep the family wealth secure).
  
  Plus she's got the reflexes of a puma.
7/15/08

aningeniousname

In my area we have the strange legend of the massively fat bulimic Prescott, he is said to haunt Chinese restaurants in the area and attack people foolish enough to carry cans of Carnation milk or Marks and Spencer trifles.
Obviously I don't believe it, I think it's more likely to be a Skunk ape on holiday.
news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk_politics/7357008.stm

[reply]
1. 7/15/08
  
  kdawg68
  
  nah, I'm the source of that legend. A few owners of Chinese restaraunts had to put restraining orders on me for stalking their daughters.
2. 7/15/08
  
  ThriftShopRomantic
  
  Plus, he smells a bit.
7/15/08

DrowseyMonkey

Yeah, we call them Sasquatch up here ....

Big Foot ... such an obvious name, LOL

[reply]
1. 7/15/08
  
  aningeniousname
  
  Americans like obvious names that's why the call autumn, fall.
2. 7/15/08
  
  kdawg68
  
  "the crows seem to be calling my name" thought Caw.
3. 7/15/08
  
  ThriftShopRomantic
  
  I was happy with the Skunk Ape, though. I'd been going down to Florida for years with no knowledge of the Skunk Ape. And then on year, the local paper had a huge spread...
  
  (No centerfold, sorry-- just blurry pictures of what looks like some dude in an ape costume.)
4. 7/15/08
  
  DrowseyMonkey
  
  @anin .. well, we call it Fall too Unless you're trying to be all posh.
7/15/08

legbamel

We've got a haunted school legend, based in a town called Absaraka. I just like to say Absaraka, mostly. It sounds like a piece of exercise equipment crossed with a torture device. Wait, aren't those the same thing?

[reply]
1. 7/15/08
  
  dlowe
  
  LOL, you say tomato and I say torture device.
2. 7/15/08
  
  ThriftShopRomantic
  
  Isn't that one of those As Seen on TV commercials? The new Absaraka-- rock-hard abs in only 34 seconds a day?
7/15/08

dlowe

Anyone remember Chupacabra?
Ahh good ole California.

[reply]
1. 7/15/08
  
  focusorganic
  
  I thought Chupacabra was Puerto Rico, mostly?
7/15/08

ender

down in the dallas/fort worth area is a li'l burb called duncanville. and aroundabouts there is a place called witch mountain. my guess is that this area has finally been de-witch-ified by now and is all new development, but back when i was in college, this was a scary place.

there was one road which went thru this area and on the end by the highway, there was a gate. during the day, it was open. supposedly, at night, the cops would station a car there and close the gate. if you insisted on going up there, the cops would open the gate for you - with the warning that if you got into ANY trouble, they would not help you. not even if the car broke down just after they closed the gate behind you.

a mile or two inside the gate was a really cool old cemetery. the one time i went there (during the day as the girl who told me about it was a wuss and wouldn't go at nite), it was obvious that a bunch of hooligans had been working on destroying the place for quite some time. two sides of the cemetery were fenced with old, black wrought-iron fencing. the other two sides were bounded by woods and the long side also had a steep drop-off to a creek or small river below.

i had never heard the wind make those horror movie whistles before going out there.

the legend, of course, is that a bunch of satan-worshippers ruled the place and i have to say there was something odd about the whole area. for one, i could see where one grave had been recently dug up. not recently buried, recently dug UP with all of the graveside decorations and flowers mixed into the mound of dirt. when i went up closer to that grave, there was a hole big enough to drop down into and as far as i could tell, there was actually a tunnel down beneath the graves. i wanted to investigate further, but allowed myself to be talked out of it.

other people told me later that yes, there was a group of whacked-out nutbags who would go out there and yes, they had dug a tunnel system over a series of years.

i actually was friends with someone who, when i told the story of my having gone out there, she turned 18 shades of pale and made me promise to never go back out there again. she said during her rebellion against her preacher father, she'd joined up with said whacked-out nutbags and whether you believe in their "abilities" or not, they were at the very least violent li'l wannabees. it had been at least 5 years since she'd had contact with them and she was still getting threatening visits and phone calls from them.

personally, i'd still like to see this supposed tunnel-system.

[reply]
1. 7/15/08
  
  kdawg68
  
  pig woman would dig a better tunnel system with her hooves.
  
  Seriously though - let's grab a midget and head out there. We can make the midget crawl through the tunnels and report back to us.
  
  Umm...what "powers" exactly were they supposed to have? I'm just curious so that we know how to properly costume our midget friend for his tunnel excersion. You know - safety and all.
2. 7/15/08
  
  ender
  
  oh the standard fare - levitation, telekinesis, i am sure there was more. think dark side jedi.
3. 7/15/08
  
  dlowe
  
  "I'm just curious so that we know how to properly costume our midget friend for his tunnel excersion." LOL
  
  I had a football coach in high school that was a long range reconnaissance guy in Vietnam (the war lest anyone be confused). He was short so he was always the guy they sent into the tunnels. Poor short people.
4. 7/15/08
  
  ThriftShopRomantic
  
  Please don't consider doing this, Ender, until your leg heals. Remember, it's always the slow person who ends up Meat in all the horror movies.
5. 7/15/08
  
  ender
  
  lol
  i'm some 800 miles away from it now, so it'll be a while before i get out there. and considering i can't travel far in either of our vehicles and renting a bigger one is rather cost prohibitive, i think you can relax. gimpy is going nowhere fast at the moment.
7/15/08

maryse

We have catboy of Durham ... a male student who dresses up as a cat on a regular base.
durham21.co.uk/archive.asp?ID=3879

[reply]
1. 7/15/08
  
  ThriftShopRomantic
  
  His family must be so proud.
2. 7/15/08
  
  dlowe
  
  Does he fight with the dogboy of Raleigh (fastest growing city in the US)?
7/15/08

johnsblogs42

Big Foot it turns out, (unfortunately, but expected) was created by a person. He let the cat outta the bag shortly before his death that he made it up for the benefit of stories for his grandkids.

But his (bigfoot) legend lasted and spread quite a bit prior to that. So much in fact, that there are actually people who still believe it.

As for a real legend, and only slightly less well known than bigfoot, is the Legend that,

I am amazingly amazing.

But that legend is also categorized as a myth.

8^)

[reply]
1. 7/15/08
  
  ThriftShopRomantic
  
  You mean, Bigfoot was the guy who played Chewbacca?
7/15/08

kdawg68

We have this legend here in Hanover of an injured Red monkey....

[reply]
1. 7/15/08
  
  ender
  
  now THAT is a tall tale!
2. 7/15/08
  
  ThriftShopRomantic
  
  If there's Babe the Blue Ox, why not Ender the Red Monkey?
7/15/08

lordsomber

"The 'Wog' in Barrow County, GA that was described by Native Americans and early settlers as about the size of a horse, but with two legs longer than the others and a strange tail that made a sound when it walked."

onlineathens.com/stories/051506/living_20060515023.shtml

[reply]
1. 7/15/08
  
  ThriftShopRomantic
  
  Oh, I hadn't heard of him before-- thanks for sharing that!
7/15/08

recyclecindy

Just a few hundred feet from the bottom of my driveway was a sighting location for Bigfoot. This happened years before I lived up here. I tried to find a story on-line about it. I could only find this link. www.bigfootforums.com/index.php?showtopic=18934

As the story goes, a couple were staying in a camp trailer just up the road and spotted this “thing” that they swear was Bigfoot. They were so scared that they fled the property that night and went to the nearby bar to get help. I personally know a person who was at the bar that night. He said he didn’t know what the couple saw up on the mountain but he did say that whatever they saw scared them to death. He said he had never seen anyone that terrified before. The couple was so scared that they just left the trailer up there and never returned.

[reply]
1. 7/15/08
  
  ThriftShopRomantic
  
  Sounds like they certainly saw something-- whether it was a bear, a loose exotic animal or someone playing a practical joke, etc... I bet the bar was lively that evening.
7/15/08

voodooKobra

I live in SW Florida, so definitely skunk ape. -_-

[reply]
1. 7/16/08
  
  ThriftShopRomantic
  
  Ah! Yay! I'm glad I'm not the only one here with, er, knowledge of the Skunk Ape. (Of course, does anyone really KNOW the Skunk Ape? :))
7/15/08

focusorganic

We have the ghosts of the Lemp Mansion. Other than that, I don't know.

Where I'm from, CT, there is the legend of the green lady. My brother and I went to green lady cemetery, and as much as I love ghost stories, this one is definitely a load of bull. There's also the one about parking your car under some tree on a certain night when someone hung themselves and you should hear their feet scraping on the hood of your car.

Honestly, I think a lot of CT legends are just adapted from bigger urban legends!

Oh yes, then there's Dudleytown: www.ghostvillage.com/legends/dudleytown.shtml

[reply]
1. 7/16/08
  
  ThriftShopRomantic
  
  A lot of the local legends do have similar features.
7/15/08

7masterheathen

In our town's local cemetary, for decades, there were sightings of a glowing grave. Actually, it's the tombstone that's glowing. I and many others I've been with, have seen it with our own eyes. You can see it from the road when you drive past the cemetary at night.

Perhaps the tombstone has phosphorous in it.

[reply]
1. 7/16/08
  
  ThriftShopRomantic
  
  I've heard of that before regarding a cemetery in my town, too, and can't recall what I read was causing it.
7/15/08

kevingoodman

I seen a hippy running through the woods behinds my parents house once.

[reply]
1. 7/15/08
  
  kevingoodman
  
  That's actually happened to me twice. Finding hippies in the forest and I found some nudies at a quarry once.
2. 7/16/08
  
  ThriftShopRomantic
  
  I'm sure they had legends of all their own.
3. 7/16/08
  
  kdawg68
  
  There's also the legend of the avatar thief......seriously, who is that woman in your avatar? Doing well, there KG!
4. 7/16/08
  
  kdawg68
  
  There's also the legend of the avatar thief......seriously, who is that woman in your avatar? Doing well, there KG!
  
  Edit: Regarding the nudies in the quarry - that was probably just Ender and her satanic friends.
  
  Edit x2: Now there's the legend of the duplicative - yet slightly ammended comment.
5. 7/16/08
  
  kevingoodman
  
  Who's calling me a woman
6. 7/16/08
  
  ThriftShopRomantic
  
  You know, it's especially weird to see this new photo, KevinGoodman, because the photo of your wife here is done in the exact same style as your own photo had been...
  
  My brain hurts.
7. 7/16/08
  
  kevingoodman
  
  The picture of my wife was actually cut from a photo of us together - for about five minute I used the other half of the photo - that was me. Is that what your talking about?
8. 7/16/08
  
  ThriftShopRomantic
  
  No, it's just the sepia tones and the good lighting.
9. 7/16/08
  
  kevingoodman
  
  And there was the time me and my buddy sneaked into a girl’s camp with a guerilla suit. And they did what I never would have foreseen – they chased me.
10. 7/16/08
  
  kevingoodman
  
  Yeah - I am sure she has doctored all our photo's in photoshop - I guess that's good, huh, an identifiable artistic style is emerging.
11. 7/16/08
  
  ThriftShopRomantic
  
  Yes, ma'am!
12. 7/16/08
  
  kevingoodman
  
  Oh, they did find some crop circles in my home town about eight - nine years ago. Made the local news.
13. 7/16/08
  
  kevingoodman
  
  If it wasn't so much work I would go back to my new self - and I was so popular yesterday – (sighs)
7/16/08

thebigandyt

The most famous one we have is the legend of Finn McCool. He was a Giant from Ulster that had a problem with another Scotish giant. First he scooped up some earth and threw it at him but it fell short into the irish sea. The hollow left became Lough Neagh and the lump of earth became the Isle of Mann. After this he started to build a bridge over to scotland this is how the Giants Causeway came into being. All true.

[reply]
1. 7/16/08
  
  thebigandyt
  
  After checking out wikipedia, I found he also sucked his thumb alot
2. 7/16/08
  
  ThriftShopRomantic
  
  I knew something of Finn McCool, but not the thumb issue.
  
  In Wikipedia 2.0, we learn he also had a security blanket.
7/16/08

kdawg68

Did you know that many dams have legends of giant fish - big enough to swallow a man whole? I read once that wherever divers have had to go to check dam maintenance, there are always tall tales of gigantic, mutated fish - typically cat fish for whatever reason.

[reply]
7/16/08

katelynjane

There's dinosaur footprints and fosils found in our area...does that count?

[reply]
1. 7/16/08
  
  kevingoodman
  
  I'm glad it's your area because my daughter is so concerned about dinosaurs after Jurrassic park. A few times she's had panic attacks at the park thinking we were at the dinasaur park.
2. 7/16/08
  
  ThriftShopRomantic
  
  That's got to be pretty interesting to see.
  
  I know there have been a few places recently that have found woolly mammoth bones, too.
  
  Love that kind of stuff!
7/16/08

jjloch

What a great, interesting topic!!!

Wild wave, dear blog catalog users.

JJ

[reply]
1. 7/16/08
  
  ThriftShopRomantic
  
  Wavin' back atcha.
7/17/08

kidicarus333

yah, I live right near Stull, Kansas. Which somehow is supposedly like a gateway to hell or something, at least the old Stull church grounds is supposedly, (church was torn down to dispel rumors and tourists). They used to have ceremonies and people who wanted to come see ghosts and stuff all the time, but the locals really hate it.

[reply]
1. 7/17/08
  
  ThriftShopRomantic
  
  Yeah, that's part of the thing about these legends-- if an area doesn't want publicity and unusual tourism, they get it anyway.
7/17/08

chrissymarie321

We have one or two legendary figures from Shropshire
Matthew Webb, first man to swim the channel, died swimming Niagara Falls, I believe.

John Mytton, now there was a colourful man: manged to lose the family fortune in super quick time, there are lots of legends about him and is known locally as "Mad Jack":
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Mytton
and Edric who is still said to be riding over the Shropshire hills in the mist...missing his fairy wife, Godda

www.whitedragon.org.uk/articles/edric.htm

[reply]
1. 7/17/08
  
  ThriftShopRomantic
  
  Thank you for sharing a bit of your local fairy tales... Poor Edric. These fairy marriages always end badly, don't they?
7/17/08

junbitoy

There's a quaint little building at one corner of a side street in the city. It used to be an old house converted into a bar by countless businesses that fold up after just a few months of operation. An unmistakable feature is a broken glass window pane that resembles a pregnant woman. Legend has it that a case of teenaged pregnancy resulted in self-abortion killing the girl. People still hear her cries in the middle of the night. The glass window has been repeatedly replaced, but only to crack in the same place producing the same image - the pregnant girl! A seafood restaurant which opened a few months ago just closed, and the glass pane cracked again. Now there's a new window and a spanking establishment - a jazz bar. A waitress suddenly resigned and wouldn't say why, and the cook complained of strange noises in the kitchen. In a few months, the window will crack....

[reply]
7/17/08

GK16

I am the only weird one I can think of. Can’t think of anyone else

[reply]