Local Urban Legends

[SweetBell]

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The little town I grew up in has several of its own urban (rural?) legends, aside from the really well-known ones like Bloody Mary and so on.

I have three stories to share, two of which are actually true, and one of which that is most likely not. The first is about a little girl that drowned in one of the lakes around my town. I can't remember how long ago it was, but it supposedly happened before there was a real road along the lake. There was a little girl that lived in a house with her parents that was next to the lake. It was late fall/early winter, and the lake was frozen. The little girl went to play near the water (this is a really small town where parents don't really feel there's a lot of danger or the need to watch their kids all the time--my sister and I were allowed to walk the ten minutes to the ocean for as long as I can remember). She fell through the ice, got trapped, and drowned/froze. That part is all true, and this next part is where the legendy-stuff comes from: when her parents found her, all they could see of her was her hand reaching up through the ice. Some people think her spirit wanders around that lake now.

This next story is also true. This happened after the high school burned down (suspected arson, but the RCMP never caught anyone for it). They were building a new high school, this time with a swimming pool underneath for two reasons: one, so there was an indoor swimming pool for people to use during the winter (it also had a little gym in it) and two, as a water reservoir in case of another fire. Anyway, there was a woman and her husband that lived in this house that everyone called The Castle because it looked like a mini castle. One day, the woman just up and disappeared. Her husband told police and everyone that she had supposedly taken the bus into the city and was flying away to live in South Africa with her ex-boyfriend. I think his story has changed a lot during the years--sometimes he says she's living in California under a fake name, and that he's kept in contact with her and that she's in South America. In any case, no one ever found out what happened to her in reality. HOWEVER, many people (if not all) in my town believe that her husband had killed her, and buried her body in the cement of the high school pool, which he was helping build at the time. I pretty much stopped swimming in that pool.

This last one is fake, and is there just to scare kids. Anyways, in the elementary school gym, there's a stage, and in the far left wall there's a little door that opens into a storage closet--what they put in it, I have no idea. It is in a really stupid place as you need a ladder to get up it. Supposedly, there was a little girl named Nelly that accidentally got locked in on a Friday and was stuck in it all weekend (though I wonder why her parents never had the school checked when she never came home...). She died because she ran out of oxygen. This little room became known as Nelly's Room by all the kids in the school and even the teachers called it that. I've actually heard several different versions of this, where she was trapped for the whole summer, or that it wasn't a little girl, but the school secretary who got locked in (no one noticed because she was always the last to leave the school). Even though no one really believes it, it's still told to all the kids at some point or another, and everyone still calls it Nelly's Room.

There are several other stories in my town, about hitch-hikers on a stretch of highway we call Misery Mile, and hauntings in pubs (and in the schools, too, aside from any of the above mentioned), and so on, but I think they're all kind of typical so it defeats the purpose of me starting this thread. What I'm really wondering is if anyone here has legends specifically from their town, outside of the usual legend, they'd like to share? I'd love to read them.

[scarygirl67]

There are a lot in my town...many of them can be read in Troy Taylor's "Haunted Decatur...Spirits, Scandals, and Sins".

A couple off the top of my head...in the Avon theater, there is supposed to be the spirit of Gus Constan, who was one of the owners of the theater...I believe he owned it the longest. Mr. Taylor himself said he experienced strange things in the hallway of the theater.

Another is the legends of Hell's Hollow...a stretch of ground that is located directly behind the dam of the lake. It used to have roads you could take through it..but the city cleared it all out several years ago, so it isn't much of anything now. It had many stories of murder and coverups...including a big farce of a story written by a man named Robey Parks for the Chicago Herald and Examiner. This story took a few unsolved murders in the area and turned it into a huge conspiracy filled with characters and events that didn't even exist. Then it got even more screwed up when True Detective Magazine ran a story about it....pretty embarrassing! And it made the trail even colder for solving the real mystery of what happened there.

Thanks for posting your stories! I think legends, whether they are true or not, are fascinating to read about...and what can be even more fascinating is finding what possible "grain of truth" the legends came from.

[SweetBell]

Ooh, that's very interesting! Thank you for sharing. I can imagine the embarrassment, getting publicity for something fake. Kinda makes everyone feel a little ridiculous, eh? It's unfortunate when it prevents the truth from being found out, especially when it comes to something as serious as homicide.

(01-31-2010 06:25 PM)scarygirl67 Wrote:  I think legends, whether they are true or not, are fascinating to read about...and what can be even more fascinating is finding what possible "grain of truth" the legends came from.

I completely agree with that. Seeing where all these stories come from is part of the fun for me.

[scarygirl67]

Yeah, that Hell's Hollow thing happened back in the 1930's...my grandmother remembers when the story was a popular one...and yeah, she said it was pretty embarrassing, lol!

When I was growing up, we always used to scare each other with stories of Hell's Hollow...and a lot of us as teenagers enjoyed driving through there at all hours, trying to see who would get scared first. All the kids hanging out there all the time ended up being the reason the place was mowed down and cleared. We weren't trespassing, as it was public property...but it was getting to be a hassle for the city.

The research I did into the actual story of the place showed that there was a lot of negative activity to be sure...but to be honest, it wasn't really any more or less than anywhere else in the town at the time.

I love being from a "haunted" town...but to be honest, this place has been haunted by corruption more than it has been by ghosts!

[Graveyard Hound]

I think it's required ffor every town to have at least one or two urban legends in or about their town or certain parts of it.

[CBguy1983]

We have one here called Thearosa's Bridge. One basic story says this settler back in the day got together. However he got her pregnant. She begged him to leave his wife for her and the baby. The settler refused and denied the baby. In a fit of grief the native american(Thearosa) jumped off a bridge and killed her self and the baby. Since she committed suicide she was seperated from the baby. Legend says if you can get to her bridge you say "Thearosa I have your baby" 3x. Then weird things happen. My cousin has been there and his friend did the 3x bit. His friend started having bad stomach pains. On top of the fog and the pains the imprint of a childs hand appeared on the drivers windsheild. As soon as they left the bridge his friend got better. Take it for what its worth.