Local myths and legends from your area.

[Blunderboy]

Well it's coming up to that time of year where we all like to freak ourselves out a little bit, and since nothing does that quite so well as hearing about urban legends and spooky happenings that supposedly occurred right around the corner, (and since the search bar reveals this hasn't been done in the last 18 months or so) I figured that the good people of the Escapist might wish to gave round the proverbial camp fire (ala Are You Afraid of The Dark?) and share with each other the strange stories and legends from your area.

This thread is not here to debate the viability of such stories (as Jimmy Carr once said "It's easy to tell if your house is haunted. It isn't.") Or the mental states of those who think that they are true or untrue. It's merely a place to share and discuss them.

Well I'm from Essex, in England and the most famous legend in this area is probably that of Black Shuck [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Black_shuck].

I'm sure there are many more, and if I wasn?t at work right now, I would share them with you, but you'll have to wait until I get home for those.

 

[Hallow'sEve]

Wont find it online, but there's a bridge in my hometown where if you cover the hood of your car in a fine dust (like baby powder) and go in neutral across the bridge (its on a slight slope) you'll have the tiny handprints of a child that her mother threw off the bridge way back when.

There's also supposed to be some woods that are haunted, not for any real reason, but because whenever you drive through them at night EVERYONE'S lights aren't as effective (meaning that instead of 50ft your headlights only go 20ft or so) like the woods are eating the light.

 

[Rawne1980]

Pendle Witches here. Don't live to far away from Pendle Hill.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pendle_witches
http://www.pendlewitches.co.uk/content.php?page=factfile
http://www.pendlewitches.co.uk/

Not myths though, it did actually happen.

Whether they were witches or not 10 people hung for the crimes of murder by witchcraft, 1 more died in prison and another was found innocent and they lived not too far away from where i'm sat right now.

 

[nukethetuna]

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bunnyman_bridge

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G6VKlTEKt5ZGlkLvjJ8hitKVACpUqVADkUzROHGCR0zTrXkrHJ5c4qNSoAkffJcY7vXPStZLh5EKtjBOTimaVKgFSpUqYCqfY6tc2MM0MPKY5kZHV8kYIwagUqAM5pE561ilQAqVKlQB//2Q==

HE'S GONNA GETCHA!

 

[Blunderboy]

I'd somehow forgotten to also link to the other famous legend in the nearby town of Canewdon.
A town that famously has a history of Witches [http://www.strangeuk.com/witchcraft/item/17-witches-of-canewdon].
A few years ago the police had to put up a cordon around the church and graveyard, to stop people getting in. Not entirely sure as to the logic behind that though.

 

[Firstmark_Bannor]

Lets see, where I live the only myth/legend type deal is a ghost hitch hiker. Not really all that interesting. Young girl was murdered under a bridge trying to get home, now her ghost attempts to complete her journey each night. The bridge is about 5 or 6 mins away from my house.

 

[TheNumber1Zero]

I don't remember it's name, never heard any backstory, or really much of anything about it, but I did hear of 1 Myth.
Sometime around Midnight on a Sunday (Or would that make it Monday?) some woman-thingy supposedly wanders around all spooky-like.

... That's about it.

Never heard any details, only heard about it once, and frankly I'm more scared of the fact that one of my neighbours has a decapitated Deer's head in one of his dead trees.

Local area is Edmonton, KY if anyone might know of some possible Myths I never heard from the area.
Boo.

 

[ShindoL Shill]

Nessie is the famous one from Scotland.
and witches. I live 20 minutes away from Witches Craig. it's a caravan park now though.

 

[rdaleric]

My hometown Rochdale has quite a few local myths, one is of the Baum Rabbit, a ghostly White rabbit that has haunted the church of Saint Mary's in the Baum for 10 years. And there have been reports of a Boggart(sort of a cross between a poltergeist and a goblin) In Clegg hall for years

 

[The Funslinger]

I wrote a book about Yorkshire myths. One from the village I live in was about a blacksmith and innkeeper called Tom Lee. He robbed gold from a cart, and got shot in the arse escaping. A traveling doctor got the bullets out. He saw that same doctor chatting with a group of people in his inn and got paranoid. So he ambushed him in the night, clubbed him to death and threw the body in a part of the river called the Doctor's Bath. Which is fucking freezing, I'll tell you.

 

[F'Angus]

Well nothing directly around where I live except the story of an escaped black panther that people keep seeing.

Oh and I'm sure Oxford has loads of myths that I'm missing here.

 

[Auninteligentname]

I know none, which is from my hometown, but a town closeby, is said to have a church with a huge rock leaning closesly to the church wall. The legend is that if that stone touches the church wall, Ragnarok will come.

 

[teqrevisited]

I've not heard any about my area. Well, unless you count the story surrounding our golf-playing tramp.

 

[Blunderboy]

I know none, which is from my hometown, but a town closeby, is said to have a church with a huge rock leaning closesly to the church wall. The legend is that if that stone touches the church wall, Ragnarok will come.

How has no one been tempted to give it a push?

 

[Alphonse_Lamperouge]

Im from Australia, on the Sunshine Coast in Queensland, and about the only one i can think of is a true story from when our area was first settled. The white colonists (twisted race of beings that i am descended from) wanted to clear out the local Aborigines whose land they had stolen. So they organized a party and invited all the tribal chiefs and their family's to a feast by the creek. Of course, the food was poisoned, and the rest where shot. that area is now called Murdering Creek Rd, and they say it is haunted. I don't know about the haunted part but def a true story, its even taught in schools.

Another true story, and one of the very few murders of the last century in my area, goes like this. About 25 years ago a couple abducted a 12 year old girl from the local primary school, they had her for about 4 days before they found the body. Aside from all the other terrible things a pedophile and his enabler wife can do to a young girl, it was found that they had played a game of naughts and crosses on her back (XOX) with a wide bladed hunting knife. The park where they left her body still has a memorial for her, and is only 5 mins from the town center.

 

[RGman]

I studied in a catholic school administrated by nuns for 13 years. When I was little there was a corridor in the pre-schoolers section in wich there was a marking on the wall, a rectangle in the shape of a door. Legend has it that that wall covered a door to a secret room, in wich one of the past head nuns died and became a part of the school itself, like a beating heart, hidden, beyond that wall, but never silent...
To make things worse it was the bathroom corridor, so if you were a little kid and needed to get out of the class to go to the bathroom... alone... oh, the memories....


Tun dum... tun dum... tun dum...

 

[Auninteligentname]

I know none, which is from my hometown, but a town closeby, is said to have a church with a huge rock leaning closesly to the church wall. The legend is that if that stone touches the church wall, Ragnarok will come.

How has no one been tempted to give it a push?

The same way many stop them selves from saying bloody mary 3 times before a mirror. They may think it isn't true, but won't do it, as they may lose their life if it's really true, only with that rock, the whole world might go. That at least covers a lot of people. The rest? I have no idea .

Also, the rock is more like a 5-7 meter long stone pilar which is stuck into the ground.

 

[Blunderboy]

I know none, which is from my hometown, but a town closeby, is said to have a church with a huge rock leaning closesly to the church wall. The legend is that if that stone touches the church wall, Ragnarok will come.

How has no one been tempted to give it a push?

The same way many stop them selves from saying bloody mary 3 times before a mirror. They may think it isn't true, but won't do it, as they may lose their life if it's really true, only with that rock, the whole world might go. That at least covers a lot of people. The rest? I have no idea .

I have a firmly held belief that if they ever find a switch deep in the Tibetan mountains labelled 'End of Universe switch, please do not touch' that the last sound in existence will be someone saying "Well, just to see if it's true.."

Also, the rock is more like a 5-7 meter long stone pilar which is stuck into the ground.

Yeah, that'd do it.

 

[Francis York Morgan]

Banshees and a hooded figure that supposedly comes out at midnight in the local forest but then again the hooded figure could be mistaken for a chav

 

[The Keeper]

Wont find it online, but there's a bridge in my hometown where if you cover the hood of your car in a fine dust (like baby powder) and go in neutral across the bridge (its on a slight slope) you'll have the tiny handprints of a child that her mother threw off the bridge way back when.

Weird. You don't happen to live in New England USA do you? We have legend that's almost identical. If you set your car in neutral along this one particular hill, the ghosts of several children will slowly push it up. People do the thing with the powder, as well and supposedly get lots of little handprints. The hill sits right by a set or railroad tracks I believe, and the legend states that the children come from a school bus that got hit on the tracks a long time ago. I guess they are trying to have other drivers avoid that fate.

From what I hear, the phenomenon is a simple trick of gravity. In that case, I suppose it's not surprising that it would show up in more than one legend.