Local Legends

JCbride2015

Do you have any fun local urban legends?  We are watching Weird or What (Shatner is the best) and it's the Jersey Devil episode.  I'm pretty sure I believe it's, at least, totally possible that there are undiscovered species out there that we don't understand.

Here's the story of the Jersey Devil.  In the 18th century, a woman (Mrs. Leeds) was in labor with her thirteenth child.  She was fucking tired of having babies!  She called out, "Curse this child!"  She gave birth to a monster with claws, horns, wings, and a forked tail.  The baby promptly killed his mother and as many nearby people it could get to, and flew up through the chimney.  Residents near the Pine Barrens in NJ have reported all kinds of sightings over the past couple hundred of years.  People report seeing the creature run in front of their cars, attack them in the woods, etc.  There was a rash of sightings in January 1909 that made it to the newspapers and a group of local men even banded together to hunt and kill it.  Police officers went on record with their own eye witness sightings.

Fun reading if you're interested: http://weirdnj.com/stories/jersey-devil/

lurkergirl

Dammit y'all know I don't like scary threads at night!

JCbride2015

lurkergirl said:

Dammit y'all know I don't like scary threads at night!

Don't worry, he is not accused of actually killing anybody since his family 200 years ago.  He's mellowed with age.  Also I'm pretty sure you live nowhere near the Pine Barrens!

lc07

That's really interesting! Nothing comes to mind immediately about San Diego. Granted, I didn't grow up here. We have the usual haunted hotels and homes that most towns report. 

lc07

I saw a UFO once. Does that count?

chibiyui

Seven Gates of Hell
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Seven_Gates_of_Hell

There was also a house in the backwoods of my original hometown, which burnt down and if you went in it at night you could hear a piano being played.

My conservative christian aunt and uncle apparently went there when they were young (so like, the 70's) and heard the piano music....

jdluvr06

I'm about a half hour away from Bobby Mackeys. It is a little hole in the wall redneck bar that is supposedly haunted. ETA: I'm sure there are more but that is the only one I can think of off the top of my head.

pinkcow13

Oooo creepy! Very Rosemary's Baby-esque. 

 When we were in college, our friend told us about this spot called Spook Rock Road which is in Suffern NY (I think), by the Tappan Zee Bridge. I think he told us it was featured on Unsolved Mysteries. Anyways, the version he told us is as follows (I think there are other stories out there): Years ago a group of kids on a school bus were in a crash and they were all killed, at the intersection which is on the bottom of a hill. Legend says that if you put your car in neutral at the bottom of the hill, your car will start going up the hill on its own. Additionally if you put powder on the windshield, you will see tiny hand prints appear - so it is the tiny hand prints of the ghost children pushing your car up the hill. 

 One late night, bored on campus, a group of us piled into our friends van to investigate. On our way there, a deer with glowing eyes jumped out of nowhere, which was terrifying. Also, one of the guys thought it would be funny to run out of the car and go running into the woods like a maniac. The rest of us tried the experiment. While we did not see the hand prints the car did go upwards on the hill. I think that's not all that uncommon, though.

 Regardless, it was a creepy and interesting night! Edit: Seriously Why does this thing love to eat paragraphs?! They were JUST working for me!

lc07

Deer eyes glow because of the reflection from the headlights.

But cars don't go uphill in neutral. Vans full of people certainly do not!

JCbride2015

pinkcow13 said:

Oooo creepy! Very Rosemary's Baby-esque. When we were in college, our friend told us about this spot called Spook Rock Road which is in Suffern NY (I think), by the Tappan Zee Bridge. I think he told us it was featured on Unsolved Mysteries. Anyways, the version he told us is as follows (I think there are other stories out there): Years ago a group of kids on a school bus were in a crash and they were all killed, at the intersection which is on the bottom of a hill. Legend says that if you put your car in neutral at the bottom of the hill, your car will start going up the hill on its own. Additionally if you put powder on the windshield, you will see tiny hand prints appear - so it is the tiny hand prints of the ghost children pushing your car up the hill. One late night, bored on campus, a group of us piled into our friends van to investigate. On our way there, a deer with glowing eyes jumped out of nowhere, which was terrifying. Also, one of the guys thought it would be funny to run out of the car and go running into the woods like a maniac. The rest of us tried the experiment. While we did not see the hand prints the car did go upwards on the hill. I think that's not all that uncommon, though. Regardless, it was a creepy and interesting night! Edit: Seriously Why does this thing love to eat paragraphs?! They were JUST working for me!

We have a legend just like that!  Our "gravity hill" is just outside Lambertville, NJ.  We went and actually were able to duplicate the effect of the car rolling up the hill in neutral.  I was in the passenger seat and can definitely attest that the car was in neutral and none of us were pulling any funny business.

"Fact or Faked" did an episode on a similar phenomenon and at first they were TOTALLY freaked out because it worked.  But careful measurements showed it was actually an illusion of the way the sides of the road were-- the road was very slightly downhill, but the banks on either side made it look like the car was rolling uphill.  I'm pretty sure that's what happened to us, too.

But it's still wicked cool.

chibiyui

pinkcow13 said:

Oooo creepy! Very Rosemary's Baby-esque. 

 When we were in college, our friend told us about this spot called Spook Rock Road which is in Suffern NY (I think), by the Tappan Zee Bridge. I think he told us it was featured on Unsolved Mysteries. Anyways, the version he told us is as follows (I think there are other stories out there): Years ago a group of kids on a school bus were in a crash and they were all killed, at the intersection which is on the bottom of a hill. Legend says that if you put your car in neutral at the bottom of the hill, your car will start going up the hill on its own. Additionally if you put powder on the windshield, you will see tiny hand prints appear - so it is the tiny hand prints of the ghost children pushing your car up the hill. 

 One late night, bored on campus, a group of us piled into our friends van to investigate. On our way there, a deer with glowing eyes jumped out of nowhere, which was terrifying. Also, one of the guys thought it would be funny to run out of the car and go running into the woods like a maniac. The rest of us tried the experiment. While we did not see the hand prints the car did go upwards on the hill. I think that's not all that uncommon, though.

 Regardless, it was a creepy and interesting night! Edit: Seriously Why does this thing love to eat paragraphs?! They were JUST working for me!

falsara

It seems like every time I moved there's a whole new bunch of stories. When I was living down south, FL and NC it was pretty much old war ghosts. Then in Flagstaff they have a Haunted Hotel call the Monte Vista.

My favorite was living on Okinawa because you have an awesome mix of warlord Era ghosts and WW2 ghosts.

This includes a haunted hotel that was built right next to the ruins of Nakagusuku castle, think warlords. There's also a Buddhist temple/ monastery on the neighboring hill. Well while the hotel was being built the monks told the owner. " Yout can't build here. You will make the spirits angry" it was supposed to be a resort style hotel but there were never any blueprints so there are stairs leading to nowhere and doors that open to windows. Well just as he was getting ready to furnish the hotel, he ran out of money, went psycho and hung himself in the hotel. Legends say that you can see glowing orbs in the windows at night.

There's bunch more. There's this little 100 page book that was published with all the haunted places and legends on the island.

pinkcow13

lc07 - Good point! I just remember a bunch of us screamed when we saw the deer with the glowing eyes and one girl started crying lol. In retrospect it was definitely the headlights. 

Yea JC, a gravity hill! I knew there was a term for it! At the time I didn't know what it was so I was pretty freaked out. 

jdluvr06

pinkcow13 said:

Oooo creepy! Very Rosemary's Baby-esque. 

 When we were in college, our friend told us about this spot called Spook Rock Road which is in Suffern NY (I think), by the Tappan Zee Bridge. I think he told us it was featured on Unsolved Mysteries. Anyways, the version he told us is as follows (I think there are other stories out there): Years ago a group of kids on a school bus were in a crash and they were all killed, at the intersection which is on the bottom of a hill. Legend says that if you put your car in neutral at the bottom of the hill, your car will start going up the hill on its own. Additionally if you put powder on the windshield, you will see tiny hand prints appear - so it is the tiny hand prints of the ghost children pushing your car up the hill. 

 One late night, bored on campus, a group of us piled into our friends van to investigate. On our way there, a deer with glowing eyes jumped out of nowhere, which was terrifying. Also, one of the guys thought it would be funny to run out of the car and go running into the woods like a maniac. The rest of us tried the experiment. While we did not see the hand prints the car did go upwards on the hill. I think that's not all that uncommon, though.

 Regardless, it was a creepy and interesting night! Edit: Seriously Why does this thing love to eat paragraphs?! They were JUST working for me!

We have a version of hill like that here too. I never tried it out though so I have no idea if it works.

I thought of another one. We have this legend called hog woman. It is the ghost of a woman with a pig's head who was murdered by her fiancé. So apparently if you drive down the road she was murdered on at midnight you might see her and her glowing red eyes. I had this friend who was a complete wimp and one night when a group of us were having a sleep over she had fallen asleep first. So we turned off the lights lit some cigarette stubs and called her name in scary voices. When she woke up all she could see were the red lights from the cigarettes and we made pig noises. Scared her half to death. Lol

pinkcow13

lc07 said:

I saw a UFO once. Does that count?

STUCK

Details, please!

pinkcow13

jdluvr06 said:

pinkcow13 said:

Oooo creepy! Very Rosemary's Baby-esque. 

 When we were in college, our friend told us about this spot called Spook Rock Road which is in Suffern NY (I think), by the Tappan Zee Bridge. I think he told us it was featured on Unsolved Mysteries. Anyways, the version he told us is as follows (I think there are other stories out there): Years ago a group of kids on a school bus were in a crash and they were all killed, at the intersection which is on the bottom of a hill. Legend says that if you put your car in neutral at the bottom of the hill, your car will start going up the hill on its own. Additionally if you put powder on the windshield, you will see tiny hand prints appear - so it is the tiny hand prints of the ghost children pushing your car up the hill. 

 One late night, bored on campus, a group of us piled into our friends van to investigate. On our way there, a deer with glowing eyes jumped out of nowhere, which was terrifying. Also, one of the guys thought it would be funny to run out of the car and go running into the woods like a maniac. The rest of us tried the experiment. While we did not see the hand prints the car did go upwards on the hill. I think that's not all that uncommon, though.

 Regardless, it was a creepy and interesting night! Edit: Seriously Why does this thing love to eat paragraphs?! They were JUST working for me!

We have a version of hill like that here too. I never tried it out though so I have no idea if it works.

I thought of another one. We have this legend called hog woman. It is the ghost of a woman with a pig's head who was murdered by her fiancé. So apparently if you drive down the road she was murdered on at midnight you might see her and her glowing red eyes. I had this friend who was a complete wimp and one night when a group of us were having a sleep over she had fallen asleep first. So we turned off the lights lit some cigarette stubs and called her name in scary voices. When she woke up all she could see were the red lights from the cigarettes and we made pig noises. Scared her half to death. Lol

OMG this is freaking brilliant. Pretty messed up... but brilliant!

.

lc07

Okay so this isn't local - it's northern CA but same state!

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

I've always wanted to tour it and I forget about it every time I'm up that way.

From Wikipedia:

After her husband's death in 1881, Sarah Winchester inherited more than $20.5 million. She also received nearly fifty percent ownership of the Winchester Repeating Arms Company, giving her an income of roughly $1,000 per day, equivalent to about $30,000 a day in 2012. These inheritances gave her a tremendous amount of wealth which she used to fund the ongoing construction.^[6]

At some point after her husband's death a Boston medium^{[citation needed]} told her, while supposedly channeling her late husband, that she should leave her home in New Haven and travel West, where she must continuously build a home for herself and the spirits of people who had fallen victim to Winchester rifles.^[7] Winchester left New Haven and headed for California. Though it is possible she was simply seeking a change of location and a hobby during her lengthy depression, other sources claim that Winchester came to believe her family and fortune were haunted by ghosts, and that only by moving West and continuously building them a house could she appease these spirits.^[7][8]

In 1884 she purchased an unfinished farmhouse in the Santa Clara Valley and began building her mansion. Carpenters were hired and worked on the house day and night until it became a seven story mansion. She did not use an architect and added on to the building in a haphazard fashion, so that the home contains numerous oddities like doors or stairs that go nowhere, windows overlooking other rooms, and stairs with odd-sized risers. After her death, many accounts attributed these oddities to her belief in ghosts.

pinkcow13

lc07 said:

Okay so this isn't local - it's northern CA but same state!

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

I've always wanted to tour it and I forget about it every time I'm up that way.

From Wikipedia:

After her husband's death in 1881, Sarah Winchester inherited more than $20.5 million. She also received nearly fifty percent ownership of the Winchester Repeating Arms Company, giving her an income of roughly $1,000 per day, equivalent to about $30,000 a day in 2012. These inheritances gave her a tremendous amount of wealth which she used to fund the ongoing construction.^[6]

At some point after her husband's death a Boston medium^{[citation needed]} told her, while supposedly channeling her late husband, that she should leave her home in New Haven and travel West, where she must continuously build a home for herself and the spirits of people who had fallen victim to Winchester rifles.^[7] Winchester left New Haven and headed for California. Though it is possible she was simply seeking a change of location and a hobby during her lengthy depression, other sources claim that Winchester came to believe her family and fortune were haunted by ghosts, and that only by moving West and continuously building them a house could she appease these spirits.^[7][8]

In 1884 she purchased an unfinished farmhouse in the Santa Clara Valley and began building her mansion. Carpenters were hired and worked on the house day and night until it became a seven story mansion. She did not use an architect and added on to the building in a haphazard fashion, so that the home contains numerous oddities like doors or stairs that go nowhere, windows overlooking other rooms, and stairs with odd-sized risers. After her death, many accounts attributed these oddities to her belief in ghosts.

I JUST read about this yesterday! I think someone posted something on FB about 10 of the creepiest houses across the US or something along those lines.

jdluvr06

@ic07 I always wanted to see the Winchester Mystery house. It looks like the coolest thing ever.

JCbride2015

I have heard of the Winchester House too.  It sounds really awesome and creepy.

lc07

You guys. I just realized my brother is getting married 20 minutes away from the Winchester house next March. IMMA GO!

lc07

pinkcow13 said:

lc07 said:

I saw a UFO once. Does that count?

STUCK

Details, please!

Okay so I grew up in the woods in mountainous rural PA. No sidewalks, no street lights. If you want to explain where you live you have to tell people to turn where the mailboxes are past the big tree. So middle of nowhere. No light pollution.

We had a hammock. If there weren't mosquitos and bears you'd want to sleep outside every night. What I saw was definitely up in "space". It looked like a satellite except it was brighter than a satellite and not blinking. It was brighter and slightly larger looking than Venus. And I don't know if it appeared suddenly or not because I was just staring at different parts of space and happened to look in that direction and saw it. It was moving in one direction and stopped abruptly, moved in a completely different direction. And did that maybe 4 or 5 times.. zig zagging around. And then it just jetted off. I've never seen anything like it.

I only smoked cigarettes and drank beer as a teenager and I had been doing neither that night. 

Edited: To remove the part about the telescope. That was irrelevant. I wasn't looking through it at the time.

bwy

I thought you guys were gonna say like local sports players or famous people that live in your neighborhood. Nevermind me... lol! 

lc07

Looks like they do Friday the 13th flashlight tours. We should do our KVC!! (Knottie Vay Cation) - too much wine.

JCbride2015

lc07 said:

Looks like they do Friday the 13th flashlight tours. We should do our KVC!! (Knottie Vay Cation) - too much wine.

I would TOTALLY do a haunted KVC.  Fi actually met his BFF on the forums for Weird NJ, and we used to go urban exploring all the time in high school and college.  Yes, I have actually wandered around an abandoned insane asylum in the middle of the night with a flashlight.  I love this stuff.

lc07

I think it would be so much fun! I'm down for real.

arrippa

lc07 said:

Okay so this isn't local - it's northern CA but same state!

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

I've always wanted to tour it and I forget about it every time I'm up that way.

From Wikipedia:

After her husband's death in 1881, Sarah Winchester inherited more than $20.5 million. She also received nearly fifty percent ownership of the Winchester Repeating Arms Company, giving her an income of roughly $1,000 per day, equivalent to about $30,000 a day in 2012. These inheritances gave her a tremendous amount of wealth which she used to fund the ongoing construction.^[6]

At some point after her husband's death a Boston medium^{[citation needed]} told her, while supposedly channeling her late husband, that she should leave her home in New Haven and travel West, where she must continuously build a home for herself and the spirits of people who had fallen victim to Winchester rifles.^[7] Winchester left New Haven and headed for California. Though it is possible she was simply seeking a change of location and a hobby during her lengthy depression, other sources claim that Winchester came to believe her family and fortune were haunted by ghosts, and that only by moving West and continuously building them a house could she appease these spirits.^[7][8]

In 1884 she purchased an unfinished farmhouse in the Santa Clara Valley and began building her mansion. Carpenters were hired and worked on the house day and night until it became a seven story mansion. She did not use an architect and added on to the building in a haphazard fashion, so that the home contains numerous oddities like doors or stairs that go nowhere, windows overlooking other rooms, and stairs with odd-sized risers. After her death, many accounts attributed these oddities to her belief in ghosts.

I grew up outside of SJ and we use to go there for birthday parties all the time.  While, there are stairs that go nowhere and weird windows, I have never seen anything freaky (and we have done a night tour). It's a little disappointing.

 

I have gone to Alcatraz at night for their night tours and that scared the crap out of me. There are some great haunted stories there. If you ever go to SF, I would recommend doing that.

cupcait927

Not totally exciting but FI and I used to live in an apt that was in a haunted B&B. It was even featured on an episode of one of those ghost hunter shows (before we lived there). It's known in our area for being the haunted B&B. Nothing ever really happened while we lived there outside of a few incidents, like when all of the smoke alarms started going off at 3 am (no guests were there) and when our crockpot got unplugged while we were both at work (again, no guests). I knew that there were ghosts there because I never really felt alone, even when I was in the apartment by myself. I miss that place. Our new house has zero ghosts.

blabla89

Surprisingly Atlanta doesn't have many that I know of. Near where I live, there's a decrepit old mansion that was eventually acquired by the state and the grounds were turned into a mental institution. They built this big, creepy hospital building surrounded by little cottages that used to house the patients, and underground tunnels connecting them to the main hospital. It's super fucking creepy and (of course) its' allegedly haunted.

climbingsingle

pinkcow13 said:

Oooo creepy! Very Rosemary's Baby-esque. 

 When we were in college, our friend told us about this spot called Spook Rock Road which is in Suffern NY (I think), by the Tappan Zee Bridge. I think he told us it was featured on Unsolved Mysteries. Anyways, the version he told us is as follows (I think there are other stories out there): Years ago a group of kids on a school bus were in a crash and they were all killed, at the intersection which is on the bottom of a hill. Legend says that if you put your car in neutral at the bottom of the hill, your car will start going up the hill on its own. Additionally if you put powder on the windshield, you will see tiny hand prints appear - so it is the tiny hand prints of the ghost children pushing your car up the hill. 

 One late night, bored on campus, a group of us piled into our friends van to investigate. On our way there, a deer with glowing eyes jumped out of nowhere, which was terrifying. Also, one of the guys thought it would be funny to run out of the car and go running into the woods like a maniac. The rest of us tried the experiment. While we did not see the hand prints the car did go upwards on the hill. I think that's not all that uncommon, though.

 Regardless, it was a creepy and interesting night! Edit: Seriously Why does this thing love to eat paragraphs?! They were JUST working for me!

@pinkcow13 - Spook Rock Road is like 15 minutes from me (in Rockland County). I grew up hearing that story too. And of course, I had friends claim that their cars had been pushed up the hill. I never tried it myself. I was always too scared. 

This is right where I grew up too. This place is freaking creepy as hell. 

http://www.weirdus.com/states/new_york/local_legends/tweed/index.php

cupcait927

http://www.weirdus.com/states/new_york/personalized_properties/mushroom_house/index.php

This place is literally down the road from my office. It's pretty neat to go and look at.