Folklore

[Lupine Volt]

Are there any local legends in your area? Mysterious hauntings, creatures, jinxes? Ghost stories, for Halloweens sake?

I live in Northern Michigan, and we have the legend of the Dog-Man. The legend says that a group of lumberjacks, in the 1800s, found a dog like creature in the woods. They chased it around for a bit, before it ran inside a hollow log...when it emerged from the other side, it stood up on two legs.

They were never heard from again. Every seven years or so, there are mysterious happenings. A horse team dies from fright, a farmer is found slaughtered, scratch marks on the doors of a church that could only be made by a dog that stood 7 foot 4. And, most disturbingly, back in the 70s, a group of hippies camping in a cabin woke up in the middle of the night to see a wolf like man looking into their window...and grinning. A two legged creature stalks the northern woods...don't go out at night.

...So, who else has anything spooky to share?

 

[.GoreTuzk]

I live in Northern Michigan, and we have the legend of the Dog-Man. The legend says that a group of lumberjacks, in the 1800s, found a dog like creature in the woods. They chased it around for a bit, before it ran inside a hollow log...when it emerged from the other side, it stood up on two legs. They were never heard from again.

They told people that story and then they died... never heard from again? Then how do people know the story? LOL sounds like a "be afraid kids and go to bed at 10 PM tops so the boogeyman won't eat your toes."

A horse team dies from fright

Some doctors you have there... "So what did it die from, doctor?" "I believe he died out of fright, sir."

a farmer is found slaughtered,

Murder happens, y'know?

scratch marks on the doors of a church that could only be made by a dog that stood 7 foot 4.

Just a practical joke to mess with people.

And, most disturbingly, back in the 70s, a group of hippies camping in a cabin woke up in the middle of the night to see a wolf like man looking into their window...and grinning.

Hahahaha! That's like saying two junkies saw superman masturbating in their backyard. "Dude is that superman?!" "Yeah dude, and he's rubbing his penis!"

Don't mind me, I just like ripping off firecamp stories like that =P I do love to hear them, though.

 

[Minish]

Uh... apparently the sixth form building at my school is haunted? XD
That's it. We're surprisingly boring where I live.

 

[Murkrow]

Not any that I know of in Cardiff, but in west Wales there's a camp called Llangrannog that supposedly is haunted by a ghost called 'The Black Nun' who apparently walks around with a dildo (this part could have been made up by people at school). I never saw her.
I didn't see the 'night man' (caretaker) either but everyone else did when they kept knocking on his office door and ran. I did see 'the fat lady' who takes up three seats in the canteen.

Although since it's a camp for young people, usually 10-15 years old, it's pretty easy to assume that it was made up by someone staying there once to scare everyone else.

 

[Ayame]

Unfortunately, my town is boring and the only supposed 'scary thing' is the ever-present Bloody Mary.
Somebody should make a thread just about Bloody Mary, because it's an interesting subject and we could share stories about how we reacted when younger.
Maybe I will, or would that be kind of like a duplicate?
It isn't really related to anything in a specific area, though, so I suppose it would be alright.

 

[Dannichu]

Hurr, I think Devon's got just about the most traditional folklore of all of the UK, if not Europe, possibly the world.

Hell, Conan Doyle didn't get his inspiration forHound of the Baskervilles from nowhere.

Devon is a rich source of folklore, a unique culture and varied customs.

Devon has a host of folklore, and the tales go well beyond the famous rhyme of 'Widecombe Fair', with many being tales about pixies, and others about the Devil, the wild hunt, wisht hounds, and sacred groves.

Pixies have the reputation for being mischievious, and if they are not paid the appropriate respect, or given the appropriate gift, woe betide you. Perhaps the most common tales involve pixies leading people astray on Dartmoor (being Pixy-led), which with the moorland bogs and changeable weather can very easily become a matter of life and death. One way to avoid being pixy-led is to turn your coat inside-out. However pixies are not always malicious, and if left water they are sometimes reputed to leave gifts.

Dartmoor and Exmoor are also the home of the dreaded 'wisht hounds' (black dogs with baleful red eyes) who at the bequest of Dewer (the Devil or the leader of the wild hunt), hunt down unbaptised souls and sinners.

The Devil himself appears a number of times in Devon Folklore, more frequently than in most other parts of Britain. The Dewerstone (near Shaugh Bridge) is reputed to be the site where footprints (one set cloven, another human) left in the snow showed where the Devil guided a lost traveller over the cliff edge in a blizzard. The wisht hounds are also reputed to have driven people over the edge of the Dewerstone.

Here 'Widecombe Fair' is worth a mention, for beneath its comic tale of people on horseback, it is believed that the grey mare represents the taking of the souls to the Devil.

Of course, one of the more famous 'legends' is that of Drake's Drum, and it is said that in England's hour of need, when Devon's shores are threatened, the beating of his drum will bring Drake back to join the fray.

And

Hairy hands, cloven footprints, cider sweetened by devilish means, mischievous sprites and mysterious fresh flowers - if your taste is for the bizarre, the sinister and the downright scary, you're in for a treat with Devon's many myths and legends.

Ashburton's naughty children used to be threatened with Kutty Dyer, an evil water sprite who would cut their throats and drink their blood.

In the early 20th century, strange happenings struck on the road near Postbridge - several cycles, pony traps and even cars lost all control and crashed. One man reported that a pair of large, hairy hands had closed over his own and forced him off the road.

In the mines, miners feared the goblins that could help - or hinder: a bit of pasty left out for them was a sure way to win a friend.

Every night a ghostly white lady makes her way by carriage to Okehampton, steps down to pluck a blade of grass, and then returns home; she can only rest easy when the mound has no grass.

The Hairy Hands legend used to scare me so much as a kid o.o

More:
The Wild Hunt quite sad.
The Beast of Exmoor is another one... there's sojme weirdness surrounding the Warren House Inn, Jay's Grave is awesome... the Devil's Footprints actually came all the way out to Teignmouth and no explanation for them has even been found. Joan the Wad is the queen of the Pixies and leads travllers to thier death in marshes. There's a legend about, when the people of Widdecombe tried to bury an evil old man, a beam of light came and destroyed the coffin.

Bowerman's nose on Dartmoor is said to be a man turned to stone by a coven of witches.
Teignmouth (my hometown) has its own legend of the Parson and the Clerk which is pretty cool and about two travellers getting turned to stone by the devil because of their greed.

And there's more I'm forgetting. I did a project on Devon Folklore for a school project a few years ago and it's the most interesting subject ever XD

 

[Murkrow]

Oh yes, I remember some better known ones.

Gelert - A dog who saved a baby from a wolf but when the owners came back, saw blood everywhere and couldn't find the baby, assumed that the dog killed the baby, and so killed the dog. They later found the baby alive underneath a bed.

Cantre'r Gwaelod - A story about some town built below sea level in West Wales that got flooded.

A lot of the story of King Arthur is Welsh.

Y Mabinogi - Four legends about Wales. I'm only familiar with two;
1.Branwen, when a woman named Branwen marries King Matholwch of Ireland, but he mistreats her. She teaches a bird to talk and it tells her brother Bendigeidfran (who's a giant) about it. They attack Ireland, they cross a river by walking over the giant, who was laying down. Can't remember the rest. Something to do with a magic pot that brings people back to life, someone who cuts the horses ears off and everyone dies in the end.
2. Blodeuwedd - Someone wants a wife, so a Wizard created one for him out of flowers. They get married, but she doesn't love him. A year later she has him killed in the only way that it's possible to kill him; with a spear while he was half indoors and half outdoors with one leg on the floor and the other on the back of a goat who's eating out of a trough. She get's turned into an owl... I can't remember all of it.

 

[Time Psyduck]

Gelert - A dog who saved a baby from a wolf but when the owners came back, saw blood everywhere and couldn't find the baby, assumed that the dog killed the baby, and so killed the dog. They later found the baby alive underneath a bed.

I know this one.

Anyway...

This one is rather modern and I can't remember it very well, as it came from a supply teacher about 5-6 years ago:

There were 13 houses build on some cliffs near Robin Hood's Bay (Yorkshire, England), 12 of which were sold quickly. The 13th one wasn't, however as everyone who came to look at it got a creepy feeling. It was eventually rented out to a family, and then strange stuff started to happen:

1) Someone's hands got trapped in a serving hatch and the hatch couldn't be moved up to free them
2) A bag was left overnight in a tidy room. In the morning the room was a mess
3) A hige mass of earth was pushed up against the back door.

After the last one builders were contacted to see if there were problems when the foundations were built. There were no foundations, as there had been two massive stone slabs which the building had been sat on. The site turned out to be a viking burial site or something.

The house was replaced by a scrapyard when this supply teacher went to see it. When he was there a hot metal something flew past him and went though the door of the car they came up in.


I'm fuzzy on the details and I have no idea if it is true or not, but there you have it.

 

[Leviathan]

I live in a largely urbanized area. There are no forests large enough to hide dryads/wolfmen/bigfoot-lookalikes or whatever, and the only place where someone died prematurely was at the bottom of a hill where a girl got hit by a drunk driver, and there haven't been any noticeable hauntings that are usually a result of the accused not being sent to jail.

There are some people who say that the chapel in our school used to hold various equipment was haunted, although there is no basis to these rumors and no specific details as to what it is that's up there.

But I still think my house is haunted. I WILL FIND YOU ONE DAY, GHOSTS!

 

[Lucas₇₅₅]

The school that I go to is called 'Arcadia,' and we have "The ghost of Arcadia."

One day, during the first Christmas chorus concert, a girl wandered away from her mother and got lost, all the while saying, "Mommy, mommy," and she eventually wandered up to the bell tower (We don't even have one). Then she fell down and died.
They say you can still hear her ghost among the halls at night, chanting, "Mommy, mommy..."

... and that's how it goes.
Corny, right? :D

 

[shadow_lugia]

My family watches Paranormal State, which is just plain freaky.

There was one house where a miner used to live. When he got stressed, he beat his wife. Then a few generations later, a couple of women lived in the house, and they didn't behave like women back when the miner lived (he was dead then). They called in the Paranormal Research Society, and they tried to contact the spirit and tell it to leave after they found a handprint on the wall with an infared camera that matched one made by a miner's glove, which they found in the basement. One of the women got annoyed when nothing happened, and shouted something like, "Why aren't you coming out, wife beater?" Then they heard a noise in the basement, and they went to look and found a shattered light bulb. They tried to contact him down there too, and he got angry again and threw another light bulb at them. It was scary.

And then once, there was a little boy, who saw a ghost that he called Timmy. They asked him to show them someplace that he appeared, so he went down to the basement, pointed to one of the pipes, and said, "There." The guy asked him if he meant some other time or right now, and so the boy just said, "Now," like he was talking about the weather and walked away. They showed him a lot of pictures, one of which was a guy named Timothy who died across the street, and asked him if any of them looked like Timmy. He pointed to the picture of Timothy, and said, "That's him. Right there."

Plus there were two episodes that involved a demon. They wouldn't say its name. This one guy said it three times, because it pushed him one day, so he turned around and said, "Who the hell do you think you are?" It ripped his shirt off and started clawing him and he still had scars, so it said, "The name is *blank*," so he repeated that, but they bleeped it out. All I could hear was that it started with "Bl."

There are a lot of ghost stories about me, though. For instance:

"One guy once said her name, and that night, he got murdered."
"She got in a car accident after looking into her eyes."
"They brushed together, and she got molested."

Of course, none of these are even the least bit true. I've actually never heard of anyone in our town getting murdered, having a car accident, or getting molested.
For some reason, all the people who retell these stories are Hispanic o.O

 

[Not Meowth]

Yes, in MY local area we are haunted by a creature that kills people by boredom...

No, wait, that is my local area.

 

[EvilCrazyMonkey]

The graveyard of this church I don't live that far from (only 3-4 miles if even) supposedly has a grave that will be awakened if you walk in circles backwards around it 13 times saying the name of whoever's buried there.
Well now.

 

[Alexi]

There's an old abandoned building that used to be a mental institution back in the Day, and it's haunted. They have tours and such, so it kinda seems suspicious, right? Well, for a large fee, you can stay the night there.

My friend's brother did, with a couple friends. He said he got pushed in the basement and heard banging doors and stuff. So, I think it's haunted. Across the street from my school, too. :D

 

[Autumn]

I do remember one that someone in my old Girl Scout troop told me around five years back. It wasn't folklore per se, as it was only a story that she told me which might well have been made up by her (as opposed to being a local rumor - I haven't heard it from anyone else) claiming that there was some thing with red eyes under a teacher's desk at her school when she was there for a sleepover.

Then there's one which I heard from another Girl Scout when I was at camp that claimed one of the cabins in our campsites was haunted by some Indian girl. I always planned to go in there at night as a joke, but I never got around to it.

There's just something about folklore that makes you a bit nervous even if the lore's not true, huh? Shame there's not more around here. D:

 

[Tailsy]

Well uh, I live in a stupid town pretending to be a city with masses of stupid old buildings, why wouldn't we have folklore?

Our biggest one is probably our personal Green Lady.

The Green Lady of the Stirling Castle in Central Scotland is believed to be either an attendant of Mary, Queen of Scots, or the daughter of a governor of the castle. The attendant legend says that the attendant dreamed the Queen was in danger and rushed to her bedside, only to find her bed curtains ablaze. She managed to rescue the Queen who later said she had recalled a prophecy that she would be endangered by a fire while at the castle. The governor’s daughter legend says that she was to marry an officer that was stationed there until her father accidentally killed him. Filled with grief, she threw herself off the battlement to the rocks below.

My grandad used to make up stories about him being chased by her; something about her thinking he was her dead husband or something. He was awesome.

There's also The Settle Inn near the castle that's supposedly haunted. Not sure what by, but it is!

 

[___urnamz2longfixit___]

This topic has served quite a lot of entertainment. Fascinating thread, Animorph.

Where I live, there's a castle. It's not well known by the rest of the world or even my county but all of the locals know exactly where it is. Legend has it that a convent of nuns used to live in there and one of them was found out to be in a relationship with a man. Which, according to Catholic laws, is not allowed. Just like a Priest isn't allowed to marry. Anyways, the convent decided to shun her and she completely lost her mind. Who can blame her? If you watch your whole life go up in smoke right in front of your eyes, you're bound to end up not as mentally stable as you were before you watched it. She refused to leave the convent and begged them to forgive her but they were harsh and refused to. She locked herself in the kitchens and much to the public's dismay, she cut her head off with a knife.

It's said that she haunts the castle and can be seen in the kitchen window on the anniversary of her death. The problem with the story is that it never tells you what date she died on.

Obviously, it's not true. Well, it could be but I don't think it is. There's no record of anyone committing suicide in the castle and none of my friends or I have seen her supposed ghost.

 

[ignore_this_acct]

ohio is boreing,all we have a a bigfoot rumor in the south

 

[Icalasari]

...My city is boring D:

 

[Harlequin]

Apparently there's this woman who haunts the bridge. She jumped off on her wedding day because her father was a prick or something and apparently you can hear her on the day of her wedding.