Local Legends Specific To Your Area

There are many urban legends and folk tales that are wide spread. La Llarona, bigfoot, chupacabra etc.
You hear about these no matter where you go. Does anyone have anything that is uniqe to your area? Somethin that outsiders dont hear a whole lot about. Somethin possibe along the lines of the Jersey devil or something like that? If so share them here let others know the area and what the legend or tale is. I look forward to reading some interesting posts on this topic so thank you in advance.

reply to post by JROCK2527


At school in a small town I lived in called Yateley (full on nutters and loonatics btw) we used to walk through a smallish wood and the legend was a man dressed as a clown attacked people with a knife in there.

Like I said the kids there were all nutters and thats the kinda thing they dreamt up to terrorise the younger kids with.

reply to post by JROCK2527


Also we had a large abandoned house that was aparently haunted. As kids we broke in and someone had left ouiji boards and small knives on the floor (almost certainly other kids as a wind up)


The next day the story had changed to the ouji boards flying around and gohsts shouting etc. It was bs but I played along just for the comedy value of everyone believing our silly story. When you are a kid everything is so much more mysterious, I miss that.

A good one I read from Chris Ryan (Bravo Two Zero SAS mission soldier) was when he was mountain training in Africa they had two men fall to their deaths when 3 properly secured anchors failed on both their lines. This was considered nearly impossible to happen as an accident. The local guides insisted they appease the spirits who were angry at their tresspass and they wrote a letter and placed it in a bottle in a cave during a ritual. The next day the letter was gone despite everyone being in a secure camp with each other. After that everything was fine and he had many spooky experiences in the area. I liked this story because soldiers don't usually want to open up about odd things as you can imagine they would probably have the piss taken out of them mercilesly by their other men, he was vocal about the experience though and seeed adament that something bizarre and unexplained happened.

Off the top of my head 2 local legends jump out.. First is the highgate vampire. Tales and many sightings over the years of a vampire/supernatural being that resides in highgate cemetery in north London.

And the second is spring heeled jack which I'm sure many people here would have already heard of.

For more information simply google highgate vampire or spring heeled jack..

Here in NW UK we have Purple Aki.

illogicalcontraption.blogspot.com...

Manitou Beach on Devils Lake

Manitou is an Indian word meaning “great spirit,” either good or evil. According to legend, a family tragedy earned Devil's Lake its name. Despite being a strong swimmer, the daughter of Pottawatomie Chief Meteau drowned in the lake. Her body was never recovered, and the Chief believed that evil spirits had stolen her.

Various versions have bright lights emerging from the lake to claim the daughter from her canoe or afterwards to mock the Chief.

The Dog Man

This folk song is by Steve Cook. The lyrics are below and they tell the legend of the Dogmen. Legend has it that the Dogmen appear in the 7th year of every decade in the Northern woods of Michigan. Anyone care to go Dogman hunting? If you've had an encounter with our lovable pooch, send us an email about it.

"The Legend" Lyrics and story by Steve Cook (this is what started it all)

A cool summer morning in early June, is when the legend began, at a nameless logging camp in Wexford County, where the Manistee River ran. Eleven lumberjacks near the Garland swamp found an animal they thought was a dog. In a playful mood they chased it around till it ran inside a hollow log. A logger named Johnson grabbed him a stick and poked around inside. Then the thing let out an unearthly scream and came out and stood upright. None of those men ever said very much, ‘bout what ever happened then. They just packed up their belongings and left that night, were never heard from again. It was ten years later in ’97, when a farmer near Buckley was found. Slumped over his plow, his heart had stopped, there were dog tracks all around. Seven years passed with the turn of the century, they say a crazy old widow had a dream, of dogs that circled her house at night that walked like men and screamed. In 1917, a sheriff who was out walking found a driverless wagon and tracks in the dust, like wolves had been a stalkin’. Near the roadside a four-horse team lay dead with their eyes open wide. When the vet finished up his examination, he said it looked like they died of fright. In ’37 a schooner captain said, several crew members had reported a pack of wild dogs roaming Bowers Harbor. His story was never reported. In ’57 a man of the cloth found claw marks on an old church door. The newspaper said they’d been made by a dog, he’d a had to stood 7’4”. In ’67 a van-load of hippies, told a park-ranger named Quinlinn, they’d been awakened in the night by a scratch at the window, there was a dogman looking in and grinning. In ’77 there were screams in the night, near the village of Bellaire. Could’ve been a bobcat, could’ve been the wind, nobody looked up there. Then in the summer of ’87, near Luther, it happened again…at a cabin in the woods it looked like maybe, someone had tried to break in. There were cuts around the doors that could only been made by very sharp teeth and claws. He didn’t wear shoes cuz he didn’t have feet. He walked on just two paws. So far this year, no stories have appeared. Have the dogmen gone away? Have they disappeared? Soon enough I guess we’ll know, cuz this is the time to fear, for another ten years has come around, the seventh year is here and somewhere in the north-woods darkness, a creature walks upright. And the best advice you may ever get is never to go out….at night.

source with reader sightings

About 5 kilometers from North Battleford, Saskatchewan (where I live), is a tiny town called Hafford. About 20 kms. northwest of there, along a dusty grid road is a very curious grove of crooked aspen trees like no other in the world.

Here is the thread I did about the mystery of Crooked Bush, Saskatchewan....


www.abovetopsecret.com...

[atsimg]http://files.abovetopsecret.com/images/member/d2cbc9876115.jpg[/atsimg]

All the legends around my place are real. We had extremely bad witch trials way back. Descendants of the victims still live in the area.

The legend of the Chained Oak.
The Alton Towers’ attraction 'HEX The Legend of the Towers' is based on the story of the nearby Chained Oak. It is one of Staffordshire’s great legends. For the purposes of the ride at Alton Towers, the original legend has actually been altered. And, yes, the tree really does exist - but you won’t find much information about it in any local history book or guide. The only way you'll find out about the true legend and locate the actual tree is by asking the locals of Alton village.

www.bbc.co.uk...

We have the Pittsburgh Green Man. The story goes he was struck by lightning which turned him green and melted his face. Then the legend takes two different paths one says he died right away the other that he lived and comes out at night. Either way if you see him he messes you up and zaps you with his self contained electricity.

This is actually different from other myths and legends because some of it is not completely made up! Over in Beaver Pa there was a guy named Ray Robinson who had been electracuted. It messed his face up and he would only come out at night and always had his face covered. But he was way to shy and scared to zap people.

reply to post by wigit


care to share a few with the community here?

in my area there are a few.

1. The spooklight, standard ghost light or glowing apparition, whatever you want to call it, it's pretty famous and Unsolved Mysteries even came out with the Army Corps of Engineers (They said it was "Swamp Gas" lol bull#).

2. The Devil's Promenade, as the legend goes, on the old truss bridge that used to be there if you drove across it x amount of times, then satan would chase you off of it, but it's a newer bridge now.

3. Some of the Indians claim there's a bigfoot like creature south of my town.

i live in NE oklahoma, near the Missouri border, so with all the Indian influence combined with all the Old world immigrants, there are a lot of legends

thanks for sharein these, have any of you actually encountered any of the said things.

Southwestern Bulgaria, and in particular the boarder zone next to Greece, is extremely rich in folk tales about various creatures dwelling in the woods and outskirts of cities like Petrich. Friends I know from different circles that have spent their childhood there have shared similar stories independent of each other that are quite shocking. Some are considered folktales, because grandparents would overuse the stories, and of course 'elaborate' on them, to scare their grandchildren off from playing in the nearby woods. A small note here for the people that are not familiar with the geography of Bulgaria, these woods and mountains are not dangerous in terms of cliffs, water streams, and weather conditions.

The folk talkes comming from that region in addition to the phenomenon of the Bulgarian Clairvoyant from Petrich, known as 'Baba Vanga', have led me to believe that the place is some sort of vortex/opening between worlds. She reported that her paranormal abilities are connected to the presence of invisible entities, which she could not explain where they came from, but some she believed were voices of the dead. This region rich in folk tales, is where Vanga as a small child recalls being lifting up in the air by a tornado, which was never documented by anyone that year, lead to her blindness and changed her life from an early age. What amazes me is the common elements between both the folk tales and and the life of Baba Vanga. I believe that we as humans are a microcosm of our earth and the nature of each region reflects the type of people, as they are its product if indigenous i.e. Vanga was a manifestation of this paranormal region or could have somehow unlocked it even more. If you read more about Baba Vanga and these stories, perhaps you'll find these correlations for yourselves.

This is said to have happened 20-25 years ago on a road outside of Petrich. A man drives to his home late at night when on all of a sudden he sees a woman in a bride's dress walking on a road. The man stops his car out of curiosity and concern for the woman's condition and asks her why she is walking alone at night on a road outside the town wearing a bride's dress. She tells him that she is late for her wedding and has been trying to stop a ride for several hours and noone had passed by. So the man offers her a ride to the town, she gets in and they started talking on the way. Only a few minutes into the conversation, the man asks her who she was going to marry and when she gives him the two names, the man stops the her in shock. It was a man he knew that had died long ago in the war, so he recognized the young bride was actually the widow of the man, also a deceased person of his passed. This is where things get out of hand, because the moment when he stopped the car, only in a few seconds the bride's skin on her face had changed in reptilian skin and she opened the door, ran away and disappeared into the woods. This is perhaps the most vivid of all stories of shapeshifting, as the others are more simplistic and have usually been spotted on the outskirts and villages near Petrich. People have also reported finding huge snake skin and occasionally seen reptilian humanoids, suddenly appearing and disappearing.

Another typical phenomenon/folk story are dwarves and overall presence of small entities have been reported by many of the passed generations living there people. In general, the common element of these stories is that the sightings have something to do with the person as a perceiver, meaning that only certain people could see the manifestation of these entities. Many stories come from witnesses who were accompanied by others who wouldn't see anything. Often sounds would accompany the sightings and usually took place in the woods at night. People often find it hard to believe what they see. UFO sightings have also been reported and many believe the village of Rupite to be a magnet for UFOs and paranormal activities. This region in general has a lot of going on, I would say it has everything going on. A friend's cousin from Sandanski was terrorized by an underground satanic cult, which is said to be formed from people who do not officially exist on documents, inhabit underground tunnels, sewer systems and kidnapp people. They are said to be connected to others in the major cities, especially Sofia, which has around an approximated 100 000 homeless people living in the underground. The Southwest region is a massive marijuana producer/exporter to Greece and Europe and is the top sex tourism destination in the country. There is just so much going on there, I can make so much conclusions that I don't know where to start from.

In our town, virgin mary was seen several times at a little chapel that sits on the hill above my town. At least, this is what the catholics believe. I assume this is the case in every 10th christ town in rural areas all over the world.

reply to post by setsero


Ok that second story was perty trippy to say the least. Yes it does sound like a very active place, I wander if any investigations have been done in and around there?

reply to post by verschickter


No offense to Catholics, but they sure do seem to see the virgin mary everywhere and I do mean EVERYWHERE! I remember a couple years back people said they saw her on like a piece of molded bread. Another time someone seen her in a wall. I believe I even heard one story people claimed to see her in the hide of a live cow or something like that.

reply to post by sueloujo


Oh!! Purple Aki! The guy who makes people do press ups? Hahaha.
In my local village there is a urban legend of sorts about a headless nun who can be seen at night sometimes. The story goes that she got murdered by the Lord of the local manor on her way to the monastery near by. My own mum claims to have seen something driving down that road, but she wasn't sure what she saw.

Here is a pic I pulled off google of the road. It's Dibbensdale, Bromborough on the Wirral if anyone knows where I mean

When was the most recent sighting?

well this is at my Cabin place...

I live in Norway, Oslo. however i own a summer cabin South east at a Islands called "Hvaler"
its been said its might be the most haunted places of Norway, and ive heard stories of different local legends.

one being the "Cow lady" she walks with cows with green aura/ smoke and been often seen in the small mountains and a road that crosses 3 ways.

another one is more famous for Germany and Scandinavia and thats is Huldra (Holda in German version). a young Female that attracts males however when you get closer youl see a tail from her with buttom of a cow often comes if the person has dark secrets.