Tag Archives: urban legend

Scraping On the Roof

Text:

“So this couple goes out on a date, in their car, and they’re driving along this country road and it’s very dark and isolated. And then the car breaks down or it runs out of gas, I don’t remember which, the car can’t go anywhere. So the guys says to the girl on the date- He says he’s gonna go get help and he tells her to get in the backseat of the car and get under a blanket and no matter what she hears, no matter what goes on outside the car, she should not get out from under the blanket. Under no circumstances should she open the car door or look out the window. So she gets in the back of the car and covers herself with a blanket and he gets out of the car, and then she hears a lot of noise, commotion. Yelling and noise and then all of a sudden it gets quiet. And while she’s laying in the backseat of the car she hears this scraping on the roof of the car. Just scrape. Scrape. Scrape. Very quietly. She’s very curious but she doesn’t look out. She just stays in the back of the car and waits for the boyfriend and she just keeps hearing that noise. That scraping noise on the roof of the car. So she’s in there all night by herself and I guess she falls asleep ‘cause in the morning she hears a bang bang bang bang on the door and she’s really scared. She huddles down even further into the blanket and she hears more bang bang bang bang on the car door and a voice says, ‘Ma’am this is the police,’ and so she looks up out of the blanket and sees it’s a police officer and he says, ‘Ma’am, get out of the car but don’t look behind you.’ So she gets out of the car and he says, ‘Were you out here with your boyfriend?’ And she says, ‘Yes.’ He says, ‘Don’t look behind you.’ And she turns around and she looks and she sees her boyfriend hanging from a tree limb over the top of the car and his feet on the car that are making the scraping noise.”

Background: The informant first heard this urban legend in highschool at band camp in Texas. She says it was likely around the 1970s. She says that she had heard a similar urban legend when she was living in New Jersey, though instead of a country road it was a road near a mental ward and the boyfriend just disappeared. 

Analysis:

The ending of this particular urban legend is very gruesome when you begin to think about what was happening during that time, especially with civil rights movements, and when you start thinking about the possible race of the couple. By the 1970s most schools and establishments had been desegregated, but racial discrimination was still extremely prominent. The legend itself is likely just used as a horror story to scare teenagers and kids from going off on their own at night. But when coming from a place like Texas that has a history of heavy racial discrimination, the implications have a different meaning.

The Aswang

Context: X is a 20 year old Filipino American college student who spent the first seven years of childhood living in the Philippines, before moving with his close family to California. The piece was collected over an audio call. 

Intv: “Can you think of any, like, ghost stories, or urban legends from the Philippines?”

X: “Probably the most famous one is the aswang, typically depicted as a vampire but can also be a ghoul/were-beast or something of the sort and like to kill and devour humans dead or alive. Can also be a witch but that’s not as common. Their strength is severely reduced during daytime/in sunlight so we tend to fill our wakes/funerals with candles and leave some on the grave after to protect the wake/corpse from being attacked. They are a very varied monster because of how varied the cultures of the 3 main islands and even the tinier islands inside of them are, but the most common one is basically bat-like ghouls/vampires”

Intv: “Where specifically in the Philippines were you told about the aswang?”

X: “So my (dad’s) family that told me most of the folklore lived in the very southern tip of the Province of Pangasinan (used to be in north Zambales before territory changes) in a village/town named Nayom and we primarily saw them as ghoul-bat creatures that range from monstrous looking to almost humanoid not really a definite one shape (not too sure if this is the only thing my family thought but that’s what they told me as a kid). Filipino media typically depict them as ghoul-bat vampires still but some of them could transform to look just like a really pale human.”

Analysis: I find it interesting how all across the Philippines they have many different stories of the aswang, going so far as to have the aswang often being viewed as different things across different cultures. The friend that I interviewed also informed me that he believes that it’s known as a man/bat creature where he’s from because of the golden crowned flying fox bat, which is native to the Philippines and X argues the tale of the aswang comes from before our knowledge of the bat as a species and therefore has been misidentified in the past.

Moss Back.

L is a 78-year-old Caucasian male originally from Meridian, Mississippi. L is a retired drill sergeant and veteran of the American war in Vietnam.

While visiting Phoenix, Arizona I met with L to discuss folklore, as he had previously helped me collect war stories for an oral history project. I met L at his Phoenix office where he provided me with two scary stories he remembered from his past. The following is the second of these two stories, which he first heard as a boy in the late 1950s.

L: Moss Back, Um.. I think it was a Cherokee Indian… What happened? Trying to think, guess we’ll see, he gets his head cut off.. and uh, then he goes around looking for his head. You know laughs and you could hear him moaning at night when he’s coming through the brush and through the trees. So you didn’t want to go out at night and you didn’t want to hear “Moss Baaack.. Moss Baaack’s coming..” laughs Oh God, probably seven eight years old when I first heard it. It was really funny, uh, so at church we had a group called “RA’s” Royal Ambassadors. So we had a ball team we played softball and that kinda stuff so we had, I’ll never forget him. He was our assistant pastor to church and he did all the stuff with the boys. We had some friends that had a lake out in the country about ten miles outside of Meridian.. and so he fixed up a deal to throw us camping out there and fishing, an overnight stay at the lake. So, we fished that day and you know uh did some swimming and fishing and all kinda stuff. And then that evening, they built a big ol’ camp fire. And they started telling us ghost stories you know laughs and Moss Back was one of ‘em and all kinds, all kinds of stuff and here’s a bunch of boys from.. seven eight, to ten maybe twelve. Um, so we listened to all these stories.. and there was somebody I don’t remember who it was, but there was another man there helping the Pastor out. And they said ok said, uh, “you boys”, uh, you know “go on to bed and do whatever you’re going to do and we’re going to go on and fish for a while there’s good fishing out here at night.” So they got in this boat and paddled out into this lake. Well, they went to the other side and came around through the dark laughs and we’re all sitting around here heard all these ghost stories you know laughs and here they come you know they got right up close to us and they went “Moss Baaack’s a comin Moss Baaack’s a comin!” laughs imitates scream we jump up running in every direction laughs oh my God! laughs boy they got us good. They, they likely scared us out of a year’s growth you know.

Reflection: L provided a great example of a common way folk have historically interacted ostensively with scary stories, pranking. The ”insiders” with knowledge of a scary story tend to prank the ”outsiders” (those without knowledge of the scary story) as an act of initiation for transitioning from ”insiders” to ”outsiders” of the story. As L’s account demonstrates, this often takes the form of the ”insiders” pretending to be the monster featured in the scary story in order to frighten the ”outsiders.” Moss Back as a character appears to be based on racially problematic history, as beheading is a known method of execution that American settlers used to punish Native American populations.

Muscle White.

L is a 78-year-old Caucasian male originally from Meridian, Mississippi. L is a retired drill sergeant and veteran of the American war in Vietnam.

While visiting Phoenix, Arizona I met with L to discuss folklore, as he had previously helped me collect war stories for an oral history project. I met L at his Phoenix office where he provided me with two scary stories he remembered from his past. The following is the first of these two stories, which he first heard as a teenager in the 60s.

L: Ok so this is the story of Muscle White… and Muscle White.. was a really bad man, he was always in trouble and been to prison two or three times, and uh been in a bunch of fights and stuff and he got in a fight where he was hurt really bad one time.. and he lost his right arm. And uh, they fixed him up a hook in prison, so he had this hook on his, on his right arm… Well he was in prison, in Parchman Prison in Mississippi… and he broke out, he escaped. And there was this state wide manhunt for Muscle White because he, he was a bad man. They, everybody was looking for him because uh.. he’d been in fights he’d killed some people I mean, he, he robbed some banks this was a bad guy. So everybody was out looking for him.. So, around Meridian where I lived, there were several places where, uh, teenagers liked to go and uh, park and pad, and.. you know and, and uh.. So, one of ‘em was a place that we called Lover’s Lane. And it was a place out in the country. And so uh, this boy and, and girl went out there, they were I think sixteen years old or so, and they went out there and they’re talking. And.. and uh.. um. The girl said that uh, she thought she heard something. And, the boy said “no it’s just your imagination there’s nothing out here there’s nobody out here” and they look, there’s no other cars out here, so there’s nobody here. And she says “no I really thought I heard something, you know or somebody or something” and he goes “no no it’s ok there’s nothing, there’s nothing out here.” And uh, she says “well, see I’m scared.” She says “I really wanna go.” He says “well no, see it’s ok really no no no” she says she really really wants to go and she’s really scared. He says well ok. Uh.. I, I guess we’ll go. And, and then he heard some—a bump on the car. Just as he was cranking up, and that kinda spooked him, and he threw it in drive and he took off real quick. And went down the road, and he said well “the night is ruined so I might as well take you home.” So he took this girl over to her house.. he got out and walked around to the side of his car to open the door for her, and there was a right arm hanging on the door with a hook on the door handle. Muscle White had been there.

Reflection: I have heard the Hook Man urban legend enough times over the course of my life to assume it offered me no more surprises. Yet, L managed to offer a version of the story that was both compelling in its execution and completely unfamiliar to me. I found it fascinating how fleshed out the Hook Man was in L’s telling of the narrative, as most versions of the story I know reduce the Hook Man to a faceless, nameless escaped convict. I believe the local geographical details that L imbues Muscle White’s backstory with provide excellent insight into Mississippi’s cultural history. Specifically, I believe L’s linkage of Muscle White to Parchman prison (a real prison in Mississippi) speaks to the prison’s historical notoriety in Mississippi. As Parchman prison is linked to a storied past of forced labor and terrible conditions for its inmates, it’s not hard to imagine how the story of the Hook Man and the prison eventually melded together through a shared association with evil in the Mississippian collective conscience.

 “For another version, see Brunvand, Jan Harold. 2014, Too Good to Be True: The Colossal Book of Urban Legends, Page #1659

“Gore Orphanage.”

F is a 36-year-old Croatian Male originally from Vermillion, Ohio. F currently works as a background detective in Phoenix, Arizona.

F performed this folklore while I visited him at his workplace with the intent to collect folklore from police officers. During his lunch break, I asked F if he had any folklore he would be willing to share with me.

F: My story is about a place called “Gore Orphanage.” It’s G-O-R-E. Um, it’s in Vermillion Ohio, so I grew up kinda close to Gore Orphanage in Loraino area, Ohio. And there was always a, story a local story about Gore Orphanage, so it was an orphanage back in the 1800s, and apparently there was a fire dozens of children died in it, and um, I, I guess the building was destroyed during the fire so.. The rumor was there were people over the years who went there to like worship the devil and do all kinds of weird occult stuff. And if you go there at night, you’re supposed to hear kids screaming, see ghosts, all kinds of stuff so uh. Oh! There was also a rumor that there was a crazy guy who lived near there who would chase people off with a shot gun so, of course as a curious teenager me and all my friends went one night, and its on this really dark road it’s, it’s pretty creepy just getting there but we got there we saw the driveway marker, um we saw some stones just kinda, laying around there and we heard a noise, saw a guy in the distance which we assumed was the guy who would chase people off with a shotgun so we got scared and run off, but, we didn’t see any ghosts we didn’t see any balls of light, uh, didn’t hear any kids screaming just uh, a guy whose probably the crazy guy with a shotgun.

Reflection: F’s account of his visit to the supposedly haunted Gore Orphanage was intriguing for me to hear, as he was the only person I interviewed to actually visit the haunted location in his story. For me, this provided insight into the ostensive act of ”legend tripping,” which entails traveling to the location of a legend to determine its veracity. In the case of F’s experience with ”legend tripping,” it appears that he determined the truth value of the legend to be mostly false. With the exception of the mysterious man watching and the destroyed orphanage, all other aspects of the story including the supernatural, were disproven.