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.