Tag Archives: scary story

Taily Poe Colorado Cryptid

Text:

“This guy is living in a cabin and he has two dogs, and he lives in the middle of nowhere. There’s no cars, no grocery stores, it’s old times, so he goes hunting in the dead of winter. He’s walking for hours and sees nothing, no animals, and he thinks it’s so strange. The woods are eerily quiet. He comes back and he goes to bed hungry and so do his dogs. Next day he goes out and looks for food again, and it’s eerily quiet, not even wind in the trees, just nothing, it doesn’t feel real. No food, no rabbits, no deer, no plants. Just snow and white and quiet. His dogs and him go to bed hungry. Next day he goes out, he’s exhausted, he hasn’t had food in him, his dogs are exhausted, he’s been walking for miles and miles. He’s lost and worn out. He sees a flash of black, and he’s like “what was that?” He sees the flash of black again and he shoots it. All he gets is this little tuft of meat that fell off, it seemed like it was cut off from the creature he shot. It seems like his tail, so he takes the tail and carries it back to his cabin. It’s not a lot of meat but it’s all he has, so he fixes it up, cleans off the skin and cooks it up, and he gives the leftovers to his dogs. He goes to bed full, wakes up in the morning, and goes hunting again. Suddenly it seems like the woods are alive again, he’s finding food, he’s finding rabbits, there’s some spring green poking through the snow, so he comes back with a good collection of food. He goes home, but as it gets dark it starts to get cold and eerie again. He starts to hear this voice from outside and some creaking on the roof. It goes “Tailyyyyyy poooooe. Taaaaaaaily poe.” He’s like “is this the wind? What noise am I hearing?” He hears it again. “Taaaaaaily poe, taaaaaaaaily poe.” He looks outside and sees nothing, it’s not windy out, so he closes the door and locks it cause he’s getting freaked out. He gets under the covers and he hears the voice all night but he tries to sleep. He wakes up in the morning, goes hunting again and gets a good amount of food. He’s got plenty of rabbits, he shot a buck. He goes home, cooks up his dinner. When it gets dark out again, he hears the voice again. “Taaaaaaaaily poe.” He checks outside, there are no branches scratching against his window, there’s nothing on the roof even though there’s incessant creaking. He closes and locks the door, but then he looks back at it and the door is cracked open. He hears it again “taaaaaaaily poe, taaaaaily poe.” He goes to bed even though he hears it all through the night. Next morning he takes his dogs out on a walk, goes fishing, he comes home and he cooks up the fish and feeds it to his dogs. Then he notices his dogs start barking at the door. Woof woof. So he lets them out, thinks maybe they have to pee, and the dogs start running. He calls them back, and they’re very well trained dogs, but only one comes back. He wonders what happened to the other, but he knows his dogs don’t run away so he figures the other dog will be back in the morning. So he closes the door, brings the one dog inside. It’s too dark and cold to look for the other one even though he’s very worried. He starts to hear it again. “Taaaaaaailey poe. Taaaaaailey poe. I know you have my tailey poe.” Now this part is new. He hears the creaking on the roof, wakes up in the morning, spends the whole day looking for his dog “Boy come here, come here!” He comes back to his cabin after looking for his dog, and sees his dog’s tail on the ground outside his cabin. He goes back inside, and the other dog starts barking at the door again. He lets his dog out, and the dog runs away. He’s now alone, he’s lost his two best hunting dogs. He closes the door, locks it, he’s freaked out and staring at the wall. The door slowly opens and he sees a black figure run towards him. He feels this pressure on his chest. He hears “Taily poe, taily poe, I’ll finally have my taily poe.” And then he dies. The end. So when you’re camping and you hear the wind saying “taaaaaily poe,” that means that Taily Poe is still looking for his tail and he might get you.” 

Context:

M is a 19-year-old college student from Colorado Springs, Colorado. She often goes camp and hiking in the woods, and her town has a lot of different cryptids and legendary monsters that people look for and talk about when in the woods. She says this particular story is a campfire story, and that Taily Poe is a cryptid that might come after you in the woods when you’re sleeping. She says that the story is meant to be ever longer, and that you’re supposed to add more to the story to make it as long as possible, she says the point is to add suspense. 

Analysis: 

Taley Poe is a legendary cryptid who is supposed to be wandering the woods. He’s one of the many legendary creatures that cryptozoologists search for in deeply forested areas like Colorado. Cryptids like him arise from people’s fear of the wild and the unknown, both the certain knowledge that there are frightening uncontrollable beasts in the woods, and from the idea that the wild is the land of the devil. This particular story is also similar to a tale though because oftentimes the teller of the story doesn’t actually believe it happened, they’re just trying to frighten people while camping. The story is told in a very particular structure, and the informant said herself that you can add things to make it longer to add more suspense. This is an example of the Oral Formulaic Theory at work, earlier known as the Perry-Lord Hypothesis. This is the idea that folk story tellers are able to remember really long stories and are able to draw them out to engage the audience by adding certain formulaic speech into the story. We see examples of this formulaic speech in this rendition of the story, with the descriptions of which animals the  man was or wasn’t able to find while hunting, with the added description to detail his plight (ex:  “He’s exhausted, he hasn’t had food in him, his dogs are exhausted, he’s been walking for miles and miles. He’s lost and worn out.”) The phrase “taily poe” can be drawn out to as long as the speaker wants and can be repeated as many times as they want. We also see the importance of performance in the way the speaker sometimes speaks as the character, seen in the dog bark sounds she makes and the “here boy, here boy.” All of these aspects draw the listener in and add to the ambiance of fear. People love to hear ghost stories and cryptid stories by the campfire, perhaps for a similar reason to why people love horror movies. They’re able to dabble in a bit of the emotion of fear while they’re actually in a safe, controlled environment surrounded by people they know and trust.

The Legend of the Hook

Text:

Informant: “The story happens in a small town, and there’s a small darkened road that teenagers would go down and park along to kiss and make out. So, the story follows these two teenagers who are parked alongside the road and start to get a little amorous…”

Collector: “Do we know anything about the identities of the two teenagers?”

Informant: “They were just two young kids from the local high school that haven’t been dating for long; they’re very innocent and new to the dating scene, so the whole situation is exciting for them. Anyhow, they’re out, things are starting to get hot and heavy, but they hear some noises out in the woods. The guy rolls down the window and asks, “Hey, is anybody out there? Do you need help?” There’s no response, so they just go back to making out. A few minutes go by, and they hear the same noises again, and the kid rolls down the window and again asks if anyone’s out there. The girl tells him, “Why don’t you go out and take a look?” and so he goes out and looks around the car and sees nothing. He gets back in and rolls up the window, but they hear yet another noise, and this time it sounds even closer, so they start to get concerned. They realize how late it is and decide to head home, and on the way home, they turn on the radio. On the radio they hear that a mass murderer had just escaped from a nearby mental institution and was on the loose. The broadcast described the man as having one defining feature: a hook for one of his hands. And so they’re like, “Oh, well, at least we’re out of that area.” So they drive home, and when they stop in front of the house, the guy gets out to open the door for her, and there on her door handle is a hook.”

Context: The informant is a 63 year-old man who was told this story by his grandmother as a teenager when she was cautioning him against staying out late at night. The informant said that the legend accurately referenced a mental hospital that was close to where he lived as a boy in upstate New York. He explained that the moral is that you can be much closer to danger than you think, and that you should trust your instincts whenever you feel like something isn’t right.

Analysis: Legends can function as a powerful social tool, and this story is a prime example of the kinds of effects that they can have. Legends typically intersect with both reality and some supernatural or extraordinary element(s), which can blend together to become powerful persuasive devices. In this case, this story was used to scare teenagers into behaving responsibly, and I will attempt to analyze how it does so, taking into account the distinctive western context that it is situated in. Teenagers often have a reputation for being fearless and reckless in their behavior, and many American teens, especially, are heavily influenced by the American education system, which arguably prioritizes rational thought and critical inquiry and de-emphasizes superstition and blind adherence to belief. As a result, it is reinforced in many American teens and adolescents with traditional schooling to be skeptical of fantastical monsters and stories. Thus, in an attempt to use storytelling as a method of persuasion for teens, it helps to incorporate some tangible aspect of reality for credence, which legends as a narrative form tend to have. Therefore, in teens, the legend would seem to be particularly effective over myths and tales, which are understood by most at their age as not factually true. The manipulation of reality in “The Hook” is particularly effective here, referencing a real location–a mental asylum–where criminals were really known to be held, in order to give the story a greater rhetorical weight and degree of plausibility. The supernatural element, a deranged man from the asylum, blends so seamlessly with the factual details of the story that I see how it would be highly useful in persuading a skeptical, rebellious teenager (as my informant once was) into avoiding staying out late at night.

Tale — Where is my Big Toe?

CONTEXT:

K is a freshman at USC. I asked him if there were any stories he exchanged around a campfire. In America, scary stories are often exchanged around campfires and amongst children. Some of them tend to be nonsensical, with seemingly random and almost humorish roots. Still, these stories don’t fail to be passed around.

TEXT:

K: There was a small family in a barnyard – the son of that family decided to go out into the fields to gather food when he saw a toe buried in the ground, like a big toe. He decided to, he wanted to get the toe – I don’t know why, but he wanted to get the toe to serve it up for food. So, he reached down to get the toe and he pulled, and it was really stuck in there for some reason and he pulled with all his might and he was able to get the toe. And later, he showed it to his mom and she decided that she’ll cook it up with the stew. So she does that, and later on they’re eating the stew, and they cut up the toe. And they each eat part of it, I guess. Later that night, while they’re sleeping, the boy wakes up to hear a voice that goes in a very gruff and slow voice, “WHERE IS MY BIG TOE?” And he could hear that phrase over and over as it gets louder and closer, and with nothing to do, he just hides under his blankets, hoping it’ll go away. That didn’t happen. So the figure enters the room asking where his big toe is to the little boy, and then he grabs the little boy by the ankle and drags him outside, and takes him back into the earth where he found that toe to begin with, and he was never heard from again. That story gave me mixed feelings. Like why would you go ahead and take a random toe, like I’m going to grab this toe and go on with my day. 

Me: Where did you hear the story?

K: I heard it from a friend in middle school. It was a good story, but definitely gave me nightmares. 

ANALYSIS:

When it comes to scary stories, and especially this particular story, it’s hard to say where it comes from. It likely originates in person-to-person narrative, and yet, amongst children, there is a popular book series known as “Scary Stories to Tell in the Dark.” From my distant childhood memory, that was a story in the text. Another instance of a recorded story was the one about the Mexican pet – the dog that turned out to be a rat with rabies. In these cases, stories like this have become so immensely popular that they have become canonized – decreasing their multiplicity and variation. And despite this, these stories still manage to be exchanged even outside of the purchase of these children’s books. The story’s ability to still retain some of its folkloric nature post-canonization speaks to the strength of both the story and the cultures that continue to retell it. 

Legend – Slenderman in Real Life

CONTEXT:

J is a freshman at USC studying screenwriting, and a good friend of mine. 

Slenderman is an online-created urban legend spread throughout the site CreepyPasta. It originated with photoshopped images of a slender, tall and faceless man in a suit.

TEXT:

J: So one time when I was a kid, my cousin and my mom were talking about Slender Man, because I guess they both heard of it. And I was like, eight at the time. And I had never heard of this because I was like, eight years old. And I had no connection to like, creepy pasta or anything on the internet. And so I asked them to tell me a story about it because I wanted to know what he was like. So they told me this story about this girl who was home alone one night, and she forgot to get water before she went to bed. So when she was in bed, she was like, oh, I need to get up and get water because I’m really thirsty. So she went to her kitchen. And as she was getting the water, she saw this weird, creepy figure in the corner of her kitchen, and it really freaked her out. But instead of going back to bed, she continued to get the water. And so then when her parents came home, they saw that she wasn’t there. So they looked around, and they asked a bunch of people. And eventually they found out that she was at the hospital. And so they went to the hospital to talk to her and ask her what happened. But her ears and her tongue and her eyes were all cut out. And her hands were cut off. So that she couldn’t see if he was going to come again. She couldn’t hear if he would come again. She couldn’t speak what happened, and she couldn’t write down what happened. And so that way, he would remain anonymous. 

Me: They told you this when you were eight?

J: Yeah. And so then I remained afraid of Slenderman until I was like, in the middle of high school. Because the legend goes that like, if you cease to believe that Slender Man exists, then he will come kill you. But so long as you believe that he exists, you’re sort of safe. And so that made me not want to stop believing in it. But then it kept freaking me out.

ANALYSIS:

Slenderman is a curious case of folklore in which it takes on a life of its own outside of its place of origin: the internet. Creepypastas tend to be another form of scary storytelling for children and young people, and they are, in a way, a place akin to campfires for the exchange of scary stories. For something as famous as Slenderman, however, it evolves into a cultural being despite having been started with fan narratives that were written down, which is not how we traditionally think of folklore. Yet because there is no official canon nor a copyright, the people are able to be communally creative while making agreements on who this character is and what he should be. 

Legend – Couch Island

CONTEXT:

P is a freshman at USC, and a good friend of mine. In the United States, children tend to go to summer camps, where they spend time with nature and with older camp counselors who supervise and lead them.

TEXT:

P: So the camp was at a lake and across the lake you could see like, I don’t know if it was an island, it was just another strip of land and there was just a couch there. Just a white couch with nothing else around it, just a couch. Yeah, we could see this couch like we could see it and so we called it couch Island. I don’t think it was an island though. That area of land, we called it couch island because it looked like it was surrounded by water kinda, and so I think the legend was, you should never step foot on couch island because — we had boats, like wooden boats. We have like, you know, canoes and we would canoe around the lake. But you’re not supposed to go on couch Island. Because there’s like some shadow guy, some shit that lives there. And like that’s his couch. You don’t want to fucking sit on his couch. But sometimes the couch would get removed and then there wouldn’t be the couch there. Like I would see the couch. Like it just wouldn’t be there some days other days it would be sometimes it was just like a chair. You know, it was switched out? Yeah, it was weird. I think, really there was a house over there. It was somebody’s house and they would just put furniture out sometimes. But we would never see them sitting there, was the thing so we were like they would always switch out the furniture so it must have been like after we’d left the camp because there was a daycare. But sometimes we would have overnights and we still wouldn’t see who was over there. So people would just make shit like people were talking about this they saw like a shadow man over there one time or whatever. But you’re not supposed to go to Couch Island. That’s what I remember. Don’t set foot on Couch Island.

Me: Did you ever hear stories about someone who stepped on couch Island and got killed? Or got caught by the Shadow Man?

P: Maybe, if anything, it was just like they stepped on the island and then they would never be heard from again. Yeah. Like that’s why you wouldn’t go there. Because if you stepped on his couch, if you sat on the couch immediately either the fog and Shadow Man  or the couch just enveloped you.

ANALYSIS:

Folklore tends to be the most believable for children, who are obviously less knowledgeable on how the world works and are more susceptible to believing legends. In this case, there are clear trends on what is unseen and the legends that surround things. When something is foggy or unexplained, there tends to be more mysticism and magic around it. For the couch, there might be a very logical explanation for it. But because there is so much in the unknown, people, and especially children, are likely to come up with a more fantastical and interesting explanation for it. In many ways, the reveal of what actually happened doesn’t matter — what is real is not what’s important, what’s important is what we believe and choose to believe.