Tupac isn’t really dead, he just faked his death to escape the spotlight.

My informant tells me about how he believes that Tupac Shakur did not really get shot in Las Vegas in 1996, but rather faked his own death.  He says that he believes Suge Knight when the former friend of Tupac claims that no murderer was found because there in fact was no murderer.  When I ask my informant why he would do this, he says that it’s a good way to become an instant legend in the recording industry.  This is a big deal to my informant, who is from LA, because Tupac recorded much of the most influential rap music in the mid-90’s when my informant was growing up on the Westside.  Although I find it amusing to entertain the myth that Tupac faked his own death, I have to admit that I am more skeptical about it than my informant.  I believe that, no matter where Tupac may have been hiding for the past sixteen years, somebody would have recognized him and called him out.  On the other hand, I know that Tupac would have the resources to stay pretty well hidden, so maybe it is not entirely out of the realm of possibility?

Legend of the Melon Heads – descendants of about a dozen escaped convicts in the Connecticut forest who resorted to cannibalism to survive the harsh winters; then they started inbreeding and developed some kind of mutation

This is one of the stranger legends an informant told me.  Since I had never heard the story before, I cringed when I first heard it, and my informant told me that is the natural reaction of everybody the first time they hear the story.  He really has no idea as to the truth of the legend, but he says that his parents remember hearing it when they were growing up, so it’s been around for a number of decades.  He says that he never really thought much about the legend or where it originally came from until I asked him about it.  Although he says he remembers it from his childhood, it is stuck in his memory more because of the gruesome details than because it was a formative piece of childhood.  I think of this story like I think of Chicago legends of mobsters – fun to think about for a bit, but then I just become curious as to how the story came about and whether it is true or not.  If it is, should we be worried?  With stories like this floating around, the answer is probably yes.

My informant tells me about a strange coincidence (he would argue otherwise) involving supremely talented musicians over the past five decades who have died at the rather young age of 27.  Jimi Hendrix, Janis Joplin, Kurt Cobain, Jim Morrison, and Amy Winehouse all died at the same age under tragic circumstances.  Most were due to drugs, but Cobain shot himself with a shotgun.  For whatever reason, these artists who were all considered to be some of the most talented of their times ended up dying at the age of 27.  This is no legend, but rather an eerie shared experience among them.  It is even said these days that the artists who all died so young would not probably not hold the same place in history had they died later on in their lives.  This legend is curious to both my informant and myself, as we both listen to the music of each of these singers to this day.  We both agree that it is a sad occurrence that such talented musicians died in their prime.  At the same time, however, we realize that part of the reverence that pop culture still has for these musicians today stems from the idea that they were troubled by demons, and they were so tortured by themselves that they had no other escape except through music or death.

Wilt Chamberlain slept with 10,000 women

One of my informants was telling me about a legend that Wilt Chamberlain (famous NBA player) slept with 10,000 women over his career in professional basketball.  While this rumor was undoubtedly started by Chamberlain himself, it offers an interesting insight into how professional basketball players see themselves and their role in pop culture as sex symbols.  Although this claim would be difficult to prove (and even more difficult to actually accomplish), it inspires people who want to further a legend like Wilt Chamberlain.  Even without this claim, Chamberlain would be a basketball legend in his own right (he is the only NBA player to score 100 points in a game).  This claim only furthers the persona by which Chamberlain may wish to be remembered.

I wanted to include at least one ghost story in my folklore contribution so I asked some of my friends if they knew any good stories of ghosts haunting people today.  One of my informants brought up the time he went to New Orleans for Mardi Gras one year and took a tour of the city.  He remembers hearing on his tour about a hospital in the region of the city near Lake Pontchartrain that is said to be haunted by the ghosts of some of the elderly patients who didn’t make it out during Hurricane Katrina.  He remembers hearing some of the stories of people who have visited the hospital (now abandoned) who heard or saw what they believed to be ghosts.  He said that his tour guide mentioned that to this day, no company plans on rehabilitating the hospital because of its gruesome history and what happened to many of the patients in the aftermath of the hurricane.  To me, this is an indication that people continue to avoid situations in which they may be confronted with places associated with morose histories.