“There are these creatures supposedly in Fairfield County in Connecticut called ‘Melon Heads’.  Apparently they were escaped inmates or insane asylum patients and they are rumored to have big bulbous heads.  There is this insane asylum in Fairfield that shut down a long time ago and supposedly the patients there kept inbreeding with one another until they became mutants of a sort.  They’re also kind of yellowish in color.”

Tanner told me that he learned this legend from one of his fellow students who lived down the hall from him in his dorm this year.  He even said that they drove to the insane asylum and found a large system of underground tunnels that had been abandoned years ago but no Melon Heads.  Tanner said that these creatures also are rumored to exist in other portions of southwestern and central Connecticut as well as some other midwestern state that he believed to be Ohio.  He also said that the student down the hall heard the story from another group of his friends from high school.   Tanner said that they are creatures that are feared for their mysteriousness and for the mere fact that nobody knows much about them.  As for the legitimacy of actual Melon Heads existing, he told me that he wasn’t sure whether to believe in them or not, but that he never actually saw one so he seems skeptical.

However, there is other evidence pointing to the existence of Melon Heads.  In the book Weird U.S. – Your Travel Guide to America’s Local Legends and Best Kept Secrets it mentions that Melon Heads supposedly exist in Connecticut, Ohio, and Michigan.  The book goes on to say that many of these Melon Heads were the result of science experiments gone wrong and radiation testing, leaving them mentally retarded and continuing to mutate on their own.  Supposedly, the Melon Heads then moved into the woods, where generations of inbreeding occurred, resulting in even more mutations.

I think that part of the reason that people fear the Melon Heads so much is because during their creation, it supposedly was regular humans that turned them into the way that they are, thus giving them an inherent hatred towards the common man.  There are other examples of creatures similar to Melon Heads that can be seen in such movies as “The Hills Have Eyes” in which creatures that have been inbreeding live in the hills of a western state such as Arizona.  This could be a variation to the legend, but it could also be the writer’s interpretation of the creatures themselves.

Annotation: Moran, Mark and Mark Sceurman.  Weird U.S. – Your Travel Guide to America’s Local Legends and Best Kept Secrets.   New York.  Sterling            Publishing Company. 2004.  pp 60-63.