Tag Archives: horror

Slushbucket

Nationality: Japanese-American
Age: 29
Occupation: Teacher
Residence: Northridge, CA
Performance Date: March 2012
Primary Language: English

“Not too long ago, there was a truck driver whose job was to drive across the country.  But he wasn’t just an ordinary truck driver.  He transported dead bodies.  For 20 years he did this, driving back and forth across the country and never had any problems…

But one day, he was driving through a horrible blizzard on a narrow mountain road.  Suddenly, the truck hit a patch of ice, swerved off the road and was stranded in a ditch on the side of the mountain.  The crash knocked the driver unconscious and by the time he woke up, the truck was completely enclosed in snow.  He tried to open his doors, but he couldn’t get out.

For days, he was stuck in the truck and was forced to eat leather from the car seats.  But after weeks, the starving truck driver had no other choice.  He made his way to the back door of the truck, into the storage container.  He was so ravenous that he opened the caskets and quickly began feeding on the dead corpses… and to keep warm, he used the skins as a coat.  The truck driver now acquired a taste for human flesh.  No one ever found the truck until the snow melted that spring, but only open coffins and scattered bones were found.  There was no sign of the driver…

On one dark and rainy night, a young girl was babysitting.  She had already put the two children to bed and was watching TV, when all of a sudden; she heard a faint noise outdoors,

‘Slushbucket, slushbucket, slushbucket…’

Thinking it was either the TV or the sound of the falling rain outside, she hesitantly returned to watching her program.  After a few minutes, she started to hear creaking, and then footsteps on the second floor of the house.  But thinking it was just the kids getting up for a glass of water, she didn’t pay it any mind, until she heard a voice,

‘Slushbucket, slushbucket, slushbucket…’

This time she heard it much clearer and much louder than before, and it was coming from upstairs!  The babysitter just thought it was the kids playing a joke on her, so she walked upstairs so that she could put the children back to bed.

Soon after, the parents came home, but the house was completely quiet.  They called for the babysitter, and no answer.  Then they went upstairs to check on the children.  Maybe the babysitter was in their room.

But as they opened the door to the kids’ room, they found the babysitter on the floor, with a pool of blood by her side. It looked as if a person had bit off mouthfuls of flesh!  Horrified, they rushed to the children and threw off their covers.  They too had been eaten!  As they turned to rush for the phone, they were stopped in their tracks as they heard staggering footsteps coming from the hallway towards the room, and a rasping whisper with each step,

‘Slushbucket, slushbucket, slushbucket…’”

 

 

My informant first heard this horror story when she was a teenager at summer camp.  She hates scary stories, so she remembers being really scared by this one.  She says she probably retold the story hundreds of times when she was younger to her siblings right before bed and friends around the campfire.  She explained that she hadn’t told the story in such a long time, so she probably added details that weren’t in the version she heard, but she tried to keep the sequence of events the same.  “Horror stories are all about the details,” she said.

The “Slushbucket” story is really similar to other babysitter-themed horror stories, which play on the eeriness and vulnerability of being the only one awake in the house after the kids go to sleep.  Therefore, this story is mostly directed toward teenagers, the age group that is just beginning to baby-sit.  The tale also seems to scare its audience into being apprehensive while babysitting, by showing the fatal result of the nonchalant babysitter in the story.  “Slushbucket” also includes elements of cannibalism, which adds to the horror.  Interestingly enough, when I looked up the definition of “slushbucket,” one of the meanings is “a foul feeder.”  Therefore, this term most likely refers to the fact that the killer is a cannibal.  It’s already bad when a mass murderer is on the loose with knife, but a cannibalistic killer who eats you alive is probably worse.

Urban Legend: A Dead Body Hidden in a Hotel Mattress

Nationality: Japanese-American
Age: 29
Occupation: Teacher
Residence: Northridge, CA
Performance Date: March 2012
Primary Language: English

 “Once there was a couple who decided to get away for a couple days.  They decided to stay at a motel and as soon as they entered their room, it smelled horrible, like maybe a rat died in there.  So, they complained to the front desk, but the concierge assured them that the room was just cleaned and the cleaning staff and even the previous occupant never complained about a smell.  The couple then asked to switch rooms, but the motel was in the middle of nowhere and completely booked.  There was nothing they could do about it, so they started to track down the smell for themselves.  The smell was coming from somewhere near the bed.  They looked under it, behind it, behind the bedside tables and still couldn’t locate the smell.  Finally, they decided just to check underneath the mattress.  When they pushed the mattress off, the found a rotting human body in the box spring.  The body was there for days, maybe weeks until it was found.”

 

My informant is from Pasadena, California and first heard the story when she was in grade school in the 1990s.  She heard it from her friends at school and also saw it in a comic book version of urban legends that she read when she was younger.  While researching this story, it turns out the story is very popular.  My informant’s version is very similar to other’s I came across online.  All the stories involve a couple, a foul smell, a search to find the smell and the discovery of the body.  However, other versions include different descriptions: the couple is on their honeymoon, the story takes place in Las Vegas, the cleaning staff cleans the room while the couple is off sightseeing (but the smell remains when they return) and sometimes there is no complaint, just a discovery.  The story of the body in the mattress has many different versions, but nonetheless, is the same story.

The most surprising and interesting discovery I made during my research was the fact that the exact same incident occurred at a Travelodge in Pasadena, CA in July 1996!  I first found this information on Snopes.com, which prides with the statement: “the definitive Internet reference source for urban legends, folklore, myths, rumors, and misinformation.”  According to Snopes.com, the motel staff discovered a woman’s body ten days after her murder after multiple complaints from occupants.  In another source, the body was found by a Honolulu native, while she and her brother were on vacation (“The Body in the Bed”).  Although unreliable sources, the two websites illustrate common variants found in folklore.  In order to really confirm the urban legend from Pasadena, I went to the City of Pasadena’s online archive.  The archive only publishes the headlines of newspapers, but the title “Body found in motel room identified: Woman, 23, is named using dental records,” dated to August 2, 1996, verified this story.  The urban legend was most likely a popular story already, so the incident may have simply been a reenactment of the legend.  Furthermore, the event may have also revived the story, which is why my informant heard it while in grade school during the 1990s.

 

Emery, David. “The Body in The Bed.” About.com Urban Legends. 20 Apr. 2012. Web. 24 Apr. 2012. <http://urbanlegends.about.com/od/crime/a/body_in_bed.htm>.

Sharfstein, Daniel. “Body Found in Motel Room Identified : Woman, 23, Is Named Using Dental Records.” Pasadena Public Library. City of Pasadena. Web. 20 Mar. 2012. <http://ww2.cityofpasadena.net/Library/PNI/pniAuthor.asp?page=1&pagesize=100&showAll=&calltype=sort&searchtype=&Pattern=&sortOn=subject&sqlQuery=qauthor+%27%25sharfstein%2C+daniel%25%27>.

“The Bawdy Under the Bed.” Snopes.com. 18 Mar. 2010. Web. 20 Apr. 2012. <http://www.snopes.com/horrors/gruesome/bodybed.asp>.

FOAF Story

Nationality: Caucasian American
Age: 34
Occupation: Waiter and tobacconist
Residence: Huntington Beach, CA
Performance Date: April 17, 2011
Primary Language: English
Language: Conversational German, Latin

The names in the following FOAF story have been censored to protect the people involved:

“This story involves my friend M—’s friend C—. He was a, uh, they used to hang out at his place on Thursday nights, a large group of them, and they were doing this one evening and they went over to the pizza place that was right around the corner, uh, and this was part of their normal traditions. Each night that they went he [C—] started flirting with this one, uh server that worked there. And then one night he said, ‘Okay, that’s it, guys, I’m gonna make my move.’

“So they said, ‘Okay; good luck.’

“And he said ‘All right. Here are my keys—house keys’—they were hanging at his place—‘If I don’t come back, hey, uh, hide them in the planter.’ Okay. So they go back, hang out at his place for a couple of hours, hide the keys in the planter, and take off.

“M— sees him two days later and he said, ‘Hey, what’s up? Y’know, what happened? Uh, you didn’t come back. Did you go out with her?’

“And he [C—] said, ‘Well, I sh—I didn’t want to take her back to my place ’cause you guys were there. She wouldn’t tell me why, but she said she didn’t want to go back to her place. So we got a hotel room.’

“‘What?’

“‘Yeah, we got a hotel room right away.’

“‘Okay, and then what happened?’

“‘Well’n, started makin’ out, she took off her clothes.’

“M— said, ‘Okay, so—ha—y’know, what was it like?’

“H’said [C—], “Oh, she—great, great breasts.’

“‘Cool. What about the rest of her?’

“He [C—] said, ‘Well, y’ever, you know, uh, remember those pictures of people’s lungs when they smoke?’

“[M—] Says, ‘You mean enphyzema?’

“H’said [C—], ‘Yeah, yeah, y’know’z all black, and bubbly, and stuff?’

“[M—] Said, ‘Yeah.’

“H’ed [C—], “Well, i’ looked like she smoked with her vagina.’

“[M—] Said, ‘Holy crap! What did you do?’

“’Ed [C—], ‘Well, I just stared at her tits.’

“‘Okay . . . so . . . then what happened?’

“Hed [M—], “Well, we were goin’ at it, she was on top of me and she had her head back and she was really into it and she was just, uh, had her eyes closed, and then she suddenly pulled back her fist and screamed, —You son’uva— and then she opened her eyes and she looked at me and she said —Oh my God, I’m so sorry! For a second there, I thought you were somebody else.—’

“M— was like, ‘Oh my God, man, what did you do?’

“‘I’ll tell ya. As soon as I finished up, I got the hell out of there.’ Yeah.”

The informant tells this story “generally when people are discussing the most horrific sexual experiences that they are aware of—this story gets carted out.”

The informant is not certain of the veracity of the story but likes it anyway: “Um, I think that it’s fantastic, uh, and amusing, uh, and horrifying all at once. I don’t know if it’s true or not, but I do know that it is a wonderful tale.”

The story, besides serving as a way to horrify people, could be considered a warning of the dangers of sex—STDs especially. Then, too, it might be a metaphor for the fears of the virginal about what it will be like to have sex. C—’s reason for telling the story to M—, if it was not true, was likely similar to the informant’s reason for repeating it—it makes a good horror story.