Tag Archives: Texas

Legend – Hairy Man Road – Texas

Nationality: American
Age: 50
Occupation: Construction
Residence: Austin, Texas
Performance Date: April 2011
Primary Language: English

Legend – Texas – Hairy Man Road

“There’s this old country road in Round Rock, Texas outside of Austin… it’s not really a country road anymore.. it’s kind of suburban now. But anyway, they say this road has been there since, like, covered wagon times. Apparently there’s a Hairy Man who lived in the area there for years… my uncle used to tell me he saw him when he was a young boy. Apparently this hairy man fell off a wagon back in the day and was raised by animals or just, uh, raised himself in the wilderness… but he would harass people passing through because he was like an animal.. and unusually hairy. They say now his ghost haunts the road and that’s what people will see when they say that they’ve seen him. I’ve driven on the road but I’ve never seen anything unusual.”

The informant seems to believe this legend since his uncle has lived near the road for over thirty years and claims to have seen the ghost. I, being from Austin, have heard that the Hairy Man was actually a homeless man that was killed by a group of high school students in their car on the way to prom. Either way, this legend has become extremely well known in the Austin area, to the extent that this road was officially named “Hairy Man Road.” I find it interesting that this legend mixes different types of legendary creatures. The hairy man seems to be part Sasquatch, part savage man, and now a ghost. It’s interesting how different types of folklore can intermix to create legends such as this one. Furthermore, the high school prom variation that I have personally heard seems to exemplify a liminal time, but also a rite of passage. In this respect, the legend seems to represent the uneasiness that the transition from adolescence into adulthood can create. Perhaps it is even more interesting that this story has made the road itself a legend, as almost everybody in Austin knows what it is. Furthermore, the legend contributes to the identity of Round Rock residents, and they have even started having an annual Hairy Man Festival. In effect, the legend serves as a way for locals to form their own identities as citizens of this town. It gives them something unique to celebrate and discuss.

Contemporary Legend – Ghosts – Texas

Nationality: American
Age: 19
Occupation: student
Residence: Austin, Texas
Performance Date: March 2011
Primary Language: English

Contemporary Legend – Ghost Story

“My dad lives in a big, old house in the country outside of Austin, Texas. The house was built in the 1850’s, and sits on fifteen acres of land that are pretty much in the middle of nowhere. After we moved into the house, nothing happened for a while, but one night it was storming really bad. I remember it very vividly. The roof was made of metal, so the sound of the rain scared me. I went downstairs and slept on the couch because it was closer to my older brother’s room, and because the TV was on. I even remember what was playing on TV, it was a marathon of that movie ‘Teaching Ms. Tingle.’ Anyway, besides the point. I fell asleep, and for some reason I woke up in the middle of the night.. and kneeling right in front of my face on the floor in front of the couch was a little boy.. around 12. He was transparent, had messy clothes and hair, and was wearing overalls.. he looked like a farm boy. I rubbed my eyes thinking I was imagining it, but he was still there. After a few seconds, he slowly vanished. Not believing what I saw, I fell back asleep eventually. After that, we began hearing noises all over the house on a regular basis. Doors rattled, stations would change by themselves on the TV, and sometimes we could hear an office chair rolling around upstairs. The creepiest thing was when you could hear somebody walking down the stairs, but nobody was there. My whole family heard these things… even my dad got spooked a few times and searched the house with a gun, thinking there was a burglar. One night when he was home alone, he says all the sudden all the doors in the house starting rattling and sounded like somebody was beating on them. Sometimes my sister would see the boy standing at the top of the stairs by her bedroom door. All this was fine.. we accepted that the house was haunted… but then we met an old man who knew the family that used to own the house.. he said he played there as a child. Anyway, he told us that a young boy and an older woman with a bun of gray hair haunt the house. He said this without us saying anything about the house being haunted.. and he basically confirmed that a young boy haunted the house. There was also this one time when a little girl was at our house and we thought she was talking to herself… when her mother asked who she was talking to, the little girl said that she was talking to the boy standing next to her… but there was nobody standing next to her!”

This story describes the supposed haunting of the informant’s house in Texas. She was extremely effective at telling me the story, and was very believable. I honestly believe that she wholeheartedly believes that this house is haunted. It is freakishly believable, and I have a hard time disbelieving myself. That being said, the story serves a very important social purpose for the family. They often host parties with hundreds of people, and everybody knows this story. I spent a lot of time with the informant growing up, and she often told these stories to groups of friends, and usually at night in a creepy setting. The story provides a very strong case in support of belief in ghosts in general, especially considering the story from the old man, who allegedly was unfamiliar with the family’s firsthand experiences in the house. Although this story began as a personal story within this family, it has expanded to the small town community around them and has become somewhat of a local legend. It is also interesting that this legend exists in such an old house and in such a rural area that is not inhabited by many people. In some ways, it seems to reflect how much of folklore stems from human uncertainty and the unknown.

Legend – Giant Man Eating Catfish – Texas

Nationality: American
Age: 50
Occupation: Construction
Residence: Austin, Texas
Performance Date: April 2011
Primary Language: English

Legend – Giant Man-Eating Catfish in Lake Travis

“I’ve heard my whole life that there are catfish in Lake Travis that are the size of Volkswagens. Right by Mansfield Dam the water gets to be like 200 feet deep, so they say the catfish down there have just had years to grow so large. Apparently divers have gone down there and seen these giant catfish… they’re so big that they could just swallow a full-grown man. I mean, catfish don’t eat people, but if you accidently, like, swam under them and they were sucking something up, they could swallow a human. At least that’s what they say.”

The informant is fifty years old and grew up on this lake in Austin, Texas. Catfish as a meal is very popular in this area, and there have been instances of big catfish being caught, though not as big as the ones that are said to dwell at the bottom of the lake. This legend, in many ways, is similar to the legends of the Loch Ness Monster and Giant Squids in the ocean. It seems that, wherever there is a large body of water that is generally untouchable by humans, a legend like this is formed. It is as if all areas undeveloped and untouched by humans are somehow savage and monstrous, almost to prehistoric extremes. Uncertainty is, apparently, a breeding ground for folklore. There was an article about this legend written in a local hill country newspaper, in which the journalist attempted to debunk the legend. According to this article, a local man made jokes to tourists, which they apparently they took seriously, and the legend of giant catfish in Lake Travis began. Also, the article addresses the fact that the water at that depth contains too little air to sustain fish, so all the fish stay closer to the surface. Overall, this seems to be just another legend of a monstrous sea creature, but adapted to the culture of Central Texas.

Annotation:
Williams, John. “A Body in Mansfield Dam? Man-eating Catfish in Lake Travis? Are These Stories True, or Are They Urban Legends?” The Hills of Lakeway Messenger [Lakeway, Texas] Feb. 2008, 2nd ed., sec. 2. Print.

Contemporary Legend – Texas

Nationality: Caucasian American
Age: 41
Occupation: Storyteller
Residence: Westlake, Los Angeles, CA
Performance Date: April 17, 2011
Primary Language: English
Language: Conversational Spanish, Conversational German

The informant heard the following contemporary legend about the Garza Theater in Post, Texas when he “went down to see a show there and was talking with some people who [he] had worked with once before” at the cast party afterward:

The theatre is supposedly haunted by the ghost of Will McCrary, its founder, who died of AIDS. Supposedly he is sometimes seen there by those who didn’t know him when he was alive and is sometimes heard to whisper forgotten lines to desperate actors from the wings. The full story as the informant tells it is in the accompanying sound clip (2 parts): Garza Theater Part 1 Garza Theater Part 2

The informant “told [the legend] to three or four people right after [he] heard it,” all of them former theatre employees who “had gone on to other things.” He also likes to perform the legend when the conversation strays to ghost stories and “in a class situation once when [he] was discussing the tradition of theatres being haunted.”

The informant’s reaction to the legend is one of mixed disbelief and fascination: “I haven’t seen it, so I don’t know that I believe in ghosts at all, but I can’t prove there aren’t any, but I’ve never seen one, so I’m fairly nonplussed about it myself. If it were true, art of me would think it was sort of awesome that you could just hang out at a place that you cared about forever and ever and ever.” He also feels a little sorry for the ghost, if there is one: “Part of me also thinks that if there is something after you die, it would be sort of lame to be stuck in a theatre in a 2500-person town in the middle of Texas.” According to the informant, the legend of the haunting is now printed in the theatre’s programs for all of the patrons to read.

When the “high school students and volunteers” that the informant mentions told of their inexplicable experiences, those stories became memorates added to Will’s legend. The legend, if it is indeed now printed in the programs, has become folklorismus—the theatre uses it as a way to generate interest and make money.