Local myths and legends - tell us yours

This is entirely separate from the brothel in my old building.

Legend has it that the highwayman Dick Turpin was born in the Spaniards Inn on 21 September 1705. This may or may not be true, but what is known is that his father was a landlord of the Spaniards Inn during the 18th Century. The upstairs room at the pub is named The Turpin Bar in his honor and is believed to be the site of his childhood bedroom. Turpin is said to have used the Spaniards Inn as a hideout from which to plan and execute his many highway robberies; the victims of which are said to roam the surrounding heath.

On dark evenings, the upstairs room has been known to turn unnaturally cold as a figure, believed to be that of Turpin, drifts through the walls. In the downstairs bar, the spectral hand of 'Black Dick', a moneylender who was run down by a coach and horses on the road outside, has been known to tug at drinkers' sleeves. Outside the Spaniards Inn, there is a horse that haunts the car park and a female ghost in an ethereal white dress that stalks the garden. It's no wonder the Spaniards Inn is notorious for being one of the spookiest pubs in London.

The garden also has a literary history: Dickens chose the Spaniards beer garden as the setting for Mrs Bardell's arrest in The Pickwick Papers, and Keats allegedly wrote his Ode to a Nightingale here. On Saturdays the pub offers a special paella menu and should the English summer turn the heath a little muddy, dog walkers will be grateful for the ‘Doggy Wash’ where they can wash their muddy pets.

Anyway! There was a legend at our high school about the "Witches' Grave" up in the Helderbergs. Rumour was that there had been a witches' coven back in the 18th Century - and all the witches were burried in this spooky old graveyard way up in the hills. That part of the country, despite being very rural, is dotted with dozens of old graveyards, often just family plots, now miles away from any modern houses or villages. The Witches' Grave was very difficult to find - up a long and winding dirt road. If it was wet, the high iron oxide content in the soil would stain the mud red, so that it would look like your car was covered in blood.

Anyway, supposedly there were a gang of Seniors a couple of years older than us (of course) who had gone and spent the night getting stoned at the Witches' Grave - they retired to an abandonned house nearby, where one of them proceeded to become posessed and COMPLETELY FLIP OUT AND BURN THE HOUSE TO THE GROUND, WITH ALL HIS FRIENDS IN IT!!!

We did eventually find the graveyard - it was very old and quite overgrown, lending it an especially spooky air. There were a whole bunch of graves together, with one segregated off at a slight distance, with ironwork all around it. It had the poem "remember youth as you pass by, as you are now, so once was I; As I am now, soon you will be, so prepare to die and follow me" (or something like that.)

Anyway, pretty spellbinding stuff for a gang of 16 year old goffs. ;-)

Blackheath also has loads of fantastic stories about the CAVES!!! Apparently they investigated them, and found the remains of wild Georgian to Victorian orgies in there, chandeliers soaked with opium rags and all that...

And then the roads all around start subsiding and swallowing double decker busses! So the council started pumping in concrete to try and stop the damage, but it took a million gallons of concrete (according to Joe) and still it kept pumping...

The biggest myth about Blackheath is that the heath itself sits on top of a giant plague pit. Mark S still claims this to be true but HE IS WRONG.

CARVING OF A HORNED GOD! OMG I am irrationally excited by this. I want to go and find it.

Try using a torch.

I drive through a haunted wood on my way to work. I'll try to find more about the ghost that haunts it.

I can't remember the exact location of the caves/cave-ins - I think it was actually a bit of Shooters Hill that collapsed, but I could be wrong. The road was rebuilt, but there are definitely unexplained dips - I think by the weird pond in the crook of two roads that you have to walk by to get to a bus stop. (Sorry, I've not been there in over a year at this point so my memory is getting fuzzy.)

They have all been sealed - apparently Joe and his Subterranea Britannica buddies tried to get in, but you really can't.

Theres a nightclub in Melbourne wot is meant to be haunted (the place they hold Retro in). Some upstairs room, aparrently. They include it on the ghost tour you can go on.

For years I was of the belief (as were many others) that the statue had been erected as a monument to a child who had drowned in the Loch. I subsequently felt a wave of sadness everytime I passed it.

It wasn't until last year when I took a guided boat trip on the Loch I found out that the statue was erected by a local landowner in the likeness of his very much alive son.

Derek Acorah was signed by Bill Shankly. That's spooky.

hah, I live like a block away from you. My Grandad grew up in the neighborhood too. He used to tell a great story about th time Squizzy Taylor borrowed his billy kart and rode it down Bridge Rd.

My aunt's huge house was a former mink farm. Its former owner was the mink farmer, Harold, who died there - and was said by my aunt, to haunt. He made lots of bumping noises but suddenly stopped when my cousin was born in the '70s.

north-east's only one that springs to mind is the lambton worm (wahey, mp3s of the song, there)

Identify yourself!

Melbourne's a creepy town. There's quite a few grizzly atories if you look hard enough.

The Cobb & Co depot on Little Lonsdale is the most malevolently evil-feeling place I've been (it was on the Ghost Tour), even more so than the time I visited Glencoe (scene of horrible highland massacre) and Cullodeon as a kid.

Youll find lots of ppl with the same interest there...Alot of it is doing what you are doing here...debunking ghost stories and myths.

Tootles!

http://theshadowlands.net/jd.htm

Dude, Weird NJ!

(cue bee gees) i started a joke with some friends that there WAS an old town myth that if it rained during Tulip Time, it meant that year's Queen was not a virgin. of course it rained one year, and the queen (who was a kind of a friend of mine) was terrified and embarrassed that ppl thought she was a skank. i have no idea how she heard of the "myth."

The Buckland Shag!

http://www.bucklandsurrey.net/HISTORY/legend1.jpg

A shallow steam crosses under the main road in Buckland, near the Jolly Farmers Pub. According to legend, it used to be a silent and very lonely spot. The Story is told of how a farmer's beautiful daughter was courted by the son of a squire. One evening they were walking together beside the stream and halted by a large stone that stood there. The young man talked earnestly to the girl, making a most improper suggestion. Shocked beyond description when she realised what he was proposing, she fell dead at his feet. The would-be seducer was then seized by remorse at the result of his wickedness, and drawing out a dagger, he stabbed himself through the heart. In the morning their bodies were found side-by-side and the nearby stone was found trickling with blood. No wiping or cleaning could stem the flow, and it continued to bleed as a grim reminder of the tragedy.

After this event, a fearsome four-legged beast, ape-like with a shaggy coat, was supposed to squat behind the bleeding stone at midnight , beside the stream that still bears the name, Shag Brook .

It was a brave villager that dared to pass that way at night. One Buckland man, after a night’s drinking session at a Reigate ale-house, swore that if the Shag appeared, he would fight it off with his trusty Hawthorn stick. As he walked home across the meadow near the brook, The Shag suddenly appeared in front of him. The man struck out with his stick, which landed with a thud. In an instant the man became sober and overcome with panic, jumping a stile and running as fast as he could across the field, with the Shag monster following behind. He only just escaped its wrath - so the story goes.

In about 1800 a team of four horses was returning to Reigate one night after delivering corn to Dorking. As they came to the stone beside the Shag Brook they suddenly stopped. No amount of yelling or whipping by the driver would make the horses take another step forward. The horses were trembling and sweating with fear. When day broke a single horse was able to pull the wagon across the brook that the four could not or would not cross the night before. By the late 1800's the Lord of the Manor ordered the stone to be removed to his own grounds to quiet the superstitious fears of his tenants. The Buckland Shag was exorcised by the Rector of Buckland, the Reverend Willoughby Bertie , with bell, book and candle.

This is the logo of the Buckland Shag Morris Men:

http://images.google.co.uk/images?q=tbn:eAhaqgnPTF8J:www.modyn.co.uk/FolkDance/Buckland/BuckIkon.gif

I'm seriously considering getting it tattooed on my person...

i love the shag.

REVIVE

I've been watching Ghost Hunters all afternoon, great stuff.

I also just discovered that I've bought many a phone recharge credit in the former home of a multiple murderess, Ms Martha Needles. She offed her family and a couple of lodgers in the late 19th century for insurance money with arsenic. There was quite an uproar and she ended up hanged at the Old Melbourne Gaol. Apparently she's still responsible for screaming and scratching at night time within the gaol to this day.

Shag monster

WTF?!

ohhh yeah. here it is:

http://www.bucklandshag.pwp.blueyonder.co.uk/images/shaglogo.png

Ok, now that I could see as a design.

REVIVE!

Billy in the Bowl - he was this fella who had no legs and used to go around in a wooden bowl with wheels. And he used to murder prostitutes, but no one minded, because he was an auld Dublin character, wheh wheh wheh.

Black Annis haunts various parts of Leicester. She would abduct children, leading them away through tunnels from the city to the hills outside where her cave was. There she would eat them and use their skins as clothes. There is an archway near the castle which my daughter will not go under after hearing this tale.

Shag monster

Can I change usernames?

One of the men suspected of being Jack The Ripper taught there.

Matt, was it Montague John Druitt?

That's the fella.

He's innocent! And has an awesome moustache.

(had)

he committed suicide:(

there's a spot in the hills about a mile from where I grew up called 'gravity point' where you park your car on (what looks like?) a downhill slope, put it in neutral and it drifts backwards up the hill a bit. good times

!!!

Tremendoid, that's awesome! YOU're awesome. I'ma go take a drive this weekend.

Like the electric brae?
But that's in the middle of the road - you can't go make out there or anything, I think.

slightly off-topic, perhaps, but last night i was at this bar and people were rehashing one of those gerbil urban legends and relating it to a local personality, and i wanted to be like, "um, that's a ridiculous urban legend", but i didn't and humanity is possibly the poorer for it.

it's kind of like when i was volunteering at the soup kitchen and arguing over the virtues of port vs stouts

Tremendoid, that's awesome! YOU're awesome. I'ma go take a drive this weekend.

i know you're being an asshole but anyway, mine is the 'pasadena, california' one

Leprechauns/Stereotypes

Partholón was the son of Sera, son of Sru, a descendant of Magog, son of Japheth, son of Noah. He came to Ireland from the Middle East through Anatolia, Greece, Sicily and Iberia, and arrived 300 or 312 years after the flood, on 14 May, a Tuesday, landing at Inber Scéne (Kenmare in South Kerry)

This weirdo artist made a totem pole for a public park. City workers cut off a few feet of it at the bottom (to make it fit or somethng). The artist got hella pissed and cursed the town's sewer system. The curse gets brought up whenever the town has sewer problems.

woah, just how pissed did he get

pissed meaning angry lol

Lugh joins the Tuatha Dé Danann

As a young man Lugh travels to Tara to join the court of king Nuada of the Tuatha Dé Danann. The doorkeeper will not let him in unless he has a skill with which to serve the king. He offers his services as a wright, a smith, a champion, a swordsman, a harpist, a hero, a poet and historian, a sorcerer, and a craftsman, but each time is rejected as the Tuatha Dé Danann already have someone with that skill. But when Lugh asks if they have anyone with all those skills simultaneously, the doorkeeper has to admit defeat, and Lugh joins the court and is appointed Chief Ollam of Ireland. He wins a flagstone-throwing contest against Ogma, the champion, and entertains the court with his harp. The Tuatha Dé Danann are at that time oppressed by the Fomorians, and Lugh is amazed how meekly they accept this. Nuada wonders if this young man could lead them to freedom. Lugh is given command over the Tuatha Dé Danann, and he begins making preparations for war.[

i have got to get a good collection of this stuff, it's astonishing

the Kirtland, Ohio Melon Heads

my synagogue: http://www.weirdus.com/states/pennsylvania/ghosts/general_wayne/index.php

Prince Georges County, MD, is said to be home to the Goatman. In some versions of the story, he is said to have been a scientist at a USDA facility, who was doing some sort of genetic engineering involving goats.

― j.lu (j.lu), Monday, September 5, 2005 7:21 AM (7 years ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

This was really close to the house I lived in until I was 6. Car rides at night got real intense after my mom told me about it.

One day at Emain Macha, Cú Chulainn overhears Cathbad teaching his pupils. One asks him what that day is auspicious for, and Cathbad replies that any warrior who takes arms that day will have everlasting fame. Cú Chulainn, though only seven years old, goes to Conchobar and asks for arms. None of the weapons given to him withstand his strength, until Conchobar gives him his own weapons. But when Cathbad sees this he grieves, because he had not finished his prophecy—the warrior who took arms that day would be famous, but his life would be short. Soon afterwards, in response to a similar prophecy by Cathbad, Cú Chulainn demands a chariot from Conchobar, and only the king's own chariot withstands him. He sets off on a foray and kills the three sons of Nechtan Scéne, who had boasted they had killed more Ulstermen than there were Ulstermen still living. He returns to Emain Macha in his battle frenzy, and the Ulstermen are afraid he will slaughter them all. Conchobar's wife Mugain leads out the women of Emain, and they bare their breasts to him. He averts his eyes, and the Ulstermen wrestle him into a barrel of cold water, which explodes from the heat of his body. They put him in a second barrel, which boils, and a third, which warms to a pleasant temperature

rumours of a fassbender movie, ah jaysus

After one particularly arduous combat Cú Chulainn lies severely wounded, but is visited by Lug, who tells him he is his father and heals his wounds. When Cú Chulainn wakes up and sees that the boy-troop of Emain Macha have attacked the Connacht army and been slaughtered, he has his most spectacular ríastrad yet:

“ The first warp-spasm seized Cúchulainn, and made him into a monstrous thing, hideous and shapeless, unheard of. His shanks and his joints, every knuckle and angle and organ from head to foot, shook like a tree in the flood or a reed in the stream. His body made a furious twist inside his skin, so that his feet and shins switched to the rear and his heels and calves switched to the front... On his head the temple-sinews stretched to the nape of his neck, each mighty, immense, measureless knob as big as the head of a month-old child... he sucked one eye so deep into his head that a wild crane couldn't probe it onto his cheek out of the depths of his skull; the other eye fell out along his cheek. His mouth weirdly distorted: his cheek peeled back from his jaws until the gullet appeared, his lungs and his liver flapped in his mouth and throat, his lower jaw struck the upper a lion-killing blow, and fiery flakes large as a ram's fleece reached his mouth from his throat... The hair of his head twisted like the tange of a red thornbush stuck in a gap; if a royal apple tree with all its kingly fruit were shaken above him, scarce an apple would reach the ground but each would be spiked on a bristle of his hair as it stood up on his scalp with rage. ”

—Thomas Kinsella (translator), The Táin, Oxford University Press, 1969, pp. 150–153

how can I get lj on dis ting /\

my aunt danced with one up beyond the horseshoe bridge one night and when he took the hat off it was the devil himself she says, and she swears left hoofprints on the rocks that are there yet as he ran away from her (she never said what it was made him take off in the interim but i know the woman with years and can offer a few suggestions) and when we said (round eyed, cos the devil was the only man that could friken you when you were seven out wesht, him and the banshee from darby o'gill) could we go and see the rocks and the prints she snorted and said 'the rocks will be long gone you eejits but i know for a fact the prints are still on them'- this is the kind of rearing we got

years later we got our own back when we slipped an unsuspecting cousin the wrong lotto results and sent him up to the kitchen (we were never let near the kitchen) with what we knew to be her numbers and i know for a fact her handprints are still on my arse