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Impact of urban legends
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Goatman of Beltsville, Maryland
The storyteller told the story of the Goatman from Beltsville story to me. On a summer night in 2005, she and her friend were driving back from a mall. Her friend took a shortcut home to Beltsville, Maryland by way of Callington Road Bridge. While on this shortcut home, her friend stopped the car on the side of road and turned off the headlights. She proceeded to tell the interviewee the story of the Goatman, emphasizing its truthfulness the entire time. After she heard the story, the interviewee never drove across Callington Road Bridge again.
The storyteller told me the story of the Goatman in a mutual friend’s dorm room at night. I had come to the dorm room to ask my friend if he knew any urban legends of ghost stories from around campus or the state of Maryland. The storyteller, a 21-year-old biology major, shouted excitedly from the couch that she knew one. She is from Beltsville, Maryland. Her mother is a lawyer and her father is a math professor. My friend and I sat down on the couch and listened intently as she told the story: The Goatman from Beltsville.
In the 1970s, a crazy doctor did a genetic experiment. The doctor bred a goat with a human by fusing the two embryos. A baby was born half human and half goat. It had horns, really thick hair on its face, a tail, sharp teeth, and a temper. The deformed baby grew into a really gross guy. As Goatman grew older he became more and more violent until finally the doctor kicked him out. After that, the Goatman retreated into the forest to live. He eats cats and dogs as his main source of food, and from time to time he eats humans walking alone at night along this one road commonly known as Goatman Hallow (Callington Road Bridge).
Goatman is bloodthirsty, fearless, and always on the prowl. Sometimes he wanders into people’s back yards and eats their pets. Owners will find their pets the next day with only the carcasses remaining. Kids are warned not to take the shortcut home through the forest because Goatman might eat them. One time a few kids took the shortcut home at night and this one kid fell behind.
When one usually thinks of a hearing a ghost story, the setting is dark with flickering light (such as around a campfire or in a basement with bad lighting) and, of course, it is nighttime. Needless to say, when I heard this story during the middle of the day on a Friday, I was a little taken aback. When prompted for any urban legends or ghost stories a white, female friend of mine immediately responded with, “Have you ever heard of de Sales Academy?” With my negative response, the nineteen year old student jumped into her story:
When asked, the storyteller elaborated that the old man was no longer outside the Wawa when his gym teacher went back outside. The teller had slight pauses in several places in his story, most notably before explaining that his gym teacher could see ghosts and after the elderly woman confirming it was her late husband.
Come with me as I take you inside one of the most haunted locations in the United States today. It is a journey down dark hallways and into rooms painted by both shadow and light where spirits talk and phantoms walk. St. Albans Sanatorium is a destination known by serious paranormal investigators as a place where they can seek answers to the mysteries of what lies beyond death. Some of these investigators were able to find resolutions for themselves to a number of these age old riddles through their experiences at the sanatorium. The frightening and true stories found within the pages of this book are about these inquisitive investigators’ encounters with The Ghosts of St. Albans Sanatorium.
I was told a story about one of Cloudcroft's more famous ghosts when casually lounging in the undergraduate student physics lounge at the University of Maryland, College Park, with a group of students during a lunch break before class. This occurred during early April, 2005. I inquired whether anyone knew any ghost stories or folklore. A friend of mine volunteered that she knew several ghost stories from her travels. The storyteller was a 23-year-old Caucasian female from an upper-middle class family in Baltimore. She currently lives in Crofton, MD, and is a physics and astronomy major.
History tells about how a neighbor’s pig fell astray into the Nurse family’s yard and Rebecca Nurse yelled at her neighbor. Soon after the neighbor feel ill and died of a
Imagine yourself camping in the Pine Barrens. You hear a noise and then see a strange creature lurking in the shadows. Could it be the Jersey Devil? The Legend of the Jersey Devil began in 1735, it was supposedly the thirteenth child of Mrs. Leeds. When she found out she was pregnant with her thirteenth child, she cursed it and said it better be a devil. When it was born, the midwife died of shock and the Devil ate its twelve sibilants, sparing its mother and flew out the chimney (Juliano 1). Another version of the story is that Mrs. Leeds cursed the child after giving birth to it, she then locked it in the attic for years. It then transformed into the beast it is today and escaped into the woods (Russell 1). The Jersey Devil is only a myth to some and a horrific reality to others. Thousands of people have seen the Devil and been harassed by it throughout the years. There are many similarities in these sightings. Many of the witnesses say it has a long neck, a tail, wings, and hooves. There has also been vicious attacks on animals. Several accounts have reported mutilated pets and livestock. The legend of the Jersey Devil may be true because of the sightings, descriptions, and attacks.
My teammate originally heard this story from her classmates during her junior year in high school. My teammate had no problems remembering the story; she was more worried that I would think she thought it was true. There were pauses in her story telling as I wrote down what she said. She related the story with little emotion or suspense. The laughter in the background also affected the impact of the legend because it is difficult to be scared when there is laughter all around. My teammate also did not make a significant effort to enhance the effect of the story through hand motions or vocal tone inflections.
In April I sat down with a friend at my house and asked about any urban legends or ghost stories he had encountered. After a couple legends he had seen in movies, he mentioned a haunted bridge about ten minutes away from downtown. He is a twenty-one year-old White male; his father owns an appliance store and his mother helps out with the books. He first heard this story in the ninth grade from a couple of friends. Supposedly, they had heard from kids who had actually been to the bridge and heard strange things at night. The bridge is located off of Uniontown road, between a couple old farms. He has not encountered the bridge first hand but still remembers the story surrounding it:
This story was recounted to me by a 20 year old female student at my University. She is a Communications major, coming from an upper middle class family in the rural suburbs of New Jersey. I interviewed her in her apartment sometime in the late afternoon in an informal setting. Although she is skeptical about things such as urban legends and ghost tales, she explained to me that this story always unsettled her in an inexplicable way.
Urban legends are the supernatural folklore of our modern society. From one generation to the next, they orally travel throughout the world, constantly changing from one region to the next. Although cultural variations exist, the core of all these urban legends remains the same, to unveil the universally known individual and societal fears. “The Graveyard Wager” is a timeless urban legend told again and again, and the one of which I will explore more in depth.
The teller showed no unusual emotion while retelling this story to me. He was positive that it was not true. He told the story in a mocking tone; he sometimes finished his sentences with laughter or a smile.
The people who told, invited him over their house, he went over, the mens wife opened the door and welcomed him in, and as he took a step in, the guys wife screamed and snatched the nearest rifle and almost shot him at their door. They were sent to court and the judges did not believe a word that came out of the man and the wife. He was then free to go after being hold in charge of "crime."
Goodman Brown heads down a “dreary road...” (311). He is then approached by his fellow traveler, who happens to be the devil. The devil had with him “a staff that bore the likeness of a great black snake" (312). The devil tries to convince Goodman
This short story revolves around a young boy's struggle to affirm and rationalize the death and insanity of an important figure in his life. The narrator arrives home to find that Father James Flynn, a confidant and informal educator of his, has just passed away, which is no surprise, for he had been paralyzed from a stroke for some time. Mr. Cotter, a friend of the family, and his uncle have much to say about the poor old priest and the narrator's relationship with him. The narrator is angered by their belief that he's not able, at his young age, to make his own decisions as to his acquaintances and he should "run about and play with young lads of his own age ..." That night, images of death haunt him; he attempts make light of the tormenting face of the deceased priest by "smiling feebly" in hopes of negating his dreadful visions. The following evening, his family visits the house of the old priest and his two caretakers, two sisters, where he lies in wake. There the narrator must try and rationalize his death and the mystery of his preceding insanity.
As soon as this fear arises, a mysterious traveler appears. This traveler is associated with being the devil. The devil is prevalently known as a symbol for evil. Especially when considering this evil spirit from a religious standpoint as Young Goodman Brown does. A black staff accompanies this devilish traveler. The black color signifies evil and the staff was described as a great, black snake. The snake continues as a biblical symbol for the evil one, as a serpent in the Garden of Eden that tempted Eve to commit the original sin. The traveler that carries the black, snake-like staff, happens to be Brown’s guide through the woods. Young Goodman Brown is not in safe hands. The goodness that survives in Brown can sense that he is in possible danger. Trying to refuse to go further into the woods, the evil traveler convinces the protagonist to do otherwise.