Good Legends

[Tillghast]

Here you can post about the older and stranger 'folk' tales.

The jersey devil is a folk legend. He was the 13th son of a crazy guy in Leeds, that flew out of his chimney and started scaring peple.

Folk tales include monsters, legends on how thing got to where they are( Ex: This rock is called Blood Rock because of the satanic cows that pratice their rituals...)

and good old stuff

Post away!

[Rhomphaia]

Alright. I am not sure if this fits squarely into this thread, but I have heard two sources for this, one older and the other somewhat new, though still decades old.

The older legend comes from Eskimo and Inuit tribes about how 'devils' inhabit certain islands off of the Alaskan coast. Plus, most of you probably know about the legendary 'Demon Bear' these peoples have legends of as well.

The next account was told to me and a friend of mine by a man we both knew. This man claimed to be a former paranormal operative in the US Military and he has read and heard some strange reports. This is the story as it was told to me.

"In the 1950s, the Navy was looking to set up a small listening post on a northern island off of Alaska's shores. They sent a destroyer up with the proper equipment to set up a few survey camps on a few candidate islands. The island of this report was lightly forested, but had severely heavy underbrush. The destroyer set men and equipment on rafts to drop them off then moved on to the next island to drop off another team. They got hourly reports from the team on that forested island until nightfall. Nothing unusual was in the reports except for the team leader thought that the utter lack of animal life was strange. Just after sundown the ship was dropping off the last team for the day when they got a frantic radio transmission that the survey team on the forested island was under attack.

The destroyer raced to their aid and arrived hours later, when only a couple of men were found in a raft on the water, suffering from the first signs of shell shock (known today as Post Traumatic Stress Disorder). The things they said made no sense. They talked about red eyes and teeth and claws. Indeed one man bore what appeared to be a claw wound from a medium sized bear on his side. They also reported the rest of the six man team was dead.

The Captain began doing radio checks with the other teams. Nothing seemed amiss and everything normal, except for this one island. Troops were readied from the destroyer but the men who had been attacked insisted that the creatures only appeared once night fell and stayed away from lights, so the Captain had the troops wait until dawn before deploying.

The small force of men arrived on the island to find carnage. The other four men had been torn apart and apparently half eaten. The whole camp and all of its equipment was in shambles, ripped apart by something of great strength. Also, trees and rifles had been smashed apart in the fight as well. However no sign, hide or hair was ever found of the creatures."

Like I said, I know this probably does not fit into this category well, but I included it because I have heard of similar disappearances and of local legends of creatures that cannot be seen until night from the native people of Alaska. This story hit me hard though because I had heard of this after I heard the 'island demon' and 'demon bear' legends.

[Tillghast]

Wow, that was awesome!

[Rhomphaia]

I also got one from here where I live, in Portland OR.

On the border of the cities of Portland and Gresham there is a hill called Grant Butte (Mount Baldy by the locals due to a fire some years ago). This hill has a colored history. I will recite the history as far as I have been able to verify by news clippings and public record.

Around the turn of the 20th century (1900), the area was completely forested (later turned to farms then from the 50s onward into houses and neighborhoods) and the area was extensively logged, both for building and fire materials and to clear ground for farms and ranches.

Back around the mid 40s, there was a sufficient number of houses to warrant a water tower on the hill. The structure was made of red brick and stood about two stories high. The remains of the old tower and pumphouse are still visible today on the SE side of the hill. This tower is signifigant because a couple of years after it was built, two boys were playing near it and one boy saw a brick fall and hit the other boy in the head. In a panic he ran home to his mother and described the scene, including a copious amount of blood and some brains, something an eight year old boy of that time would not have known about. She called the cops and ambulance and rushed up to the tower only to find the dead boy asleep at the base of the tower, uninjured. The first boy was sent to psychaiatrists (sp?) and they determined he was telling the truth. This story appeared in the Oregonian.

The next bit I have been able to find is the installation of the North water tower in the 70s. This tower was larger than the old one and entended a couple of stories underground, though a good bit was above ground as well. When a landslide rendered this tower useless, a massive water tank was built on the south face of the hill in the late 80s. I cannot even guess the size of this cavernous beast. This water tower is still in use today.

Now for the good stuff, the legends.

During the logging years, it was common practice to just strip the logs on the site and toss the branches into a furnace designed to keep the loggers warm at night. Legend has it there was one of these on the top of Grant Butte (there IS a very old smokestack up there, caked in rust). Now, this particular legend says that a stack of logs broke loose and rolled over a few loggers, killing some and maiming others. Now instead of transporting the bodies and wounded all the way back to Portland (at the time five+ miles away through forest), they just tossed them all, dead or alive, into the furnace. Apparently this is where the rest of the legends got their 'fuel'.

Although I have no specific incidents, other than a couple of my own personal experiences, I have heard of some strange things on the hill. Stuff like satanic rituals inside the north water tower during the mid 80s (when it was emptied) and into the 90s (before it was sealed). I have seen the evidence of these rituals myself, though they looked haphazard and like those who were drawing the symbols were either in a hurry or had no clue as to what they were doing. A lot more of it still just looks like graffiti.

Other than my own experiences, that is about it. Most of my experiences were rather mundane, strange noises or mild feelings of dread. The only two note worthy incidences that I have experienced are a sighting of a pair of disembodied red eyes charging me and a low fog like mist over an area of the forest in mid afternoon on a sunny summer day. Both I cannot really describe in any more detail, other than to say I honestly found the mist to be more frightening than the eyes.

[XPyromaniacX]

Essex Mountain SanitoriumThose are a couple of pretty great stories and the first one really freaked me out because I saw a bear in my front yard just as the sun was setting tonight.

This is a a great site for the Essex Mountain Sanitorium, A mental institute that was shut down and demolish but was supposedly haunted and has some very freaky pictures and videos. Because the place was so vandalized almost every picture is pretty scary at night.

Essex Mountain Sanitorium

[Rhomphaia]

That is definately an interesting site. All kinds of sites exist around the US, especially in the eastern states. It would take a lifetime to go visit them all.

[saladins follower]

the 1st one was very good

but i skimmed through the 2nd one got boring

[maidenmoon]

theres ths one abou the black dog in a church were two monks were praying a huge black dog, about 6 foot tall with red eyes ra in and rang there necks in one and disappeared through the wall. something about the church being near a death path (where dead peoples in coffins were walked over to get to the grave yards)

[XSAS_Daughter]

maidenmoon thats very freaky.