A story locals are taught as kids that *may* have been true but is almost certainly not. I feel like every town has one.

26 comments

  1. That Mecklenburg County was the first political entity to declare independence from Britain.

  3. Supposedly, there’s some old metal bridge in the woods round where I live down a dirt road. From what I’ve been told, some decently know outlaw or something was hung from the bridge after being caught. It’s possible it happened, but I haven’t been able to find any information anywhere besides word of mouth.

  4. I’ve posted this before. Stonewall Jackson swore no Union soldier could kill him.

    He was right. He was accidently cut down by friendly fire.

    I have no idea if he actually made such a boast but it’s a common thing known here.

  5. John Walsh (From the T.V. show “America’s Most Wanted”) owed money to the Colombians for losing cocaine/drug deal gone wrong, so they kidnapped and killed his kid. Colombians were known for severing heads.

  6. I’ll pull one from where I grew up, not where I live now.

    “Eagles fans booed Santa”.

    Well, yes they did, but context matters. It was the last game of a lousy season, but the team management promised a Christmas halftime extravaganza. It snowed heavily the night before, and the snow wasn’t even properly removed from the stands by the time the fans arrived. The first half was a terrible game, but hey, at least the halftime would feature a Christmas extravaganza, right?

    Well, most of the performers didn’t show up because of the snow, including the guy they hired to play Santa. So, the management grabbed some skinny teenager at the last minute, and threw the oversized Santa suit on him. The promised “Christmas Extravaganza” featured little more than this skinny kid in a poorly fitting Santa suit being dragged around the field in a cheap-looking sleigh. This was the last straw, so the boo-birds came out to sing in force that day.

  9. The general details of this story are true, but the specific details are muddy.

    Prior to 1931, The Star Spangled Banner was one of three or so stand-in national anthems. This changed when , supposedly, a US President (Hoover, if I remember correctly) came and heard it being played at a flag raising at the local fort, Fort Meade.

    It was then that he fought for The Star Spangled Banner to be the official national anthem.

    Now, most online resources claim that this was a US Senator, but, especially at the time, South Dakota Senators didn’t really have the voice to start such a movement. That’s why most people around here subscribe to the legend that it was the President.

  11. My hometown was settled by survivors of the Donner Party. My kids went to elementary school at Elisha Donner school.

  12. Supposedly, the reason the capital of Nebraska is Lincoln and not Omaha is because of a prank. They were getting ready to build the capital building in Omaha and some guys from Lincoln stole the cornerstone in the middle of the night. It was deemed easier to move the construction site to Lincoln than to ship the cornerstone back to Omaha.

    Ofc, the more likely reason is that by making Lincoln the capital, it blocked a huge chunk of the state from passing a movement to split from Nebraska to become part of Kansas (because a lot of Nebraskans identified with the Confederacy and viewed the politicians in Omaha as the oppressive north.)

    (Edit: Not siding with the folks sympathetic to the confederacy by calling it “the oppressive north”. Just stating the rhetoric they used to try and justify the movement.)

  13. Carlin, NV – there used to be a cult here. It wasn’t really a cult, it was a [hippie commune](https://orderofmyrddin.wordpress.com/2010/09/04/meta-tantay/) .The land was owned by members of The Grateful Dead.

    Salt Lake City, UT – [Lily E. Gray](https://archivesnews.utah.gov/2017/10/31/lilly-e-gray/) was the Victim of the Beast 666. She was probably the victim of an asshole husband.

    Lucama/Wilson, NC – that “acid park” or the original location of the [whirligig](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vollis_Simpson) was in any way haunted by a man’s dead daughter. And that began building the whirligigs because she died in a car accident. She didn’t…none of his children died. He was a celebrated folk artist who loved crafting junk metal into art. He was also a great friend, loved animals, and always kind. Yes, I knew him personally. My great grandmother went to school with him. I’ve known him since I was very young.

    Hopkinsville, KY – that aliens (or “goblins”) invaded a farm right outside of Hopkinsville in [Kelly, KY](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kelly%E2%80%93Hopkinsville_encounter). This one…I mean..who knows, maybe.

  17. Transit buffs have the legend of the 76th Street subway station that was supposedly built or finished

  20. My town is so small that it doesn’t have many legends. The population is roughly 80 these days. However, there is one [true story](https://nkytribune.com/2016/07/old-time-kentucky-jackson-purchase-area-had-its-own-version-of-free-state-of-jones-during-civil-war/) and one legend that may or may not be tied to it.

    I’ll start with the legend. So there’s this place a couple miles from town that people call F.O.D. (Field of Dreams) where people go to smoke weed and party. There used to be a big oak tree there (until about 6 years ago) that had some kind of large metal thing embedded in it about 15 feet off the ground. It was just like this metal ring type thing. It almost resembled a bear trap with spikes. The legend was that they used to hang people there.

    Anyway, nobody from my town knows a lot about the local history before the 20th century… but about 10 years ago this group of volunteers randomly came here to locate and restore the tombstone of a Pro-Union guerilla fighter. The locals thought they were crazy at first because this was deep Confederate territory and nobody had heard any stories about Pro-Union fighters from this area. Well they found the grave and it turned out they were much more knowledgeable than any of the locals on this subject.

    So, as we learned, my hometown was the only Pro-Union town in this entire part of Kentucky. While the entire region was Pro-Confederate, my town was settled by people from other areas that were Pro-Union. So this man named Elisha Owens started a company of Pro-Union guerrillas to fight for their cause, despite being surrounded by much bigger Confederate towns on all sides. Confederates regularly raided and attacked the town, setting ablaze everything in their path. Elisha lost his life in one of these attacks and, judging by the dates on the tombstones that were recovered, it appears as if his whole family died too, including a young child.

    It turns out that all of this information was well-documented but we locals just weren’t aware of it. Probably because this entire town was wiped out by Confederates. The few who survived fled. Upon looking into this further, there was at least one known hanging a few miles from town, but the exact location is not documented. That leads me to believe the legend about that tree with the metal thing may have actually been where that hanging took place. There’s just no way to verify it and the tree was cut down about 6 years ago. There’s also a bunch of tombstones in the local cemetery with no names that are from the era. Many are known locally to be the graves of slaves but many more could perhaps be Pro-Union fighters who died at that time. A memorial was erected a few years back in honor of the unknown people buried there.

  21. The feral people of Michigan, originating in Holland, MI. It was a way for local parents, even in the UP, to get their kids back by nightfall. I was terrified to meet one in the woods, still have trouble walking trails alone sometimes.

  22. Not sure if this counts, but in Tampa FL we have a whole festival, Gasparilla. It’s a historical reenactment of the fictitious capture of the City by pirates. It’s similar to Mardi Gras with various parades and events. There are reenactments of the pirates arriving in Tampa Bay, capturing the mayor, etc.

  23. Growing up in New England, up until 1991, we had a holiday called “Fast Day”, and while the reasons why we had it were explained to me, I never heard the same story twice.

    (In any case,it was removed from the calendar in favor of MLK Day.)

  24. The legend of Hell’s Hollow from my hometown.

    My hometown was a major railroad stop in the mid-late 1800s. There was also a stagecoach line that ran through a patch of dense woods going through a hollow right outside of town. Bank coaches and travel coaches picking up money and rich travelers from the trains would get held up by a local gang of highwaymen that operated out of a cave in the hollow. Whatever they stole would be stashed underneath this big, ugly, gnarled oak tree called the Devil’s Rocking Chair. Legend says anything placed under the tree was under watch by the devil himself and could only be taken by the people who put it there. Anyone else was faced horrifying consequences.

    Well, the sheriff of the next town over finally managed to catch one of the members of this little gang and he told them everything about the hideout and the drop spot. He got himself a posse and they went out to investigate the guy’s claims. Sheriff went out to check the tree and the rest went to the cave. When they reached the cave, however, there was nobody there and no sign it was being used. They waited for the sheriff to return, but he hadn’t by nightfall. They searched the area, including the tree, but found nothing. Not even the stolen goods.

    A year or so later, a hunter in the woods found a body lashed to the trunk of the big tree. It was just bones, picked clean, in a ragged set of clothing by the time it was found, so no cause of death could actually be determined. The legend says the devil stayed true to the bargain.

  25. I am going to use the words that people use to describe this rumor, I know the words may be offensive, but I want to tell the story the way it has always been told. My hometown has a section that everyone calls Midgetville. It is hidden behind other houses and to get to it you have to go down what looks like a driveway and then there’s a turn off that most people miss, which I think adds to the mystique. There are two stories. One, it was built for The Munchkins from Wizard of Oz. This makes zero sense since we are 3000 miles away from Hollywood. The other is that it was built for little people that worked for the circus. The reality was the houses were built in the English Tudor style and had windows lower than normal, which is likely why people said it was built for little people. The most common addition to this rumor is “We went back there and there were were midgets and they threw rocks at our car.” This is something I have heard as a first hand account from people who “went there” in the 70s through my own high school years in the late 90s. I have also heard this exact story associated with other Midgetvilles in New Jersey, Virginia and California. I know people that lived there since the 70s and in all of that time, there has never been a single little person there. There are stories that people harassed children there. In the years since it was built some of the houses have been torn down, so of the original 9, only 2 or 3 are the original houses, and even those houses have been remodeled so they don’t look the way they used to, but the stories persist.

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