Volume 32
Spring-Summer
2006 |
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For almost four decades, folklorists have been writing about adolescents’
trips to spooky locations associated with legends about supernatural events.
My research suggests that the common term “legend trip” does not adequately
describe college students’ investigations of such sites. Rather than
expressing rebellion and disrespect, college students seek the opportunity
to play a role in an eerie drama that reflects a particular legend’s plot. Are
supernatural forces real? Can machines perceive ghosts more accurately
than humans can? Legend questers attempt to answer such questions by
participating in an open-ended, apparently dangerous adventure. Three texts
narrated by New York State college students provide examples of the meaning
of legend quests for older adolescents.
During the past six years I have collected
ghost stories from college students
across the United States, finding especially
good material in New York State. Some of
the most dramatic texts describe visits to places
associated with supernatural characters and
events. These stories follow a fairly consistent
pattern: identification of a site where
something unusual took place, an explanation
for the students’ visit, and then a detailed
description of what happened during
the visit. Since Bill Ellis’s publication of “Legend-Tripping in Ohio” in the early 1980s,
many folklorists have called such visits “legend
trips” (1982–3). While this term accurately
indicates a journey, it makes no reference
to the journey’s purpose. I would like
to suggest that another term, “legend quest,”
does more justice to older adolescents’ reasons
for visiting legend sites. Among these
reasons are desires to understand death,
probe the horror of domestic violence, and
express the uneasy relationship between humans
and technology. There is also a strong
emotional component: an attempt to feel
both thrilled and afraid under relatively safe
circumstances
Linda Dégh wrote the first articles on adolescents’
nocturnal journeys to haunted locations,
including two bridges in southern
Indiana, in 1969 and 1971. In Legend and
Belief, she argues that most adolescents’ legends
are quest stories: young storytellers
travel to haunted places, telling stories as
they “prepare for the anticipated legend in
action” (2001, 253). Kenneth A. Thigpen,
author of “Adolescent Legends in Brown
County: A Survey” (1971), suggests that
putting oneself under the power of the
supernatural is central to the success of such
visits. Certain ritual actions, such as blinking
car lights, sitting on accursed seats, and
approaching forbidden tombstones, can
result in extraordinary occurrences. Thigpen
identifies a three-part structure. Part one is
an “introduction to the plausibility of the
phenomenon” by someone who has already
visited the site. Part two happens at the site
itself, when people “act out the specified
requirements to cause the fulfillment of the
legend.” Here the supernatural collides with
reality, shocking and frightening participants.
In part three, people discuss what happened,
composing a story suitable for narration at the beginning of a later visit to the
same place (1971, 204–5).
The main advocate of legend trips’ importance
for adolescents has been Bill Ellis,
whose books and articles have delineated
the legend trip’s meaning. Ellis has urged
folklorists to accept the importance of legend
trips themselves, not just the legends
that get them going. Like Thigpen, Ellis
sees the legend trip as a tripartite process:
storytelling, rituals to invoke a supernatural
presence, and finally discussion of what
happened (2004, 114–5). His analyses of
legend trips have yielded intriguing and
thought-provoking conclusions. After reading
218 accounts of legend trips in Ohio,
Ellis concluded that such trips, like recreational
drug use, were “escapes into altered
states of being where conventional laws do
not operate” (2003, 189). He also notes that
outrageous pranks and sexual experiments
are important parts of the American
legend-trip tradition, with antecedents in
folklore of the British Isles. For example,
written records of visits to British holy wells
and graves of saints in the seventeenth and
eighteenth centuries show that young people
enjoyed drinking and carousing late at
night at such locations (2004, 116–7).
Defining the legend trip as a “ritual of
rebellion,” Ellis says that this ritual “serves
mainly as an excuse to escape adult supervision,
commit antisocial acts, and experiment
illicitly with drugs and sex. Both legend
and trip are ways of saying ‘screw you’
to adult law and order” (2003, 188). Cursing
and stamping on a grave, drinking,
smoking marijuana, and stealing tombstones
all defy adults’ moral standards while
proving how brave and rebellious the trip’s
participants are. Feeling frightened by a site’s
spooky atmosphere, young couples may
snuggle up to each other, enjoying some
forbidden sex (2004, 116).
Ellis speaks from experience, having surveyed
more than two hundred descriptions
of journeys to legend sites. I agree that rebellious
behavior is one notable ingredient
of such journeys, but I do not find it to be
the main motivator among older adolescents.
What seems to intrigue college students most is the opportunity to play a role
in a strange—perhaps supernatural—drama
linked to past tragedies. By visiting legend
sites, students try to discover whether
supernatural forces are real and to answer
other important questions. They also build
up intense feelings that range from excitement
to horror and fear. Like the central
character of “The Youth Who Wanted to
Learn What Fear Is,” they go on a quest to
discover what stimuli will make them feel
“scared to death” (Aarne and Thompson
1961, Type 326).
In college, where education occurs both
inside and outside the classroom, legend
quests offer a significant kind of experiential
learning. Since many freshmen have gone
on such journeys as high school students,
they know how to organize new ones. The
complexity of the college campus and its
folklore encourages exploration, as does the
transitional life stage of freshman year. As
Simon J. Bronner observes, “The college
campus resounds with talk of the strange
and wondrous” (1995, 143). Sometimes
students discover supernatural dimensions
of familiar campus buildings or landscape
features. Often they go off campus in cars
to investigate sites associated with local legends.
Simultaneously offering safety and
danger, the car becomes a crucial part of the
discovery process. All three of the stories in
this essay, narrated and collected by college
students attending public institutions of
higher learning in New York State, describe
amazing things that happened to college
students after a drive to a haunted place.
The connection between legend and location
transforms simple storytelling into a
performance that builds upon past events
and extends into the future.
Massapequa House
As legend scholars have shown, one of
the most frequent inspirations of a “good
scare” is a house associated with death. Sylvia
Grider’s essay “The Haunted House in Literature,
Popular Culture, and Tradition”
(1999) persuasively demonstrates how consistently
the Gothic novel, the oral ghost
story, and various forms of American popular
culture have portrayed a certain kind of
house as a source of danger and supernatural
events. The haunted house, “the ugly
stepsister of the enchanted castle” (193),
usually has more than one story and contains
such features as a “gambrel roof, turrets
or towers, and broken or boarded-up
windows with ‘spooky’ inhabitants peeking
out” (181). It often stands on a hilltop
or in another isolated location.
One notorious haunted house is the
Massapequa House on Long Island. Variously
known as the Massapequa Hell House
and the Massapequa Satan House, this
building draws carloads of college and high
school students, especially around Halloween.
Heather, a junior at Binghamton University,
collected the following story from
her friend Alison, a senior at the University
of Buffalo, on March 29, 2004:
If you live in Long Island, you’ve
definitely heard of the Massapequa
House . . . it’s right off the Southern
State Parkway. The best part is that this
eerie home stands right in the middle
of a residential neighborhood. Supposedly
the place is haunted, and it
definitely looks that way. The house is
extremely old and appears like a cemetery
due to the towering metal fence
that surrounds the entire house. There
are drapes the color of blood in every
window and a hearse in the driveway. I
don’t know the story of what went
on inside the house, but I do know
that when you park your car outside,
candles are placed in the windows.
AND the number of candles lit in the
windows corresponds to the number
of people in your car.
A few summers ago, my friends and
I took a ride out to the house one night.
When we got out of the car to take a
closer look, we saw a small flickering
light appear in one of the windows.
At this point, we all jumped back in
the car as fast as we could, and got the
hell out of there!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
What happens in Alison’s story might be
described as a drive-by legend quest. Leaving
the comfort and safety of their car for
only a moment, these college students wait
to see how many candles will appear in a
certain window. They are prepared to drive
away quickly, since they know that they may
be in danger if they see a number of candles
that matches the number of people in
their car. A glimpse of one flickering light is
enough to make them get “the hell out” of
the Massapequa Hell House’s vicinity. Because
danger seems imminent but avoidable,
the quest succeeds.
Sometimes, however, mere proximity to
the house is enough to scare young questers
away. Alison’s story shows how strongly the
Massapequa House evokes images of death:
with “drapes the color of blood” and “a
hearse in the driveway,” the place “appears
like a cemetery.” Clearly, confrontation with
death motivates this visit. In contemporary
American culture, we tend to separate death
from everyday life. Jessica Mitford’s The
American Way of Death Revisited notes that
ever since the late nineteenth century, families
have tended to let specialists care for
their deceased loved ones (1998, 148–9).
Young people who have not learned much
about death may seek it out within the
framework of a haunted house. The Massapequa
House, like the spooky edifice on a
hilltop in the movie Edward Scissorhands
(1990), is an architectural monstrosity that
represents death in the midst of everyday
life.
Why do candles in a window work so
well as symbols of death and danger? At
funerals, candles often illuminate the rooms
where solemn burial services take place. Folk
tradition tells us that a burning candle
shows whether we are safe or in danger:
“Life bound up with candle” and “Burned
candle causes death,” for example (Thompson
1964, E765.1.1 and D2061.2.2.6). The
Frank C. Brown Collection of North Carolina
Folklore also connects candles with mortality:
“To see a coffin in the candle betokens
death” (Hand 1964, 44). Matching the number
of candles to the number of people in
a car brings a dead metaphor to life: seeing
such a sight, students know that their number
is up. If they don’t drive away quickly,
their own deaths may follow.
Mary’s Grave
While haunted houses give students the
chance to confront images of death, graveyards
offer opportunities to tell legends
about the deaths of individuals who have
died tragically. Some legends describe women who, having died after suffering terrible
abuse and injustice, have become horror figures
that haunt the living. Many of these
women are named Mary. Since Christianity
emphasizes the suffering of both Mary, the
mother of Christ, and Mary Magdalene, the
choice of this name has strong religious
connotations. Linda Dégh suggests that
Mary legends, which often take the form of
séance magic and ritual divination, present
“an ambiguous image of the phantom heroine
as victim, witch, mother, avenger, child
abuser, and protector”(2001, 144). This
statement applies very well to the practice
of summoning horrifying women named
Mary in mirrors (see Dundes 2002, Langlois
1978, and Tucker 2005), as well as to legends
of Mary’s grave sites in many parts of
the United States. Linda McCoy Ray’s essay,
“The Legend of Bloody Mary’s Grave”
(1976), presents a collection of such legends
in one part of Indiana. “Long Island Folklore:
Mary’s Grave” and other web sites have
documented Mary’s grave locations in New
York State, offering good leads to folklorists
with an interest in legend research.
The following legend was collected by
Binghamton University student Dianne
Harris from Steve, a student at the same
university, on March 26, 2004:
This girl Mary, back when Long Island
was all farmland, it was very rurally
developed and a lot of it was just
land. This girl Mary was born into this
family; she was born into a farming
family in Nessaquogue. When she was
born, there were complications with her
birth that caused her mother to pass
away within a day or two. She was an
only child, and her father raised her on
the farm.
Mary didn’t exactly have a good childhood,
because her father always blamed
her for the death of his wife. So growing
up, her father basically used to rape
and beat Mary on a daily basis, and
puberty rolled around and Mary eventually
got pregnant from the raping. But
her father, being a devout Christian and
believing abortion is murder, her father
forced her to have the child.
A couple months later, through the
fact that she now had the child to raise
and her father still constantly beat her,
one night Mary snapped. In the middle
of the night, around one to two in
the morning, she took her baby to the
barn-house and in a satanic ritual, she
slaughtered all the animals in the barnhouse.
She then proceeded to take her
baby and herself; she climbed up to the
storage area on top of the barn, hung
her baby from the rafters, and then
hung herself.
Eventually her father, not knowing
where she was, went out to the barnyard
and found the gruesome scene, and
to save his family and his family’s name
the embarrassment of what happened,
he buried Mary and her baby in an area
that is now basically eroding.
The area that he buried her in is now
Long Beach, Long Island. There, if you
go down to a certain area and you start
calling Mary’s name, you’re supposed
to start hearing a girl crying and hear a
baby crying, and people have actually
claimed to see Mary walking along the
road carrying her child.
Personally the most fucked up thing
that ever happened to me—there is this
pond that is right near this general area
where she was supposed to live called
Rhododendron Drive, and this area is
Creepy as HELL. I went down there
one day with a couple of friends, and
just to test it, we started calling to Mary,
and literally before our eyes, this trail
of fog around this foggy figure started walking across the lake and just
stopped in the middle of the lake, then
came up off the lake about four or five
feet and just stopped there in midair.
My friend said he heard someone crying.
I was like, WHOA, we’re leavin’.
And this story is true, too . . . if you
don’t believe me you can go to one of
the web sites and check it out for yourself.
Steve, this story’s narrator, expresses shock
about what happened to Mary. The story
of her life and death is painful and difficult
to tell. Showing how much Mary’s story has
upset him, Steve says that seeing her ghost
is “the most fucked up thing that ever happened”
to him. Mary’s ghost not only
proves the existence of supernatural forces
but also drives home the point that such
suffering has really happened. Her story may
seem fictional, because she belongs to the
tradition of la llorona, the weeping woman
who killed her child; her misty form after
death resembles ghosts of the Victorian era.
In legend quests, however, what has seemed
fictional can suddenly become real.
Mary, a domestic violence victim who kills
herself and her child, inspires both pity and
horror. A doomed sufferer, Mary represents
millions of women who have undergone
similar torment. As Elaine J. Lawless explains
in her book Women Escaping Violence
(2001), evidence about domestic violence
suggests that “the figures are probably not
reflective of even one-tenth of the number
of women who are actually beaten, abused,
and violated, but who never report it” (42).
Because women hesitate to speak about such
devastating, life-threatening situations, narrative
can serve as an important “herstory”
(13). Lawless includes the life stories of four
women—Sherry, Margaret, Teresa, and
Cathy—in her book. Legends about Mary’s
grave express the horror felt by all women
who have been trapped by domestic violence
and sexual abuse. Less personal than
the stories in Lawless’s book, yet eerily reflective
of them all, Mary’s story demands
attention.
Because the legend of Mary’s grave is so
disturbing, it interrupts and redefines people’s
concentration on their everyday life. Jeffrey
Andrew Weinstock, editor of Spectral America: Phantoms and the National Imagination,
argues that the ghost “interrupts the presentness
of the present, and its haunting indicates
that, beneath the surface of received history,
there lurks another narrative, an untold
story that calls into question the veracity of
the authorized version of events” (2004, 5).
Young visitors to Mary’s grave discover that
there is more to women’s history than official
records generally reveal.
Briarcliff
In contrast to gravesites in secluded places,
famous local landmarks are easy to find.
One such place that has fascinated both high
school and college students is Briarcliff
Lodge in the Hudson Valley. Built in 1902,
Briarcliff was known as King’s College from
1955 to 1994. John, a Binghamton University
freshman, told this story to his fellow
student Alexandra on October 30, 2004. The
fact that it was the day before Halloween
may have enhanced the story’s spooky atmosphere.
Years and years ago a lodge was built
in Briarcliff. The lodge did great business
when it first opened. Many people
stayed there, as its location was in
the middle of a high traffic area. However,
after a couple years strange occurrences
started to happen there. It became
a very popular place for suicides,
murders, and vanishings. Death
loomed over the lodge, and it was soon
closed and abandoned for having this
bad reputation.
Some years later, King’s College was
built over the old foundation of this
lodge. Just like the lodge the college
was successful in its early years. Many
students attended the school and enjoyed
their experiences there. Yet, after
some time, strange occurrences started
to happen at the school, as well. Numerous
amounts of students began
to commit suicide. People actually traveled
there specifically to commit suicide
from other colleges. Murders became
more frequent, as did kidnappings
and vanishings. Soon, due to this reputation,
the college was forced to close.
This happened many years ago, and the
college is now a ghost town.
My friends and I decided it would be
a fun time to go to the abandoned college
and make a video of the trip. Three
friends and I drove to the college at
night and entered the old, crumpled
main building. The building was in fact
decaying, as it consisted of rubble,
rocks, and debris. Upon entering the
building we heard strange noises that
faded, grew louder, and then faded
again. As the four of us walked into
the main building we heard the footsteps
of about twenty people walking.
Things were clattering down the halls
and strange noises were heard from the
high windows of the buildings. We
took the time to zoom up to each window
to look inside with our flashlights.
We didn’t realize this at the time, but
by inspecting the video, we realized that
in one of the windows where noises
were coming from you can distinctly
see a face lean into the window and
then lean out again. It is a clear image
of a human face. However, we didn’t
see this image at the time, so we continued
to explore the building.
Upon entering the stairwell to go up,
the footsteps came back, as well as faint
sounds of people whispering and
murmurs. The video camera had full
battery and was in perfectly good condition,
yet it mysteriously turned off
during this time. The camera gave no
indication that it stopped recording, and
my friends and I thought that it was in
fact still recording. Only when reviewing
the tape did we realize that it had
shut off by itself for no reason.
We wandered the house for fifteen
more minutes that the camera did not
record. Everything on the camera said it
was still recording, yet the film was blank.
The noises kept coming closer and then
going far away again, but we were never
able to discover what was making the
noise. We left the college confused and
scared.
One interesting feature of this story is its
generalization of the events that made Briarcliff
a spooky place. Although John mentions
a number of deaths, including suicides,
murders, and disappearances, none
of these seem vivid or verifiable. “Death
loomed over the lodge” sounds like a vague
threat from a piece of pulp fiction. There
are two good reasons why John gives no
specific details. Like the Massapequa House,
Briarcliff is a haunted mansion, so we expect
that deaths have occurred there. More
significantly, this is a story about an elaborate
legend quest, so what happened in the
past is less meaningful than what happens
to the brave visitors.
Why do John and his three friends want
to enter the “old, crumpled main building”
of Briarcliff ? Their main goal is to make a
video that they can share with others. TV
shows like “Fear Factor” have encouraged
young people to videotape their own exploits,
proving their courage in tough situations.
As John and his friends enter the
main building, they watch their camera carefully
to make sure that it will produce a good
record of their adventure.
The video camera, however, has a mind
of its own. Although it is in perfect condition,
it mysteriously turns itself off, giving
“no indication that it stopped recording.”
John says there is “no reason” why the video
camera would do such a thing: the solution
to this conundrum must be supernatural,
not rational. After the legend quest has
ended, the students see that their video camera
has recorded a face leaning in and out of
the window through which they heard noises.
Although they thought they were aware
of what was happening, their recording machine
saw more than they did. This contrast
between human perception and mechanical
capabilities unnerves the students. Nonetheless,
their quest is successful. They have
escaped from Briarcliff unharmed, carrying
a video that offers proof of supernatural
activity.
Whether or not they use advanced technology,
college students learn important lessons
from legend quests. They learn about supernatural
presences that seem real and past injustices
that seem almost unbearably painful,
as well as deaths that are inextricably related to
everyday life. As they talk about what happened
to them, students remember the intensity
of their emotions during confrontations
with the supernatural. Like the hero of
“The Youth Who Wanted to Learn What Fear
Is,” they come to terms with their fears and
move on.
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Libby Tucker teaches folklore at
Binghamton University. She is the author
of Campus Legends: A Handbook
(Westport, CT: Greenwood Press, 2005).
Her next book, Haunted Halls, will
investigate college ghost stories.
While haunted houses give students the chance to confront images of death, graveyards offer opportunities to tell legends about the deaths of individuals who have died tragically. Some legends describe women who, having died after suffering terrible abuse and injustice, have become horror figures that haunt the living. Many of these women are named Mary.
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——. 1971. The “Belief Legend” in Modern
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This article appeared in Voices Vol. 32, Spring-Summer 2006. Voices is the membership magazine of the New York Folklore Society. To become a subscriber, join the New York Folklore Society today.
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