Believe it or not
New York is a fertile breeding ground for urban myths.
Here are some of the more entertaining ones:
By SUNNY LEE
Ever hear the one about mob-hit victims being fitted for cement shoes? What about the one where Chinatown restaurants serve up cats and dogs? Urban legends, stories just this side of believable, are numerous, and they spread quickly. Not surprisingly, New York is the setting for many of these entertaining anecdotes and lurid myths.
"They're repeated as true stories, as either funny, cautionary or as a reflection of a free-floating angst of the time," says Nancy Groce, curator at the Center for Folk Life and Cultural Heritage at the Smithsonian Institution. "Urban legends have been around since ancient times, but they've adapted with us."
What follows is a selection of the most grapevine-friendly New York-centric whoppers, plus the real story that inspired them. Believe it or not.
Jesuit priests in unmarked graves at the New York Botanical Garden
Urban legend: Jesuit priests were buried in the grounds of Fordham University. When the land was sold to the New York Botanical Garden, the headstones were removed, but the bodies were not.
Real story: "Jesuit priests were buried there, but they were removed," says Father Thomas Hennessy, author of "Fordham: The Early Years." "However, they were unable to locate one Jesuit brother and a layman because the headstones were missing. So yes, those two bodies are somewhere in the Garden grounds."
Jimmy Hoffa buried under an end zone at Giants Stadium
Urban legend: Donald (Tony the Greek) Frankos, who turned state's evidence and joined the witness protection program, said the Teamsters boss was murdered in Michigan and kept there for five months in an oil drum. Later, he was buried in the Meadowlands Sports Complex during its final stages of construction.
Real story: In 1993, Meadowlands officials posted a large message on the marquee: "No, he's not under our stadium." According to author Arthur Sloane ("Hoffa"), the generally accepted account is that Hoffa was killed at Machus Red Fox restaurant in Michigan and put through a trash compactor.
Dead boy in "Three Men and a Baby"
Urban legend: The ghostly figure of a boy sitting at a window with a shotgun in his grip appears in the 1987 comedy. Only later do filmmakers learn that a 9-year-old committed suicide in the very same Manhattan apartment years before.
Real story: The "ghost" is a miniaturized cardboard cutout of Ted Danson's character in coattails. The script called for a situation in which Danson's character dresses in formalwear, but the scene never made it onscreen. In fact, the cutout makes another appearance at the end of the movie when Nancy Travis' character returns to claim the baby.
Does the Money Train exist?
Urban legend: The famous "Money Train" picks up cash from all the token booths in the city and funnels them to an undisclosed location. On any given "Money Train" ride, millions of dollars are channeled through the city's underground arteries.
Real story: "We don't talk about the Money Train. I don't know if it exists or if it still runs," says MTA spokesman Charles Seaton. But author Jim Dwyer's book "Subway Lives: 24 Hours in the Life of the New York City Subway" attests to its existence. He writes that the MTA's "Money Room" is the "world's busiest private currency processing enterprise"; the system is the only one of its kind to operate 24 hours a day.
Rapper KRS-One lived in the New York Public Library
Urban legend: The homeless future lyricist moved into the library at Fifth Ave. and 42nd St. during the '70s and '80s after staying at the Franklin Men's Shelter in the Bronx. He read all the books there and developed his rap persona KRS-One, an acronym for "Knowledge Reigns Supreme over almost every One."
Real story: While it's true that KRS-One (born Laurence Krisna Parker) lived in the Franklin Men's Shelter, where he met his Boogie Down Productions partner, Scott LaRock (a social worker at the time), "he never lived here," says Caroline Oyama, public relations manager at the NYPL. "But we'd be happy to have him."
Urinating on the third rail causes electrocution
Urban legend: A drunk man on a subway platform relieves himself on the tracks and is zapped when his urine hits the live rail.
Real story: "In theory, it's possible. The current can be transmitted," says a spokesman at NYU Medical Center. "But in reality, that's a long way for urine to travel. I've never heard of that before."
Pennies from heaven
Urban legend: Coins dropped from the top of the Empire State Building can kill pedestrians below or embed themselves in the pavement.
Real story: The aerodynamics of the skyscraper create a hefty updraft that blows any tossed pennies against the building; they generally land on the 86th-floor window ledges.
Chinatown restaurants serve up Fluffy and Fido
Urban legend: Roast meats hanging in the display windows of various restaurants are cats and dogs.
Real story: The NYC Department of Health has no record of such acts. Jan Brunvand, author of "Too Good to Be True: The Colossal Book of Urban Legends," says that the myth that Asian immigrants eat house pets was fueled by a fear of foreigners.
Alligators in the New York City sewer system
Urban legend: New York tourists bring back a batch of tiny baby alligators from their Florida vacation. The owners flush the gators down the toilet, where they grow, breed and create an underground colony.
Real story: Though patently false, the rumor may have gotten legs through The New York Times, which reported an incident in 1935 in which Harlem children fished a gator out of a manhole. The truth of that tale is doubtful: Reptile experts point out that alligators hunt by sight a rather tough task deep under the city as but one reason the tale is scientifically impossible.
Whispers at Grand Central Terminal
Urban legend: By standing at opposite ends of the hallway in front of Grand Central's Oyster Bar, people can whisper to each other in perfect clarity, due to the building's quirky acoustics.
Real story: The acoustics at those two exact spots (and only those two exact spots, as far as we know) do allow for such a peculiar and charming little phenomenon. Massive renovations in the 1990s suspended the whisper trick, but luckily, all seems to be right again.
Originally published on May 18, 2003
Actual killing of bear morphs into Internet urban myth
By PETER PORCO
Anchorage Daily News
May 30, 2003
- Tina in Louisiana wanted to know if the photographs were real. So did Martin, a pastor from Michigan, who wrote, "Are you able to verify for us that they are indeed genuine and true?"
Both Tina and Martin, sending separate e-mail messages to the U.S. Forest Service in Juneau, Alaska, with attached photos of a grizzly killed in Prince William Sound in the fall of 2001, had written their heartfelt wonderment atop a message string that included this text, from a previous e-mail writer:
"Think about it. This thing on its hind legs could walk up to the average single-story house and could look on the roof at eye level."
There was never a question that the brown bear that 22-year-old airman Ted Winnen shot to death in October 2001 on Hinchinbrook Island was huge.
The grizzly measured 10 feet, 6 inches from nose to tail. Its front claws were 3 to 4 inches long. An Alaska master guide estimated the bear's weight at up to 1,200 pounds. (Average brown bear weight for Hinchinbrook is less than half that.)
One photo shows Winnen holding the bear's paw as it obscures almost all of his chest. A second photo shows Winnen crouched, looking like a child behind the bear's massive, bloody head.
But the "legend" e-mail, as Forest Service spokesman Ray Massey calls the tale that's been making the Internet rounds all this time, has converted the bear into a monster of impossible proportions.
It's now "over one thousand six hundred pounds ... 12'6" high at the shoulder," reads one message Massey has received.
E-mail exaggerations about the animal began to circulate little more than a month after Winnen, stationed at the time at Eielson Air Force Base, Alaska, shot it while deer hunting with several partners.
Some of the early e-mails reached the Anchorage Daily News, and the paper published a story about the kill in December 2001 accompanied by the two photos taken by one of Winnen's partners, Eielson Staff Sgt. Jim Urban.
Despite the newspaper story, the e-mails did not stop. Nor did calls to the agency from print and TV reporters wanting to know if the e-mail version was true.
"I've gotten calls from media all over the world," Massey said one day last week. "I got a call from London today."
The Forest Service, which manages the Chugach National Forest encompassing Prince William Sound, gets three or four e-mails about the bear every week that have to be answered, Massey said.
Many of the messages are from people who are skeptical and want confirmation of their doubts from the agency. About 30 percent of the messages come from hunters who are all but certain the tale is a tall one.
What's got Massey somewhat concerned, however, is that the circumstances of the bear's death morphed some time ago into what he terms an urban myth - about a killer beast taken down by a Forest Service employee.
"He was out deer hunting when a large world class Griz charged him from about 50 yards away," according to one e-mail tale that has been circulating. "The guy unloaded a 7mm Mag Semi-auto into the bear and it dropped a few feet from him. This thing was still alive, so he reloaded and capped it in the head. ... It's a world record. This bear had killed a couple of other people."
The bear was not a record, and it didn't kill anyone, as far as is known. It was coming toward Winnen and Urban from about 10 yards away, but it may not have seen them. And Winnen used a .338-caliber Winchester Magnum.
Hoping to debunk the myths, Massey answers the e-mails with plenty of details about the actual size of the bear and the hunt. The Forest Service's Web site provides a news release about the hunt and the rumors.
But now a third photo is making the rounds, a picture that supposedly shows a person's body, the bear's victim.
Massey never opened that attachment, he said.
"I didn't want to see a photo of the body. I know it's bogus."
Massey says there's no way to know how many people are reading the false stuff as the message travels the globe. He just scratches his head and says that, 19 months after the hunt, the story is still going.
"It's like the Energizer bunny," he said. "I have no doubt the Internet is keeping it moving. Otherwise it would have died a long time ago."
Urban legends discussed at conference
June, 25, 2003
CORNER BROOK, Nfld. (CP) -- Read this and then pass it on to at least three friends. If you don't, you either have no friends, are a terrible person, or a horrible fate will befall you.
Anyone with a computer has received similar e-mail messages, chain letters with words of wisdom or promises of good luck to come......
Read full story:
Urban legend turns vacant house into teen party palace
By JOSEPH TSIDULKO, Staff Writer
CHINO HILLS - Destructive teenagers are haunting a vacant Chino Hills house, looking for ghosts that just aren't there, the owner said.
Their nightly visits have become increasingly violent and disruptive to neighbors of the quiet, horse ranching neighborhood just off Peyton Drive.
"They come every night. On an average night we chase away 30 to 40 kids,' said Debbie Cross, who lives up the street from the property.
The home is rumored to be the site of four brutal murders for which Kevin Cooper now sits on San Quentin Prison's death row.
While those rumors are untrue, the property, owned by the Chino Valley Equine Hospital, has become a popular hangout for trespassers who have ravaged it, breaking windows, smashing the interior and covering walls with satanic imagery.
Visitors started arriving to the house about five years ago after the popular news show "20/20' did a story focusing on Cooper's legal battle, Cross said. The television program disclosed the address from which the 911 call was placed following the murders.
Cooper was convicted for slaying three members of the Ryen family and a house guest in 1983 after escaping from the California Institution for Men in Chino.
The Equine Hospital's property was assumed to be the scene of the crime because it was the only abandoned home in the area, sheriffs and residents say.
Cross has seen everything from people holding candles and circling the house in black robes, to a man shooting heroin in the front yard, to gang violence. Her 10-year-old son was physically threatened once after asking visitors to leave.
"In the past year they've gotten more destructive. Lately they're more intent on breaking things up,' Cross said. "They have total disregard for anybody else's privacy.'
Cross said 90 percent of the trespassers "are just kids that are curious,' but said there is no way for her family to know which 90 percent that is.
"The tone has changed. The new writing on the walls is more evil,' said Tyra Stevens, practice manager of the Equine Hospital.
The property has incurred about $50,000 worth of damage since February, Stevens said.
A few weeks ago the outside wall of the building was covered by gang markings, and Cross said she witnessed a racially charged standoff between rival gangs.
The Equine Hospital plans to convert the home into a hospital with full surgical rooms to which it will relocate from its site on Yorba Avenue in Chino. Stevens would like to assign interns to live there when construction is completed, but she worries about their safety.
"We've tried saying 'this is not the Kevin Cooper house.' The kids don't believe us,' Stevens said. "They're coming from Ontario, Upland. The mystique is there.'
A large party at the house last month on Friday the 13th was broken up by San Bernardino County sheriff's deputies after neighbors called to complain.
Arrests were not made because there were no "no trespassing' signs posted, Stevens was told. She said signs on the property were torn down by the teenagers.
That policy will not continue, said sheriff's Deputy Bonnie Cobley who is assigned to the Chino Hills station.
The San Bernardino County Sheriff's Department wanted to go easy on trespassers because some didn't know that being on the property was illegal, Cobley said.
Sheriff's deputies are now aware that fair warnings against trespassing are posted on the property, Cobley said, and anyone caught at the house will receive a citation which carries up to a $1,000 fine. Repeat offenders may be imprisoned, Cobley said.
Sheriff's deputies have discussed the house in briefings and have stepped up patrols in the area, Cobley said.
The house endangers not only nearby residents but the trespassers as well, Cobley said.
"I'm concerned about the safety of the people that come there,' she said, citing hazards in the unlit rooms, as well as a drained pool and a beehive in the back.
Word of greater vigilance from law enforcement will spread, Cobley said, and that might deter would-be visitors.
"It's going to be a process of getting on top of this and continuing to do so,' Cobley said.
Cross welcomes a more proactive approach from the Sheriff's Department, but worries it may prove ineffective.
"(Trespassers) usually don't stay more than 15, 20 minutes. By the time the (deputies) get here they've already taken off,' she said.
Stevens seems to share Cross' pessimism, embittered by a bizarre situation that is getting progressively worse.
Standing in the house she hopes to convert to a hospital, surrounded by profane graffiti and macabre drawings on all walls, she lamented, "kids always like the bad guys.'
Family of buried teen wants ghost stories to stop
Sept. 4, 2003
By: Heather DiMattia, Daily Star Staff Writer
More than 20 years after her 15-year-old son died in a car accident, Wilkinson and her daughter, Mary Anthony, are defending their loved one's memory against fictitious ghost stories that have led many to visit the Springfield Cemetery. They'd like to know who started the stories and why.
"There is no truth to this," Wilkinson said. "I don't believe in ghosts and goblins."
Wilkinson and Anthony met the mayor and local media at Springfield Town Hall Wednesday evening to tell the true story of Michael Brown's death in 1983 and to correct the "mystery" surrounding his tombstone, which has led the town to pass an ordinance restricting loitering in the cemetery between 8 p.m. and 6 a.m.
The truth is that Brown loved to fox hunt, his mother said. The night before he died, he drew a picture of a hunt on a brown paper bag. Soon after he was buried, Wilkinson had the picture engraved on the back of the boy's tombstone.
"It meant so much to him," she said. "It comforted me because it was something that he loved."
A short time elapsed before the picture was actually engraved on the tombstone, and that may have triggered the rumors.
"Whether it brings closure or not, it's the truth," she said.
The most popular story told, one that's even posted on the Internet at www.freakopedia.com, is that Brown was involved in a hit and run accident while hunting. The story names a man called "Wilkerson" as a drunken driver who hit the boy.
The story also states that after Brown's funeral, his mother stayed by his gravesite for about an hour. After a 10 minute break to a nearby store, she returned to find markings on her son's grave that detailed his accident leading readers to assume that Brown's ghost drew the picture.
The family has even heard rumors that the story aired on "Unsolved Mysteries." Anthony called the television show to confirm the rumor, but show officials couldn't come up with anything, she said.
"I didn't know it was this big," Wilkinson said. "It is so heartbreaking that it has come to this."
It has gotten so big that Mayor Charles Martin said Springfield police issue at least 15 to 20 citations a month for people loitering around Brown's grave.
The grave, which sits on a hill in a family plot, is visited often as evidenced by the well-worn path that leads to it, the mayor said. Beer bottles and other trash have been found near the site, and drug arrests have been made there. Other graves near Brown's have also been damaged.
Anthony, who goes to clean the gravesite often, said her family must replace 80 pounds of soil four to five times a year near the grave because of the heavy traffic eroding the ground.
On one occasion, Brown's tombstone was knocked over, Anthony said. She asked the mayor, who was in the cemetery tending to his son's grave nearby, for help. He then asked her about the stories, which she denied.
She's also encountered other people at the cemetery who came to see the grave and ask questions about the stories they've heard. Each time, Anthony dismissed the rumors and told the visitors the truth.
Wilkinson said her son loved people and he would probably be thrilled to know that so many have visited his grave site.
"...he's up there having a ball," she said.
The Living Dead
Zombie and Vampire myth in worldwide cultures
by Meg Burd
October 29, 2003
In light of Halloween being just a few short days away, I think should make a confession. I am scared, no, terrified of zombies. Perhaps it's the proliferation of movies and spooky stories that spring up this time of year, but whatever the reason, nightmares about these living corpses are keeping me up at night. Weird as it all is, I can't be the only one who finds these creepy creatures so terrifying. Myths of the living dead such as zombies and their monstrous cousins, vampires, can be found frightening to many people in many different cultures. In examining these legends, important ideas about why these monster myths are so powerful and why they scare us collectively may surface.
Perhaps the greatest legend of the living dead is that of Dracula, a vampire found in both ancient European folklore and modern day movies. Described by the book "In Search of Dracula" as an authentic 15th century prince in Eastern Europe called Vlad Tepes, he was demonized and turned into a blood-sucking monster in popular legend due to both his bloody actions and the peasant's feelings of being sucked financially dry by monarchs such as Vlad.
His legend found rebirth in modern times with the publication of Bram Stoker's "Dracula" in 1897. Called "a great transitional novel" by writer Brian Aldiss, Stoker's Dracula was an "ancient thing" when "like a disease (he) arrives in London. A barrier has been crossed; the infection has entered the modern vein." In this sense, the power of the vampire to scare audiences in the Victorian era rested upon Stoker's Vlad as a harbinger of the terrifying disease of (in Victorian eyes) foreign forces, and the shocking sexuality that Stoker's Dracula represents.
Vampire myths, like Dracula or even modern ones found in Africa, deal with these fears, and add to them concerns about the power of dominating forces (such as colonialists in Africa) to sap a person or community of its "life blood." Embodying the fear of either powerful or sensual intrusion, these myths perhaps allow people to channel their concerns about "outsiders" into something tangibly terrifying.
Zombies (in my opinion the most terrifying of the undead) are also a feature present in global cultures. Most prominent in Haitian voodoo societies, zombies there are, as ethnobotanist Wade Davis describes them in his fascinating book "The Serpent and the Rainbow," an actual feature of Haitian culture. These factual zombies were people who were "cursed" by voodoo sorcerers and after which "died" only to be resurrected in a mindless, hazy state of slavery. Davis suggests that many of these "zombies" were in fact victims of a psychotoxin made from puffin fish venom or a plant known as "zombi cucumber," the effects of which are a death-like trance followed by an awakening of amnesia, confusion and delirium. Davis says that the Haitian zombie myth provided a "template upon which cultural beliefs and fears could go to work" with the toxin promising to "amplify these processes a hundred times."
More modern zombie myths and movies rest on fears present in modern culture. Movie critics point to films such as the new "28 Days Later" as a play on contemporary terrors of bio-contamination (remember the anthrax scare?) and concerns about the destructive power of mindless rage that seems to be growing in our society. In the zombie classic "Night of the Living Dead," the dead are resurrected as soulless brain-eaters by a nuclear spill. By encapsulating the concerns of the day in a monster myth, we are able to look at them and fear them in a different, less direct way.
Both these monsters, the authors of "Blood Read: The Vampire Metaphor in Contemporary Culture" assert "touch on the basic fears that make us all vulnerable." While varied in setting and reason, vampires and zombies remain terrifying because, as writer David Skal says, "very little about the underlying structure of horror images really changes, though our cultural uses for them are as shape changing as Dracula himself."
Meg is a graduate student at CSU. She will be busy this Halloween barricading her house out of fear of zombie attacks
Legends Speak Of Haunted Long Island
By Ralph D'Ambrose
October 29, 2003
While the infamous "Amityville Horror" house has found its way into the pages of Long Island legend, it is not the only reportedly haunted location in Suffolk County.
According to the Long Island Ghost Hunters, an organization dedicated to the study of paranormal happenings in the area, several sites around Suffolk County have histories or legends of hauntings surrounding them.
The former Kings Park Psychiatric Center is rumored to be one such site. According to the New York State Office of Mental Health, the center opened its doors in 1885 and closed in 1996. According to LIGH cofounder Nikki Turpin, the name was originally the Kings Park Lunatic Asylum.
"Original treatment for patients included rest, relaxation and manual labor," said Turpin. "This changed when the population of patients rose beyond the hospital's capacity. Treatments became more intense and extreme with such therapies as electric shock and lobotomies becoming the norm in many hospitals."
According to Turpin, the legends state that hundreds of souls of the mentally ill who died from torture still linger on the property. The majority of these spirits are said to haunt the lower levels and the underground tunnels.
"One legend is that of Marie, a 17-year-old girl who died while undergoing electric shock. Another is that of a man who was brutally beaten and left in small room in the underground for several days. Both are said to walk the tunnels," Turpin said.
Visitors to the center have claimed to experience dizziness, feelings of unexplained terror, cold spots, the feeling of being watched and banging sounds. "One young man reported to me that he saw a misty form and dim lights moving within the windows of building 136 or the medical center," said Turpin. "There are stories of screaming voices and tearful sobbing said to be associated with building 15, also known as Wisteria House. I was even told one tale about a phantom dog seen at the Grand Stand," Turpin said.
"There are also tales that relate to a mass grave cemetery, said to be located in the northern area of the center. It is in this area where ghosts are said to chase the living away in an attempt to warn them," Turpin said.
Patchogue is home to another ghostly legend, the story of the "Hanging Tree." The tree is located in a patch of woods along Grove Street with a branch hanging over the Swan River. According to Lizzette Geigel, Turpin's partner and cofounder of LIGH, "Legend says that a woman named Mary was accused of being a witch and hanged from the tree after a makeshift trial was held. Another legend tells of a man committing suicide by hanging himself from the tree."
Reports, according to Geigel, state that a spectral noose can be seen hanging from the branch and a "spooky presence" is felt there.
The legends surrounding this location may, however, not be true at all. "Whatever the legend there has been a decided lack of evidence that this legend has any basis in fact," Geigel said. "Research has found no evidence that anything ever happened there."
According to HauntedLongIsland.com, a website that also chronicles local paranormal activity, there have been two witch trials that initiated on Long Island. The first, the Garlick Trial, came from East Hampton in 1657 and the second, the Ralph and Mary Hall Trial, came from Setauket in 1664. Neither trial took place on Long Island and all defendants were found innocent.
"Of course this does not mean that vigilante justice was not practiced or recorded in history," Geigel said.
Another fabled haunted spot is the Wickham Farmhouse in Cutchogue. According to Turpin, the farmhouse is reported to have been established around 1710. "The tale I've heard is that in 1854 James and Frances Wickham were murdered in their bedroom one night," Turpin said. "The weapon used was an axe, which is consistent in the tales. My understanding is as the years went by it happened again, this time with a young servant being the victim."
According to Turpin, the house displays the typical signs of haunting, such as cold spots and odd noises. This house also has had reports of a visible ghost that returns to the bedroom of the murder. The ghost is reported to carry an axe with him, Turpin said.
Bohemia's Normandy Inn is rumored to be the home of a ghost named Maria, although some refer to her as Sarah.
According to Turpin, Maria "was brutally strangled to death in the upstairs back bedroom when the place was a speakeasy. It is said that it is she who has haunted the place ever since her death."
Reports state that Mary has been known to knock on guests' doors at night and disappear, leaving a slight wind and a chill behind. According to Turpin, "Other strange stories of weird phenomena are cold spots, whispering, strange sounds and shadowy figures that would move around the kitchen. Footprints seem to appear in the carpeting, especially in winter, although no one has treaded in those areas."
Although the reports vary as to who actually found them, it is reported, Turpin said, that a pile of unidentified bones was discovered in the basement during renovations. "Whoever it was went for help and upon their return they found the bones had disappeared," Turpin said.
The Long Island Ghost Hunters' website contains stories submitted by readers from around the county about paranormal experiences they have suffered. Stories range from ghostly harbingers of death to a kindly spectral grandfather who would tuck a young girl in at night.
For more information on the Long Island Ghost Hunters or paranormal activity on Long Island, visit www.longislandghosthunters.com or HauntedLongIsland.com.
Mysterious 'Gravity Hill' continues to draw the curious
Unlike pop singer Lance Bass, of the music group N'SYNC, who recently attempted to scrape together $20 million to defy gravity by taking a trip into space, Washington County residents can apparently defy one of Newton's laws just a few miles south of Bartlesville at no charge.
"Gravity Hill," located between Bartlesville and Ochelata near Gap Road at the intersection known as Matoaka Switch, is the stuff of local legend.
"When I was a little boy of about seven, my dad drove us out to Gravity Hill, stopped, put the truck in neutral and let off the brake," says Jim Hess, director of the College High School Alumni Association and a local historian. "The truck began to roll uphill. Then we got out and poured part of a Coke on the pavement. It also ran uphill."
The family was amazed at what they witnessed.
"My brother and I were astonished and ready to apply all kinds of weird 'magnetic' explanations to the phenomenon," says Hess. "Dad smiled and explained that the 'hill' was an optical illusion caused by the lay of the land around the hill, which made it look as if it were uphill, when in fact, it was slightly downhill."
Typically, when driving a vehicle "uphill" at Gravity Hill, the vehicle will cross the railroad tracks before coming to a stop on the bridge.
"Someone told me the point of it was to travel as far as possible to see if you could make it across the bridge and over the railroad tracks without coming to a stop," says Hess.
And if not?
"If you make it, you're supposed to lead a long, healthy life, and if not, well I guess the opposite," says Shannon Taylor.
"It's certainly not real. It's some kind of optical illusion," says Oklahoma Wesleyan University science Professor Brian Turner.
Rolling "uphill" is a common illusion experienced in many locations around the world. The area in which the phenomenon takes place is usually hilly, where the level horizon is not visible and the trees may be slightly leaning. An optical illusion is caused, making a slight downhill slope appear to be uphill.
Webster's defines gravity as, "The force of gravitation," between "two sufficiently massive bodies..." But gravity can also mean, "grave consequences; seriousness, importance..."
For example, consider these local legends.
One tale claims that years ago some teenagers were on their way to a football game when they stalled on the railroad tracks. While attempting to push their car to safety, a train hit them and they were all killed.
Another legend has it that one night a family of four children and their parents were driving toward Gap Road when their car was stranded on the railroad tracks. A train hit them and they all died.
Another grizzly story concerns a woman who was kidnaped and murdered in the area.
Joe Sears, a native of Bartlesville, remembers going to Gap Road every weekend to help feed his uncle's cattle.
"My Uncle had not only related this local history to me but reminded us of 'gravity hill' at the end of it," Sears says.
As he got older, Sears remembers Gravity Hill and Gap Road became a source of much fun with a carload of girls from high school.
"In 1967, me and the carload of girls were chased back into Bartlesville, by a mystery car one night," says Sears. "It became a horrifying experience for all of us and I never returned to gravity hill."
Others were skeptical of Gravity Hill's "powers."
"Gravity Hill was kind of an urban legend to me, something that probably wasn't true but I learned in reality it was after my first visit," says Michael Thomas. "Deeply impressed, I took many a date there and friends too. It made a nice evening, the perfect adventurous date."
How Gravity Hill was first discovered may never be known, just as the origins of the legends may never be uncovered. Through the years though, Gravity Hill has maintained its mystery and appeal.
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LEGEND OF BELL WITCH STILL HAUNTING
John Bell kept it to himself in 1817 when he first spotted strange-looking animals in his cornfield that mysteriously vanished when he tried to shoot them.
Then came the rapping, gnawing and scratching sounds in the night, and complaints from his children that an unseen hand was pulling their hair, tugging at their bedcovers and slapping their faces.
As Bell eventually invited people to stay in his home in hopes of solving the mystery, they told of a spirit who whispered, whistled, quoted Scripture and sang hymns. Even Andrew Jackson, who later became the nation's seventh president, was said to have had a haunting encounter.
When Bell died in 1821, the family blamed a spirit known as the Bell Witch for poisoning him. They also say it broke up his youngest daughter's engagement to a neighbor.
Although reports of the hauntings tapered off after Bell's death, the legend of the Bell Witch has only seemed to grow stronger.
This month, a ballet on the subject was produced in Nashville. A movie shot in eastern Tennessee may be in theaters or on video before the end of the year. There are untold numbers of books and popular Web sites that focus on Bell Witch tales.
Carney Bell, the great-great-great-great grandson of John Bell, is portraying his ancestor in the only production authorized by the family: ''Spirit: The Authentic Story of the Bell Witch of Tennessee.''
The final performance of the year is scheduled for Halloween night on an outdoor stage about a mile from the old Bell homestead northwest of Nashville in what is now the town of Adams.
John Alford, a Nashville actor who wrote the play, says the Bell Witch legend remains interesting to audiences today.
''The most fascinating thing about it for me is that all the major participants were real people,'' he said. ''Either it was a hoax on a massive scale or group hysteria on the level of the Salem witch hunts or something very strange happened that no one can explain.''
Alford based his play on an 1894 book by Clarksville newspaper publisher M.V. Ingram, who recounted stories from a diary of one of Bell's sons.
''There have been a number of versions that portrayed the Bell family as less than intelligent or unsavory morally and sometimes both,'' Alford said. ''I know the Bell family and it was important to me to do something they could support and stand by. I don't try to offer an explanation. The legend is without one.''
Carney Bell, 70, said he got involved when the play was first presented last year as a fund-raiser for the Adams Museum because he wanted to make sure it didn't portray his family negatively.
He says family members many of whom moved to Mississippi after John Bell's death have continued to experience strange events that could be manifestations of the Bell Witch, but nothing as blatant as the events of the early 19th century.
According to Ingram's book, neighbors were invited to spend the night in the home to confirm the strange things the family had claimed. Some of the guests shouted out questions. Eventually came the reply: ''I am a spirit; I was once very happy but have been disturbed.''
It reportedly gave many answers about its origins but came to be known as ''Kate'' after claiming at one point to be ''Kate Batts' witch.'' Batts was an eccentric neighbor who had battled with the Bells over a slave purchase.
The spirit reportedly delighted in discussing the Bible with guests and was able to repeat two sermons given simultaneously at churches 13 miles apart. But it also was known to cuss and spit, and on at least one occasion attacked a man who doubted its existence.
But most of the physical attacks were directed at John Bell and his youngest daughter, Betsy, Ingram wrote. After Bell died and Betsy broke off her engagement, the manifestations lessened and eventually stopped.
There were reports that the spirit promised to return in 1935, and that is the premise used by Sevierville director Shane Marr for a movie now in post-production. He hopes to have a distribution deal before 2004.
''When I moved back to Tennessee from L.A., I wanted to make a true story, a period piece with a good soundtrack and I wanted to make a spooky story,'' Marr said. ''The Bell Witch fit into that perfectly. It's a campfire story that I heard when I was little.''
New York choreographer Ann Marie DeAngelo said she had never heard of the Bell Witch until she was asked to participate in the production that opened Nashville's ballet season.
''I really worked with three themes, a force that disturbs, a marriage that can't happen and a death. The overriding theme is about love and loss,'' she said. ''I think it's a good story even if you don't know anything about the Bell Witch.''
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Legend of the ghostly horseman galloping past Ellistoun Castle
Dec 2, 2003
THE rocky remnants of medieval Ellistoun Castle cling to a wooded hillside, where winter winds and howling gales scream scarily through the trees.
But it's more than the boreal blasts that send shivers up your spine in the blackness of night, when you pass the terrifying tower the ancestral home, 500 years ago, of the powerful Sempill family of nearby Castle Semple.
Your heart races when you remember the spooky story of the ghostly horseman, mounted on a jet-black steed, who is said to gallop furiously along a muddy track, which drops down into a gloomy glen, where roaring waterfalls cascade torrentially through the trees.
It's whispered the screaming spectre is the demonic spirit of a 17th century cavalryman, spurring his phantom horse from the corpse-covered moor at nearby Muirdykes Mount, where Scottish Covenanters and Jacobite dragoons fought a bloody battle on June 18, 1685, with the loss of several lives on both sides.
The rider's tattered tunic is crimson with blood, while under his gore-drenched hat stares a hollow-eyed, shrieking skull, instead of a human face.
The reins of his wild-eyed, snorting steed are held hard in the blood-stained, bony hands of a skeleton.
When the rain crashes through the branches of trees on dark, owl-haunted December nights and the wind wails like ancient banshees summoning the dead to their graves the thin veil between this world and the next melts in the mist and you stand on the abyss of eternity.
The strange story had an eerie sequel. A few years ago, mist-mantled marshes at nearby Castle Semple Loch were drained to provide more farmland.
In the ghostly gloom, a long, narrow object protruded from pool-pocked reeds.
It was a 17th century sword, later displayed in a local museum.
It is thought that the waterworn weapon belonged to a wounded soldier, fleeing the field at Muirdykes on horseback 300 years ago only to blunder into a marshy mausoleum at Castle Semple Loch and be sucked to a slow, lingering death in the choking mud and weed-strewn water.
It is also thought the bleached bones and shrivelled bodies of doomed rider and horse are still entombed in the rush-robed morass, where the sword was discovered.
Leaving their tormented phantom forms to eternally wander the darkened countryside, which conceals their corpses.
Derek Parker
Urban Legends of Boca and Delray
The skunk ape, a man who lives in a tree, a haunted bar, and more
Published Saturday, December 13, 2003
by Ashley Harrell
The man whose stomach exploded after he washed down his pop rocks with Coca Cola. The kids who flashed their headlights at an oncoming car as a prank, and plummeted to their deaths after the car made a quick U-turn and ran them off the road. The pretty young housewife who farted loudly while entering her unlit home, which turned out to be filled with surprise party guests.
We've all heard various versions of these Urban Legends-'the horrific and sometimes hilarious tales that mysteriously surface and spread with reckless abandon.
Although most of the legends are loosely based on fact or are just complete myths, some are actually true.
And incase you weren't aware, Boca Raton and Delray Beach have their own Urban Legends'-and they're not all myths.
Haunted Haunts
If you've ever been sipping a martini at Dada in Delray Beach and gotten the distinct feeling that someone was watching you, it could have been "Fran."
In the mid 1900's, Fran is rumored to have tripped over her dog's leash and fallen down the stairs of the historical house that was later turned into the artsy bar known as Dada.
According to chef and managing partner Bruce Feingold, Fran suffered a broken neck and instantly died, but her body was not discovered until weeks later, with the corpse of the dog curled up next to her.
"The house is definitely haunted, I've witnessed it myself," said Feingold, who heard eerie footsteps and "felt her presence" back when the house was first being revamped.
"She turns lights on and off for no reason," said Feingold. "We can lock up and walk out to the parking lot, and then all of a sudden- boom. All the lights go on in the dining room."
Luckily, Fran is a nice ghost according to the staff at Dada, who say "she's just messing with us."
Down the street at The Sundy House, the 1902 historical home that once belonged to the first mayor of Delray, John Sundy, thousands of dollars have been spent on fixing the faulty phone system of the hotel and restaurant that now occupies the building, but to no avail.
"We all think the Sundy spirit is still alive," said Manager Roger Rojas, who also said workers have refused to work alone at night because of the noises and things that go on with the phones, and some have even quit.
The Florida Skunk Ape
Although this 7-foot-tall stinker is known to hang out mostly in the Everglades, Florida's bigfoot-like creature known as the Skunk Ape has been spotted a little too close for comfort.
In 1977 a man told the News that he spotted the hairy creature just west of Delray Beach.
"He smelled bad--like a skunk," said the unnamed witness, who also said the ape was "real hairy with no clothes."
Another sighting, or smelling, rather, of the legendary Sasquatch was reported in West Palm Beach only four short years ago.
"My window was down and it was horrible, like diarrhea that's been sitting in the toilet for three hours," said the witness, who said he saw the creature on the side of the road. "I've never seen anything like that before. I think its eyes may have been red because of the reflection in the headlights."
The skunk ape is known to walk upright, exhibit human-like qualities, and be covered in shaggy black hair.
Evidence of the Florida Skunk Apes's existence includes hundreds of documented sightings, some hair samples, and several foot casts, but real proof has yet to surface.
Dave of the FAU woods
Fact or myth: If you live in the woods of your college campus instead of the dorm, you will achieve a 4.0, graduate summa cum laude, and get a scholarship to the graduate school of your choice.
Hey, it worked for Dave.
For over a year, this FAU student, who declined to give his last name, lived in the dense campus woods, sharing his tent for a short time with a raccoon, and saved over $12,000 in rent and bills. But he didn't do it just for the money.
"I was so unhappy living in the community of students," he said. "I've got nothing bad to say about the housing. It's the social environment, and what people are into," he said.
After exploring the territory back in 1999 and finding it a suitable habitat, the modern day Henry David Thoreau decided to take his few belongings into the woods.
Dave stored much of his food in lockers during the year, and also attended nearly all the on campus events that offered free snacks.
He estimated that he spent $1.75 on food per day.
Dave said he enjoyed waking up to the birds and the butterflies, and said that unlike the dorm where he had to wear earplugs to block out the rap music, he had no problems getting to sleep at night in the woods.
"I'd fall asleep listening to night sounds. Crickets and frogs and stuff like that," he said. "Once you get over the supernatural, superstitious fears, it?s really quite relaxing."
At the age of 28, Dave graduated with a 3.95 GPA and went on to Colorado State University with an academic scholarship in the field of environmental ethics.
The Meaning of Boca Raton
The strangely appropriate name of our city is rumored to mean "mouth of the rat" after an inlet of looting pirates, but it's actually all a misunderstanding. Boca (or mouth) does describe an inlet, while raton (literally mouse, rata means rat) can mean "cowardly thief," allowing our name to be translated as "thieves" inlet."
But stories of peg legged pirates and walking the plank in this region are merely romantic legends, according to Susan Gillis, the Archivist of the Boca Raton Historical Society.
The original site of the Boca Ratones Inlet was Biscayne Bay, near the city of Miami Beach. In 1823, a mapmaker confused our more northern inlet with the one in Biscayne Bay, and mistakenly named our city Boca Ratones, which was shortened to Boca Raton over the years.
Mizner's monkeys
Was he as crazy as the apes he carried around, or a brilliant architect?
Legend has it that the eccentric Addison Mizner had a penchant for monkeys, and was almost always surrounded by a menagerie of friends.
He usually wore a pair of silk pajamas from China when he cruised the streets of Boca in his convertible, with trusty sidekicks Johnny Brown, the monkey, and an unnamed parrot on either shoulder.
Boca Raton Resort public relations director Jennifer Davis said she also heard that Mizner had the golfers come in from the course one day to run up and down the staircase with their spiked shoes on.
Mizner's reasoning--he wanted his hotel to look just a bit older.
Perhaps the peculiarities of the architect might help explain the one famous urban legend at Mizner Park.
It has been said that if you get plastic surgery, go to Mizner late at night and throw a penny in the wishing fountain, a wealthy older man will walk out of the gazebo and propose on the spot.
Ghostly legend swirls around bridge in Escambia County
12/29/03
By CONNIE BAGGETT
Staff Reporter
TIPPENS EDDY -- In an age when imagination is gasping for breath in the chokehold of video images, finding a skilled storyteller is a treat indeed.
Patti Mitchell's journey into the Southern tradition of spinning a tale started with Kathryn Tucker Windham's chilling stories of hauntings in the region. Now, she has spread her own entertaining tales to generations of students hungry for the unexplained.
One of the most requested and oft repeated stories is set at the bridge over Burnt Corn Creek at Tippens Eddy.
Folks say on dark, still nights you can see a glow in the deep, black water in Burnt Corn Creek. A form emerges from the water, then disappears into the thick under brush along the banks.
Young people have been coming to the bridge just north of Brewton for decades to try to catch a glimpse of the greenish glowing figure some call the ghost of Tippens Eddy Bridge.
For a long time, there wasn't much of a story to go along with the sightings -- nothing to explain why the place would be haunted -- but teacher Patti Mitchell soon remedied that.
"Back when I was a kid," Mitchell began, "we had a terrier we used to bring out to Tippens Eddy so she could run the banks. It was one of the last old wooden bridges in the county still in use then.
Mitchell said she liked running back and forth on the bridge, but one day she got too near the edge for her father's comfort.
"He reached over and got me and said, 'Young'un, you better not get too close to that edge. If you fall in that black water, you might never come up.' Well that scared me, and it stayed with me."
Later, as a teenager, Mitchell and her friends would go out to the bridge at night.
"It got to be a popular place to come," she said. "There weren't many people living out here, and it was considered way out in the country then. The people who did live in the area didn't come out at night, so there was no traffic. One night, a boy said he saw a glow off in the trees."
As the story was repeated, the glow soon grew to be a ghost.
Tippens Eddy got its name from early settler James Augustus Tippins, who moved from Georgia to Alabama with his wife and children in the mid-1800s. He homesteaded land along Burnt Corn Creek at a place where the water formed a pool -- the same spot where a bridge was soon built. Even years ago, several spellings of the surname were common, and no one knows just when or why Tippins changed to Tippens.
Annie C. Waters' "History of Es cambia County" states that Tippins was a teacher and surveyor who helped mark the boundaries for the Oklahoma Territory. He was visiting his daughter, Easter Travis, on the east side of the Conecuh River when he died. Because his death came during a flood, he was buried in the only available cemetery, far from his homestead.
Tippins' descendants became teachers, lawyers and farmers. Some held office in county government -- tax collector and sheriff, to name a couple.
There is nothing left of the homestead along Tippens Eddy Road now, just weathered pilings jutting up out of the swift current marking the ruins of bridges.
All along the road, older homes stand shoulder to shoulder with new houses, and fields stand next to pines or cut-over tracts. But there is the newer bridge that offers a commanding view of the creek below and the pilings from the old bridge.
That's the setting for the ghostly tale Mitchell tells her fourth-grade students at Brew ton Elementary every year.
According to Mitchell's story, which has grown into a local legend a teenage couple were arguing on the bridge in their parked car when the girl got out and began walking on the old bridge, which, in the'60s had no guard rails. The boy reached to grab her, but she pulled away and fell into the water below. She was never seen again.
Weeks later, another couple were standing on the bridge when they saw the glow in the depths of the water. It took the form of a girl, just the size of the one lost. The figure struggled out of the water and up the bank into the woods and kept walking. Some say the girl is trying to get home.
"I could just never figure out what ghost it might be," Mitchell said, "and the kids always wanted a story. So I made one up. It's always a little different every year. It was just for fun, and the kids loved it."
More than 20 years after she began telling the tale, students still drive out to look for the ghost, and some tell their own children the story of the apparition.
"The strange thing about Tippens Eddy is that even in the hot summertime, there's always a cold breeze that blows there," Mitchell said. "And nobody ever catches fish in that hole. There's just something about it.
Mitchell told the tale on a cold, rainy day as she stood on the banks of the creek, careful to point out the location of the old bridge.
"Even though the bridge is no longer there," Mitchell said as ghostly mist rose from the creek, "memories remain and the ghost of Tippens Eddy Bridge will live forever."
It's Friday the 13th! Kidney theft and broken necks
By Martha Petteys - 02/13/2004
Glens Falls (N.Y.) Post-StarThe story goes like this, a business traveler is at a bar and a stranger buys him a drink. That's the last thing he remembers.
Hours later, he wakes up in a bathtub of ice water. A note on a nearby phone gives him the advice that will save his life Call 911.
The emergency dispatcher, who is now very familiar with this tragic scenario, instructs the man to carefully reach behind him and feel if there are any tubes protruding from his lower back.
He says, "yes," confirming the dispatcher's suspicions the caller's kidneys have been stolen for sale on the organ transplant black market.
"This is not a scam or out of a science fiction novel, it is real. It is documented and confirmable. If you travel or someone close to you travels, please be careful" so ends this urgent e-mail, which has become the Bigfoot of Internet urban legends.
Scary urban legends know no better friend than the Internet. On this Friday the 13th, we celebrate the pervasive spooky tall tales.
While legends have been around since the beginning of time, the Internet has given the tales wider reach than a New York Times bestseller and, best of all, validity (because we all know, if you see it in writing, it has to be true.)
With a click of a button you can be the hero, warning every person in your address book to protect their kidneys, watch for ankle-cutting gang members and be wary of long-strapped purses as they can cause decapitation by purse snatchers.
"I just saw a segment of 'Oprah' reporting on the deaths of at least 14 women in the United States due to broken necks from usually harmless purse snatching!!"
With messages like this, it is a wonder the world was safe before spam.
For the record, Oprah never did a segment on decapitation via purses. But then again, she's never been seen wearing a purse wrapped around her neck, either.
Snoping for the answers? People are constantly asking Barbara Mikkelson if the friend-of-a-friend story they heard is true.
Mikkelson is the founder of Snopes.com, an Internet site dedicated to urban legends and myths. The site, which was started by her and her husband as a hobby nine years ago, now gets a million and a half hits a day.
Mikkelson works out of her Los Angeles home, scouring on-line news databases, slouching over microfilm to track down the root of stories about back-seat killers, rabbits that come back to life and, of course, kidney snatchers.
"The good news is, it is completely impossible," said Mikkelson. "You just can't show up at a hospital with a kidney in a bucket and say, 'Here, put it in Mr. Jones."
But Mikkelson knows, even as she says this, there are those out there who will take their belief of kidney thieves to the grave.
Like Patty Radford of Houston, who writes, "Yes, this does happen. My sister-in-law works with a lady that this happened to her son's neighbor."
How's that again? Your sister-in-law's co-worker's son's neighbor?
The National Kidney Foundation has tried to dispel the rumors by asking anyone who has had a kidney illegally removed to contact them. So far, no one has.
Mikkelson has been tracking urban legends long enough to know that there is nothing too outrageous for someone to believe.
Her favorite you've-got-to-be-kidding-me tale is the story about the little boy whose body was a burlap bag filled with leaves. The e-mail asked people to send the boy money so that he could get a real body no doubt he would buy the body on the black market from the kidney/body-snatching people.
Mikkelson got e-mails asking if the burlap boy was real.
The human condition?
Robert Bartholomew, author of "Hoaxes, Myths and Manias: Why We Need Critical Thinking," said urban legends will never go away because they fulfill a need and are part of who we are.
"Some people think with education, you can rid the world of urban legends and superstitions. I disagree. They are part of the human condition," said Bartholomew, who has a Ph.D in sociology.
Bartholomew, who lives in Whitehall, N.Y., said urban legends help people make sense of the world around them and serve as cautionary tales.
During World War I, a story was spreading in towns around the country that German submarine captains were coming ashore, attending shows at crowded theaters and attempting to spread influenza. After Sept. 11, similar tales were surfacing on the Internet about Arab-Americans.
Mikkelson said she also sees old urban legends dusted off and updated for a new scare.
A well-known tale about a killer disguised as an old lady begging for a ride at a shopping mall predates the Civil War.
In the newer version of the story, the stranger leaves behind a briefcase containing rope, an ax and duct tape in the car. In the original tale, the killer leaves a carpetbag in the stagecoach.
"These legends are expressions of what we are feeling disquieted by," said Mikkelson.
The tales feed on our mistrust of strangers, our feelings of vulnerability, our fear of gangs and women's anxiety of being alone.
The more we hear a tale, the more apt we are to believe it, she said. And, people have a natural weakness for the written word. If we see it in print, we believe it.
Mikkelson receives hundreds of e-mails each day from people trying to confirm the story they read about the woman who died after eating a Kentucky Fried Rat, the person killed during a gang initiation because he flashed his headlights at a gang member and, they write to ask if that poor rabbit really did get a turn under the blow dryer.
The popular "Hare Dryer" story goes something like this: A man's dog comes home with his neighbor's rabbit in his mouth. The rabbit is dead and muddy, but besides that, looks relatively unharmed. Rather than fess up that his dog killed the rabbit, the guy decides to wash and blow-dry the rabbit and sneak it back into his neighbor's backyard cage.
The next day the man sees his neighbor at the cage acting very distraught. Playing it cool, the man asks, "What happened? Did the rabbit die?"
The neighbor replies, "Yes, three days ago. I buried him and now he's back in the hutch!"
Celebrities and comedians have used this legend as their own for years, said Mikkelson.
Johnny Carson related the story as a true event that had happened to his neighbor in 1989. Then, three months later, his guest Michael Landon told the same rabbit tale, this time with Landon as the owner of the dog.
In 2000, singer Marc Anthony told Jay Leno the story, swearing that it had been his father-in-law's dog. And, that same year, William Shatner told the story to Conan O'Brien, saying that the incident had happened to his co-author.
"That poor rabbit," said Mikkelson. "He's been dug up more times."
Myth surrounds angel
As Halloween nears, dozens flock to statue
Iowa City Press-Citizen
Tuesday, October 26, 2004
The last one to leave, Eve Small, 7, reluctantly reaches out to touch the Black Angel after her class finished drawing the monument Monday at Oakland Cemetery. Press-Citizen / Jason A. Cook
Legend has it that if you touch the Black Angel with your bare hand, you will die in seven days.
"Look, look, I'm touching it," Eve Small, 7, said to her art teacher, Jamie Hieronymous, as she laid her hand flat on the side of the more than 8-foot-tall monument that rests over a grave in Iowa City's Oakland Cemetery.
"No, you have your glove on," Hieronymous said.
"Look, I'm touching it with my bare hand now, look," said Eve, one of about 30 students with Willowwind School, 226 S. Johnson St., who visited the cemetery Monday for a special Halloween art project.
"We came to draw some observations of the Black Angel because Halloween is a huge event at our school," Hieronymous said. "We always tell tales and stories, and we always tell ones about the Black Angel."
Fortunately for Eve, Oakland Cemetery Supervisor Jim Wonick said he does not think any of the myths and rumored curses are true.
"I don't believe in any of them," Wonick said.
But Joshua Schaeffler does.
"If you look at her in the eyes, she'll bring you to the graveyard at night," said the 7-year-old Willowwind student.
"I know when she died," said Blake Termini, 9. "She died on her birthday."
According to the legend told in Hieronymous' class, the angel was originally white but turned color late one night when the woman whose grave is marked by the mysterious monument sent down a lighting bolt to strike the statue. Hieronymous said the woman was angry with her unfaithful husband.
"I think it's very cool," she said of the grave's mystery and allure. "I've lived here all my life and this is definitely the place to come around Halloween."
According to cemetery officials, angels on graves usually are positioned with heads and wings uplifted as a symbol of help in the ascent to heaven. However, the black angel is facing down, with her right wing shielding her face and her left wing at her side. A tree stump monument sits next to the angel's cement perch that reads, "The Feldevert Family."
Wonick said Teresa Dolezal Feldevert moved with her son, Eddie Dolezal, to Iowa City in the late 1800s. After her son died of meningitis in 1891, Feldevert erected the tree stump memorial and then left for Oregon, where she married Nicholas Feldevert. Following his death in 1911, she hired Mario Korbel to design the $5,000 angel monument to sit atop the remains of her son and the ashes of her husband.
While the angel arrived in town Nov. 21, 1912, some stories assert that it was stored in a barn for six years as Feldevert fought a court case over her dissatisfaction with the monument. She reportedly refused to pay Korbel because he failed to incorporate a replica of the tree stump monument on the angel statue as she had requested.
According to the story, after the long battle in court, which Feldevert lost, the statue was erected in 1918. When Feldevert died of cancer on Nov. 18 1924, her ashes were also laid under the monument.
"It turned black because of oxidation," Wonick said of the statue, which is bronze. "It is because bronze has steel or iron in it."
But some believe the black color can be credited to Feldevert's evil character, and one story asserts that the angel is black because a preacher's son, whom he murdered, is buried below.
"I couldn't even put a number on the amount of people who come here to see it. ... They even come from out of state," Wonick said, adding that the mythical history draws the crowds. "Some say that if you kiss the black angel you will die instantly, but I haven't seen any piles of people out there, so. ..."
Wonick said that although hundreds of thrill seekers visit the statue each year, they are not supposed to pass the cemetery gates after 4:30 p.m.
"And we stay on Halloween night and ask for extra police patrol," Wonick said. "We stay until 1 a.m. to 2 a.m. ... but our people have a lot of fun watching the people."
According to one of the many legends, on every passing Halloween the angel turns one shade darker as a reminder of the people she has killed.
"It's interesting that people like that kind of stuff," Wonick said. "But I guess that if I believed in stuff like that, I wouldn't be working in a cemetery."
Black Angel Myths
Any girl kissed near the Black Angel in the moonlight will die within six months.
If a girl who is innocent of men and the world is kissed in front of the angel, the angel will return to its original color, and the curse that turned it black will be lifted.
Touching the angel at midnight on Halloween means death within seven years.
Anyone who kisses the angel will die instantly.
Every passing Halloween causes the angel to turn one shade darker as a reminder of all the people she has killed.
Black Angel facts
The monument has been the site of many weddings.
The cement tree stump monument has no date inscribed, and there is no death date on the Black Angel monument for Teresa Feldevert.
Neighbors of the cemetery often can be found scraping the statue trying to discover the reason for its blackness.
Source: Black Angel Monument brochure distributed at the Oakland Cemetery, 1000 Brown St.
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