Category: Local Legends
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Nursery Rhymes For Horrible People
How The Victorians Celebrated Death, and What I Learned From This Macabre Tradition Avery Vane, Avery Vane Wicked, twisted, and insane Killed his wife and ate her brain Then killed his son and did the same When I wrote this verse for my short story The Complications of Avery Vane (published in the Scribblers’ Den…
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It Goes on All Fours
When I was in high school in Southern California, I made friends with brothers who recently moved to town from Gallup, New Mexico. At one point, they told me a story about driving in the desert at night near Gallup. They saw a coyote-like animal come out of the bush and run alongside the car.…
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More Monsters from Texas
I’m back with a few more interesting monsters from the great state of Texas. Ottine Swamp Thing East of San Antonio is the Ottine Wetlands. They are a relict ecosystem believed to be 12,000 years old. And in case you’re wondering, a relict ecosystem is a particular habitat that exists in geographic isolation from an…
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THE DEVIL WENT DOWN TO CAROLINA
I decided to hop on the ‘haunted homelands’ bandwagon this time around, as several other posters did before me. My subject is the U.S. state of North Carolina. Although I no longer live there, it’s a special place to me. I still visit there occasionally, mostly at towns on the islands of the Outer Banks,…
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A Tour of Proctor Valley
Thursday before last I joined the “Local Legends” series with an essay on haunted San Diego, a high-point of which was the stop in Proctor Valley, epicenter of San Diego’s Bigfoot equivalent, the Proctor Valley Monster. Over the weekend I found this video on the subject by a fellow I’ve enjoyed for a while. I…
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A Witch’s Grave
Folks have been sharing some local spooky legends from their parts of the country in recent posts. For today’s post, I thought I’d share a legend I first heard directly from one of my neighbors in Las Cruces, New Mexico. Like many cities in the southwest, Las Cruces is part of a clumping of towns…
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Ghosts and “The Monster” of San Diego
Good morning, friends and followers, and I hope it finds you in the mood for spooks! Negatrite opened this can of worms and C.W. scooped out a handful, so I’m diving in to get my share before they’re all gone! For those who don’t know, San Diego, the city on the southwestern corner of the…
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Beasts, Monsters, and Urban Legends of Texas
Three weeks ago, negatrite! posted a nifty article on creepy things that just might visit your backyard if you live in New Jersey or Delaware. Then he threw out the challenge to show him some creepies from the readers neck of the woods. So I decided to take up the challenge and find out what…
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WHAT LURKS
When it comes to horror and monsters, do you know what lurks in your neck of the woods? I have a foot in South Jersey and one in Delaware. The latter is where I was born, where much of my family and tribe reside, and where I lay my head now. The former is where…
Threads that Bind 