Dirt Biker Ghosts in Maryland
This story was heard from a friend of mine; a 20 year old, Caucasian, Irish-American male. He discovered this story when he first moved into his house. He heard this story from his newly acquired friends who were neighborhood children that had lived in the area since before he arrived, although he did not mention any specifics about the sources, such as names, how many there were, or how old they were, but just that they were friends. The teller, however, did remember where he heard this story, which was told while sitting right outside of his house, within eyesight of the woods mentioned in the story. This story was collected late at night in the teller’s dormitory room; he was focused on telling the story, and one other person, a mutual friend, was present to also hear the story.
The story all started when three children were riding dirt bikes in the woods near the teller’s house. The boys were being sort of reckless and doing tricks with their dirt bikes [the teller performed a mock trick with his hands], when one of the teens suddenly made an error and crashed his dirt bike [teller smacked one hand into his arm, like something hitting a tree]. When the other two children realized that their friend was dead, they panicked and ran to get their parents. The deaths do not end here, however, because after the incident both of the other boys’ lives started going awry and they both died in very mysterious circumstances. One of the boys was killed in a freak car accident, where his seat belt broke and he was thrown from the car. The third boy was murdered for no apparent reason. All three of these deaths also occurred fairly close in time to each other, happening about a week apart.
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...ing this part of woods. All of these events can be explained by natural occurrences, such as the woods being dark in the daytime, which could be because the trees are very dense, allowing little light into the area. Also, noises of dirt bikes coming from the woods could be coming from cars driving around the area, being that it is a fairly populated city. It is not important to prove the urban legend wrong, but it is important to realize why these explanations were offered. Since the legend is told by children, who are often ignorant of reasons for natural occurrences and usually have great imaginations, it is possible that it was created in order to offer explanations which make sense for the child. These explanations that the child offers are not necessarily founded in actual natural principles, which is why stories such as this one often evolve into urban legends.
The grandmother always would tell the grandson different stories about the land, the people, pretty much everything in the world. But one day she told him about the Deer Woman, because she thinks that he is becoming a fine hunter. She told him that his grandfather told her the story of the Deer Woman, how she would appear to lone hunter and welcome them into her lodge which would be alone lodge with warm furs and robes and a fire going. They would go in there and she would take their souls, some would have families that they forget about because they go looking for the Deer Woman but they never find her, because the Deer Woman took their souls they forget who they are forgetting about their families. The grandmother tells him not to go into the lodge that he was to turn back from where he came from and keep walking away. One day the Young Hunter was out with a couple other hunter they were hunting for the tribe, well he was out by himself and he ran into the Deer woman. She welcomed him, the hunters almost went into the lodge, but he remembers what his grandmother
The following story was told to me by a nineteen year old man in his dorm room at College on a Saturday afternoon in March. He is from Monroe, New Jersey, and lives with his two parents, his younger brother, his dog Cougar, and his cat affectionately known as Hellspawn. His father works as a contractor, a security guard, and a fire extinguisher inspector, and his mother works at a local garden center.
When one usually thinks of a hearing a ghost story, the setting is dark with flickering light (such as around a campfire or in a basement with bad lighting) and, of course, it is nighttime. Needless to say, when I heard this story during the middle of the day on a Friday, I was a little taken aback. When prompted for any urban legends or ghost stories a white, female friend of mine immediately responded with, “Have you ever heard of de Sales Academy?” With my negative response, the nineteen year old student jumped into her story:
The storyteller was an eighteen-year old male attending the University. Currently a sophomore, he was raised as a Catholic in Maryland. Upon visiting me a couple of weeks ago on a Saturday night, we relaxed over some calzones in my dorm as we began to watch television and listen to music. Flipping through the channels, we came across the Sci-Fi network, sparking a sudden interest in both of us to talk about scary stories. We began to discuss the local urban legends, myths, and horror stories that we knew, and he began to tell a story that he heard from a friend down in South Carolina during his freshman year. It went like this.
A car pulls up and the boys freeze. Rather than be caught they head into the woods. At this point in the story all the loose ends begin to be tied up and the conflict and climax are taken care. The main character stopped the man from assaulting them further, which eliminated that conflict, and the car showing up stops them from potentially raping the girl. The strange man did get some sort of revenge by damaging the main character’s car. After the strange man and his buddies leave the boys come out of the
Imagine the most heinous act, a human sacrifice, Satanic cult, or devil worshipers. Now imagine a shadowy forest, several busy freeways, a murky stream, and three lifeless young bodies. One parent describes the act; “Imagine all the evil that you could think of, of how someone could be murdered, and that’s how these three children died.” The fear of such things quickly spread through the town of West Memphis, Arkansas on May 6, 1993. The scene at Robin Hood Hills was a gruesome one on that hot afternoon. The discovery of three bodies, each an eight-year-old boy, sent shock across the community instantly. Stevie Branch, Michael Moore, and Christopher Byers were last seen riding their bicycles into the woods, a popular playground for the cub scouts, around six o’clock on the evening of May 5, 1993. At approximately eight o’clock that evening, the three frightened parents phoned the West Memphis Police Department.
Tidwell, James N. "Folklore in the News." Western Folklore 14 (1955): 213-14. Web. 9 Apr. 2014.
The sparsely populated towns and countryside of the Pine Barrens of Southern New Jersey have often been the ideal setting of various ghost stories, including the infamous tale of the Jersey Devil, that are told in the more heavily populated Northern New Jersey and Philadelphia metropolitan regions. One of those “Piney” towns is home to a lesser-known, but equally interesting, tale of a street that is haunted by the ghost of a young boy. The story is set in the town of Atco, within Waterford Township, and is located approximately half-way between Philadelphia and Atlantic City, right in the heart of the Wharton State Forest section of the Pine Barrens National Reserve.
This tale was told by a twenty-year-old Caucasian male from Boonton, New Jersey, who was very excited to share his paranormal experiences. According to the narrator, Split Rock Road runs through a nice residential neighborhood. However, at one point the pavement stops and turns to gravel. At this point, there are no lights on the road, which is surrounded by woods. As you continue down the road, you come to a bridge on top of a dam and an abandoned guard tower. Legend has it that if you turn off your headlights and stop the car while on the bridge, everyone in the car dies. The narrator attempted this once with his friends late at night. He managed to turn off the headlights and stop the car, but all of his friends started screaming and begging him to go back, so he left very quickly. He said that it was one of the scariest experiences of his life. Additionally, there is rumored to be a ghost that wanders on Split Rock Road, a young girl in a white sundress. However, the narrator had never personally seen this ghost.
One of these urban legends deals with what happened to “two girls at some college.” A college student from University of Maryland, Baltimore County recites his tale about the murder of a young girl at an unnamed college. The storyteller is twenty, and currently lives in Rockville, Maryland. A Chinese-American student, he is majoring in the mechanical engineering field and “considers [himself] to be a normal guy.” Both his parents work in the restaurant industry. He told me the following story in a face-to-face interview:
The teller is 24 years old, and works for the state department of education. Originally, he was from the Baltimore area where he attended an elementary Catholic school. He moved to Bell Air in second grade and grew up there. After his parents separated, he moved back to Baltimore to live with his grandparents, and has remained in Baltimore ever since. The sister he mentions in the story moved away to China years ago. A weekend or two ago, he, I, and a few other friends spent the evening in one of our favorite hang-out spots in Columbia, Pub Dog. It was there, sitting in our dimly lit booth, over some beers that I heard him tell this story from his childhood. He spoke in a strangely matter-of-fact tone, considering the weirdness of the story he was telling, and in a smooth, comfortable manner that seemed to indicate he had told the story many times before. Here is the story he told:
The storyteller told me the story of the Goatman in a mutual friend’s dorm room at night. I had come to the dorm room to ask my friend if he knew any urban legends of ghost stories from around campus or the state of Maryland. The storyteller, a 21-year-old biology major, shouted excitedly from the couch that she knew one. She is from Beltsville, Maryland. Her mother is a lawyer and her father is a math professor. My friend and I sat down on the couch and listened intently as she told the story: The Goatman from Beltsville.
Since the beginning of the society, the forest has been portrayed as a place filled with darkness, and inhabited by the devil and other unworldly creatures. The rumors that were formed about what could be lurking in the forest were created to fill the void of knowledge of what was in the woods and to give them something to believe in. In reality, what lurked in the forest was still unknown to most people. The mystery of the forest was what people were so scared of.
When I heard this story, 12 years ago, it came from the mouth of my father’s good friend, an Ojibwa man, named Henry Meekis. I still remember everyone sitting in front of him while he told the story. His passion for the story permeated the room and we were all captivated by it.
I collected this urban legend from a nineteen year old male here at the University. He is a sophomore and is majoring in biochemistry. He was born in India, but moved to Phoenix with his parents, sister and two brothers. He first heard this urban legend from friends during a sleepover when he was in fifth grade. While we were standing and retelling the story, other people came up and listened to him tell the story. Afterwards, everyone agreed that they had heard this story when they were younger, but that some of the details were different. It was very interesting how one story could have so many different variations.