Lights Out
In preparation for this writing assignment, I interviewed about 15 students at the University to collect their urban legends. One legend, often called “Lights Out,” was mentioned by just about all of the students I interviewed. Those who did not mention it on their own recognized it when I described it.
I interviewed a 19-year-old male sophomore who anticipates getting into the School of Business. He transferred from Community College this past fall, and currently lives with a relative in a nearby off-campus home. He went to a small Catholic high school. He recalls first hearing this legend early in high school, probably between freshman and sophomore year. After telling him the purpose of the interview, I began the conversation by asking if he knew any urban legends, to which he replied:
Ummm, maybe (pensive)… you mean like the gang killer story? (looks excited)... It’s something like, (change to more serious tone) if you see a car driving on the road, coming toward you with no headlights on, and you flash your headlights at them, they will turn around and chase you down and kill you… I think gangs really do that though (slight smile), so I guess it’s a non-urban legend.
He told me the story rather quickly, but in an uncharacteristically serious tone, and maintained eye contact during the performance. The story he told is not really very long or involved with characters and exact places, but I interpret that as an element that makes the story more likely to circulate, since the lack of specificity implies it could happen to anyone, anywhere. Normally, this individual cannot say a single sentence without laughing, joking, or including some kind of sarcasm, but his tone while he quickly reviewed this ...
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...ecause those who do get screwed.” It could mean that people who worry about the safety of others instead of their own are at the greatest risk.
Works Cited
Armstrong, David. (1994, January 23). "Police label gang story a hoax; Rumors of motorists killed in initiation rite spread from coast to coast." The Boston Globe. Retrieved April 7, 2006 from LexisNexis; keyword “gang headlights legend.”
Emery, David. “Flash Your Headlights and Die!, Netlore Archive: Resurgence of a terrifying urban legend about aspiring gang members opening fire on oncoming drivers who innocently flashed their headlights” (10 paragraphs). Retrieved April 7, 2006 from http://www.urbanlegends.about.com/library/blbyol.htm.
Mikkelson, Barbara. (2005, October 29). “Lights Out!” (31 paragraphs). Retrieved April 7, 2006 from http://www.snopes.com/horrors/madmen/lightsout.asp.
The storyteller had not witnessed the strange happenings at the school but claimed to know someone who had seen the disturbances. As a performance, the telling of this story was very matter a fact and my friend did not self-aggrandize; the performance was quick, to the point, but not particularly dramatic. The storyteller told the legend as fact and was not melodramatic about her role as storyteller.
The first close-to-death experience the narrator and his posse have involves a case of mistaken identity. The group wrongly identifies a lone car as that belonging to a mutual friend and flash their headlights in a
In April I sat down with a friend at my house and asked about any urban legends or ghost stories he had encountered. After a couple legends he had seen in movies, he mentioned a haunted bridge about ten minutes away from downtown. He is a twenty-one year-old White male; his father owns an appliance store and his mother helps out with the books. He first heard this story in the ninth grade from a couple of friends. Supposedly, they had heard from kids who had actually been to the bridge and heard strange things at night. The bridge is located off of Uniontown road, between a couple old farms. He has not encountered the bridge first hand but still remembers the story surrounding it:
For example, “Evening of the 27th. Unexpectedly jumped up from his chair, a perplexed expression on his face, and ran to the wall. Rubbed palms along a small area of the wall, like a blind man. Turned. Asked, "Where 's the piñata?" Shuffled into hallway. Noticed a large nurse walking away from us down the hall. Muttered, "If she 's got our piñata, I 'm gonna be pissed." (Feet In Smoke Sullivan) I found this part of the story very unbelievable but believable when thinking back to being electrocuted what it can do to your brain. I wished that John provided more dates of Ellsworth 's disclosures because I found them pretty humorous and sad at the same
Dangers on roadways is an issue that describes the discrepancy between perception and reality of road rage. The media, for some odd reason, tends to make road rage a huge controversial issue. As seen on talk shows from Oprah Winfrey to CNN, they reveal to people that road rage could happen at any time and to always be looking over your shoulder. These talk shows and news programs also put fear into our minds by explaining that most roadragers often use guns to kill or injure their victims. Glassner contradicts the media's speculations by stating that out of approximately 250,000 people killed on roadways between 1990-1997, AAA attributed that one in one thousand was an act of road rage (pg.5).
Wexler, L. (2005, October 23). Darkness on the Edge of Town. In The Washington Post. Retrieved November 20, 2013, from http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2005/10/20/AR2005102001715.html
1. Bissinger, H.G. Friday night lights: A town, a team, and a dream. Reading, Mass.: Addison-Wesley Pub. Co., 1990.
Barry considers himself as one of the “normal” drivers as he refers the other drivers as “testosterone-deranged youths.” He mentions in this part of the story that “So the tiny minority of us Miami drivers who actually qualify as normal find ourselves constantly being trapped behind people drifting along the interstate at the speed of diseased livestock, while at the same time they are being tailgated by the testosterone-deranged youths”(92). Many people could see his point of view from this part as they experience this not only in Miami, but in other parts of America as well. Everyone has had road rage or at least experienced road rage once in their life
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.
Poe, J. (1998, Mar 30). CITY GANG INFLUENCES SHOW UP IN SMALL TOWNS SOME CASES OF FATAL VIOLENCE REPORTED; EXPERTS FEAR SPREAD. Chicago Tribune Retrieved from http://search.proquest.com/docview/418629134
Bissinger, H. G. Friday Night Lights: A Town, a Team, and a Dream. Reading, MA: Addison-Wesley Pub., 1990. Print.
A 19-year old female from Harford County, Maryland, narrated the story of Black Aggie, the urban legend of an overnight stay in a cemetery. She grew up Christian, and still lives in one of the more rural areas of Maryland with her younger sister and parents, who own and work at an electrical contracting business. Accustomed to hearing many ghost stories and urban legends, she first heard the story of Black Aggie during a middle school slumber party. Late one Saturday night over pizza in our Hagerstown dorm, she was more than willing to share her favorite urban legend with me.
Headlights always were intensely bright at night. They’re intimidating. It’s hard to move or react after being stunned by them. These lights were enormous circles, the first sign before the crunch of metal that followed afterwards. An impact side swept the vehicle into the snow. The spinning made the girl dizzy and she was sick upon her dress. The screams of a man and woman joined together in a terrifying harmony before they cut off
Commonly, vehicular collisions are considered a negative occurrence. Dave Eggers hints towards this mindset in his short story Accident. Plotted in the middle of an intersection in 2005, the story commences with the main character driving his automobile through the intersection and striking an older Camaro. The three teenagers in the Camaro are fine, but the main character notices all the damage he has done to their vehicle and he fears an unpleasant encounter with them. Dave Eggers uses irony throughout the situation to illustrate the main character’s relief. The characters’ involvement with the collision emphasizes Egger’s theme that no matter how unfortunate an incident, positivity can result.
The subject of this report focuses on the phenomenon known as Urban Legend. Urban Legend, henceforth referred to as UL, is well known in the arena of folklore and other sorts of stories passed down through generations; however, it is relatively new to the world of literary composition as a legitimate genre to be analyzed and studied in texts by experts of literature. In fact, if it had to be labeled, UL would be considered a sub-genre of folklore by many of the experts. These stories are known as "modern oral folklore - typically a tall tale with a frisson of comeuppance of horror, related as having actually happened to a 'friend of a friend'" (Clute & Grant, 1997). UL is also considered to be very similar to myth and fantasy.