Lurking Louis
Urban legends can be effective conveyors of entertainment and morals. We all have heard urban legends during our lives, whether it was in a dorm room, the dinner table, or around the campfire, but rarely do we take the time to fully appreciate the value of the stories. Urban legends have this rare ability to make us question reality. We have this feeling in our minds that says “Oh, this cannot possible be real,” but then our imagination questions that and reels us in and plants a lingering doubt. David Emery, a writer and follower of urban folklore, defines urban legends as “told [to be] true, and plausible enough to be believed.” Besides this lingering suspense, urban legends and similar folklore often have underlying morals that are hard to uncover, but when they are, the stories become clear. When collecting stories, the best and most unique one was a local story native to a town in New York State. I vividly remember how he told the story:
There was this rundown, old split-level on the edge of the town owned and inhabited by a young couple. This young couple did not have much money so they had to rent out the basement. The tenant that lived in the basement was a short, old man by the name of Louis. Louis lived there for about a year, but he NEVER came out of the basement. He NEVER answered the door during rent collection but just slid it through the mail slot. After a year, the couple was considering evicting Louis, mostly because they had a fear of Louis and his shady activities in the basement. Also, the couple was due for a baby in the upcoming year and they felt it was best for Louis to go. Louis did not respond well to the eviction however. So, when the couple was cleaning out the apartment, for another tenant, a skeleton fell out of the closet and landed on the floor with a loud CRASH! The couple ran out and called the police. After the whole thing with the police was sorted out, the couple moved out. More families would move in, but on the anniversary of the eviction, the Ghost of Louis would appear and haunt the inhabitants of the house, causing them to move out. The cycle continues today, and no one has seen Louis ever again, but rumor is he died after that eviction.
The story was told to me by one of my high-school classmates, who is a resident of the town of Atco. The nineteen year old young man is currently a sophomore at Clemson University and describes himself as being a Roman Catholic of half Italian-American and half Irish-American decent. The young man also noted that he is normally very socially conservative and a staunch Republican. His father is employed as a general contractor and his mother runs her own catering company. He describes himself as a “self proclaimed expert of all things related to the Atco Ghost.” He cannot remember the specific date when he first heard the story, but stated that he can remember knowing most of the details to the story for most of his life. He also claims to have attempted to see the ghost on only one occasion and after what he saw, he refuses to ever go back to that area of town at night. The following is an almost word for word account, which he checked to ensure its accuracy, of the lengthy story as he retold it to me ...
Lewiston, Idaho, once an important port for miners traveling in search of gold, is now a town of about 30,000 people. Few of the people who live in the Lewis-Clark Valley speak of its over one hundred year history. However, there are still parts of the community where one can explore and see the age of the town. Downtown Lewiston is one of a few areas where people can go exploring. They wander the streets, admiring the buildings that stand proudly above them. One building in particular ties a unique history into the downtown area. Morgan’s Alley stands at the corner of Main Street and D Street, overlooking the cars and people passing by. On the outside, it looks like an ordinary, older building. On the inside, it holds secrets of the past and possibly a ghost.
Urban legends are the supernatural folklore of our modern society. From one generation to the next, they orally travel throughout the world, constantly changing from one region to the next. Although cultural variations exist, the core of all these urban legends remains the same, to unveil the universally known individual and societal fears. “The Graveyard Wager” is a timeless urban legend told again and again, and the one of which I will explore more in depth.
This documentary directed by Joshua Zeman and Barbara Brancaccio follows the Staten Island urban legend ‘Cropsey’. Cropsey was originally thought to be nothing more than a boogeyman used by parents to scare children out of trouble. Rumored to be lurking near lakes and woods come nightfall, Cropsey took the form of an axe wielding, escaped mental patient who would prey on young children. According to Staten Island natives, exploring Cropsey’s home, Willowbrook Mental Hospital, was a popular pastime amongst the youth who thought him nothing more than myth. However, in the summer of 1987, when 12 year old Jennifer Schweiger disappeared, the legend of Cropsey resurfaced. This time, he posed a much realer threat to the children of Staten Island. With the community in outrage over the loss of one of their children,
In trying to determine is a story is an urban legend or not, there are several different topics examined within the contents of the story. One of these is regarding how long the story has been around, for stories that are modern are what we consider urban legends and not folktales. A tale that has been around for a significant period of time, but what we would still consider ‘modern’ is “The Double Theft” from The Criminal Mind chapter. In this story, the beginning sentence is, ‘This “true” story was told to me back in 1970 in Silver Spring, Maryland” (Harold, 308). In this, it actually lists the year that the author originally heard the rumor, giving it the credit of being recent enough to count as an urban legend.
Late one night just as the sun began to set behind the distant hills a piercing scream was heard in the distance. Could this be the return of the psycho man that disappeared ten years ago that went around and knocked on children’s windows and would scream until he made them cry many years ago? The man’s name was Jeff Reddy , he was supposed to be shipped off to a mental asylum. When he was a child he was dropped on his head and his parents and siblings were mean to him. The psycho man did not graduate high school because he was always scaring people in school until one day a girl named Mary told the principal and he was suspended and they put a 350 foot restraining order from Mary.
Perhaps some of the best stories told are classified as urban legends. Urban legends have become a part of culture, and a way to tell stories. They can tell us things about ourselves and about how we lead our lives. They serve to entertain us, but can also teach us lessons, such as morals to live by. Urban legends are passed on between generations, and become a part of the oral history of a place. Whether the stories are true or not, urban legends are often taken to hold at least some truth about a culture. No matter how radical some of the stories may be, people often take the urban legends to be true. People may take these stories to be true simply for entertainment purposes, but mostly because the morals the stories teach are important. Urban legends can become a part of the place where they originate, and can help define a culture, and shape its history.
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.
...r lived in the house experienced some type of paranormal activity. The information was concluded was doubtful in many ways. The evidence about the woman hanging from the tree behind the house would be doubtful. Anything could have happened behind the house on the tree. The person could have just be seeing things or having a flashback about something that happened previous years ago.
The ghost story chosen for this paper was told by a 19 year-old Caucasian male college student. The story involves a supposedly haunted building in the nearby town. He heard the story from a friend but does not recall when or where he first heard the story. He recounted the story in the afternoon while sitting in his room with a few other students watching television. According to his story, the haunted building was once used as a factory. One day there was a fire which burned down a good portion of the building and killed all the workers inside. The ruins can still be seen and are alleged to be haunted by ghosts of the deceased factory workers. The teller once tried to locate the factory ruins at night with a few friends but had trouble doing so. He said they found people looking for the same place and joined them to find it. They found an old building in an isolated area but were not sure if it was the correct place. The story teller recalls having an eerie feeling when arriving at the isolated building. He and his friends soon left without exploring further because the uneasiness about the area began to scare them. The teller told the story in a rushed manner, quickly telling the details. Upon recalling his eerie feelings while searching for the building, he broke into nervous laughter, and one could tell he was somewhat unnerved by the experience. This conclusion led the listeners to believe that searching for the old factory would be a scary experience.
I remember enacting an urban ritual with my friends back in middle school. Giggling and squealing, running in and out of the bathroom, not really believing but still terrified by the possibilities. It was less a story with a moral than it was just a sleepover prank. Needless to say I wasn’t surprised that when I asked a roommate to relate an urban legend to me over lunch one day that she chose that of “Bloody Mary."
The Urban Legend that I chose is the Killer in the Window. It is pretty much about a man that comes up to a sliding glass door with a knife. The girl that was home alone covered herself and her head with a blanket and calls 911. The police gets there and they are looking for footprints but there is no footprints but there is no footprints outside the door. The police see footprints behind the couch though. The policeman said “You are a lucky girl because the man wasn’t outside he was right behind you it was just his reflection.
According to Brunvard, urban legends can tell us a lot about the society in which we live. Brunvard explains that these stories are an indication of our own fears and issues, and by implanting them into stories, we give voice to them. For example, “The Boyfriend’s Death” tells the story of a young couple who had gone to the woods in the boy’s car, and they were making out. The boy then left the girl alone in the car and promised he would return but never did. She later saw his body hanging from a tree.
"As you can see from this tour this mansion is a bargain buy and you
The babysitter's dead! There is a corpse wrapped in a carpet! There is blood all over the bathroom! Oh, wait… that is from Stephen King's it movie and novel about that dumb clown who is built off of fear. Speaking of clowns...there are MURDERING CLOWNS running around! These are all urban legends. An urban legend is a story or a legend based on some kind of truth, but the story is exaggerated and spread out from its original story. The urban legend has been used to make things interesting and scaring teenage girls right into the arms of a dreamy football player and you know how that works out. The geek takes over and wins, leaving the quarterback behind for the serial killer. On the other hand, all of these urban legends have fear in them. But