Hey, as the title of the blog suggest, this shall be my personal catalog of myths, legends, and general occult from around the world. I don't expect anyone to read it, but my friends say I should jump on the blogging bandwagon. I'll update once or twice a week, with a new telling of an urban legend, or detailing a famous mythological creature. Urban legends may or may not be linked to snopes.com or other related sites for more information and a conformation of truth.
Let's start off with a classic, one that I used to think actually happed. It's truth status is also up in the air on Snopes.com, which adds to the creepiness.
We all know this one, mainly because the teller claims that it happened locally. And it starts the same as a lot of others, a couple driving up to the local make-out point, the location of said make-out point is most often in a forest. If not, they park under a tree.
Sometimes the main story takes place after they've had their fun, other times it happens on the way. Either way, the car, be it out of gas or a dead battery, stops working. This story started being told before cellphones were widespread, so that solution isn't brought up often, but more recent tellings make it a point to mention that either service sucks in that area or both their batteries are dead. So basically the situation is that they are stranded after dark in an isolated location. Not something we want happening, especially because we hear stories like this a lot.
So the boyfriend leaves to get help, or gas if that was the problem, and promises to come back. Some versions have the boyfriend tell her that he will knock on the roof of the car a specific number of times or in a specific pattern when he's back.
Now there are three variations of what happens next. Sometimes, she hears branches scraping against the roof from the wind, sometimes she hears water dripping on the roof. Other times she hears tapping on the roof and thinks her boyfriend is back for a few seconds, but the tapping doesn't stop. Either way, it doesn't stop and continues all night. Scared out of her mind, she eventually doses off.
She wakes up to the flashing lights and the shrill of a police siren, most often belonging to a state trooper. She gets out of the car and starts to babel out her story. The officer interrupts her and brings her to his cruiser telling her, "Don't look back!" If it's a state trooper, he is said to try and block her view with his hat.
Now how she looks back varies, sometimes she doesn't listen to the officer, other times, she catches a glimpse while getting into the cruiser, other time's still, she doesn't see it until backup arrives and the officer drives away. She is always treated to the gruesome sight of her boyfriend's corpse strung up in the tree. If she heard branches scraping, it was his fingernails. If she heard dripping, it was the blood from his slit throat. If she heard tapping, it was his foot swinging and hitting the roof of the car.
In some versions, the girl's hair turns stark white in seconds. In many versions, she is scarred for life, and the killer is never caught.
The classic scenario of someone murdered at make-out point, seemingly a cautionary tale to encourage kids not to go there. This story is in almost every collections of urban legends Iv'e come across. And if it isn't, then the person who wrote the collection had already written a version in a previous one. It has appeared in pop culture time and time again, and even though the earliest snopes.com can trace it back to is 1964, my grandmother told me she heard about it when she was a teenager, which I think was in the 1950's, since my mom was born in 1961. But there could be some miss remembering somewhere on either on our parts. She might have heard it later than she thought she remembered, or I could just be assuming that she was a teenager at the time.
Non-expert speculation on appeal and possible origin:
I think this one's popularity is obvious, along with any other make-out point horror story, and it's the same reason why it's told over and over again by people who are the age that would want to go there. Everyone who hears it the traditional way, from a friend who heard it from a friend who heard it from a friend that was related to or know someone involved in the incident or subsequent investigation, is told that it happened locally. My grandmother claimed it was true when I retold the story to her, and named a Big Blue, the local nickname for a mini mountain/really big hill officially named Great Blue Hill as the location. This made sense to me, it's covered in forest, and because the roads are meant to allow easy access to the hiking paths and (if I remember right) have very few streetlights, not many people drive them at night, despite the spectacular view of the Boston Skyline from one specific place, which still is the most popular drive-to spots for dates because the city lights look amazing at night, although there is the annoyance of the occasional family, including children, coming up to see the view in addition to the cops whose sole purpose seems to be ruining a couple's good time and sending them home. It's also a good five to ten minute drive up a windy road from the nearest civilization, which happens to include three gas stations close together, and cell reception in shoddy up there because of a radio tower.
Now my little red herring had a point, we all have a vivid picture of our local areas that are said to serve that purpose for dates, and it makes it a lot easier to picture that story happening. And the local versions are shaped in a way that make the stranded situation possible. It also gives the police officers a better reason to patrol the area than drawing the short straw and getting saddled with the job of stopping couples from having sex in the back seat. There was a murder there, and the killer was never caught.
As for why the story was created, I have a nagging suspicion that a father made it up to tell his daughter, so she would be too scared to go there so a boy could have his way with her. I'm sure many girls will agree that their father would do this if a gun was not available.
Another theory I have is that the police officer in charge of stopping the hanky panky and sending the couples home started telling it to make sure they never came back out of fear, meaning he had one less couple to deal with. Lets face it, if that's the case, who the would blame him? I heard that doing that was one of the worst parts of being a cop somewhere, don't remember where though. I do know that I personally would want to avoid the situation as much as possible if I was a police officer.
Relevant links:
http://www.snopes.com/horrors/madmen/boyfriend.asp (Several variations are listed here)
http://urbanlegends.about.com/od/horrors/ss/Campfire-Tales_7.htm (This one is a version that has events I didn't mention in my retelling)
http://findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_m2386/is_v109/ai_21250634/ (This one combines this tale with another one I've heard as a separate story)
http://hubpages.com/hub/Urban-Legend-The-Dead-Boyfriend (This variation has the town sheriff be the one to find her)
Have fun sleeping if you are reading this late at night! Next entry will be detailing various Werewolf legends.
CrazyLogic
PS. Fun Fact about the hill I was talking about, the hill was called Massachusett by the local Native Americans. If Wikipedia is right about this, the Massachusetts tribe was named after the hill, most likely because they lived on or close to it. Since the state was named after the tribe, the state is therefore named after the hill by proxy.
Broken down, massa-adchu-es-et, the term massa- is "large", -adchu- is "hill", -es- is a diminutive suffix meaning "small", and -et is a suffix identifying a place. So if I'm right, the name means, "Big hill, small place" or something similar. Not sure what the 's' at the end of the tribe's/state's name though, "people of"? Just a wild guess based on the fact that many other Native American tribes include the "people of" in the meaning.
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