Legend tripping explained

Legend tripping is a name bestowed by folklorists and anthropologists on an adolescent practice (containing elements of a rite of passage) in which a usually furtive nocturnal pilgrimage is made to a site which is alleged to have been the scene of some tragic, horrific, and possibly supernatural event or haunting.[1] The practice mostly involves the visiting of sites endemic to locations identified in local urban legends. Legend tripping has been documented most thoroughly to date in the United States.[2]

Sites for legend trips

While the stories that attach to the sites of legend tripping vary from place to place, and sometimes contain a kernel of historical truth, there are a number of motifs and recurring themes in the legends and the sites. Abandoned buildings, remote bridges, tunnels, caves, rural roads, specific woods or other uninhabited (or semi-uninhabited) areas, and especially cemeteries are frequent sites of legend-tripping pilgrimages.

Reactions and controversies

Legend-tripping is a mostly harmless, perhaps even beneficial, youth recreation. It allows young people to demonstrate their courage in a place where the actual physical risk is likely slight.[3] However, in what Ellis calls "ostensive abuse," the rituals enacted at the legend-tripping sites sometimes involve trespassing, vandalism, and other misdemeanors, and sometimes acts of animal sacrifice or other blood ritual.[4] These transgressions then sometimes lead to local moral panics that involve adults in the community, and sometimes even the mass media. These panics often further embellish the prestige of the legend trip to the adolescent mind. In at least one notorious case, years of destructive legend-tripping, amounting to an "ostensive frenzy," led to the fatal shooting of a legend-tripper near Lincoln, Nebraska followed by the wounding of the woman whose house had become the focus of the ostension.[5] The panic over youth Satanism in the 1980s was fueled in part by graffiti and other ritual activities engaged in by legend-tripping youths.

Associated places in the United States

See also

Further reading

Notes and References

  1. "Legend trip", entry in American Folklore: An Encyclopedia, ed. Jan Harold Brunvand (1996)
  2. Peter Monaghan, "The Surprising Online Life of Legends" The Chronicle of Higher Education Dec 12, 2011 http://chronicle.com/blogs/pageview/the-surprising-online-life-of-legends/29221?sid=cr
  3. Ellis, Bill. "Legend Trips and Satanism: Adolescents' Ostensive Traditions as 'Cult' Activity." In The Satanism Scare, ed. James T. Richardson, Joel Best, and David G. Bromley, 279-95. NY: Aldme DeGreyter
  4. Ellis. Bill. Death by Folklore: Ostension, Contemporary Legend, and Murder. Western Folklore. July 1989. 48. 3. 201–220. 10.2307/1499739. 1499739 .
  5. Summers, Wynne, L. "Bloody Mary: When Ostension Becomes a Deadly and Destructive Teen Ritual." Midwestern Folklore 26 (2000):1 19-26.
  6. Web site: The Devil's Chair. October 3, 1996. https://web.archive.org/web/20060820115207/http://www2.truman.edu/~adavis/mipages/bairdchair.html. August 20, 2006. dead.
  7. https://roadtrippers.com/stories/bachelors-grove-cemetery-is-the-most-haunted-graveyard-in-america Bachelor’s Grove Cemetery is the most haunted graveyard in America
  8. Web site: Black Agnes. David. Mikkelson. 5 November 2000. Snopes.
  9. Web site: The Truth About Bunnyman Bridge. Center for Paranormal Research. 2016-05-12. 2014-07-19. https://web.archive.org/web/20140719070740/http://virginiaghosts.com/bunnyman.php. dead.
  10. Web site: The Bunny Man Unmasked – Fairfax County, Virginia. Fairfax County Public Library. Brian A. Conley. 2016-05-12. 2011-10-30. https://web.archive.org/web/20111030185642/http://www.fairfaxcounty.gov/library/branches/vr/bunny/. dead.
  11. Web site: 2017-08-15 . Crawford Road - Colonial Ghosts . 2022-05-28 . en-US.
  12. Book: Tremeear. Janice. Haunted Ozarks. 16 August 2011. Arcadia Publishing. 978-1625841735.
  13. Web site: Hexenkopf: The Witch's Head. horrorfind.com. dead. https://archive.today/20130126151828/http://usersites.horrorfind.com/home/ghosts/hauntedus/hexenkopf.htm. 2013-01-26.
  14. Web site: The Hornet Spook Light. prairieghosts.com. 2007-03-09. 2007-02-13. https://web.archive.org/web/20070213234938/http://www.prairieghosts.com/devprom.html. dead.
  15. Web site: The Gore Orphanage. Forgotten Ohio.
  16. https://web.archive.org/web/20051030045007/http://lorain.lib.oh.us/local/history/gore.asp Legend Tripping in Ohio: The Gore Orphanage
  17. Web site: Captain McHarry's Vault – New Albany, IN – Weird Story Locations on Waymarking.com. Waymarking.com.
  18. Web site: The Witch's Ball of Myrtle Hill Cemetery. Forgotten Ohio.
  19. Book: Kinsella, Michael . 2011 . Legend-Tripping Online: Supernatural Folklore and the Search for Ong's Hat . University Press of Mississippi . Jackson, MS . 978-1604739831 .
  20. Web site: Our Lady of the Angels School Fire December 1, 1958 Chicago Illinois.
  21. Web site: Stull Cemetery! One of the Seven Gateways to Hell?. prairieghosts.com. 2007-07-14. 2007-07-11. https://web.archive.org/web/20070711152659/http://www.prairieghosts.com/stull.html. dead.
  22. Web site: The Waverly Hills Sanatorium . 2004-04-22 . 2004-04-02 . https://web.archive.org/web/20040402065524/http://prairieghosts.com/waverly_tb.html . dead .
  23. http://www.ohiotrespassers.com Ohio Trespassers – Ohio legends & Waverly Hills

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