#local lore

[appleandelder]

Stick Season

“We once had a guest describe the landscape as a hue of lavender. We are reminded of this sentiment every year, and can’t help but agree. Stick season is incredibly beautiful in its own right. The white trunks of the birch trees stand out amongst a sea of dark brown and purple... The bare branches now offer a deeper view into the forest. Suddenly, mountainscapes and pastures are visible in places they had once been obscured.”

“A tranquil effect washes over Vermont immediately after foliage. A few bouts of rain, a burst of wind, and one early frost cause piles of leaves to slowly return to the earth. Bright yellows and burnt oranges drop from their treetops. The trees left behind remain tall and barren, surrounded by sporadic conifers and pines. Leaf-laden trails wind through a forest of bare branches and sweeping views. In Vermont, we call this stick season.”

from: An Ode To Stick Season // Cheddar & Gin ; Uncovering The Hidden Stories of Vermont [x]

[daily-dose-of-writing]

#397

In the local legend, there is an endless man who never dies, and a faceless man who never breathes, and a headless hound who never howls. You discover two out of three of these live hidden in your house

[hobbitwhole]

Give me your cryptic local lore

Or give me death

[irishbirdyneedleworks]

#Stitchtober Day 14 ~ Local Lore

In Lebanon Ohio, there is a hotel/restaurant called the Golden Lamb. It’s the oldest hotel in Ohio and it’s said to be haunted by a little girl who died there.

It’s a really cool place to visit!

[ghostjelliess]

One time Jake and I were traveling through NW Montana, and....

We were talking to a young barista about where we’re from/going, yada yada, and she just casually mentioned that there was a local superstition that to get out of the podunk town, you had to hike to the top of all four mountains in the area and leave a treasure. Otherwise you might leave, but you will come back. She said tons of people had only hiked a few of them or not left treasures and left only to return in a few months, or even years and that she’s been picking out her treasures for a while because she doesn’t want to have to come back and do it all again if she picks the wrong ones. She was on her last mountain and heading to college at the end of the summer!

American Gothic is very much a real thing.

[breelandwalker]

Just discovered that we have a gigantic spiderweb outside of our living room window. Looks like it was made by one of the seasonal orb weavers that tend to come out every autumn. She’s definitely a lady spider; she’s about an inch or so long, black with tiny yellow bands, and has a big healthy butt. Sort of like this (not my photo):

She looks very similar to an orb weaver who built a web across our dining room window several years ago. As I recall, that was a very good year. And according to my husband, local lore says a spider in your window means a good harvest season and an easy winter for the family.

Here’s hoping!

(Just please stay outside, Miss Spider. You’ll catch far more buggies that way.)

[violetwolfraven]

I wanna hear about local lore

I know I’m gonna regret this when I’m reading any replies I get at like 10 at night, but I wanna hear y’alls creepypasta stuff from home. You don’t even have to say where you’re from cause I’m sure not gonna. (Also, don’t troll and say anyone is just paranoid. If you don’t believe in magic, go take your negativity elsewhere.)

Anyway my thing is kinda minor but there’s this unspoken rule around my general area that everyone Knows even if they don’t know they know and that is whatever you do, you Do Not go in the woods after dark.

You can sneak out, you can rebel as a teenager, but you Do Not go in the woods at night, and especially not alone. The one time I snuck out of the house was at a friend’s birthday party, and we stuck to the streets. It made it more likely we might get caught, but we still stayed away from the woods. I mean it. You Do Not go in the woods after dark.

And, naturally, as an area where we have had bears, cougars, coyotes, and the rest of the animal kingdom depending on the season, this isn’t too weird, but let’s just say...

At a summer camp where there are over a hundred girls in units of about 20 scattered around a lake, there’s not going to be any dangerous creatures nearby. The most exotic creature any of us has ever seen there was a salamander by the swim docks, so none of us are all that worried about bears or anything.

And still...

Even as the older units start to test the buddy rule a bit, that always dies off by the time you’re in the unit that’s 15-17-year-olds. At night, you DO NOT leave your tent alone. Not even to go to the bathroom. Legit, some girls have held it all night because they don’t want to go out in the dark.

I’m not sure what this rule is about, or why the people in and around my home town know to follow it.

All I know is that I don’t plan on testing that anytime soon.

Anyone else???

[mythicallore]

Creature Feature: The Beast of Bray Road

The Beast of Bray Road is a hairy humanoid with canine features that was sighted near the towns of Delavan and Elkhorn in Wisconsin, mainly during the 1990s. It was labeled a Werewolf in local folklore. Most cryptozoologists have decide to label it a Bigfoot in order to avoid dealing with the scientific absurdities involved with werewolves. However, some people think that it is a cryptid canine instead. Some researchers consider the Beast of Bray Road to be identical to a kind of Wisconsin Bigfoot named the "Bluff Monster" or the "Eddy." Other names that have been applied to the Beast of Bray Road include the "Bear-Wolf" and the "Indigenous Dogman". But the Native Americans call it the "Wendigo ."

The Beast of Bray Road counts as the most famous of modern American werewolves. It has been in the media regularly since the first sightings were publicized, and even had a low-budget movie based on its legend. Because of the numerous witnesses who have claimed to see this creature, the evidence supporting the Beast of Bray Road is far greater than the evidence supporting almost any other werewolf legend. Cryptozoologists, of course, do not generally take shapeshifters seriously unless they are fringe cryptozoologists who hold more of a paranormal view of things. Therefore, as with other werewolf reports, there is a tendency to force the evidence into a more acceptable interpretation, discarding whatever circumstances and details of witness testimony that do not fit with the chosen hypothesis. First of all, there are those try to hold up something far more normal than the creature as it is described by most witnesses. Some say that all this fuss must be based around an escaped pet wolf, a large feral dog, a bear, or some other creature that is known to exist.

 According to this interpretation, the werewolf-like characteristics are due to mistaken observations or sheer panic that causes exaggeration of the animal's true features. Others think that it is all hallucination, or that a costumed prankster is behind it all. For those who believe that the Beast of Bray Road is something out of the ordinary, but not something as radical as an actual werewolf, cryptozoology is a natural place to turn for possible candidates. Several distinct cryptids, namely the skunk-ape (an odd relative of Bigfoot), the waheela (or bear-dog) and the canine-like shunka warakin, have all been mentioned as possibilities for the real identity of the Beast of Bray Road. All of these creatures would fit with some of the sightings, but none of these cryptids could account for all the sightings.

We would still have to throw out some sightings, or we would have to assume that some witnesses were mistaken in their descriptions or that not all witnesses were seeing the same creature. The last main explanation used for the Beast of Bray Road is that at least two different creatures were being seen in the same area at the same time, and they ended up getting placed under the same label even though they should have been studied separately. It is possible that all of these were ordinary beings, such as wild dogs and costumed pranksters. It is also possible that one or more of these creatures was a genuine cryptid or mystery animal of some type, perhaps a new species, or perhaps only a subspecies or some non-native animal secretly released in Wisconsin.