Glencairn Museum

Growing up in PA, we heard a lot of spooky stories regarding the Pitcairn family... my sister's friends would sometimes mention the Pitcairn [haunted] mansion.  They spoke of deformed descendants still living there.  They mentioned the horridly abstract notion of inbreeding to a small child (me).  

Turns out this terrifying fictional place I built up in my head as a kid has always been a beautiful sprawling estate which houses an amazing cathedral, a museum, and a mansion.  No ghosts nor deformations were spotted.  It was a wonderful tour and a great way to spend a windy Saturday afternoon. 

Glencairn is a castle-like mansion in Bryn Athyn, Pennsylvania, that was home to the Pitcairn family for more than 40 years. Now the Glencairn Museum, it contains a collection of about 8,000 artworks, mostly religious in nature, from cultures such as ancient Egypt, ancient Greece, the Roman Empire and medieval Europe, as well as Islamic, Asian, and Native American works.  The nine-story, granite-and-ruddy-colored-stone mansion features more than 90 rooms on 10 floors.

Hexeglaawe

We're getting ready to do some more field research for our Hexeglaawe series of Pennsylvania folklore.  Usually, paranormal researchers uncover very little actual evidence, but I'm feeling really proud of our irrefutable proof of the unexplained below.

The White Lady

The White Lady was very tired and sat down on a bench with her baby next to her in a stroller. Another women came by and engaged the White Lady in conversation, and at this time the baby’s stroller rolled into the lake unnoticed by either women. Once the conversation concluded, the White Lady noticed her baby was missing and jumped up in fright and frantically began searching for the baby. She then walked around Stow Lake and asked people, “Have you seen my baby?” All day and night she asked anyone who passed if they had seen her baby.

As the night came to an end the last place she checked was the lake, and it is said she never returned. If one ventures to the lake at night and she is active, it is said she will be seen emerging from the water to approach the individual and ask the question, “Have you seen my baby?”

Image source.
Text source.

Hexeglaawe: Crybaby Bridge

The latest expedition in our Hexeglaawe series.

Click below to learn about the dark legend of the Van Sandt Covered Bridge.

Urban Legend: The Three Legged Woman

This is really terrific. 

Click below to hear the tale...

Beware The Slenderman

Amazing documentary.  My highest recommendation to seek this one out.


Click below for an interesting article...

31 Urban Legends Of October

By artist Chris Raimo.

Slenderman

BEWARE THE SLENDERMAN tells the story of the internet’s elusive Boogeyman and two 12-year-old girls who would kill for him. Morgan Geyser and Anissa Weier lured their best friend into the woods, stabbed her 19 times, then set out on an odyssey to meet the tall and faceless man known online as Slenderman. Shot over 18 months with heartbreaking access to the families of the would-be murderers, the film plunges deep down the rabbit hole of their crime, a Boogeyman and our society’s most impressionable consumers of media. The entrance to the internet can quickly lead us to its dark basement, within just a matter of clicks. How much do we hold children responsible for what they find there?

Sneaks

I read in the newspaper that shoes would be thrown over the power lines to serve as a reminder/warning of a murder that occurred nearby. This seems proven to me: as I was traveling past a home in which a drug-related murder had occurred about three months prior … a pair of shoes were hanging from the power lines in front of the home.

Image by Eli Braud.
Text source.

Found A Dog While On Vacation...

By Blanka Dvorak.

Killer Legends On ITunes

I'll definitely be buying this.

The Candy Man

Dying to see this documentary.  Can't seem to find any information on it being shown again in any format.

Click below for another clip:

Trestle Of Death

The Legend of the Pope Lick Monster.

It's True

Was happy to take part in a feature at ShellHawk's blog:  Favorite Urban Legends.

Click below:

The Hook

When they arrived at the girl's house she got out of the car, and, reaching to close the door, began to scream uncontrollably. The boy ran to her side to see what was wrong and there, dangling from the door handle, was a bloody hook.



Image from The Thrifty Crafty Girl blog.

The Hook

"Would you like to come in and have some cocoa?"
she asked.
"No," he said, "I've got to get home."

He went around to the other side of the car to let her out. Hanging on the door handle was a hook.

From Scary Stories Treasury.

True Story

Melody was babysitting for a wealthy couple. The couple has a huge rolling mansion, and the father requests for the babysitter to sit in the television room closest to the kids, so she can hear them if they happen to call out during the night.

Melody puts the kids to bed, then she settles down to watch TV and wait for the parents to come home. Melody notices a clown statue standing in the corner of the room which looked as though it was watching her. Feeling somewhat unnerved by it, she tried to ignore it, but eventually, the statue sent chills down her spine and it scared her enough to leave the room to call the father. She asked him if she could move the clown statue to another room and after a long pause, the father tells her to grab the kids, run next door and call the police.

Melody thought that the father’s reaction to her request was a bit odd, but she was scared enough to do as she was told. Once she was at the neighbor’s house and the police had been called, she phoned the father again to ask him what was going on, to which he replied, “We don’t own a clown statue.”



Image by Darwin Bell.

The Halloween Campus Massacre

Have you heard of this one? There is this rumor all over college campuses about a mass murder that is predicted to take place on Halloween. This prediction was supposedly made on the Oprah show a couple of weeks ago by the same lady that predicted the OK bombing. Have you heard anything about this? Everyone here is talking about it. It's in the paper, it's on the radio, and students everywhere are scared. Please let me know whether you know if this is an urban legend or if I should get out of town that weekend. This is extremely important!

Urban Legends

I can remember the first time I ever heard an urban legend. My sister had the honor of being the teller. She probably heard it from her friends and knew it was just a fun ghost story and figured she'd tell her brother (four years her junior) to give him nightmares. I was pretty young at the time, and the fact that I can still remember the moment she told it to me is proof it must have worked.

It was one about a hitchhiker. Some guy picks up some girl late at night on a road. They talk a little and the woman seems strange and quiet and very very pale. At some point the man looks back and she's gone. I'm sure my sister added some emphasis to that last part - "AND SHE WAS GONE!!!!" At which point I'm sure I must have said "That didn't happen!" to cover my fear. To which I'm SURE she must have replied - "I know the person it happened to! He called the police and they told him it happens all the time on that road!" And I'm sure that was sufficient documented proof for my young mind to accept the story as fact.

I am surrounded at work by people who believe every email they get - the ones that usually end with "Send this email to everyone you know." I've become the snopes.com guy, checking out these obviously fake stories and letting people know they're morons (in a nice way) for believing them. I was looking at snopes.com this morning and saw this little gem and it reminded me about my evil sister and my first urban legend:

During the war a soldier faithfully wrote his mother every week so she would know he was all right. One week she didn't get a letter and immediately began to worry.
A couple of weeks later, she got a letter from the Army saying that her son had been captured and was being held in a Prisoner-of-War camp. They assured her that they had no reason to believe the American prisoners were being mistreated in any way.
A few weeks later the woman finally received another letter from her son, it read: "Dear Mom, Try not to worry about me, they are treating us well and I'll be released as soon as the war is over. Make sure that little Teddy gets the stamp for his collection. Love you, Joe"
The woman was overjoyed to hear the news, but was confused because she had no idea who "little Teddy" was. She decided to steam the stamp from the envelope and have a look. When she did she saw that written on the back of the stamp were the words:
"They've cut off my legs".

snopes.com

Bizzare and Dark Tales from Japan

It had been a week since my colleague stopped coming to work without leave. When I went to his place to check on him, I found him lying on his bed hiding under covers. I asked what was wrong, and he replied, "That woman over there says I mustn't go out." I looked at the place he pointed. Then I saw in the narrow gap only a few centimetres wide between the fridge and the wall, a long-haired, paper-thin woman staring at us.



I am a psychiatrist and the other day I encountered a case which sent a chill down my spine. Sometime ago a new family moved in my neighbourhood; a couple in their sixties and their son, who was about 30 years-old. The son was a so-called hikikomori(*) and was seldom seen outside his home. Naturally I couldn't ask the family directly but it was obvious that they had moved to the new place to escape from the social stigma.Days had passed and the son went out less and less until he would not leave the house at all. He was now a complete hikikomori. Every night the mother was heard screaming at him in his bedroom. When I sometimes chanced to meet the mother she greeted to me with a smile but she always looked pale and haggard.A half year had passed since I last caught a glimpse of the son when his father came to me and said, "could I ask you to visit us tomorrow?" I had never been involved with them personally or as a doctor but since we were neighbours and neighbours were supposed to help each other, I agreed to come.The next day when I visited them both father and mother welcomed me at the door. "Please, come this way," the mother said as she lead the way to her son's room. When we came to the front of the room the mother suddenly shouted, "I'm going to open the door!" As soon as she burst in she shrieked, "why are you still sleeping? Get up!" She tore the duvet off the bed. I saw what lay there and was struck dumb with disbelief. There was only one faceless, unclothed mannequin lying on the bed. Then the father told me, "the person I want you to see is my wife, who can not bear to accept the reality."
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Note:
*hikikomori - lit. "pulling away, being confined", i.e. "acute social withdrawal") is a Japanese term to refer to the phenomenon of reclusive individuals who have chosen to withdraw from social life, often seeking extreme degrees of isolation and confinement due to various personal and social factors in their lives. (Wikipedia)

Saya In Underworld blog.