Legend tripping

The Bunny Man Bridge, location of a 1970s urban legend about a man in a rabbit costume threatening people with an axe

Legend tripping is a practice 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.<ref>"Legend trip", entry in American Folklore: An Encyclopedia, ed. Jan Harold Brunvand (1996) Template:ISBN</ref>Template:Not in citation The practice mostly involves the visiting of sites endemic to locations identified in local urban legends, and can serve as a rite of passage. Legend tripping has been documented most thoroughly to date in the United States.<ref name="CHE">Peter Monaghan, "The Surprising Online Life of Legends" The Chronicle of Higher Education Dec 12, 2011 [1]</ref>

Sites for legend tripsEdit

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 controversiesEdit

File:Popelick2.jpg

Pope Lick Trestle in Louisville, Kentucky, the reputed home of the Pope Lick Monster

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.<ref name="Ellis">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</ref> 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.<ref>Template:Cite journal</ref> 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.<ref name="Ellis" /> 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.<ref>Summers, Wynne, L. "Bloody Mary: When Ostension Becomes a Deadly and Destructive Teen Ritual." Midwestern Folklore 26 (2000):1 19-26.</ref> The panic over youth Satanism in the 1980s was fueled in part by graffiti and other ritual activities engaged in by legend-tripping youths.<ref name="Ellis" />

Associated places in the United StatesEdit

The Baird Chair monument in Kirksville, Missouri<ref>{{#invoke:citation/CS1|citation

|CitationClass=web }}</ref>

Bachelor's Grove Cemetery, outside of Chicago, Cook County, Illinois<ref name="BatCem">Bachelor’s Grove Cemetery is the most haunted graveyard in America; article; Roadtrippers; Accessed 25 June 2022</ref>
The Black Agnes statue, formerly in Pikesville, Maryland and now in Washington, DC<ref>{{#invoke:citation/CS1|citation

|CitationClass=web }}</ref>

Bunny Man Bridge near Clifton, Virginia<ref>{{#invoke:citation/CS1|citation

|CitationClass=web }}</ref><ref>{{#invoke:citation/CS1|citation |CitationClass=web }}</ref>

Crawford Road in Yorktown, Virginia<ref>{{#invoke:citation/CS1|citation

|CitationClass=web }}</ref>

Goat Man's Grave near Rolla, Missouri.<ref>Template:Cite book</ref>
Hexenkopf Rock in Williams Township, Pennsylvania<ref>{{#invoke:citation/CS1|citation

|CitationClass=web }}</ref>

File:Bachelors Grove taken on IR.jpg

Bachelor's Grove cemetery (in infrared)

The Hornet Spook Light twelve miles southwest of Joplin, Missouri<ref>{{#invoke:citation/CS1|citation

|CitationClass=web }}</ref>

The Lake View Public School, also known as the Gore Orphanage, near Cleveland, Ohio<ref>{{#invoke:citation/CS1|citation

|CitationClass=web }}</ref><ref>Legend Tripping in Ohio: The Gore Orphanage</ref>

McHarry, Captain Frances burial spot in Harrison County, Indiana<ref>{{#invoke:citation/CS1|citation

|CitationClass=web }}</ref>

The Myrtle Hill Cemetery in Medina County, Ohio<ref>{{#invoke:citation/CS1|citation

|CitationClass=web }}</ref>

Ong's Hat, New Jersey<ref name="Kinsella">Template:Cite book</ref>
Our Lady of the Angels School in Chicago, Illinois and its Fire Memorial in nearby Queen of Heaven Cemetery.<ref>{{#invoke:citation/CS1|citation

|CitationClass=web }}</ref>

Stull Cemetery in Stull, Kansas, claimed to be a "gateway to Hell"<ref>{{#invoke:citation/CS1|citation

|CitationClass=web }}</ref>

Waverly Hills Sanatorium, an abandoned hospital for tuberculosis victims, in Louisville, Kentucky<ref>{{#invoke:citation/CS1|citation

|CitationClass=web }}</ref><ref>Ohio Trespassers – Ohio legends & Waverly Hills</ref>

ReferencesEdit

Template:Reflist

Legend tripping

Contents

Sites for legend tripsEdit

Reactions and controversiesEdit

Associated places in the United StatesEdit

See alsoEdit

ReferencesEdit

Further readingEdit