Let's talk of things that go bump in the night. Stuff that makes your skin crawl. Creatures that are Beyond the Supernatural™. Also checkout the in-character site - Lazlo Society™
We're all from different parts of North America... different parts of THE WORLD.
Tell us, share with us, some of the *local* tales of your area. I've heard of a dinosaur-like creature sighted in the swampy forests of the areas of the Suwanee River in the pan-handle of Florida. I've heard of the "Faulk Monster" of the swamps in Arkansas. Obviously, BIGFOOT is in the American northwest. There are lake monsters everywhere.
So tell us, let us know about some of YOUR local legends and spooky tales. Even if it won't add much to a BTS game, just list it here so it might inspire our imaginations and help us wonder about the world beyond our personal experiences, beyond our imaginations... beyond the supernatural.
Last edited by Gallahan on Sun Aug 14, 2005 12:12 am, edited 1 time in total.
"Coincidence is a glimpse into a pattern otherwise hidden." "We live in a world of secrets. Where those secrets intersect, people die."
There's a road near here that just feels....wrong. A lot of people have talked about how spooky it is. There's graffiti on an overpass that looks like it was done in blood. A friend saw a neat pile of animal skulls out there once.
Every time I used that road, I felt...bad, like there was something evil there. After the last time, I decided I was never using that road again.
Arguments for something weird....one of the instances I know about, someone was taken out there and murdered. His case and one of his killers is the case/criminal that got the Supreme Court to outlaw the execution of mentally retarded individuals.
Arguments against something weird....there's some military equipment right at the spot it feels the worst. Maybe they started the rumors that the road was spooky and hoped for the placebo effect, in order to keep as many people as possible away from that area.
That's the only really wacky unusual thing I know about. Because I'm not far from a lot of historical places, there are ghost stories all over the place, but you can find those anywhere.
Interstate 4, in Florida which passes through the Orlando area is also known to many people (especially policemen, firefighters, emergency medical technicians and news crews) as "The Highway of Death," among other similar nicknames.
The reason is that for some inexplicable reason, there are an unusually high number of fatal vehicle accidents. And of these, most are confined to about a 20 mile stretch. Even under perfect driving conditions, this stretch of road accounts for the greatest number of fatalities anywhere in Florida, and must rank in the top 3 of the nation, if not higher.
No one can explain it: no unusual curves, the road surface is not especially slick, visibility is superb, it's not congested or strangley laid out, there's not a lot of merging going on.
But... the dying continues along that unassuming stretch of road. It's spooky to think about. And it reminds me of that Haunted Hitchhiker scenario in BTS's Boxed Nightmares supplement.
But unlike that adventure, this is unfortunately very, very real. Be safe when driving out there. Be especially safe...
"Coincidence is a glimpse into a pattern otherwise hidden." "We live in a world of secrets. Where those secrets intersect, people die."
Galveston is allegedly one of the more haunted cities in America, but I don't know many of the stories. One I have heard of is that someone fell down the stairs on her wedding day - going to the church, no less - and now haunts the house.
I cut this story out of our local free paper when it came out because it had 'horror game idea' written all over it. Behold the Hub of Hell.
Personally, I think that we have a duty as role-players to try to anchor each other to reality a bit. To keep other gamers from being complete freaks and weirdos, or even psychopaths, if we can. Killer Cyborg
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Saugerties, nearby towns and cities and the surrounding countryside are ripe with folklore.
Not to terribly far away from my residence are the all too familiar tons and locations where the Legend of Sleepy Hollow originates from Yes, the very same legend that Washington Irving popularized. And yes the story predates Irvings telling of it.
Also the mountain and very place where Rip Van Winkle supposedly took his two decade nap is only a few miles from my house. The Legend of Rip Van Winkle also predates Irving's telling of it with several different versions of it existing.
The Hudson Valley and the Catskill Mountains, where Saugerties resides is also supposed to be a UFO Hot Spot with some locals claiming to have even seen MIBS and other strange happenings.
I'll recount some more later, some detailed things that I have seen, heard or felt. (This last setting may be setting myself up for a joke, but oh well...)
Alright, here goes. I am going to tell two stories, one that has a logial explanation and the other that is quite unexplained.
The first story happened about (whoa...I feel old) ten years ago. I was hanging out with some of my friends at night when we saw large ovular lights dancing in the sky. There were about four of them and they danced in a rhythmic, controlled fashion. Each were rather large and scred the wits out of us.
We just stood there with ouths agape, looking at these...well...UFOs(they were at that moment Unidentified Flying Objects). It was not until about five minutes of their dancing that we started to formulate the worst case scenarios (abduction, invasion, etc.) in our heads. Almost on cue, a helicopter came into view and flew toard the lights. A knot twisted in our stomachs and we ran home.
Explanation? About 5 miles or so from my house is a Convention Center, on that night they were having a concert. The lights we saw were the large spot lights on the thick clouds that night. Something about the distance obscured the beam of the light so that we only saw the discs of the light on the clouds. The helicopter was pure coincidence (or maybe someone else was also fooled like we were).
Alright, now for the unexplained one.
This past January me and my friend Aarpn were outside of my house in the bitter cold, he was about to get into his truck and leave hen we saw a plane go buy in the heavens.
"Holy crap! It's a UFO" Aaron remarked sarcastically. We both laughed...but we stopped a few moments later. Why? Well, we also spotted three fast moving white lights (each light the size of the plane's light) moving erratically across the sky, nearly crashing into each other and taking break neck turns.
I'm a bit of a scholar on UFOlogy and wierd things, enough that I know not to jump to conclusions. So, as we watched those funny white lights dance about (and as another three joined the dance) I began to explain to Aaron Keel's theory of UFOs...one that I firmly believe in...UFOs are in a sense supernatural, but they ARE NOT aliens from outerspace, they are permanent fixtures of our environment, existing outside of our spectrum of reference. ((If you guys want me to explain this theory further, ask)).
Well, anyways, we began to count the lights. When we made it to 21 different lights maneuvering in the sky, we both felt kind of unnerved. Some of them raced toward each other, as if they were going to crash, but then shot off back toward the direction they were coming from.
Aaron remarked; "Well, I'm going to get out of here before one of those permanent fixtures notices us." I saw the logic to that and said good bye. As I walked inside I looked up. Calling back to Aaron, I pointed out three more lights and then went inside.
I don't know what the hell they were and won't jump to any conclusions on them. They were, by definition Unidentified Flying Objects (we had no clue what they were). At least a couple dozen other people saw those lights that night, not including the people on the flight that passed by, who saw the lights dancing out of the windows of their plane.
No one claimed to ever hear the "lights" make a sound, BTW.
Wow. I must ask, what part of the country are you in? What country, in fact, since so many people from Canada, England, etc. in these forums. But yeah, I'd certainly like to hear more of Aaron Keel's explanation.
Has anyone seen clips of official NASA videos that show unexplained UFO activity? Back in the 90s on a show from the scifi channel called SIGHTINGS, they presented two such films.
The first simply showed a quarter of the Earth. Suddenly, a glowing "buzz saw" shaped object appears from nowhere over the ocean, with the consistency of lumionous clouds and spins in place (like a buzz saw blade) and slow churns across the sky and almost as quickly vanishes. It lasts for maybe 3 seconds. NASA has no explanation for this anomaly.
The second is the one that shows UFOs dancing through space, with the Earth in background. Then, from off camera, it seems like rockets or missiles are shot at them. The UFOs easily dodge and more missiles are fired. NASA explainded this one as ice particles being pushed in odd angles by retro thrusters.
"Coincidence is a glimpse into a pattern otherwise hidden." "We live in a world of secrets. Where those secrets intersect, people die."
I live in Saugerties, New York. A modest upstate town, fifty miles south of the capital at Albany and around 200 miles or so north of New York City with the own of Woodstock 10 miles or less to the west and the Hudson River acting as one of the town's brders. The surrounding area is rich in folklore and said to be a UFO hot spot.
I kinda goofed on the syntax of that post: it should be "Exlpain to Aaron, Keel's theory of UFOs.
Aaron was my friend in the story.
John A. Keel the theorist.
John A. Keel's Theory of UFOs ((As explained by Josh Sinsapaugh))
Basically, UFOs in the paranormal sense (i.e. the strange lights bobbing in the sky, flying saucers, etc.) are a permanent fixture of our environment. They've been on Earth just as long as we have.
The idea that UFOs are from outerspace is a product of our modern imagination, no different then the midieval belief in faeries or demon. With the atomic age and the advent of space travel we quite simply, as human beings are want to do, attributed the phenomenom to be beings from another planet.
Primitive man saw the same lights as spirits, humans in antiquity (including Romans and Arayans in India) thought these lights were their gods, in the middle ages they were faeries or Ignus Fatuus (Will o' the Wisps) and so on and so forth.
In actuality (according to the theory) the lights people see in the sky are alien, but not alien in the frame of reference that most people think of. They are essentially beings (or creatures) of pure energy typically invisible to the naked eye. However, when the phenomenon crosses into or through our visible spectrum we see them as lights, Hence the dazzling lights reported in sightings and hence also the common colors of blue and red (opposite ends of the spectrum) that these "lights" often take on.
That is the theory in a nutshell without going into whether or not the "lights" are intelligent or responsible for other phenomenom ((I could get into that too)).
Gallahan wrote: NASA explainded this one as ice particles being pushed in odd angles by retro thrusters.
Reminds me of the Air Force's Project Blue Book during the 1960's. ((A government funded project to debunk UFOs.))
98% of the explanations were far more unbelievable than the phenomenon itself. Such as saying a row of lights flying in formation at night (caught on camera) were nothing more then migrating geese. (I am not making this up...I wish I was ::nh: )
My favorite is a black & white picture of something (I don't know what), crisp and clear. Appears to be a disc shaped object in flight.
Written directly on the photo, in black marker (complete with arrow), is the Blue Book explanation: "Spinning Hat."
Blue Book was essentially nothing more than attempt to sway the general public into thinking that UFO sightings were figments of the imagination of public consciousness. In essence, if you saw a UFO, you were labeled a "cook" who couldn't tell the difference between swamp gas, flying geese, the planet Venus and indigestion.
Around this time, I think that a large psychological operations campaign was initiated to convince the population of this. This "psy-ops" campaign involved upper echelons of Hollywood and companies like Hanna Barbarra who created one of the most popular Saturday morning cartoon series: Scooby Doo Where Are You. I know, this sounds ridiculous, but uncover the layers of this onion and you'll realize that in Scooby Doo, ALL of the mysteries were hoaxes. The purpose of Scooby Doo was to convince young children (a generation) that things like things like UFOs are all make-believe and hoaxes.
Meanwhile, the very lead investigator, I forget his name but he was their sole lead PHD in the matter, left Blue Book and started investigating UFOs on his own, because he personally could not lie to the public anymore. This was all very well laid out in the late Peter Jenning's documentary on UFOs which aired this past spring.
About Keel's UFO theory: It makes sense. There are several classical paintings in which UFOs make appearances, discreetly in the background. They are not merely mistakes made by the artists. Further, ancient South American carvings (Mayan, Incan perhaps, Aztec) depict "men" in what look like space helmets; these men are seated in chariots or strange, pointed craft with fire coming from the other side as they race across the sky.
Further, regardless of one's faith, the fact that Ezekiel in the Bible itself "sees a wheel." Find the book of Ezekiel and skim until you find his sighting of the wheel which lands from the sky, adorned with fiery jewels and sounds like a waterfall. Then, a four faced "angel" emerges from the wheel and does some strange things open to interpretation.
UFOs have been around since recorded history.
Maybe they are responsible for recently discovered lightning phenomena present in the upper atmosphere. Strange flashes of light with no observational source. Jets of blue plasma shooting upwards into the stratosphere if not higher. These phenomena have been given names like "blue jets" and "sprites." Maybe there's a connection.
"Coincidence is a glimpse into a pattern otherwise hidden." "We live in a world of secrets. Where those secrets intersect, people die."
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