50 States 50 Urban Legends

[00:00:00]There are 50 states. Every single one of them have something they don't put in the tourism brochure. From entities that have been cited since before Columbus arrived in America to things similar to the Bermuda Triangle to even little fun silly guys like this creature right here. Wow. Look, look at him. He's so whimsical. Today, we're going to be talking about 50 urban legends from all 50 US states. Rather than recycling the same cryptids like Bigfoot and Dubacabra, I'm wanting to dive into more local urban legends that are more fun and obscure but still recognizable, if that makes sense. So, if you're from the United States, then you're probably going to hear about something from your state that you didn't know about. So, let's go ahead and get into this list.

[00:00:43]Starting off with Alabama, we have Hugging Molly. So, for over a century, parents were just trying to keep their children from being outside at night.

[00:00:52]And so they started to tell their children this story of this entity called Hugging Molly that if they were caught wandering in the streets alone after dark, then this giant 7-ft tall creature would chase them down and give them a bone crushing hug and scream in their ears really loud. And this was really just a way to try to get these kids to listen to their parents to come home after dark. But this was in a specific town in Alabama. And it actually the town was functionally policed by this madeup monster uh that for years a lot of people actually believe existed. But for some reason anytime I hear about the hugging Molly and hear its description, I always imagine the rolling giant, which is this thing that Kane Pixels YouTube channel made that is in this abandoned mall place. It's called the oldest view video, but this urban legend originated in Abeville, Alabama, and it came about during the early 1900s where apparently kids were just not listening very well, so they had to be scared into imagining this horrendous creature hugging hugging you. Also, actually, another thing that I imagine this thing as is the old lady in the game Repo, who is a really scary looking lady, too. But I just wanted to give you guys those two depictions so you knew kind of what to imagine if you're caught after dark in Alabama.

[00:02:20]You're welcome. All right, next up we have Alaska with the Alaskan triangle.

[00:02:24]So this is actually a real circumstance that came about to create a bunch of different legends. So there is this very large region where people and planes disappear just like the Bermuda Triangle. This triangle is formed by connecting Juno, Anchorage, and Barrow, Alaska, which Barrow is like the northernmost city in the US. It's like a weird place already. And anyways, inside this triangle, there is an unusual high number of disappearances and strange phenomena and also magnetic anomalies, which is very similar to the Bermuda Triangle. But since the 1970s, there have been thousands of people that have vanished in this area without a trace.

[00:03:06]The most famous disappearance was actually this small plane that was carrying the House Majority Leader, Hail Bogs, and also an Alaska Congressman, Nick Beckage. This plane disappeared somewhere between Anchorage and Juno, and they actually did this massive 39-day search that covered 325,000 miles. But there is no trace of the people or any debris from this aircraft ever being found from this disappearance, which is very strange because, you know, whenever something disappears in the ocean, it's like, okay, yeah, I can see how it's just completely gone. But we're talking about an aircraft disappearing over land and they just can't find it in the United States. That's pretty crazy. For Arizona, we have the Lost Dutchman's gold mine. So, this is a legendary gold mine in the Superstition Mountains. It is named after this guy who they started to call the Lost Dutchman because it was this guy who was actually a German immigrant that was misidentified as Dutch named Jacob Waltz who allegedly brought this incredibly rich gold ore into the town nearby before dying in 1891. This was sad because he died without ever revealing where his mine was located exactly. But on his deathbed, he described the location of his hidden gold mine kind of by trying to tell the landmarks nearby. He kind of gave a cryptic and fragmentaryary description of where he claimed it was at. But there is a famous clue that he gave that you may have heard of. He said, "You can see the weaver's needle from the mine, but you can't see the mine from the weaver's needle." And so this has turned into this legend about the Dutchman's curse because following his death, there were so many treasure hunters who were going out and trying to find his mine and using his famous clues and they all ended up dying from weather or heat or getting lost or even unsolved murders/ accidents. So it's a big mysterious thing and people are still looking for it to this day. Now for Arkansas, we have the Fal monster. This is a tale of this 7- foot tall ape man that terrorized a small town named Fal since 1970. Now the main legend stems from this famous incident in 1971 where local residents Bobby and Elizabeth Ford reported this massive hairy creature that was attacking their home. And they had like a big story about how it kept tormenting them. It would claw out their windows. It actually physically grabbed Bobby in their tellings of the story.

[00:05:49]And they described this creature as being about 800 pounds, having dark shaggy hair, and sometimes leaving a distinct threetoed footprint like a dinosaur. Is it? It's not a dinosaur.

[00:06:03]But they go on about how this thing is aggressive to livestock. And there even ended up being a lowbudget movie being made about this creature in kind of like a documentary horror style film. All right, next up we have California with the Dark Watchers. So this legend dates back further to almost any legend in America. Back even in the early 1700s where the first people from the European section of the world came over, the Spanish settlers were here and they were reporting these things being described exactly how they're being described still today. So the folklore has stayed about the same about these things.

[00:06:43]People report seeing these watchers that are these shadowy looking people sometimes having hats so they look like the hatman just standing off in the distance and watching travelers usually around twilight. Now generally these things are considered harmless. However, if you approach them or just show too much interest or stare directly at them they disappear. Now, while some people think that these things may be like an optical illusion such as a brocken spectre, others think that these are like some sort of spiritual thing that the Native Americans had been talking about for a very long time. And it really is strange because still today people are always going on about seeing these things along the road in California. Moving on, we have the state of Colorado with Riverdale Road, which is the most haunted road. So, this is an 11mi stretch of road near Denver that is said to be the home of a Phantom Camaro, a ghost that taps on your car, and the gateway to hell. So, first of all, the Phantom Camaro is supposed to be this 1970s muscle car that just appears out of nowhere. It has one headlight missing out of it. It doesn't shine. and it challenges drivers to a race and then vanishes in thin air. It's also said that the hilly section of this road had this runner who was running along here and then a car came along and hit him and he died. And so now there is also a legend about this ghost deceased runner that will chase cars down and tap on the sides of their vehicles. And also for this road, there is the gateway to hell where people have given a nickname to this burned down mansion just off of Riverdale Road where according to the legend, the mansion owners were insane.

[00:08:37]And he actually burned down his house and killed his own family in the legend.

[00:08:41]And now there's just this burned stone archway that locals call the gateway to hell. And if you go into it, you experience some sort of horrible thing.

[00:08:50]For Connecticut, we have the Melon Heads. Now, the Melon Heads legend has a whole bunch of different variants of this story. One of the most famous ones was that there was this evil doctor who was running an orphanage and he took in all these orphans who had a medical condition where their brains would swell up. And so that's why, you know, the melon heads, kids with big heads. But then after years of abusing these children, they had enough and they ended up killing the doctor and burning down the orphanage where they then ran off into the wilderness. And now they're just a bunch of feral children with bulbous melon-like heads that have now resorted to cannibalism to survive. And so now if you go into this area, these feral children will come out and try to eat you. And that's kind of the legend.

[00:09:39]Some people think that they may just be children with hydrophilis, which is water swelling in their brain. And that's just kind of sad, especially if they're out there alone. But there may be like a population in this area that actually has a larger amount of people with this condition. Next, we are on the state of Delaware with the Shelbyville Swamp Monster. This was a really funny situation where back in 1964, there was this local newspaper who started to report on how there was a rumor of a swamp creature in Shelbyville. Now, he had actual pictures of this thing. It looked like this, I don't know, almost like Bigfoot looking humanoid that was kind of freaky looking from the pictures. And also, there was actually real random witnesses that started to report seeing this swamp monster around the area. And this kind of became a big sensation where people started to go out and form hunting parties to go hunt this creature. and they would drive around in the back of trucks with shotguns and uh try to get this thing. But eventually the legend of this monster kind of died out. Turns out about 23 years later after this legend was really big, this guy came out and confessed that this whole thing was a hoax and the newspaper editor was actually his friend who created this story to sell papers and it worked really, really well. But it got so dangerous that he had to stop dressing up as this creature. It's just so crazy. like he wanted to make a little bit of money, so he faked being a swamp monster. And then they're like, "Okay, we're going to hunt you." And he was like, "Oh yeah, I don't really want to get shot." Um, fair, but it was a pretty good hoax. For Florida, we have the skunk ape. I added this one because I really like the skunk ape. I feel like it has a pretty fun story. Back in the 1960s, different people started to report seeing this tall, hairy, really foul smelling creature that was mainly reported in the Florida Everglades. One big event that happened was in 2000 in Sarasota County where the sheriff's office received this famous Maka skunk ape pictures where these pictures came from an anonymous woman in Sarasota, Florida, who mailed these pictures with a letter. And the letter claimed that she was upset not that there was like a giant ape in her front yard, but she was rather upset that the ape was stealing her apples off of her tree. And she was like, "Oh man, I'm so upset that there's an escaped orangutang in my yard."

[00:12:17]Anyways, deputies ended up investigating, but they didn't find a creature or figure out who sent in the pictures. But there was also another funny event where in 1970 there was a pretty credible witness, like two witnesses. There's actually two Palm Beach County Sheriff deputies that were reporting that they were being stalked by this tall apelike creature while they were in a grove. And they even said that they fired their guns at this thing, but they only ended up recovering a bunch of hair and even like humanlike footprints.

[00:12:53]And I'm just thinking they couldn't they couldn't tell exactly what this thing was, but they still shot at it. That's crazy. Like it's crazy that they would, you know, admit that they did something like this while they were on duty especially. But I will say with a lot of these sightings, you got to keep in mind during the 70s there was a lot of these sightings. What does this mean?

[00:13:16]What do you think it means? For the state of Georgia, we have Lake Lanier.

[00:13:20]This is widely considered to be one of America's most haunted and deadly lakes.

[00:13:26]There's actually hundreds of drownings and disappearances and strange encounters that people claim they have since this lake was created. The reason why people think this lake is haunted is because this lake was actually built in the 1950s where it was previously this town called Oscarville. And basically they flooded this entire town. The cemetery was never fully relocated. They flooded homes and churches and graveyards. And many believe that the unrested dead still linger in the water according to their legend. There's also a portion of this legend called the Lady of the Lake where in 1958 there was these two women that ended up driving off a bridge and drowned. One of the bodies was found in a blue dress but couldn't be fully identified. And another woman that was supposed to be in the car was not found for over 30 years.

[00:14:20]But locals go on about how they see a ghostly woman in a blue dress that wanders the shoreline and grabs swimmers from below. But there's still ongoing tragedies at this lake. More than 700 people have actually died while swimming here. Many of the bodies have never been recovered. And swimmers go on about seeing unexplained phenomena. Some say they feel cold hands pulling on them in the water or strange lights and even disembodied screams occasionally near the water. Next, we have Hawaii with the Night Marchers. So, the Night Marchers legend is basically about these ghosts of ancient tribal Hawaiian warriors that are said to be able to be seen on specific nights marching in a line with glowing torches along the ridges of the mountains. They're said to walk along the ancient trails on specific nights, usually associated with ancient Hawaiian moon phases. Anyone that is near their path that they may be walking on may feel a sudden drop in temperature, hear chanting, or even hear the sounds of con shells being blown. There's also kind of a belief that anybody that looks directly at them will die a violent death. And so, I've actually heard this firsthand. They say that if you're on the mountains at night and you encounter the night marchers, the only way to survive is to lie face down on the ground motionless and you may be spared.

[00:15:48]There's other traditional like protocols that I was told that you have to strip yourself naked and pee yourself in order to not be killed by the night marchers.

[00:16:00]But maybe they just told that to me to to just make me do that. I did I didn't do it. However, part of this legend is that if you have ancestors in this procession of warriors and they recognize you, they will tell the others to spare your life. So, they say that if you are a Native Hawaiian, you won't be killed by the night marchers. I actually worked on the north shore of Aahu back in 2017 and I was planning to climb a mountain behind my workplace and like stay the night up there in hammocks, but I had a girl that I was working with tell me that if I did that that I shouldn't do that because the night marchers uh might get me. And I had never heard of that before. And then I was told to pee, you know, pee my pants and whatever and strip myself naked if they if I see them. But I ended up climbing the mountain anyways and I didn't have to to pee my pants.

[00:16:52]But I will say I feel like there was kind of a weird thing where as soon as I got off the mountain, it was like these gnats like followed me from the top of the mountain and then we had like gnats at our workplace at the camp for like the next week. So maybe I cursed the the camp in a different way. Next we are on the state of Idaho. We have the phantom jogger. This is kind of an obscure urban legend that is centered around the Canyon Hill Cemetery in Caldwell, Idaho.

[00:17:21]So, the legend goes that there is this entity that is a phantom jogger that you can see if you drive up to the gates of the cemetery around midnight and then park your car between these certain trees in the certain area and face the cemetery with their lights off. Then this apparition is supposed to appear as this legless jogger ghost that comes up to your car window and taps on the glass to get your attention before disappearing into the night on her jogging route. How is it legless and also jogging? I don't know. Part of the lore of the legend is that there was a woman who was an avid jogger that got hit by a car when she was passing the cemetery. And [music] anyways, whenever she got hit by the car, she lost her legs. They just flew off her body and now she just endlessly runs repeating her final run without legs. There you go. Moving on to the state of Illinois, we have the Piaza bird. So on this limestone bluff along the Mississippi River just north of Alton, Illinois, there is this painted creature that is really freaky looking.

[00:18:27]This is a creature with deer antlers, a humanoid looking face with sharp teeth.

[00:18:32]Its entire body is covered in scales, but it has these large wings and bird talons. There is a popular story attached to this creature. The name Piaza is supposedly supposed to mean the bird that devours men. This tale attached to it tells about this giant flying monster that prayed on the local tribe until their chief leader, Chief Ogatoga, used himself as bait. He lured this creature within range and then had 20 hidden warriors that were armed with poison arrows kill the beast. Now, this picture is from the 1900s. It is a recreation of the original painting, but the older version of this picture actually existed just a few hundred yards away from this one where it ended up getting destroyed over time. The old version of this painting was actually created prior to the arrival of Europeans in this region. It was actually the largest Native American painting ever found in North America.

[00:19:34]This painting was created by the nearby city of Cahokia, which is, you know, just east of St. Louis. You probably have heard of the area called Cahokia Mounds. you maybe haven't, but it was a city that was so big that around the 12th century, it was actually thought to maybe be larger than London and Paris at the time where they think there was a population of like 10 to 20,000 people, which is really crazy to think about.

[00:20:02]And anyways, uh I just think it's interesting that, you know, we had like the biggest civilization in North America. And their largest depiction of anything was this horrific monster, lion, bird, demon thing. And because of that, like what do you why do you think they did that? Probably because they saw, right? Am I right? This exists.

[00:20:23]It's probably still out there. Just kidding. All right. For the state of Indiana, we have 100 Steps Cemetery. So, this is a legend about how if you go to this burial ground near Brazil, Indiana, which is already known for being a historically spooky cemetery, and if you ascend these steps at midnight and count each step as you go, the ghost of the cemetery's first undertaker will appear at the top and then show you a vision of the time and manner of your own death.

[00:20:54]Then you will have to climb back down the stairs and count the exact same number of steps on your descent or the caretaker will return and kill you on the spot. And don't do this because the cemetery closes down at sundown, so you can't really do this, but also because the ghost man's going to kill you. Okay.

[00:21:15]Now, for the state of Iowa, we have the Black Angel. Now, the Black Angel of the Oakland Cemetery is this 8 and 1/2 foot tall bronze monument that is located in Iowa City, Iowa. This thing is actually really creepy looking if you see it.

[00:21:29]It's made out of bronze, but it was a pretty gold bronze color at first, but now it's turned completely black and has this big like drooping downturned wings and also it has parts of its fingers missing and it just doesn't look nice.

[00:21:44]like it looks like a malevolent creature instead of a benevolent creature. The statue was supposed to be placed by a woman named Teresa Felder who moved to Iowa from the Czech Republic. She had this bronze statue placed in the cemetery for her son who had died and then later she also had her husband buried there and then once she died her ashes were placed there as well. What's strange is that while the monument displays Teresa's birth date, it doesn't have her death date, which might be because, you know, nobody wrote it because she didn't have the money to pay for that. But the legend goes on about how the reason why this thing turned black is because it is cursed because she I don't know, she did something bad and so she wasn't supposed to be buried there. That's like the legend. I don't really understand why. But anyways, a lot of students will go here and visit the statue mainly on Halloween and they will test their luck by touching or kissing the statue because the legend goes that you will be struck dead or get the angel's black curse if you don't have like purity or whatever, which some people claim that you will get this like rare illness from kissing the angel's foot as well. Probably cuz everybody's kissing it. Now for Kansas, we have the Hamburger Man. So this is a legend about how in the Sand Hills area just north of Hutcherson, Kansas, there is this locally known spot called Hamburger Hill, where there have been many hikers go missing. And the legend goes that there is this mysterious disfigured hermit whose face supposedly kind of looks like ground hamburger meat who if he catches you, he butchers you into ground hamburger meat, which wouldn't be wouldn't be hamburger. It would be people people burger. In the local telling, he attacks these victims by using a hooked hand, which dude's basically Captain Hook, where he then drags them back to his shack hidden inside the park, where he then grinds them up. The accounts of this hamburger man go back to like the 1950s, and the targets are always people that are out after dark in the legend. A lot of people don't know this, but the legend actually came about from this completely ordinary guy that sold burgers in the area named Burger Jean. Great name, especially for his job. And he just sold burgers there in Hutchinson. And uh I don't know why there'd be so mean to him. He seems like a nice guy, right? I don't think he got a hook either. All right, for the state of Kentucky, we have the Pope Lick Monster or the Goatman. So, the main legend about the Kentucky Goatman thing is of this part goat, part man creature that is reportedly living beneath this railroad bridge that goes over Pope Lick Creek close to Louisville, Kentucky. Now, there's several kind of competing origin stories about this thing. The most popular one is about this circus tragedy where there was this man that kind of looked similar to a goat that was a circus freak and they did this sideshow where they kind of made him look more like a goatman and then the circus train that was carrying him got derailed after it got struck by lightning which allowed this horrible creature to escape which was probably just a human I guess.

[00:25:14]Anyways, there's also another version of the legend where there was a goat farmer who struck a deal with the devil. And anyways, it resulted in this. The best depiction of this thing is this photoshopped image here that looks like it is a trail camera picture of very demonic looking goat creature over a person that's sleeping on the ground.

[00:25:37]And he's also reaching for the trail camera because he hates cameras, I guess. and he he knows that he's being photographed. But what this legend has now become over the years is that there is this monster that uses hypnosis or even voice mimicry to lure people off of the path or onto train bridges so that they meet their death. Some people claim that victims are attacked by the goat man wielding an axe, but some people claim that the sight of the goat man is just so disturbing that people just voluntarily jump off the bridge whenever they see him because that's that's the only thing they can do. What makes this legend actually pretty freaky is there was actually at least one death that is directly linked to Goatman. In 2016, there was this 26-year-old woman who was out searching for Goatman and she was on the Pope Lick Creek Bridge where she was struck by a train and also was knocked off the bridge to her death, which is very sad. And so, you know, there's not usually legends that uh have people die searching for them or dying in the exact way that these legends say the legends kill. You know, also I just want to say there is a popular version of the Goatman in Maryland specifically where the Goatman was created because a scientist was doing experiments on goats and then he turned himself into a goat and started attacking cars. Louisiana, we have the Rugaroo. So this is alleged about a werewolf-like man that kind of got down to Louisiana in a strange way.

[00:27:11]So, you know, originally medieval France had this big werewolf myth, which was fairly common because parents were always telling children to stay away from wolves because there kept being a lot of attacks in rural areas of France where people would die from wolves, which is very strange to think about to me. There was even such a superstition around werewolves that the church linkedthropy, which is just like the word for werewolfism, specifically to witchcraft. And they even had like a big witch trials thing, just like the Salem witch trials. They had the werewolf trials where around like the 1520s to 1630s, there was like 30,000 trials where people were like, "He he's a werewolf." No, he's a werewolf. I don't shapeshift. It was all that stuff. You know, you know, the normal stuff that they do in France instead of actually dealing with the wolf problem. And anyways, because of all this, authorities often blame like serial killers or just like mental illness on supernatural curses like werewolfism. Later on, many French colonists began settling down in Nova Scotia in the Providence in Canada, which is that island right next to Maine. But then a lot of these French settlers didn't want to like bow down to the British crown. And so they ended up moving down to Spanishcontrolled Louisiana, especially to the swamps of New Orleans. And this is where the legend of the Rugaroo kind of came from.

[00:28:48]But because there's no wolves down in New Orleans, Louisiana area, this legend kind of warped into this creature that was a versatile shape shifter, taking the form of a were dog or an owl or even a cow where it would terrorize children and rule breakers. And kind of the main legend is of this wolf or dog thing that has the head of a dog and the body of a human and it would hunt down Catholics that didn't follow the rules of Lent and that a person would turn into a werewolf if they broke Lent 7 years in a row. But the legend's kind of different depending on who tells it and where exactly it's at in Louisiana. Some say that rugaroos will be under the spell for like 101 days and then after then they can transfer the curse into another person by sucking their blood. All right. For the state of Maine, we have the North Pond Hermit. So for [snorts] nearly three decades, these residents in Rome, Maine, which is not a very large town.

[00:29:53]was actually really small were haunted by this phantom that would break into their houses into their cabins and steal food and supplies and it left the locals terrified. Specifically, this happened in the cabins along North Pond, which is why they ended up calling it the North Pond Hermit. This is kind of a legend where people weren't sure if this was actually real as it was just kind of like they were kind of paranoid because it wasn't like anything was happening that was violent and residents were just kind of having stuff disappear from their homes. Like they would just find food missing or books missing off their shelves. They might find their window like slightly opened. But it turned out that this phantom hermit thing was actually a real thing where this man had been living alone for 27 years in the wilderness with no human contact or almost no human contact. And he had been committing thousands of burglaries to sustain himself. This guy actually became so well known in the area that people started to leave food out for him so he would stop breaking into their houses. His name was Christopher Knight.

[00:31:02]And basically when he was only 20 years old, he entered the woods after his car ran out of gas and he just started living out there. He had no survival plan, no training. He didn't really have like a clear goal and he didn't even tell anybody. This guy just went out there, started living in the woods near North Pond. He spent 27 years alone, making him one of the longest known hermits in American history. This guy built a campsite in this dense thicket that was so well concealed that even nearby residents never stumbled across him. But he would do burglaries like stealing food and propane and books and batteries and clothing. It was crazy cuz this guy did not warm himself with anything like a fire or propane because he thought it might risk revealing his location. And this is so crazy because this guy was up in Maine and it was so cold at night sometimes around like 2 to 3:00 a.m. in the middle of the winter that he would actually have to get up and pace around his campsite to keep the blood flowing through his body so he didn't freeze to death. But he had virtually zero human contact for all these years. He recalled speaking one word to a hiker one time that ended up crossing his path where he just said hi.

[00:32:20]And then finally, he ended up getting caught in 2013 by a game warden who set up motion alarms at this summer camp that he had been repeatedly robbing and he was sentenced to 7 months in jail.

[00:32:32]So, this was one legend that turned out to be a real person. For Maryland, we have the Snaligaster. So, this is a legend that kind of came from German immigrants that started settling around these towns in Frederick County, Maryland in the 1730s. They started talking about this thing that they called Schneidergeist which meant quick ghost in German where they described this half reptile half bird thing living in the caves of South Mountain where it would swoop silently from the sky and steal animals and children. Features of this thing kept changing depending on who was telling the story, but usually they described it as picking up things with its metallic beak and sharp teeth.

[00:33:20]And also that it had octopus like tentacles and curved talons and a single eye in the center of its forehead. And as it flew, it screamed like a train.

[00:33:30]The legend goes that they figured out that the seven-pointed star actually kept this thing away. So they started painting this thing on barns. And even if you go to this area today, there are still seven-pointed stars painted on a lot of local barns. This legend actually exploded around 1909 when newspaper stories started to spread that the Smithsonian Institute was offering a reward for its hide. It was kind of funny. Even President Theodore Roosevelt was so captivated by these newspaper stories of this dragon flying over Maryland that he reportedly considered postponing his African safari trip to hunt it himself. The creature's official story kind of ended in 1932 when newspapers reported that this thing had been lured into a moonshine still where it got overcome by fumes and then drowned in this 2500gallon vat of liquor. A funny thing is back during prohibition when they weren't supposed to have any alcohol, moonshiners would explain the sounds of their illegal whiskey operation as the beast and they would just always use that as an excuse.

[00:34:41]Oh, the beast is out there making loud explosions again. It's the snail gaster.

[00:34:47]What can you do about it? You can't do anything if it's just dragon octopus.

[00:34:51]For Massachusetts, we have the Bridgewater Triangle. This is this roughly 200 square mile area of southeastern Massachusetts. That is basically New England's version of the Bermuda Triangle. At the center of this triangle, there is Hakamuk swamp, which is an Algangquin term, meaning the place where spirits dwell. Around 300 AD, this place served as a hunting ground and burial site for the Wanowag people. The legend goes that there is this curse there that causes a lot of strange events and that this curse came as a result of King Phillip's war. This was actually considered the bloodiest war per capita in American history that just absolutely devastated the Wampa people where by the end of it nearly 3,000 Wanau men, women, and children were either killed or sold into slavery. Many believe that this area is haunted and cursed by this event. They report different phenomena around the area that cover basically every category of weird like UFOs, poltergeist, Bigfoot like sightings, giant snakes, and other Native American creatures from mythology. Even law enforcement apparently have reported seeing weird things like giant black pterodactyl like creatures, kind of like the Thunderbird.

[00:36:15]In 1998, there was this big incident where cattle were found mutilated in the woods multiple times, and authorities were thinking that this was used as a ritual sacrifice. And there's also like a persistent legend of this redheaded hitchhiker entity that is seen wandering the highways of the triangle. But even just 20 mi north of where this triangle is, there was that really weird phenomenon that was the Dover demon, which if you don't know, this was that creature that was cited in 1977 in Dover, Massachusetts, where there was three separate encounters over the span of 25 hours where they allegedly saw this gray alien looking creature just crawling along the ground on all fours, but he had like a big massive head and apparently just freaked people loud. All right, for the state of Michigan, we have the dog man. So, this is a legend about this 7 foot tall bipeedal K-9 humanoid thing that how sounds like a human scream. The legend began with this encounter in 1887 in Wexford County where there was these two lumberjacks that described this creature with a man's body and a dog's head. They said that this creature stood up on its hind legs and emitted this blood curling scream that caused the men to flee and abandon their campsite. Then around 1937 or 38, decades later, there was this man named Robert Fortney, not Fortnite, Fortney, who claimed that while he was being attacked by these five wild dogs, the pack leader, who was a larger dog, stood up on its hind legs and watched him with uncanny amber humanlook eyes and I think it talked to him. I think that's what the legend is. Yeah, that's right. He he talked to him in the story, in the legend. This folklore now claims that this creature now emerges in these reoccurring 10-year patterns linked with the years ending in seven, like 1887, 2017, 2027. That's going to happen next year. The dog man will be here.

[00:38:31]Most sightings of this thing are reported in the northwestern quadrant of the lower peninsula with the creature being said to stalk the area around the Manasty River since the days of the Ottawa tribe that used to live there.

[00:38:45]And this has kind of led to different speculations about the dog man about how he was actually part of Native American mythology and that maybe he was even a spiritual protector of ancient Native American burial grounds. Because once again, this is on a burial ground and a lot of these sightings are kind of tied to being near these sacred areas. You know, I actually grew up next to a Native American mound, too. So, what does that what does that mean for me?

[00:39:16]Now, for the state of Minnesota, we have the Wendigo. I know this is kind of a cliche one, but I just wanted to The windo is so sick, and I just kind of like talking about it cuz it's really freaky. The Wendigo is this legend about this malevolent cannibalistic spirit that kind of possesses someone after they either become really greedy or taste human flesh. Usually this thing is described as a humanoid looking thing that is extremely skinny but the more it eats the larger it gets. But it still stays extremely emaciated and it is insatiable. It is always hungry. It is always devouring. It will never eat enough. The legend came from the Algangquin speaking native people in North America. The legend especially is deeply rooted in areas like the north woods of Minnesota. But if you look at this map right here, there are a lot of different areas throughout the country that spoke Alangquin. So any of these areas really could have had the legend.

[00:40:17]The biggest example of any type of like person that kind of became a windo is the story of swift runner which was this plains cre trapper from Alberta Canada who was trying to survive a harsh winter around 1878 to 1879 where he cannibalized his entire family which was eight people in total six children his own mother his wife and it's kind of just a really dark story that I don't want to get into too are, but they tried to plead psychosis whenever he was being tried in court. But he was still brought to justice, even though some people thought he was a Wendigo. I will say after looking further into this report of this situation, it was really messed up. But this guy could have just gone like 25 miles away and gotten food. More in modern day, the tail of the windo has kind of gotten distorted and turned into more of a boogeyman figure that looks like this emaciated elk looking thing with elk antlers and kind of humanoid looking body. But in the state of Minnesota, there is even a town called Wendigo. And the reason it's called that is because of the lake windo which is this 199 acre lake that has a lot of like weird anomalies. It has this lake within a lake and historically the Native American communities living in the region would do this cultural ceremony on this island to protect against the Wendigo spirit. Now for the state of Mississippi we have the threelegged lady. So, the three-legged lady of Nash Road is this phantom figure that is kind of a normal human body, but she has an extra leg attached to her torso. Some say this thing just dangles limply and she just drags it across the pavement with a scraping sound, but others say that's actually useful and that she uses it to run way faster almost with like unnatural speed or that she even uses it as a weapon and she can kick really hard with it. But anyway, the legend goes that people summon this lady by going to this winding rural stretch of road near Columbus, Mississippi called Nash Road, where motorists that want to see her to encounter her will stop in the road, turn off their headlights, honk three times, and then after waiting for a bit, they're supposed to either hear knocking on the roof of their vehicle or even feel her jumping on the roof of her car, slamming her body against the vehicle where, you know, there's different versions of the legend, but apparently she's supposed to challenge you to a race down the road where she will try to outrun the car and if you do end up losing the race, you suffer a very bad punishment, which is up to your imagination. And as for why she has a third leg, there's a variant of the legend where she was this woman that got cursed by a bunch of witches to grow a third leg and to just walk around with this abnormal unnatural limb as eternal punishment. But that's really about it.

[00:43:32]All right, for the great state of Missouri, we have the Ozark Howler. This is a legend about this black shaggy beast that is said to dwell in the Ozark mountain regions of southern Missouri and also north Arkansas. According to the tradition, this creature looks like a bear in shape, has all this dark shaggy fur, but also usually has horns or kind of antlers. Most reports of the howler are from the 1900s, but they think that the creature's origins likely came from a report in the late 1700s from none other than Daniel Boone.

[00:44:09]Daniel Boone claimed that he ran into this thing and ended up killing this large hairy creature in the region that Boon reported that he shot. He described it as being this massive glowing eyed creature that famously was described as being a mix between a bear and a cat. A bear bear cat that he said had a bone chilling humanlike scream. Other encounters usually say that this thing has a horrific howl that's said to sound like a cross between a wolf's howl, an elk's bugle, and a woman's scream. And that's why it's called the Ozark Howler.

[00:44:50]Very spooky. But there was this really funny thing where in 2015, this Arkansas TV station was submitted these photos of some sort of creature that a lot of people were claiming was the Ozark Howler. This is the picture. They claimed they took this photograph in Devil's Den State Park, which is in Arkansas. But Arkansas Fish and Game actually responded to these images and they were like, "Guys, this is a hoax."

[00:45:19]Which, like, I don't really know why they would have to say that because obviously it is. But I just I really like this depiction. It looks like kind of a big weasel thing kind of cat with little deer antler horns. But I just thought it was really funny. Anyways, that is all that I have for this list.

[00:45:38]I'm going to do the other half in the next couple of weeks. Not next Saturday, but the Saturday after. But thank you guys so much for watching. If you guys like urban legends, then you are a deranged viewer just like me because you stuck to the end. I salute you for that.

[00:45:54]I always find it fun going back through and learning about these silly stories from every state in the United States.

[00:46:02]It doesn't matter where you go. Every state has some silly thing that they like to go on and on about. But, you know, I do too. I like going on about the complete nonsense. It has nothing to do with anything. But, if you want to help support the channel, you can get merch just like this. Mysteries National Park shirt still live until the end of the summer. If you want that merch right there, it's pretty sick. Also, if you would rather listen on Spotify, I do have a Spotify version of this video.

[00:46:30]But thank you guys for watching. Keep being a deranged viewer. Go out there, hunt some urban legends. Go hunt some cryptids. But have a great summer and I will see you guys in the next video.

[00:46:42]Goodbye.