Legend tripping is a practice in which a usually furtive night pilgrimage is made to a site which is alleged to have been the scene of some tragedy, horrific, and possibly supernatural event or haunting.["Legend trip", entry in American Folklore: An Encyclopedia, ed. Jan Harold Brunvand (1996) ] 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.[Peter Monaghan, "The Surprising Online Life of Legends" The Chronicle of Higher Education Dec 12, 2011 [1]]
Sites for legend trips
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,
, rural roads, specific woods or other uninhabited (or semi-uninhabited) areas, and especially
cemetery are frequent sites of legend-tripping pilgrimages.
Reactions and controversies
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.
[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] However, in what Ellis calls "ostensive abuse," the rituals enacted at the legend-tripping sites sometimes involve
trespassing,
vandalism, and other
, and sometimes acts of
animal sacrifice or other
blood ritual.
These transgressions then sometimes lead to local
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.
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.
[Summers, Wynne, L. "Bloody Mary: When Ostension Becomes a Deadly and Destructive Teen Ritual." Midwestern Folklore 26 (2000):1 19-26.] The
Satanic panic over youth
Satanism in the 1980s was fueled in part by
graffiti and other ritual activities engaged in by legend-tripping youths.
Associated places in the United States
-
The Baird Chair monument in Kirksville, Missouri
-
Bachelor's Grove Cemetery, outside of Chicago, Cook County, Illinois
[ Bachelor’s Grove Cemetery is the most haunted graveyard in America; article; Roadtrippers; Accessed 25 June 2022]
-
The Black Aggie, formerly in Pikesville, Maryland and now in Washington, DC
-
Bunny Man near Clifton, Virginia
-
Crawford Road in Yorktown, Virginia
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Goat Man's Grave near Rolla, Missouri.
-
Hexenkopf Rock in Williams Township, Pennsylvania
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The Hornet Spook Light twelve miles southwest of Joplin, Missouri
-
The Lake View Public School, also known as the Gore Orphanage, near Cleveland, Ohio
[ Legend Tripping in Ohio: The Gore Orphanage]
-
McHarry, Captain Frances burial spot in Harrison County, Indiana
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The Myrtle Hill Cemetery in Medina County, Ohio
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Ong's Hat, New Jersey
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Our Lady of the Angels School in Chicago, Illinois and its Fire Memorial in nearby Queen of Heaven Cemetery.
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Stull Cemetery in Stull, Kansas, claimed to be a "gateway to Hell"
-
Waverly Hills Sanatorium, an abandoned hospital for tuberculosis victims, in Louisville, Kentucky
[ Ohio Trespassers – Ohio legends & Waverly Hills]
See also
Further reading
-
Aliens, Ghosts, and Cults: Legends We Live, by Bill Ellis (2001)
-
Encyclopedia of Haunted Indiana, Kobrowski, Nicole, 2008.
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Legend Tripping: A Contemporary Legend Casebook. Logan: Utah State University Press; McNeill, Lynne S. and Elizabeth Tucker, eds.; 2018.
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Legend-Tripping Online: Supernatural Folklore and the Search for Ong's Hat, Michael Kinsella, (2011)
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"Legend Tripping: The Ultimate Family Experience, Robinson, Robert C., 2014.
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Lucifer Ascending: The Occult in Folklore and Popular Culture, by Bill Ellis (2004)
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Raising the Devil: Satanism, New Religions, and the Media, by Bill Ellis (2000)
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''What's in a coin? Reading the Material Culture of Legend Tripping and Other Activities (2007), by Donald H. Holly and Casey E. Cordy. The Journal of American Folklore 120 (477):335-354.
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Debies-Carl, Jeffrey S. If You Should Go at Midnight: Legends and Legend Tripping in America. Jackson: University Press of Mississippi, 2023. 312 pages.
