Hometown Horrors
Some of us here at Rockabye Baby come from places that have eerie, strange pasts . . . tales of devils, witches and ghosts haunting our hometowns. A few brave souls were gutsy enough to share the ghost stories and urban legends from where we’re from, including me. Read on if you dare . . .
The Jersey Devil
My hometown ghost story is an easy one that's fairly well known. I grew up in New Jersey, where for close to 300 years, New Jerseyans have passed down the story of the Jersey Devil (or Leeds Devil), a mythical beast that stalks the Pine Barrens. Legend has it that when "Mother Leeds," so named for her many children and her residence at Leeds Point, learned she was pregnant with her 13th child, she threw her hands up to the heavens in exasperation and exclaimed, "Let this one be a devil!"
And so he was.
The story is especially known by my family, since my grandfather worked at a restaurant for decades at the tip of Leeds Point. Each time we'd drive to eat dinner there, if we'd been acting up in the car on the way as kids, my dad would always threaten to take us to the Jersey Devil, and pretend he was veering towards Mother Leeds's old house. It never failed to get us to behave.
The Blair Witch House
When I was in high school I played football. After my junior season was over we had a get together at the coach’s house, which wasn’t far from where the Blair Witch house was located. Being that it was late, a bunch of us decided to head over there to check it out. One of the other coaches came with us to make sure we stayed out of trouble. As about 10 to 15 of us headed inside, the coach secretly slipped away and snuck in the back entrance of the house.
As soon as there were way too many of us inside the pitch black house the coach yelled, “GET OUT OF MY HOUSE!!!”
The result ended up being a whole team of rough ’n’ tough football players screaming like children while running into the forest — myself included.
—Bill, sales rep
Annie Mary Twente
I grew up in a rural town in southern Minnesota. Living there, it was a rite of passage for local teens to venture out onto the gravel roads south of town to find an old, “haunted” gravesite for the purpose of having the living sh*t scared out of themselves. The gravesite belonged to little Annie Mary Twente.
Annie Mary fell ill with “lung fever” (old slang for pneumonia) in the fall of 1886. Before Annie Mary was put to rest, she slipped into a coma, leading her family to believe that she had died. The Twentes, restless in their grief, were convinced someone had stolen their girl from her grave. The father persuaded a few of his neighbors to help him dig up his daughter. The poor child was found on her side in the coffin, her eyes wide open in terror, strands of her hair clasped in her fists, and scratch marks on the lid of the coffin. She had been buried alive. It’s believed that her spirit haunts the grounds.
Like I said, almost every generation went out to see what went on near the grave. My grandparents did it, my parents did it, and, of course, so did I. One freezing cold night in October my junior year of high school, five of us piled into my best friend Amanda’s white Oldsmobile, aka “The Beast.” We headed out (another friend driving because Amanda was too scared), weaving south down the gravel roads that led there, all of us nervous with excitement (and petrified (though we didn’t want to show it)).
Almost as soon as we arrived the headlights flickered on and off. We screamed bloody murder, but then my friend driving started cackling so we knew it was just her pulling one on us. So we dared her to roll closer to the grave. We parked. Shut the engine off, sat in the dark and heard nothing. Nothing for a looooong time. Then suddenly, there was something on the roof, scratching. It got louder and louder. We all screamed, fired up the engine and kicked it into reverse to get the hell out of there.
Apparently, two nights before we headed to where Annie Mary was buried, someone had tried to break in. Guess she wasn’t too keen on visitors after that.
Have a good ghost story? Post them below. Feeling spooked? These Halloween pics of the Rockabye Baby team will fix that!
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