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Haunted Virginia at Schiffer Publishing
Category:
Spirituality
Publisher: Schiffer Publishing
ISBN-10: 0764332813
Type: Non-Fiction
Pages: 256
Copyright: May 1, 2009
ISBN-13: 9780764332814
Price: $14.99 (eBook)
A nonfiction ghost book, set in the state of Virginia. Has ghosts, Civil War myths and legends, urban legends, myths of famous Virginians, monsters, Native American myths and African American myths, plus history too and true stories.
Like every state in the Union, Virginia has unique myths, legends, and yes, even true stories that sound much like legends, but aren’t. Learn about the urban legend of the Bunnyman and what happens to mortals at his Bunnyman Bridge in Clifton at midnight on Halloween. Prepare to discover the myths surrounding Edgar Allan Poe and other famous Virginians. See why Natural Bridge is actually a haunted tourist attraction. And what makes the Great Dismal Swamp so creepy: Is it the ghosts or Bigfoot? Meet the Witch of Pungo in Virginia Beach and find out that Mothman and the Jersey Devil actually visited Virginia. Read Virginian stories of witches, demons, monsters, ghosts, pirates, strange animals, and soldiers from the Civil War. Come visit a most amazing, frightening, and even intriguing Virginia that you never knew existed.
Size: 6″ x 9″ | 45 illustrations |
Binding: soft cover
Excerpt
Introduction
“Myths and legends die hard in America. We love them for the extra dimension they provide, the illusion of near-infinite possibility to erase the narrow confines of most men’s reality. Weird heroes and mould-breaking champions exist as living proof to those who need it that the tyranny of “the rat race” is not yet final.”
Hunter S. Thompson
Everyone participates in the reading of legends, myths, or folklore at some point in their lives. Who hasn’t read Greek mythology in school, or the folklore of Paul Bunyan, or tall tales of famous, real people like Calamity Jane or Johnny Appleseed? And what about urban legends? Urban legends are myths told in modern society, in cities or online, unlike many of the old tales set in the countryside. Even now, these get passed around in emails or are posted on the Internet—stories about the serial killer with the knife hanging around Lover’s Lane, Bloody Mary, the terrible smell under the bed in a hotel room or even the computer virus story that may have been true three years ago, but is still sent out as a warning.
A legend (Latin, legenda, "things to be read") is a narrative of human actions told about someone that existed in reality, once upon a time, but the true events have been twisted, making them more fascinating. Legend includes no happenings that are outside the realm of "possibility,” defined by a highly flexible set of parameters. These may include miracles that are perceived as actually having happened. There is the specific tradition of indoctrination where the legend arose, and in which the tale may be transformed over time, in order to keep it fresh, vital, and realistic. It is kinda like that game you played with your classmates in school, where you whisper to the next person a story, and by the time it comes full circle, that story has changed drastically from what it began as.
A myth is a sacred or traditional story that concerns the origins of the world or how the world and the creatures in it came to be in their present form. Myths serves to unfold a part of the world view of a people, or explain a practice, belief, or natural phenomenon. Parables and allegories are myths. Nothing is supposed to be real about it at all, even if someone mentioned in the story is a real person, like some famous Virginians in this book. There are stories told about their habits or life that are not true.
Folklore is the traditional beliefs, myths, tales, and practices of a people, transmitted orally. It is popular, but unfounded beliefs. Or, as Merriam-Webster says: “traditional customs, tales, sayings, dances, or art forms preserved among a people.”
The flavor of people and their culture, all interwove with day to day life when settlers came to the New World. They brought with them their folk tales and beliefs, and founded new ones in the new country. Some old stories mutated into different ones. There were older tales told by the Native Americans who were already living in Virginia before the white man came. Then, when slaves were brought to the New World, they brought with them tales from Africa and changed them, molding them to fit their new home.
Today, in modern times, we continue this with urban legends. Who hasn’t heard of the killer with the hook in lover’s lane? Or who hasn’t said, “Bloody Mary” while staring into the mirror, hoping to make a ghost appear? There’s the hitchhiking woman dressed in an evening gown that is picked up and climbs into the back seat, giving directions to an address to the driver. Once they arrive at the house, though, the driver discovers that she has mysteriously disappeared. When he goes to the door, he is told that his hitchhiker is the daughter of the owner of the house, who had been killed just after she left a party several years before, never making it home. But stories like the hitchhiking ghost existed long before they ended up as urban legends. I know I’ve read stories when it was a buggy or wagon being driven, not a car. So how many urban legends started as folk tales by those who colonized America?
Many of the legends and folk tales told by our ancestors have some kind of moral attached to them. These may be warnings. Watch your womenfolk and children, so that marauding Indians could not kidnap them. Don’t dare approach some old woman living in the woods for a much needed potion to rid one of an unwanted pregnancy, for she may conjure a spell and convince you to crawl into her oven to be cooked.
Virginia, like the other states in the U.S., has its own unique stories. The colonists that settled this Commonwealth were mostly common folk. They got up early in the morning to farm the land or ply their trades and went to bed early to begin anew the next day. For entertainment, they did not have televisions or video games or the Internet. Instead, entertainment was tales told to their children that had been told to them by their own parents, or to company at parties or around the campfire. Stories of the woman who lived alone in the cabin in the woods might be a witch who ate little children. Tales of giant hairy ape men seen and heard wandering the woods and mountains, or a tale of a howling thing in the middle of the road spread on purpose so that slaves would remain in their cabins at night.
Add tales from the Native Americans and those told by black slaves and you get a lot of wonderful stories to fill a book. When you sprinkle all that with countless sightings of Bigfoot, ghosts, monsters, and wild animals that aren’t supposed to exist—even monsters from other states— you have a body of myth unique only to Virginia. Then there are those tales that sounds like fiction, but are real-life, bizarre stories.
No matter what anyone says, secretly, we all love reading these wondrous stories, for not only are they scary tales, or incredible tales, but a link to Virginians of the past. These legends, myths, and even the strange true stories bring us closer together. Reading them, we stretch our fingertips across the centuries to hold hands with a colonist listening to a storyteller across the flickering flames of a campfire on a cold night. Whether based on a crumb of fact or not, these kinds of tales are a great way to pass the time. You can read them inside a warm house with a cup of tea within hand’s reach during the middle of winter while a snowstorm roars outside, or on a vacation at the beach in the summer while basking in the sun.
So sit back in an easy chair, your cup of tea or coffee near at hand, and take a trip through the pages of this book. Be prepared to learn about weird animals, vampires, werewolves and other kinds of monsters that creep, even about ghosts that haunt cemeteries, houses, and other places. Take a page out of history and learn something new about famous Virginians, about the truths and untruths that have been told about them. Discover the tales that Native Americans and African-Americans of Virginia once told. Even learn something about real people and animals whose own lives sounded like legends, but weren’t. It’s time to learn the unique legends, myths and true tales that Virginia holds dear to its heart.
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