Your friendly neighborhood... thing

[Mikey]

So, who are your local cryptids and famous urban legends? Everywhere has got something or other... London has Spring-Heeled Jack, the Tower ravens, etc., etc.; Teaos has got the waitoreke and the legends of the Patupaiarehe in the mountains of kiwi-land... I'll give it a start.

So, I'm from New Jersey in the U.S., and our most famous representative may be the Jersey Devil but we also have the Gator Man of northern NJ and southeastern NY, the spectral Griggstown Cow (which just turned out to be a feral bull remaining from an escaped herd thirty years prior, advanced enough in age and poor enough of eyesight that he only failed to avoid people on archetypal misty or stormy days,) the giant mantis or "Mantis Man" of Hackettstown, the dreaded Sandy Hook Sea Serpent,and the Hoboken Monkey Man.

We also have the Devil's Tree, the Atco Ghost (supposedly a young boy killed by a drunk driver who manifests to drivers who honk three times on Burnt Mill Road in the Pine Barrens,) a fair bit of the typical haunted hotels and such, buried treasure from Captain Kidd and from the historically-true Revolutionary War privateers, and the incredibly-named stretch of locations haunted by lynched highwaymen and Leni Lenape spirit guides called "Shades of Death Road."

[Graham Kennedy]

The one that springs to mind is the Liver birds, from my home city.



Legend has it that the one looking out to sea is a female, who is looking out for seamen on voyages. The male looks over the city, to keep an eye on their families (or in some versions, to make sure the pubs are open). They must always face away from one another because if they were to mate and fly away, the city would cease to exist.

[Mikey]

Is that why they're tied down?

[mwhittington]

I live in northern California. We have Bigfoot, but then again so does half the United States. But apparently we have a lot more:http://www.weirdca.com/index.php?type=18

[RK_Striker_JK_5]

New Hampshire doesn't have much, but we do have America's Stonehenge.

[Bryan Moore]

Connecticut has white collar criminals and some abandoned mental institutions... don't know if those count towards crypto-zoology.

[RK_Striker_JK_5]

Connecticut has white collar criminals and some abandoned mental institutions... don't know if those count towards crypto-zoology.

I think we can let allow that.

[Mikey]

Doesn't Connecticut have the Melon Heads?

[Reliant121]

I have several in the Hampshire area.

Most famously is probably Ascapart the Giant who was supposedly conquered by Bevis of Hampton. Bevis took him in as a squire rather than kill him; Ascapart betrayed him and abducted his wife. Eventually he died when Bevis and co. rescued his wife.

Slightly more ethereal, we have Kitnocks Hill named for Kitty Knocks. She's meant to be a young girl who drowned or died in an accident while eloping. Those who pass through the hamlet of Curdridge can see her ghost at night.

Beaulieu Abbey is a fond one for ghosts and the like. A Cistercian abbey established at the behest of King John as an "apology" for ordering the trampling of some monks in a previous time in his life. Reports of ghost monks, latin chants, even a ethereal boat rowing across to the Abbey's boatyard in storms to name a few.

[Mikey]

Maybe it's because of the greater length of history there, but there is such a beautiful wealth of this type of lore in the U.K.

[RK_Striker_JK_5]

Yeah. The US hasn't had much time to build up as many cool/semi-disturbing myths.

[Reliant121]

I suppose two millennia+ of history would produce more legends than 350 years

[Mikey]

One of my favorite UK-based cryptids is the black dog, with examples ranging from Mann, the Orkneys, and Scotland all the way down east to East Anglia. Black Shuck, the black dog of Norfolk and Suffolk, was reported in print as early as the 12th c.

[Reliant121]

Not strictly a cryptid though it has a definite olde english feel, I love the tale behind "The Highwayman" by Alfred Noyes. I particularly enjoy the adaptation into song by Loreena McKennitt

[Mikey]

Can't play the vid right now, but ironically enough I was listening to McKennitt's "The Highwayman" on my Pandora feed this morning.