There is no shortage of urban legends today. One of the most prominent ones is QAnon. Carl Schultz has written a piece Debunking Urban Legends in the Alleghenies in bold.
Stop me if you’ve heard this one.
A few years ago, a team of Russian geologists invented a new kind of drill–one that has the ability to dig deeper holes than scientists ever thought possible. To test the drill, the geologists used it to bore a hole into the permafrost-covered ground of a remote region of Siberia.
When the geologists neared the nine-mile point of the hole, the drill began to spin wildly, indicating that it had broken through into a larger area–a cave or a cavern, or some sort of large empty space.
The supervisor of the geological team made the decision to lower an array of other measuring equipment into the hole, along with a heat-resistant microphone. To the surprise of the geologists, the temperatures at the bottom of the hole measured an astonishing 2000 degrees Fahrenheit.
But the microphone revealed something even more astounding: The sounds of human voices wailing in pain and torment.
This led the scientists to a staggering conclusion: The geologists had accidentally drilled a hole into Hell. The voices the scientists heard were actually departed souls consigned to the devil for eternal torment.
The details sometimes change, but that’s the way the story’s usually told. Occasionally, for additional verisimilitude, the narrator will claim that a recording of the tormented cries of the damned is available on YouTube for one’s late-night listening entertainment–but conveniently can never quite locate the tape on the website.
If you’ve never before heard or read the above story, welcome to the wonderful world of urban legends. Also known as apocryphal tales, urban legends are a genre of modern folklore that describe supposedly factual events in an attempt to explain or reinforce the fears and anxieties of modern society. Like the familiar folk tales of the past, these modern legends frequently contain cautionary significance or moral lessons to impart to the audience.
Urban legends often employ authentic sounding references or even local settings, and describe troubling or frightening events occurring in a mostly-unprovable context. Usually the legends are tales of the uncanny or the supernatural, placed into a narrative carefully crafted to scare the living daylights out of the reader or listener.
“Urban legends are told both in the course of casual conversation and in such special situations as campfires, slumber parties, and college dormitory bull sessions,” wrote University of Utah professor and folklorist Jan Harold Brunvand in his best-selling 1981 treatise “The Vanishing Hitchhiker: American Urban Legends and Their Meanings.” “The legends’ physical settings are often closeby, real, and sometimes renowned for other such happenings.” A deserted house, for example, or a remote cemetery.
A number of urban legends have connections to Pennsylvania–and some even take place in our area. An enormous cache of stolen Civil War gold is said to be buried in the hills of Jenner Township, guarded by seven devils and a headless woman. In a twist worthy of Stephen Vincent Benet, one hapless Thomas Mills resident seeking to recover the treasure in 1862 allegedly argued six of the devils into submission, but failed to persuade the seventh (women, even headless ones, didn’t gain the right to vote in the US until 1920). Presumably, the gold remains buried in Jenner Township to this day.
And generations of local high school students made their way to the Snavely Cemetery near Elton in Cambria County on a pilgrimage to Becky’s Grave, the final resting place of a young woman said to have been burned at the stake in 1892 for practicing witchcraft. The kids were unknowing that the woman whose remains they sought had actually perished in a house fire at age 83 along with her 79-year-old husband–and that they rest in peace together in an entirely different cemetery.
“As in any age or with any subject,” concludes folklorist Brunvand in his 1981 treatise, “when a skilled storyteller begins to play with such ideas, and when members of his audience respond, repeat the stories, and begin to add their own flourishes, then legends begin to form–and to circulate. I believe that a great deal of their continuing popularity can be explained in terms of…the possibilities of (those events occuring).”
Scary stories told around a campfire, or by the light of a flashlight by children during a sleepover, are an American tradition as venerable as Trick or Treat itself. Debunking them should not be hard if the Scooby Doo kids can do it. Knowing that most urban legends are approximately 99% imagination and 1% truth shouldn’t render Halloween any less enjoyable–but might make the celebration a little more reassuring.