The Witch House, home of Judge Jonathan Corwin, is the only structure still standing in Salem with direct ties to the Witchcraft Trials of 1692. As a local magistrate and civic leader, Corwin was called upon to investigate the claims of dark magic when a surge of witchcraft accusations arose in Salem. He served on the Court of Oyer and Terminer, which ultimately sent nineteen to be hung. (Source)
Since its construction in 1912 there have been over 100Ā suicidesĀ at the Colorado StreetĀ Bridge in Pasadena, California, earning it the nickname of Suicide Bridge. Over 50 of those deaths were during the Great Depression from 1930 to 1937. Today it has aĀ suicideĀ barrier which has reduced the number ofĀ suicides at the bridge but it still holds on to its nickname. According local urban legend, a worker fell off the bridge during its construction and into wet concrete. It was quick drying and he was left to die. Many believe that his ghost still haunts the bridge and that he is the reason why it has claimed so many lives, that his ghost urges people in crisis to take their own lives.Ā
Several spirits are said to haunt the Colorado Street Bridge, including a man with wire rimmed glasses and a woman in a long robe who disappears. The woman is often seen standing on top of one of the parapets, vanishing as she throws herself off. Ghosts have been seen walking the river bed under the bridge. Strange sounds and cries have been heard at night and semi transparentĀ apparitionsĀ have been seen in the area. One voice that is often heard at nightĀ is a female voice that whispers that something is āher faultā to anyone passing by.Ā
Another ghost dates back to aĀ suicideĀ in 1937. Myrtle Ward, a 22 year old mother,Ā carried her baby to the bridge after being left by the babyās father. She threw the baby off the bridge and then immediately jumped over herself so they could be together in the afterlife. In a twist of fate the baby landed in the branches of a nearby tree and was unharmed. Myrtle died, and her ghost has been seen wandering the bridge still searching for her baby.
I’ve passed this bridge when my sister used to work near there and the bridge really is beautiful. I’m almost tempted to go stand on it, but I know my mom would never let me cause ‘The devil might push me off or tempt me to jump’.
I’d prob be too weary to go anyway. Maybe. If u ask me, bridge seems almost cursed.
The Petrified Forest National Park in Arizona has always attracted people with its beautiful fossilized logs of trees that existed over 200 million years ago. Even though it is prohibited to take specimens from the park, people nonetheless steal pieces of petrified wood all the time. But what has also been reported, as far back as the 1930ā²s, is that those who take anything from the park are equally cursed with bad luck. The museum at the park has an entire room dedicated to the confessions from these thieves, usually written as letters sent to the park along with the pieces of petrified wood that were stolen. There is also a āConscience Pileā of fossils that sits at one of the entrances to the park, where countless thieves have quietly returned the fossils they stole. The rocks are not put back in the park, and merely sit as a monument to the curse of the petrified wood.
In South Dakota, a sinister urban legend named āWalking Samā is thought to have driven over ten teenagers to take their own lives, but how can a mythological figure drive people to such desperate measures?
The scene of the shocking spate of suicides is the Pine Ridge Indian Reservation, home to the Oglala Lakota sub-tribe of Sioux Native Americans, but also something a lot more ominous.
The Native American tribe believes in a mysterious, shadowy figure that walks the plains whispering suicidal urges into peopleās ears. Although the Oglala Lakota tribe refers to him as the āTall Man Spirit,ā this haunting presence has became colloquially known as āWalking Sam.ā Tribe president John Yellow Bird Steele explained that many Sioux believed in: āA suicide spirit similar to the Slender Man.ā
Reservation minister, Chris Carey, even went as far as to tell The Times thatā āA Tall Man spirit is appearing to these kids and telling them to kill themselves.ā
Although blaming the suicides on this spectral figure of traditional folklore might seem far-fetched, there is no denying the amount of young people taking their lives on the reservation is much higher than the national average.
Since December, a distressing 103 suicide attempts have occurred on the reservation, and out of them, nine young people between the ages of 12 and 24 have died.Ā While the these deaths are obviously saddening and shocking, a foiled mass suicide is perhaps the most chilling tale to creep out of Pine Ridge. In February, Pastor John Two Bulls was alerted that a group of teens had planned to kill themselves in a mass suicide. After rushing to the spot, he was confronted with a cluster of nooses hanging from the trees and a group of young people who had converged at the spot. Luckily counseling was offered and the teenagers were dispelled before they could harm themselves, but this tale could have ended in enormous tragedy.
Santana Janis who commited suicide at age 12.
Just Who is āWalking Sam?ā
Walking Sam is just as showy a figure in folklore as he is in real life. The origins of the legend cannot be pin pointed due to the Native American oral tradition of passing down stories, but it is believed that his name has been spoken for centuries.
Known by multiple names, including āStovepipe Hat Bigfootā and āBig Man,ā Walking Sam is strangely similar to the much better known Slender Man in appearance.
He is said to be seven foot tall with an impossibly lean figure and long, spindly limbs with no mouth. When he extends his arms, the dead bodies of Lakota men and women hang from them.
Walking Sam is similar in appearance to Slender Man
In folklore, Walking Samās presence is not intrinsically hostile. Itās said he was sent to this earth as punishment and is constantly seeking company to whom he cannot speak.
In Peter Mathiessenās 1983 book about Pine Ridge, In the Spirit of Crazy Horse,he is described as follows:
āThere is your Big man standing there, ever waiting, ever present, like the coming of a new dayā¦ He is both spirit and real being, but he can also glide through the forest, like a moose with big antlers, as though the trees werenāt thereā¦ I know him as my brotherā¦ I want him to touch me, just a touch, a blessing, something I could bring home to my sons and grandchildren, that I was there, that I approached him, and he touched me.ā
How Widespread Are the Beliefs?
According to The Daily Dot, many local people believe in Walking Sam and he has made his presence known at tribal council meetings with government officials. Blogger, Mike Crowley, explained how at one meeting:
āA woman, who was elderly but otherwise quite lucid, described Walking Sam as a big man in a tall hat who has appeared around the reservation and caused young people to commit suicides. ā
He also reported meeting a local bookstore owner who told him
āThere really are bad spirits out there on the reservation, and you need to be careful. She said that if you go looking for them, you might just find them.ā Ā
The arid ābad landsā in Pine Ridge
Another Explanation
Although Walking Sam a captivating tale, the real reason for the dramatic spate of tragic suicides is probably more to do with the extreme poverty that the Oglala Lakota tribe live in.
The Pine Ridge Reservation has some of the worst rates of alcoholism and drug abuse, violence and unemployment in America, and life expectancy for men is below 50 years, the lowest in the Western Hemisphere.
Racism has also been cited as a reason that so many Oglala Lakota teens are driven to kill themselves. Santana Janis, who killed herself aged just 12 years old, was called a āfilthy Indianā in a hotel lobby just days before she died, and Pine Ridge students were doused with beer and forced to leave a hockey game outside the reservation for their own safety just two months ago. In the words of Santanaās grandfather:
āOur kids today just want to die because theyāre sick of all this oppression.ā
Walking Sam might have become the spiritual totem for these suicides, and a figure that the teens themselves empathize with, but this shouldnāt distract the eyes of the world from the very real challenges the Oglala Lakota people face in their day to day life.
Walking Sam might be a compelling myth, but the teen suicides are real and tearing the soul of the reservation apart.
At the falls in Minnesota, along Lake Superiorās north shore, a river forks at a rock outcropping. While one side tumbles down a two-step stone embankment and continues on like a normal waterfall, the other side vanishes into a deep hole and disappears ā apparently forever.
A giant pothole, the Devilās Kettle, swallows half of the Brule and no one has any idea where it goes. The consensus is that there must be an exit point somewhere beneath Lake Superior, but over the years, researchers and the curious have poured dye, pingpong balls, even logs into the kettle, then watched the lake for any sign of them. So far, none has ever been found.
One theory is that the river flows along an underground fault and comes out somewhere under Lake Superior. This is unlikely, because for this to happen, the fault would have to be precisely oriented towards the lake, and would have to be large enough to allow the flow of half the river. Even if such a fault exist, it would have likely been clogged over the years as rocks, sand, logs and other materials fell into the kettle. Besides, there is no evidence of such a fault in the area.
Another theory is millions of years ago a lava tube formed when the rocks first solidified. The problem with this theory is that the rock at Devilās Kettle waterfalls is rhyolite, and lava tubes never form in rhyolite. Lava tubes form in basalt flowing down the slopes of volcanoes, and the nearest basalt layer to Devilās Kettle is located much too far underground to be any kind of factor in the mystery. The existence of a large underground cave is also ruled out because underground caves form in limestone rock, and there are no limestone in the area.
One of the most popular questions around the mystery is: āWhy donāt Geologists just drop a GPS tracker into it?ā
And the answer : āProbably because standard GPS trackers arenāt waterproof, run on electricity, and transmit their position using an aerial. They donāt work indoors and if you drop them out of an upstairs window, they break. What you would need is a ruggedized GPS tracker strong enough to continue working if it was bashed around on rocks by strong water pressure for several weeks (in an environment which apparently destroyed all the ping-pong balls). It would need to be waterproof to some depth. It would need a big enough battery to allow it to go on transmitting for many weeks, and big enough aerials to receive and transmit from tens of metres below the ground, yet be small enough to pass through twisty rock passages and smooth enough not to get caught on any rocks. It would have to be light enough not to simply sink to the bottom of the initial waterfall and go no further, but not so buoyant that it floated to the surface of the first cave and was carried no further. And the grant proposal to fund all this will need to have a better reason than āto find out where it goesā. ā
āEagleās Nest Sinkhole (also known as the āLost Sinkā) near St. Petersburg, Florida has been called the Mount Everest of diving. From ground level, it appears to be nothing more than a pond, but narrow shafts at the bottomĀ of the pond lead into a much larger underwater cave system with over 2 kilometers (1 mi) of charted passages, rooms larger than a football field, and shafts no wider than a doorway. The caveās deepest point is 94 meters (310 ft) below the surface.
The comparison to Mount Everest is due to its remoteness, difficulty, and spectacular beauty. Itās also an incredibly dangerous dive site. Like the Samaesan Hole, the depth of Eagleās Nest Sinkhole is such that Trimix certification is recommended. The use of only regular air can lead to disorientation below 46 meters (150 ft). Cave diving certification, previous cave diving experience, and diving with a guide familiar with the area are also highly recommended. Guidelines are used for divers to find their way back to the surface.
Even with experience and equipment, veteran divers have died in Eagleās Nest. Some have simply blacked out; others have become tangled in their own guidelines, eventually running out of air. The siteās remoteness also means that help is not close, and only other cave divers are qualified to attempt a rescue. In 1999, Eagleās Nest was closed due to the deaths, but it was reopened in 2003. A day pass for diving costs $3.ā
Surtsey is a piece of land that formed in 1963 (Iceland), after a huge volcanic
eruption that has lasted for 3 years. Now, the land is used for
scientific research and observations. The focus of the work is to better
understand how an ecosystem forms from scratch, without any human
impact. There are only a couple of scientists that are allowed on the
islandās premises, making it one of a few forbidden places on earth.
(Source)
š„ There is beauty in destructionš„ 