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Local lore/monsters?
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cdev:
Hello, do any of you have any colorful local lore, or especially any unusual or quite probably imaginary "monsters". Many areas of the US including (especially?) my own have a local oral tradition of stories about strange places or people, which  would qualify as "strange" Where I live, there even is a magazine about them. and many books. But as anybody who grew up around here can testify, some of these stories are true. One can visit the places they happened.

As somebody who lives inland, I rarely, if ever have felt threatened by sharks. Certainly, Ive seen them in the water while deep sea fishing. And even run my fingers over their mny rows of sharp teeth in a restaurant near Tomales Bay in Nothern California, a popular vacation spot for great white sharks, its my understanding.

But as far as I know they have never made their way up the Passaic (perhaps the most polluted river in the USA ) into my neck of the woods. They would have to jump very far or portage their way around the Great Falls in Paterson in order to access its upper reaches, and the Great Swamp. (an Amazon like area where its easy to imagine primordial creatures.) There are fish in there, including some very large ornamental carp, some of which look like the colorful fish in a koi pond.  So a shark would probably find enough to eat. But I think we could count on the Great Falls in Paterson, keeping them out. Or at least providing a challenge worthy of the giant man eating, primordial fish.

On a railroad bridge over a creek quite a bit south of here, there is a mural of "Jaws" teeth around the central arch f a railroad bridge with three arches, reputed to be the site of a vicious shark attack in 2016. But wait, this bridge is over a middle sized freshwater creek and quite a long distance from the ocean.

And so starts a true story, which actually was made into he novel and film, This shark attack was very real, two lost their lives and another lost his leg, this was the true story behind Peter Benchley's  "Jaws" novel and film, If indeed Sydney is a city with a substantial shark problem, where the nightly news report features a shark report.  I think you might want to hear what happened here in NJ. If there is any lesson we should take away is that when somebody tells us they have seen a shark in a place where they might pose a danger to humans we should listen to them!

To understand the relevant geography one has to know about the so called inland seaway. The US Atlantic coast is a great area for boaters and sailors because of a series of barrier islands that provide an easy north south route, protected from the ocean that goes for hundreds of miles along the eastern coast of the US. Its these narrow barrier islands that run north and south that provide the havens for sharks who seem to like warmer waters behind them. They used to be among the favorite haunts for pirates who terrorized shipping between the islands of the Carribean and the rest of North America and Europe. Unlike Australia we don't hve man eating crocodiles in any real abundance. However there are alligators which seem to be inching their way northward as temperatures rise, and also occasionally sharks. ANd some alligators, probably former ets have indeed been found in the New York City sewer system.

New jersey, it will become evident, is also very fertile ground for the "science" of cryptozoology, or the making up of mythical animals. As well as eccentricity. A tolerant attribute which I think promotes mental health.

Here are some resources on this attack, which may be one of the most famous shark attacks of all time.



Article in WeirdNJ Magazine

Wikipedia: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jersey_Shore_shark_attacks_of_1916   (dozens of links)

artag:
I find the North American fascination with monsters interesting. I live in England, which has it's share of ghost stories but they're almost always people (or ex-people) retracing the steps they took in life and advertising some wrongdoing.

North American stories seem to be more monster-based : perhaps from Lovecraft, or perhaps his stories were just in the same trend. Films, as a more recent form of literature, often follow the same trend; either nameless monsters like Amityville or possessions (a monster taking over a live person) like Carrie.
mindcrime:
There's all sorts of "local lore" around where I grew up (southeastern NC, USA). But probably the best known bit concerns an area quite close to my childhood home in Brunswick County. I never had the opportunity to encounter this myself, but it was quite a popular legend locally for a long time.

The story goes like this: There was a train line that ran down to the coast, towards Wilmington, NC. Close to Wilmington, near the border of Columbus County and Brunswick County is the tiny little community of Maco. There's not much in Maco, it's basically just an intersection. Anyway... one night a train was coming through, when part of the train came loose from the rest and drifted to a halt on the track right near Maco. The conductor on the caboose was a man named Joe Baldwin, and he immediately realized that a following train would likely run into this stalled out piece of train, so he grabs a couple of lanterns and starts swinging them furiously, trying to warn the next train to stop. Sadly, the other train was coming too fast, and it collided with Baldwin's car, and he was decapitated in the wreck.

For years afterwards, locals told of a mysterious light (or lights in some variations) that would appear, swaying and bouncing around the train tracks at Maco. It became known as the "Maco Light" or "Joe Baldwin's lantern" as the locals held that the light was the spirit of Joe Baldwin, looking for his head which was never recovered after the collision...

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Maco_light
https://northcarolinaghosts.com/coast/maco-light/

mindcrime:
Another one from southeastern NC is the "Beast of Bladenboro".
 
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Beast_of_Bladenboro

And even more near and dear to my heart, is the history of people of "Crusoe Island". Crusoe is about 20 miles from where I lived as a kid, and my dad actually grew up right beside Crusoe in a place called Old Dock, NC.  Growing up, stories always circulated around our area to the effect of "never, ever go to Crusoe unless you are from there, or know somebody from there, and have a damn good reason to be there." Beyond that, the exact reasons for this admonition were always left a little vague, other than hand-wavy references to "They don't like strangers much there." It wasn't until I was an adult many years later that I discovered this purported history of Crusoe, and explanation for the extremely insular / isolated lifestyle of the residents there.

https://restorationsystems.com/uncategorized/swamp-people-french-haitian-aristocrats-in-the-green-swamp-of-north-carolina/
JPortici:
From time to time a black cougar was reported to have been seen here in treviso's province, even went in the newspapers
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