Pennsylvania’s Urban Legends
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Written by: cherrythorn
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Date: Tue, 27 Apr 2010 |
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For my Campus Collection Project, I want to research the truth behind some of Pennsylvania’s Urban Legends. As a kid, I would read them with my cousins all the time. I am interested in finding out what others know and what they believe in. I think this would be a really interesting topic because it feels close to home and would be like storytelling- then just finding out if it is fact or fiction.
Ever hear of the “Curse of Billy Penn”? How about the “Lie Detector” or the “Hermit of Wissahickon?” These are just a few of the many urban legends sprouting from the Pennsylvania area. As with most urban legends, these stories have their own versions in different places, but the stories still haunt and entertain the residents of Pennsylvania.
“The Curse of Billy Penn” is probably the most well-known legend in the Philadelphia area. At one point, the William Penn Statue on top of City Hall was the highest point in the city, and it was an unspoken rule that no one would ever build higher. During those times, Philadelphia sports teams had four championships in under ten years. Then in 1984, Liberty One was built – 450 feet higher than the Penn statue. Since then, there has not been a championship title for any of Philadelphia’s teams. No country in the United States has gone longer without a win than Philadelphia. Is it true? The city will find out soon, now that the Phillies are in the World Series.
“The Lie Detector” was a story published in the June 22, 1977 edition of the Philadelphia Inquirer. The police caught a man accused of theft who would not admit to it. They did not have a lie detector, but instead put a spaghetti drainer on his head attached to a photo copier with a paper inside that said “He’s lying”. Whenever they did not believe him, they simply pressed “copy” and the result that he was lying would come out on a piece of paper. Because it happened so many times, the man finally admitted to his crime. It does not seem very far –fetched and could very likely be true, but many people began to question it because similar stories circulated in the 1960s, almost a decade earlier. The alleged thief may be the only one to ever know its validity.
A much more bizarre legend is called “The Hermit of Wissahickon”. Supposedly there was a doomsday cult who slept under the stairs and ate what they could find. The group would call themselves “The Tabernacle of the Mystic Brotherhood” or “The Society of Women in the Wilderness”. The group would practice ritual magic, alchemy, shamanism, body modification, and many other rituals that would bewilder local residents. The hermits said that they created a Philosopher’s Stone that would turn ordinary matter into gold. When the last brother was dying, he asked a friend to return the Stone to “the lady of the lake”…to throw it into the Schuylkill River.
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Source: Pennsylvania’s Urban Legends
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