Bigfoot, haunted ruins are scary but what scares Joe more? Real-life situations
As Halloween nears, there’s always a lot of Internet chatter on spooky Ohio legends.
Fans of that sort of thing bring up the usual assortment of bizarre creatures, weeping bridges, haunted ruins and so forth to make the case that our state is a leader in creepiness.
Every state thinks that. Look up “crybaby bridge” sometime. There are bridges in many spots around the country where you can supposedly hear the sounds of weeping if you listen closely enough and are on your fourth beer.
Well, look, we humans love to scare ourselves, especially when we know deep down there’s no actual threat. I mean, who honestly could be terrified by Mothman, the winged humanoid said to roam parts of Ohio or West Virginia or both? If he’s a moth, just turn on the porch light and when he flits over to it, hit him with a big fly swatter.
More: Haunted sitesTravel: Haunted histories and ghostly tales make Ohio sites worth exploring
What strikes me about these fantasy tales, as preposterous as they might be, is that many of them have a corollary in real life that actually is frightening. As usual, I made a list:
⋅ Fantasy story: Crybaby bridge.
⋅ Real story: Any old (especially old) bridges
Oh, yeah, we ought to hear weeping around bridges, freeways, sewers, water lines, power grids and other aging systems that will fall apart without some serious investment. Anyone who’s spent three or four days without electricity knows what a horror that is.
⋅ Fantasy story: Lake Erie Monster
⋅ Real story: Lake Erie, period
Supposedly, Bessie, a giant serpent in the mold of Scotland’s Loch Ness monster, inhabits the lake. Oh, how I wish that not only were she real but also that she could devour the pollution-fueled algae blooms that foul Erie every summer.
In Ohio, we treat our signature natural resource as if it’s a giant cesspool. Pretty monstrous, don’t you think?
More: Haunted sitesTerrifying tours and tales — plus events for the kids — at these Greater Columbus haunts
⋅ Fantasy story: Countless tales about haunted sites where orphanages, mental health hospitals and prisons once stood in Ohio
⋅ Real story: We’re still not so good at caring for neglected children, the mentally ill and the incarcerated. That’s plenty disturbing, even without any supernatural presence.
⋅ Fantasy story: Bigfoot
⋅ Real story: Big Money
Come on, if a shadowy apelike creature with giant feet really did exist, he’d long ago have been captured, placed in a zoo and probably given an endorsement deal with Nike.
The actual outsized creatures I’d like to flush out of hiding are the ones who anonymously pour their wealth into political action groups so they can move public opinion to suit their purposes risk-free.
They’re ghosts, and something tells me they’re not friendly.
Joe Blundo is a Dispatch columnist.
@joeblundo
This article originally appeared on The Columbus Dispatch: Joe Blundo shares what frightens him more than Halloween stories
