TheFoothillsForum

I thought it might be fun to post tall tales, or legends and lore here. There I've got one straight out of Kernville, that is timely for fall. Would love to hear other kid appropriate tales, too. This is taken from a story I wrote several years ago for my website:

Very nice, love your story.

Anybody hear the story of Jonathan?
This young couple bought a house in this neighborhood. It needed a little TLC and the couple was up for it. They worked every night after work and every weekend. Lots of noise came from the house but the neighbors figured it was the saws and hammers and other usual noise. After months of work the noise finally stopped. It seemed as if the couple was done with their remodel.
The couple kept pretty much to themselves but the neighbors were curious as to what changes they had made to the house. They couldn't tell by the outside, which still looked pretty run down. The weeds kept growing while they had worked on the inside. So, one day , some of the neighborhood women decided to take a house warming basket of goodies to their new neighbors. They walked up the driveway and up the front porch steps and knocked on the door. Finally, the young woman opened the door just enough for the women to see her eye. They told her how they wanted to welcome her to the neighborhood and brought a house warming gift.
The woman opened the door a little wider, but still all anyone could see of her was her head. She thanked the women and said that she had just gotten out of the shower and could they leave the basket on the porch. She would get it later. The women weren't sure what to make of that but did as she requested. They left the basket on the porch and went to one of the women homes for coffee.
Mrs. Jacobs, who lived next door to the new residents, said it was kind of strange how they never had any workmen at the place.
Mrs. Li said she thought it strange how she had never seen a moving truck deliver their furniture. For that matter, she never saw when they moved in at all! All she ever saw was that one day there was a "For Sale" sign and the next day it was gone and a dark green van was parked in the driveway.
Mrs. Haywood wanted to know if anyone else had heard screams coming from the attic late at night. It woke her and her husband from a sound sleep on Monday morning around 3:15am.
They all agreed that they did hear strange noises late at night and something just wasn't right at that house.
Months went by and the strange noises kept up. The police were called but there were no laws being broken.
One night the whole neighborhood was woken up in the wee hours of the morning by loud crashing noises and then the sound of several gun shots and then a terrible scream! The neighbors called 911 to report the gun fire and the police were there in minutes. The neighbors all gathered around outside the couples home and waited to hear what the police said. Several hours went by and many cops showed up. Finally, around 4:00am, the coroners car came and two body bags where whisked into the back of the car. After that, the police made a search of the neighborhood and told all the residents to go home and lock their doors. They were also advised to call the police if they saw any unusual people lurking about. They gave no information, pending a full investigation.
It wasn't until several days later that the whole story came out. The couple were scientists who worked at a genetics lab. Apparently, the young woman had been working on a top secret project. She was six months pregnant when she was accidentally injected with the serum she was working on. The lab ran all the tests they could on her but could see no harm to her or the unborn baby. She delivered a healthy baby boy right on schedule. It wasn't until the baby was a few days old that they noticed something was wrong. The baby's face started changing and its fingers started growing and looking like claws. Its nails became long and hard. The couple didn't know what to do. They didn't want it to be experimented on so they kept the child a secret from their co-workers. They downloaded pictures of babies from the internet and passed them off as their son. No one knew anything was wrong. The couple soon found employment at a lab in this town and moved into the house just down the street. They remodeled the attic into a nursery of sorts for their son. They kept to themselves and said nothing to anyone of their tragedy.
They kept the door to the attic locked when they weren't in their. They kept the baby chained in his crib for safety reasons, (theirs as well as the baby's). He was very strong, you see. But one night the husband came home tired. The wife had been up with the baby all night and he was still awake and being "playful". They fed him, changed him and put him to bed.
But they forgot to lock the attic door. Jonathan came out of the attic.
Jonathan went down the stairs.
Jonathan wanted to play.
Jonathan was never found.
Goodnight my little Angels.

But I thought Jonathon was in our attic! LIES! UGH, I've been mislead all this time!(jk)

Great story of Jonathan! I can't believe I never noticed it before. With Halloween here...it's time for more legends and lore. Here's one from a little mining town that was located off of Tioga Pass.

The Triple Deaths of Ah Wee,
The Laundryman of Bennettville
by Cecile Page Vargo

High in the Sierras, near the base of Tioga Hill, laundryman Ah Wee was sick and dying in his Bennettville shanty. His friend, Jim Toy, a merchant and Chinese doctor from Lundy, hurried across the rugged mountains to his side. Not long after he arrived, Ah Wee took his last breath. Jim waited until the body was cold and rigid, then went to a boarding house for supper. After the meal, he and a group of men decided to go back to the laundryman’s and tend to the body. Imagine their surprise, when they arrived and Ah Wee was up and walking around. It took the strength of all of the men to get Ah Wee back to bed again. Jim Toy nursed Ah Wee through the night. Just before daybreak, however, Ah Wee breathed his last one more time.

Mule Ride to Lundy
A strong box was built for the Chinese laundryman’s body, so it could be taken to Lundy for internment. Louis Amoit’s pack train would come for the body and the box around noon that day. Meantime, Jim watched the corpse constantly for returned life. Louis arrived and they packed the box with Ah Wee’s body in it on the back of a pack mule. They trudged along slowly until reaching the level ridge of Mount Warren Divide. As Louis hurried the mules, the one with Ah Wee’s corpse began to trot. Suddenly, groaning noises were heard from the strong box. First thoughts were that it was the mule groaning, but Louis decided it best to make sure. As he stopped the mule, the groans from the box became louder. Ah Wee was alive once again. Reportedly, Louis Amoit’s “ eyeballs crawled out on his cheeks, looked at his ears, and tried to climb under his hat” in fear.
Louis Amoit and his pack mules, with the once again alive and breathing, Ah Wee, headed on to Lundy. In Lundy, Ah Wee rested comfortably in quiet quarters, appearing to be convalescing nicely. By 11:00 that Monday morning, an American physician checked on him to see how he was doing. Ah Wee turned his face to the wall and breathed his last one more time.

Peaceful and Penniless
The Homer Mining Index of October 27, 1883 , reported that on the Tuesday after his third last breath, Ah Wee was buried with “imposing ceremonies of the Chinese kind.” When interviewed for the Index, Ah Wee’s friend Jim Toy said he had died of a cold. Asked if it was a case of pneumonia, Jim Toy thought the reporter had said “no money”, and replied “No, no. Him got no money - him allee time gamble - tlee week ago him losee two hundled dolla - him got no money.” Regardless of what caused Ah Wee’s triple deaths, the third death was the charm, and he laid peacefully and penniless, to rest one last time.

Stretching the Truth

It is well known that during the 1870’s and 1880’s, a few editors of mining town newspapers were prone to exaggeration to make the life of the lonely miner more interesting as he read about weekly events. Amongst the editors of the afore mentioned Homer Mining Index, where the story of Ah Wee originally came from, was one known as Lying Jim Townsend. Lying Jim, cranked out copy for the camps of Bennettville, Lundy, Bodie, Aurora and surrounding areas. He was particularly noted for inserting an “occasional yarn of questionable veracity” once in awhile. Lying Jim was quoted from a column as saying “It requires inventive genius to pick up local news here now. The scribe has to trust to his imagination for facts and to his memory for things which never occurred.”

Whether Lying Jim, had anything to do with the three deaths of the Bennettville laundryman, this self pro-claimed ghost town gossipist of modern times doesn’t know, but she does find it interesting that this all occurred so close to Halloween.