Thursday, October 17, 2013

Legend Tripping

Along the same lines as Paranormal Investigation and trolling e-Bay for Possessed Items, there’s a little activity called Legend Tripping. Now, it’s nowhere near as scientific as Paranormal Investigation, and it’s not as safe as viewing pictures of items and locations from your computer, but for those (usually teenagers) interested in the paranormal, it’s a world of fun (or terror) all it’s own.

After receiving information on a local legend, usually accompanied by a dare, participants will travel (usually at night) to a location indicated by the legend and attempt to fulfill the conditions of the legend and/or dare. Common legends involve graveyards where interaction with certain graves/crypts will trigger activity, and railroad crossings where ghost children will push your car across the tracks if you stop on them. These in turn have led to cautionary tales that basically warn against Legend Tripping, such as the one about a young woman who dies of fright after driving a knife into a serial killer’s grave, because she believes he has grabbed her jacket.

Legend Tripping is most common among teenagers, sometimes as right of passage, who may perform illegal activity during the evening to heighten the experience or fulfill the dare. Which of course only puts them, and Legend Tripping in general, at further odds with real Paranormal Investigation and local Conservatives. To help lessen this, some reference sites give specific instructions for Respect when Legend Tripping.

Despite this tension, it’s probably not going to go away anytime soon, and in fact, has a long history, with similar incidents taking place in several classic books. 

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