FROM THE NEWS DESK: If you ever went to a costume party as Robin Hood or Maid Marion, you might be interested to learn that a farm that is linked to Robin Hood’s final resting place is up for sale.

All you need to take ownership of Mock Hall Farm, which has been in the same family for nearly 500 years, is somewhere close to £500,000, or approximately $800,000 US Dollars. I’m off to search under the cushions of my couch for spare change…

Link: West Yorkshire farm with Robin Hood link for sale

The last place I expected to encounter an intriguing piece of folklore was in the middle of a gritty crime movie like Serpico.

In Serpico, Al Pacino plays the part of an honest cop who is trying to cope with the rampant and widespread corruption of his colleagues in the New York Police force.

It’s a confronting and tense drama – one that saw Pacino nominated for an Academy Award for Best Actor in 1974 [1].

What it isn’t, however, is the sort of movie in which you expect to encounter a fairytale; and yet, in a scene in which Serpico and his girlfriend, Laurie, are talking about his dilemma, the following story is told:

Read the rest of this entry »

Footnotes:

1.	He lost to Jack Lemmon in “Save The Tiger”.
	Return

The question that seems to be on everyone’s lips — well, let’s be honest, the question I’ve been asked at least a couple of times by email, anyway — is what do I, Murray By Moonlight, amateur urban legend investigator, think of the MythBusters show?

Do I like the show? Do I respect the things Adam, Jamie and the rest of the crew are attempting to achieve with it? Do I secretly envy them for all the things they get to blow up? For that matter, do I secretly envy Jamie (that’s him on the right in the picture) for his silly moustache and his even more silly hat?

The answer to at least some of these questions is yes…

Okay, so if you ever spent an evening sitting around a campfire listening to ghost stories, then the chances that you’ve heard the story of ‘The Man With The Hook’ are somewhere around about 2 billion percent. It’s one of those wonderfully chilling tales that never fails to send a tingle up the spine, and it has made its way into any number of folk stories told all over the world [1].

I recently discovered a wonderful retelling of the tale over on AmericanFolklore.net, and I’d love to encourage you to go over and read the story, if for no better reason than it might remind you (as it did me) of some great times you spent at a younger age being scared out of your wits by a good tale.

Interestingly, I’ve encountered two different main retellings of this tale in my life. The first is very much like the version over on American Folklore, where the young couple discover the psychopath’s bloodied hook attached to the car door handle, indicating a very narrow escape.

The second, which may well have been borrowed from some other tale of a terrible encounter with a maniac, is even grislier still!

In this version the boyfriend leaves the young woman to go for help. A few minutes later she hears a sound on the top of the car, and moments after that a police loud hailer instructs her to run from the car for her life, and that whatever she does, she’s not to look back. Of course, she does risk a glance back at the car as she flees, and the story ends with her screams as she sees the The Man With The Hook standing on the roof of the car, holding the severed head of her unfortunate boyfriend [2].

Hope you enjoy the read, and I’d love to hear about your own encounters with the story of ‘The Man With The Hook’ in the comments below.

Photo courtesy of TJ Scott.

Footnotes:

1.	For example, I first heard it when I was about 12, at a Christmas Camp I attended just south of Brisbane, here in Australia.
	Return
2.	Seriously, when I look back on stories like these, is it any wonder we all had nightmares as children?
	Return

I recently picked up a copy of Italian Folktales by Italo Calvino in a wonderful little bookstore while in Hobart. It’s a collection of distinctly ‘Italian’ folk stories [1], and while I’m only partway through it, I’ve discovered some interesting things when compared to folk tales with which I am more familiar, which generally come from Western Europe or the US.

Footnotes:

1.	Though some are quick to point out that it’s difficult to define ‘Italian’ in a folk sense, since historically what we think of as ‘Italy’ was in fact a number of distinct provinces with their own folk traditions and tales.
	Return