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Who
Was the Bunny Man?
Urban
Legends of Virginia
As
October 31 approaches, it seems appropriate to
examine some of those pesky Virginia urban legends
that surface during the Halloween season. From
Fairfax’s ax-throwing “bunny man” to
Richmond’s vampire, these tales seem to have a
life of their own, multiplying and mutating over the
years.
Brian
Conley, a former historian with the Fairfax County
Public Library, first became interested in the
“bunny man” legend in 1992 when a library
customer wanted to find information on a murder that
supposedly took place near her home. The story was
vague, involving an escaped inmate who allegedly
murdered two children for trespassing and left their
bodies hanging from a covered bridge. It sounded
quite similar to a story Conley had heard many years
earlier in 1976. When the woman mentioned the man
supposedly had been dressed in a bunny suit, he knew
that the legend had resurfaced yet another time.
Conley
decided to investigate the origins of the ubiquitous
legend. He has documented his research in "The
Bunny Man Unmasked: The Real Life Origins of an
Urban Legend," a 12-page article posted on
the library’s Web site. His search lasted years
and took him to newspaper archives on old murders.
His first breakthrough came when he discovered a
decades-old Washington Post article, “Man
in Bunny Suit Sought in Fairfax,” (October 20,
1970). The article reported that a man “dressed in
a white bunny suit with long bunny ears” threw an
ax into a parked car and yelled, “You’re on
private property and I have your tag number.” He
found a report of a similar incident two weeks later
when an ax was thrown through the window of a
construction site guard’s car. Conley was even
able to track down the police report. He concluded
that the tale, which by 1973 had 54 variations
reported by a University of Maryland student
studying “urban belief legends,” originated from
the strange behavior of someone upset with the
burgeoning development in the Kings Park area of
Fairfax County.
The
tale of the Richmond vampire is a much earlier
legend. In 1925, when the Church Hill tunnel caved
in, a strange creature covered with blood was seen
coming out of the cave-in. His mouth was covered
with blood; teeth were jagged; and rotten flesh
clung to his arms and legs. Supposedly, he ran to
the Hollywood Cemetery and hid himself in a crypt
marked “W.W. Poole.” Poole’s grave has the
year of death, but no birth date.
As
with the “bunny man” tale and many urban
legends, the tale of the Richmond vampire has some
basis in truth. According to Greg Maitland, an urban
legend expert who researched death records, a
fireman named Benjamin F. Mosby was shoveling coal
into the steam tank of the train when the tunnel
collapsed. He was scalded and stumbled out of the
tunnel with skin falling off his body. He was rushed
to Grace Hospital, but died 24 hours later. Maitland
also explains that in 1920s Richmond, the phrase
“going to Hollywood,” meant a person was dying.
Another
urban tale that has made the rounds of the Internet
involves “laundricide.” Supposedly a graduate of
Virginia Tech was trying to stuff 50 pounds of
laundry into a washing machine by standing on top of
the machine and stuffing it in with his legs. In a
Rube Goldberg sequence of events, he accidentally
engaged the machine while his legs were still in it.
When the machine’s agitator went into gear, his
head hit a nearby shelf, knocking over a bottle of
bleach that blinded him. His dog then came into the
room at the same time that a box of baking soda fell
from a shelf. The dog, startled, relieved himself,
and a chemical reaction with the baking soda caused
a small explosion. The agitator went into high gear
spinning the hapless victim at 70 miles per hour. He
hit his head on a steel beam and died instantly.
("A
Slight Case of Laundricide.")
In
debunking the myth, the Web site www.snopes.com
points out that top-loading washing machines come
equipped with a brake that stops the spinning tub
when the lid is open. Also, scientifically, the
chemical reaction that supposedly caused the
explosion is not possible. The site also mentions
that the original version didn’t identify the
victim as a Hokie and possibly that detail was added
by a rival University of Virginia alum.
An
urban legend that circulates across the U.S. may
have origins in a real Virginia event. In this tale,
a couple checks into a remote hotel and smells a
rotting odor coming from the bed. They alert the
desk clerk and then discover a dead body in the box
springs. In 1989, a murderer actually used this
method to get rid of his two victims. The first, a
27-year-old woman was discovered under the floor of
a motel room on Rt. 1 in Alexandria. The second, a
29-year-old woman was found under a bed in another
Alexandria motel. Apparently in the first case, the
murderer partially hid the body under the bed and
then put it under the floorboards. He didn’t move
out of the room for several weeks. (Halloween
Ghost Stories -- Urban Legends.)
Have
you got a favorite urban legend that originates here
in the Old Dominion? If so, e-mail Edwin.Clay@fairfaxcounty.gov.
NEXT:
Weigh Stations in Virginia: Or How Heavy Is That
18-Wheeler?
--
October 29, 2007
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