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For almost four decades, folklorists have been writing about adolescents' trips to spooky locations associated with legends about supernatural events. My research suggests that the common term "legend trip" does not adequately describe college students' investigations of such sites. Rather than expressing rebellion and disrespect, college students seek the opportunity to play a role in an eerie drama that reflects a particular legend's plot. Are supernatural forces real? Can machines perceive ghosts more accurately than humans can? Legend questers attempt to answer such questions by participating in an open-ended, apparently dangerous adventure. Three texts narrated by New York State college students provide examples of the meaning of legend quests for older adolescents.
During the past six years I have collected ghost stories from college students across the United States, finding especially good material in New York State. Some of the most dramatic texts describe visits to places associated with supernatural characters and events. These stones follow a fairly consistent pattern: identification of a site where something unusual took place, an explanation for the students' visit, and then a detailed description of what happened during the visit. Since Bill Ellis's publication of "Legend-Tripping in Ohio" in the early 1980s, many folklorists have called such visits "legend trips" (1982-3). While this term accurately indicates a journey, it makes no reference to the journey's purpose. I would like to suggest that another term, "legend quest," does more justice to older adolescents' reasons for visiting legend sites. Among these reasons are desires to understand death, probe the horror of domestic violence, and express the uneasy relationship between humans and technology. There is also a strong emotional component: an attempt to feel both thrilled and afraid under relatively safe circumstances.
Linda Dégh wrote the first articles on adolescents' nocturnal journeys to haunted locations, including two bridges in southern Indiana, in 1969 and 1971. In Legend and Belief, she argues that most adolescents' legends are quest stories: young storytellers travel to haunted places, telling stories as they "prepare for the anticipated legend in action" (2001, 253). Kenneth A. Thigpen, author of "Adolescent Legends in Brown County: A Survey" (1971), suggests that putting oneself under the power of the supernatural is central to the success of such visits. Certain ritual...