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Date Collected

Fall 11-2017

Place item was collected

Apartment Lounge, Logan, Utah

Informant

Tyler Shelley

Point of Discovery/Informant Bio

Tyler is a 20 year old male, he grew up in Taylorsville, Utah, but spent his senior year in Florida and now lives in Salt Lake. He has his high-school diploma from Florida, and a Paramedic certificate from Bridgerland Applied Technology College. His family is LDS, but he isn’t. He is a close friend of mine that I met in middle school. He is an aspiring musician that is currently working as a mechanic, and is a bit of a wanderer. He is spontaneous and goes for late night drives all of the time, and is a little bit reckless. He loves to tell stories. He talks about Ash in this supernatural legend, his Transgender cousin and best friend.

Context

This story was told at an impromptu game night in the public lounge at my apartment around 9:40 pm. Tyler was visiting Logan to see all of his friends up here, and it had been about 3 months since we had seen each other. Tyler, my best friend Rae (and his friend through me), and I were halfway through a game of phase 10 when we got bored and I asked him about recent adventures, and he told me this story. It was pretty quiet, because it was late and there were only 3 of us in the room. The collection context of use are very similar, because he was telling the story naturally, and I made him pause to turn my recorder on. It would be told in peer social setting, later at night.

Text

“Okay so I was going on these really random spontaneous adventures with my cousin, and for some reason it was like the day after halloween, and we’re like- let’s go, to a ghost town- like this abandoned town in the middle of nowhere, and we’re like okay, like googling one, it’s called coal city… it’s like, on the way to Moab, like two and a half hours away, and it was like abandoned in the 40’s, right? And we’re like, okay. So, so we drive there, and we’re there before the sunset and on the way there we’re like commenting on how pretty it was, so well, THIS ROAD IS SO PRETTY and uh we went to the ghost town and it’s like tractors and a couple abandoned buildings no biggie and it was interesting. And we started ta go explore the desert, before the sunset? You could see the full moon, we chose a full moon to go to a ghost town, this is ominous. And uh, kid you not, like the sunset. It got dark. We’re driving back, and like, the road we thought was so pretty- there was BLOOD everywhere in the road dude. It was like, super sketchy, because it wasn’t just like one spot, it was for like 4 miles. Well it looked like it was road kill, like on the road like somebody hit a cow or somethin, but there wasn’t any bodies. And I like stopped the car get out and it was like d e f i n i t e l y dried blood on the road and I was like this is trippy, so we got back in the car and left.”

Texture

There was a jovial tone to his story, but also an underlying spooky mood that filled the room. It was told very casually, because we are such close friends and the environment of the game night. He seemed really excited to tell the story, but didn't have the intent of scaring us (you could tell because none of it was jumpy or drawn out, just a recollection). It was told at a medium volume most of the time, but he got louder at key points in the story and sometimes trailed off when trying to remember what happened. He told it with pretty high energy. He told the story as if he was terrified when it happened, but now looks back on it with fondness and a good laugh.

Course

Introduction to Folklore, English 2210

Instructor

Dr. Lynne S. McNeill

Semester and year

Fall 2017

Theme

G7: Unexplainable Phenomena

EAD Number

2.2.2.7.33

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