From: lasner@watsun.cc.columbia.edu (Charles Lasner)
Newsgroups: alt.folklore.urban
Subject: Some Midwest legends
Date: 21 Nov 92 14:29:10 GMT
Reply-To: lasner@watsun.cc.columbia.edu (Charles Lasner)
Organization: Columbia University

Here is a collection of Midwest legends I am forewarding for Andy Sporner:


I was born and raised in the area of Plymouth, Indiana. I was under the
impression that your group would be interested in a couple of "tall-tales"
which are true in the sense that people believe them to be true, but in
reality are not.  So they are "true tall tales" or UL's.

They all have to do with a certain convent of a religious order which is
located in a rural area outside of Plymouth.  These are the more popular
tales that are told and I will share them with you here:

#1:

In the late 1960's after Vatican II revised much of the Church's liturgical
practices and certain styles fell from being in vogue (IE: statues), a
decision was made to "lay to rest" a group of old statues that were in
a serious state of disrepair.  One such statue depicted a saint holding 
her breast in her hand (it had been cut off by a roman soldier during the
roman pursecution).  The group of statues was in a woodside chapel called
the Chapel of the Holy Helpers.  It now serves as a memorial chapel as it
is bordering the cemetery.

This much of the story is true.  Here is the circumstances which followed 
and the outcome.  

The leader of the complex decided that they should be sunk to the bottom
of the lake (which also bordered the property) rather than throwing them
out as common refuse.  So a group of workmen loaded them into a boat and
rowed to the middle of the lake.  They then dumped them overboard and they
in fact sank.  As they were rowing back, they looked and saw that they 
were floating on the water.  THEY WERE HOLLOW INSIDE.  So they proceeded to
take and bust them up with an axe so that they would sink.  After that day
rumor flew that they were murdering people, dismembering them and sinking
them in the lake to "get rid of the evidence!"  How this happened is that
a poor imaginative soul was driving on the county road on the other side
of the lake and thought for sure that that is what they saw! 

Thats the tale.  My own thoughts are if it was indeed true, why do it
in broad daylight so that people like that would see it?  Second, where
is a person's common sense!? 

#2:

Down the road from this convent (about 2.5 miles away) there is (or was)
a boy's school and minor seminary.  I had heard in my childhood days before
I really knew much about either place that there was a tunnel between the
two buildings constructed for "illicit unions".  I was talking to a man
recently who set the record straight on this story.  It seems that in
the basement there was a disused walk-in cooler that was used to store
stuff for the yearly carnival that was held there.  Anyway, this was under
lock and key to keep the high-school-aged kids from tampering, etc.  One got
curious one day and asked what was behind the door.  The man they
asked was a maintainance man who had had just about enough questions 
about that door, so he invented a story about a tunnel.  It started 
pretty much there and it confirmed in the minds of a lot of local bigots
the existence of a tunnel.

At this point in time there is no seminary any more and the convent is
a thriving junior college (which I attended).  As for the story.  It
is still being told and it gets more and more sensational all the time.
   
#3:

This same college campus is seated on about 30 acres and includes five
buildings all connected by steam tunnels because there is a central 
power house where the steam is generated.  The story goes that a man
was called in during the late 1950's to early 1960's to do some work in
the tunnel.  This was the height of the "Can we elect a Catholic president?"
controversy.  Anyway's, in this tunnel there are rooms called expansion rooms
where the steam pipes go in, make a loop and come back out again.  As
with most steam tunnels, you tend to hear all kinds of noises.  Well, this
guy must not of ever heard of an expansion room because he tore out of the
place totally white like a bat out of hell.  The story later turned out
to be that he though he heard groaning in a dungeon and he thought he saw
a man chained to the wall.  

These expansion rooms have a door that is 1 1/2 foot tall and scarely a foot
wide and you have to be pretty damn good to get in there.  Since those rooms
are pretty dark and the fact the the pipes rise up one of the walls, it can
be pretty clear where he got that idea.  There was a lot of stories already
in circulation that the nuns were actually witches and they would capture
the Protestant preachers and torture them!

#4:

Since this place did have a lot of tunnels there was talk that the sisters
were building up a stock-piling of weapons so that when Kennedy was elected
they could help the Pope take over the United States.  It actually got so
out of hand that the sheriff actually came in to investigate.  

This kind of story was not entirely new in the area though.  The sisters
bought the place in 1918 from a man allegedly connected with the Mafia.
It was their place for all kinds of stuff.  The sisters built the complex in
1926 and founded their motherhouse there (they were hospital sisters).
About a couple years later in 1933 a group of priests built a minor 
seminary down the road from the convent.  They were a German order and
at this time German-Americans were feared as being Nazis. (In some cases
it was true.)  Time passed and in about 1938 some kid pulled a prank 
and lit off a stick of dynamite in the corn field.  Well, for the locals
that was enough and the either the National Guard or the Sheriff's 
Patrol was called in to shut down a "Hitler Youth Training Center".  
It took pretty much 'til the end of the war before people started to
believe the story for what it really was.  The odd thing was when the
Sheriff (or National Guard) did a search of the grounds for weapons
and found none, the stories only got more sensational.  

Even though the place has been closed now for about 14 years the 
stories still circulate even now.

-----------------------------
Well that's all folks I hope you get some enjoyment out of these.

grrr@eagle.ibc.edu

________________________
end of forewarded message

cjl
Newsgroups: alt.folklore.urban,sci.med