No, there were never any hangings on Rock-a-Dundee Road, nor has a crazy “hatchet lady” ever chased motorists out of the area.
Yes, there is a permanent roadside memorial to a small child who died in 1993.
Yes, a person was stabbed on Rock-a-Dundee Road.
Yes, there is a permanent roadside memorial to a small child who died in 1993.
Yes, a person was stabbed on Rock-a-Dundee Road.
JULY 1967
Looking back at one of the area’s most bizarre tales:
Two teenagers were making out in a car on the side of Rock-a-Dundee Road in Hampden, Mass., when, much to their dismay, the car wouldn’t start. “I’m walking to town for help,” said the boyfriend. “Keep the doors locked, and no matter what, don’t unlock the doors or get out.”
His girlfriend waited awhile and heard a scratching sound on the roof, but she thought it was the wind blowing a branch, since they were right under a tree.
Awoken the next morning by a Hampden police officer, she was escorted to his cruiser and instructed not to look back at the car. But she did, and saw her dead boyfriend hanging from a noose, his toes barely touching the car roof.
Many communities have adopted this bona fide suburban legend, going back, according to snopes.com, to at least 1964 in Kansas. By the late 1970s the story had spread across the world. Why is this kind of tale associated particularly with Rock-a-Dundee Road? As far as anyone knows, no murderous bloodbaths ever occurred there. Maybe it’s because of the road’s weird name. Rock-a-Dundee—sounds like a satanic chant. Or maybe it’s because it gets pretty damn dark out there in the boonies.
“The Boyfriend’s Death” story originates, no doubt, in tales of real life lover’s lane slayings. Hell, look at the Zodiac murders in the San Francisco area in the 1960s and 1970s. Necking can be fatal if a serial killer finds you. Snopes.com goes on to analyze the girlfriend defying the “don’t look back” order: it seems that taboos are always broken in folklore, and look what happened to Lot’s wife in the Bible when she ignores a similar command.
When we were growing up, we heard the theory that some sort of mob operation—counterfeiting or bootlegging or something like that—had taken place at a house on Rock-a-Dundee Road, and that the perpetrators had spread the haunting rumor to keep people away. If that was the case (although doubtful), quite the opposite has occurred over the past four decades. Thrill-seekers in Sixteen Acres, Wilbraham, Hampden, and East Longmeadow—the local legend hasn’t really spread much beyond this area—have considered it an adolescent rite-of-passage to make at least one chilling cruise down Rock-a-Dundee Road late at night.
Sure, my friends and I went down to Rock-a-Dundee Road a few times in our youth. But we never saw anything. Granted, it’s not a place you want to break down, especially where it turns into a dirt road and goes through a wooded area as it winds into Somers.
Over the years the stories have expanded to include tales of a crazed woman wielding an ax and chasing anyone foolish enough to venture down the road, teenage suicide hangings (the nooses, of course, are supposedly still dangling from the trees), and even an account of a bus running over a small child named John on the road after dropping him off. In this story, after the accident, his parents built a gazebo at the bus stop in his honor, and if you enter the structure, sometimes you can still hear the boy crying.
There is, in fact, such a structure on the road, decorated for the season with large Christmas lights, red bows, and four flat standup wooden carolers. A large boulder sits next to it, engraved with the message “Our bus stop in loving memory of John Shea.”
A note to readers: this isn’t his real name. But out of respect for the boy’s family, I’m not going to divulge it, and I’ve blocked it out of the photos.
A four-year-old boy named "John" who lived on Rock-a-Dundee road did die in the summer of 1993, but he wasn’t hit by a bus. He quietly passed away at home after a long illness, and the gazebo was apparently built as a memorial to him.
The story, of course, has been twisted and adopted into regional lore on the Internet by youngsters fascinated with the paranormal, including one person who claimed he was in the gazebo and felt a sudden gust of cold air, and then an hour later he found a scratch on his face. “I really freacked (sic) out,” he wrote, “because i felt like i was being folowed (sic) the rest of the day.”
I’m not surprised that the gazebo has prompted another Rock-a-Dundee legend: it’s just too tempting to see the rock inscription and skew the facts about the boy’s death to suit a haunting story. No, I didn’t go inside the gazebo once I took the photos. No, I didn’t get a weird feeling when I was there, except for being painfully aware of the fact that I’m a middle aged-man visiting Rock-a-Dundee road again after nearly 30 years. No, the road wasn’t named after the large rock, but that’s what people will undoubtedly be saying for the next hundred years. Yes, I know I am inevitably contributing to the spot’s notoriety by writing about these stories, but so be it.
There is a short YouTube video shot by adventurers cruising down Rock-a-Dundee Road at night. I’m not going to provide the link, because it’s not really worth watching. For a moment it has a humorous Blair Witch Project quality as headlights suddenly bear down on the couple. It's not a murderer, but an irritated motorist who just wants to pass the crawling car. Indeed, people who live on the street are sick of kids cruising up and down their street and turning around in their driveways at night, but they’re stuck with a legend. The YouTubers brought a Ouija board on the trip, and the passenger announces that it has directed him to the letter R. That’s R, I believe, for Rock-a-Dundee Road. No shit. “You couldn’t pay me enough to live on this street,” declares the driver. Believe me, honey, you probably couldn’t afford to live there.
OCTOBER 22, 2008
True story: a 20-year-old man was stabbed on Rock-a-Dundee Road this year. Fortunately, he survived. The circumstances were unclear from the news reports, but two adults and two juveniles from Springfield were arrested and charged with armed robbery, assault and battery with a dangerous weapon, and possession of marijuana.
This doesn’t sound like the kind of random slashing that is the stuff of Rock-a-Dundee road legends, but I’m sure in time the story will be amended enough to be incorporated into the area’s mythology. After all, we have the Internet now to speed up misinformation.
Memo to dead boyfriend, hatchet lady, and "John": you’ve got company—knife man.
NEW! READ AN UPDATE ON ROCK-A-DUNDEE ROAD, INCLUDING THE MAKING OF A FEATURE FILM, AT SPITTING TO ALL FIELDS, PART 5.
15 comments:
I lived in the Hampton County area my hole life. I grew up here and my parents and so on.
My grandmother told me about the storys on Rock a dundee road. They all are bogus. Except for that poor boy you refer to as John. I've gone to the area at night. The bazeebo was beautiful. Not at all scary.
The road on the other hand is so dark and narrow it is a little erie.
wow. never thought id see a reference to a video i shot on my "PoS" camera 2 years ago. i'm quite surprised that i've seen absolutely no stories about the couple who drove off the side of the road after being possessed, or the girl who drowned in that lake...
iive been through that road at least 50 times in the 2 1/2 short years ive known about it, and it gets worse and worse each time.
one time a cell phone i had in my car which was not turned on, not even registered at the time, suddenly turned on and vibrated like as if i had a text message, which i found odd since there was no service there, and the phone didnt even have a number at the time. i looked at my friend (the female driver in the youtube video) and took out the phone. opened it up and read "Hello Stephen" freaking out i threw the phone out the window, and havent found it since.
ever since we uploaded the video, and the school we were attending heard about it (CCHS) its been so many people up there it wasnt even worth taking the ride up anymore.
but its been a good year and a half since ive been up there, and think its time for another adventure through Rock-A-Dundee road.
Youtube video link:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yZrkirGtb3E
My facebook link:
http://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=100000159204955
Steve,
Thanks for reading. I never heard the story of the woman who drowned in the lake. What year did that happen? I also never heard of the "possessed" couple who drove off the side of the road, but on the Facebook "Tales of Rock-a-Dundee Road" group a woman from Sixteen Acres describes the time she and her boyfriend went off the road after going too fast.
Wow, kids from Chicopee go all the way to Rock-a-Dundee Road? That's quite a haul. Let me know what happens on your next trip.
will do. trying to go up sometime soon. and there is alot of people from chicopee going up after we started to. Ouija board moved to the letter r and it could have meant anything, or maybe the dirt road made it move. no clue as to that. after word got out around our school that road has taken a turn for the worse. potholes everywhere, dirt roads all messed up.
for the couple who went off the road, ill search for the story again, but try to describe it as best as i can.
there was a couple going down the rod, male driver, female passenger, the male started randomly speeding up, and was scaring the female. she started to yell slow down, and he slowly looked over, and his eyes were black. continued to speed and slammed into a tree off the side of the road.
pretty sure i remember what tree it was, and not sure if i have a picture of it on my myspace or not, but ill have to take one next time im up.
the girl in the lake is a creepy one, as one time we went up druing a full moon, and it looked like a form of a teenage girl was sitting on the rocks on the side of that lake.
not sure of the year it was in, but rumors were that she drowned in the lake, and id have to ask my friend to post here and explain it, as she knows the story better than me. the lake is said to look like its always raining (girls tears) and it looks that way, but after going back during the day time we found out that it was A LOT of bugs skimming the top of the water making that affect.
the woman with the hatchet, normally people have spotted her in the cemetary down the road from rock-a-dundee. never seen her on the road itself, but that cemetary scares the hell out of me. went in there once and it was the worst feeling ive ever had.
another story is about a red (i think, or black) truck that will tail gate you down the road, and disappear. now one time this did happen, and they were right behind us from the turn around point, until we took a right bout halfway down the rod, and we had to swerve into a random street to make them keep going straight. after coming out the other end of the street to speed back to the road we noticed that there was no car down the way they had just went since the road ended in that direction.
"john" as you call him, there is something fishy about him. everyone whos heard of that road heard of the "bus" that hit him right? thats the normal story. as we were using the Ouija board we talked to him, and we asked how he had died. got a response of p-o-i-s-o-n. thinking nothing of it i went home and decided to research the road more carefully. stumbling across an obituary i found that the house number he lived in is correct, but the cause of death, and the last name were not. his last name was slightly different from that on the boulder, and the cause of death was from "a sickly illness he had been fighting for months". after reading that i thought of what we had seen on the Ouija board.
going to try to see if we cant get up to that road sometime soon, and see if anything goes down. will be replying after i find out anything.
All of these legends sound like an episode of that show Supernatural. Every single one... It's all bull. We were up there the other night and nothing happened except it was near impossible to get through in a pick up truck.
I just went down this road for the first time last night, we headed over there at around 12am from Springfield & it took about a half hour to get there. I was expecting some whole crazy shit to happen but nothing insane occured, other than us passing through a huge mist in the middle of the road. Yes, it was foggy, but it wasn't a "fog" mist. This mist looked like if you blew out a candle & how the smoke would appear, but it was so stationary. It wasn't floating up into the sky, it wasn't drifting off with the breeze, it was so stagnant. I'm convinced it was a ghost & I refuse to have anyone tell me otherwise.
Oh & by the way, the little boy who was killed by the bus, his name wasn't John Shea, it was Jaren M. "Duney" Ascher. And he actually wasn't killed by the bus. He was 4 years old & he died of a brain tumor.
Funny thing, if you go in from the Connecticut end the sign used to say "Rocky Dundee Road", thought that was strange.
We used to go up there on Halloween night every once in a while, just knowing the legends makes it pretty creepy. We usually did it to scare the girls and make them cuddle up next to us so we could "protect" them. I used to have a van that had a manual choke. Yes it was the seventies and the van had shag carpeting on every remotely flat surface, and a separate room with a bed in the back. One trip I stopped on the bridge at the beginning of the road and pulled the choke all the way out when the engine was warm so the truck wouldn't start, the girls were screaming and literally shaking and all the guys were smirking. One of the girls punched me in the arm so hard that I had to 'fess up and start the van before she had a panic attack. Good times...
Yes, I've seen maps that show "Rocky Dundee" in CT. There are a few Rock-a-Dundee Roads in New England. Unbelievably, a studio named Nagrom Films is making a thriller/horror called "Rock-a-Dundee Road" based on the Hampden legend.
Whoops, mistyped on the last comment. There are a few ROCK O'DUNDEE Roads in NE, a slight variation. (Celtic roots to this curious name?)
I've personally been on the road and have been followed by the red truck. Pretty freaky
Im from Chicopee, and I've been to this road about 5 times. First time wasn't so bad. Second time I brought a friend, at a turn, my friend says he saw the boy standing in the bushes. Second time, I brought my lady friend, at the same turn (without me telling her any of the stories) she claimed she saw a boy, and felt as if something was following us. The fourth time, a third friend felt a presence, and immediately had stomache pains at that same road. My fifth time on that road was truly terrifying. We heard screaming, we saw shadows, we took pictures (I believe I took a picture of the boy, in fact). We even saw the ghost truck behind us, we sped out of there, not sure I'll be going back anytime soon.
I went last night with a couple of friends we went into the lake platform and yelled tick Tok 3 times we did see the spirit of the girl tht drowned in the lake. When I seen it I ran inside the van so fast really creepy. Tht same night we went to the memorial for the lil boy stand in it we all felt very wierd I felt lightheaded as we was bout to leave we heard a knocking sound at first we just thought it was just the trees or something 3 time it kept on doin it... tht will be the last time I ever go up there for those who don't believe nothing will come to u if your just looking for something to happen things will start happening if ur not looking. Ikno weird but I was in a car with non believer after lastnighy it changed our whole opinions.
Literally just went on it. It's not haunted guys, it's just bogus. Relax. We all know, we don't need to hear your pretend stories.
So I assume you guys are going out there on Halloween? Keep me informed! Red rum! Red rum!
I grew up in Hampden in the 60's and 70's. those stories are so fake, we as kids used to tell others that didn't live in town about these urban legends and they stuck and were believed, some are so gullible, my favorite was the disappearing castle on the corner. there's a new one to share about that street. You can mention rock-a-Dundee road to any teenager in the springfield area and they still to this day believe these stories are real, to funny
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