NEWS for North Dakotans
Agriculture Communication, North Dakota State University
7 Morrill Hall, Fargo, ND 58105-5665

July 20, 2000

Plains Folk: Legends, the Sequel

"I have a legend to tell about the Hatton area," one of my North Dakota students started out. "Back in the woods along the Goose River there is an old abandoned house and family cemetery. The family's last name is Oss.

"There are many legends about this family. One is that they had a gas chamber in their basement and they used it to kill people. Another is that the kids killed their parents by pushing them out an upstairs window. The best one is that the kids robbed a bank a long time ago and buried the money in the family cemetery so that they wouldn't get caught.

"There is an old car down by the house that the kids supposedly stole. Then they bought a bunch of monkeys from a circus and put them in the car. Finally they took dinner forks and stabbed all of the monkeys to death.

"I know for sure that the gas chamber legend is false because I have been in the house since I only live about five miles from it."

To which another correspondent replied, "I'm from Northwood which is about 15 miles away from Hatton so I also know the legend about the Oss farm. I have heard some other additions to that one. Rumor has it that when the mother died, they put her in her rocking chair and continued to feed her for like the next three days. Also when the father and the grandparents died, they buried them in the pig pen, even though they have a cemetery out there.

"I've also been out to the farm before and it's REALLY weird on the inside. There are tons of magazines, letters, and old books on the floor. In quite a few of the rooms you can't even see the floor."

What is it that makes stories stick to a place like this? And how does the teenage fascination with the place get started? What we're talking about here, with the Oss house, is what students of folklore call a teenage legend trip--you go out somewhere in the country, and you tell stories about it. Grisly ones.

When you're stuck in school, though, you still can add a little adventure to your life by investing even that dreary place with legend. "Minot High School is one school but with two buildings," explains another of my informants. "Magic City houses grades 11 and 12 and Central houses 9 and 10. Central was built around 1910 and housed all four grades until the 1970s.

"Apparently Central once had a swimming pool underneath the risers that form the theatre or what everyone calls ‘the pit.' It is a real dark and seldom-used area of the school.

"The reason that the pool no longer exists is this: Sometime, probably in the late 1950s, a group of intoxicated seniors, practicing the ritual ‘freshman Friday,' tied a small freshman scapegoat to a chair and threw him in the pool. Since the pool was so secluded and seldom used even then, no one could hear him screaming, and it would be about three days before he was found by a janitor.

"Before I entered high school, I was told that kids who would be walking around the pit area (alone) would tell of hearing screams and splashing, even though there is no swimming pool there today."

This swimming pool story evidently gets around, as another of my writers replies, "I'd just like to add that the one about Minot High School and the secret pool/drowned guy sounds really familiar. At my high school in Pipestone, Minn., there was supposed to have been a pool underneath the stage in the auditorium at some point in the school's history, and there was some vague drowning story involved there, too, though not as developed as the Minot one. Just thought it was odd that the pools had been in the same place in both schools, hmmmm . . . "

Doesn't seem odd to me, but then I'm gullible.

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Source: Tom Isern (701) 231-8339
Editor: Dean Hulse (701) 231-6136

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