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Melon Heads

If you do look into this, be sure to tell us your findings. If only to reassure us that you haven't been taken by the Melon Heads :)
 
Never come across the Melon Heads before - they have the signs of an UL - just enough grains of truth to make them plausible and scary . . .

Carole
 
I read some of the stuff on the sites, it was bloody scarey! :eek!!!!:
 
Dashwood said:
If you do look into this, be sure to tell us your findings. If only to reassure us that you haven't been taken by the Melon Heads :)
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I certainly will, I'm going to go at night and during the day, take pictures and a camcorder, hoping too see one of those ceepy little bastards.
 
The story about the "melonhead" attacking the couple in the car reminds me somewhat of the Dover Demon. Are there opossums in that area? ;)

The "backstory" of it seems like a typical piece of rural American gothic/horror type folklore, kind of reminiscent of other stories like the Jersey Devil, many of HP Lovecraft's stories, etc. Like Lovecraft, it has that "could just possibly be believable" thing that makes it all the more scary.

Weird NJ is a great site - are there similar sites for other parts of the US (and, indeed, the UK and Europe)?
 
Since Cobains ghost hasn't posted since, can we assume he's plant food now?
 
melonheads

i'm particularly interested in comparing a certain cultural/social phenomenon between different countries: the US is rife with legends about outcast groups like inbreds and mutants that live in very rural areas (like appalachia, and the southwest US), and countless horror movies are made from this (the Hills Have Eyes (both versions), Wrong Turn, Deliverance-- off the top of my head, there's many more!!) and i was pondering whether the UK has this kind of stuff, b/c it's a much smaller country containing quite a population.

what brings this up: i have a very interesting book, called WEIRD US by Mark Moran, and it discusses several outcast group legends, particularly Melonheads. i've heard of these, although it was not a big local legend as i am from northern virginia and melonheads are most 'prevalent' (if they exist) around ohio. as the main story goes (of course, there are many different versions), a Dr. Crow was commissioned to treat children sufferin from hydrocephalus-- a condition in which large pockets of water gather around the brain-- but he grossly mistreated them by performing experiments on them and neglecting them, and eventually they became little more than animals. they eventually killed him and now roam the woods of northern ohio. reports and sightings still come in, and some people claim that they attacked them.
hydrocephalus is a real condition, and it looks very strange, so i'm sure that people with this condition do not want to be viewed by people and thus live out of the way of 'normal people' (altho my understanding is they don't live very long). it's unfortunate that people are cruel and misunderstanding enough to spread stories of these people being violent and attacking others, but it would be intriguing if there was any truth to any of these stories....

so, are there any similar stories in the UK or elsewhere? i'd love to hear about it!!

there's much more to this if anyone is interested, plus the book also discusses 'Jackson Whites' and Melungeons, so this all is for another post if i get enough encouragement to go into it :D
 
Ever heard the medical abbreviation 'NFN*'? :lol:

*normal for Norfolk
 
hrrrm no, is there something i'm missing here??....
 
I'm sure we have a thread about "melonheads" or something similar from a couple of years ago somewhere about here...
 
escargot1 said:
Ever heard the medical abbreviation 'NFN*'? :lol:

*normal for Norfolk
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I know some people there, and various parts of Norfolk and Suffolk will be cited in cases of "cross jostling" (interbreeding) although never the part of Norfolk the person citing this comes from. Very often the alleged number of fingers will be brought up.
I think the UK doesn't have the wild isolated places necessary for proper US style freakery legends though. Compared to the US we're virtually shoulder to shoulder here.
 
ahh, i see, i wasn't sure if the Norfolk you were referring to was the one that I know in southern VA. I have never heard of the interbreeding cases there?! plus that area doesn't strike me as rural, but i have only passed on through on I-64 on my way to the outer banks. i can't quite envision it on a map, but i know that the area is part of coastal VA (i'm still surprised to hear that people actually LIVE there.). could you go into that some more, i'd love to hear about anything besides the VERY well trodden west virginia inbred stories!
 
WAIT, are we in fact talking about Norfolk in the US? I just read the article that escargot posted and it's talking about UK doctors so now I am confused (just so i don't look quite that stupid in the case that we are talking about a UK norfolk, there IS a Norfolk/Suffolk about 3 hours south of my hometown, since we early americans weren't original enough to come up with our own town names.) well.
 
They're talking about the UK. 8)

I was once told that in the Isle of Wight doctors are supposed to ask pregnant women whether they are a blood relation to the father.
 
:lol: Really? Oh that's AWFUL!

Yup, sorry Kneesox, I should've made it clear that I was talking about the English county of Norfolk.

'NFN', or 'normal for Norfolk', means, well, something like 'as healthy as can be expected after generations of intermarriage'.
 
stating the obvious, but;

the usa is a big place, and has low or zero population areas, the uk doesnt.

NFN? why are ppl in norfolk supposed to be inbred more then anywhere else? go back 500 years and i suppose we where all inbred (born in a village, married in the village, had kids there etc.)
 
My husband was once asked by a specialist whether his parents were related. :lol: (They aren't, he's just a spontaneous mutant ;) )

I suppose Norfolk has that reputation RealPazza because people don't tend to move from there, it has quite a lot of poor areas, like Cornwall, but unlike Cornwall it doesn't attract millions of incomers. It's a lovely place though. It's also very flat and parts of it and Suffolk have a larger than avarage disabled population.
 
Kneesox, I've merged your thread with the earlier 'Melon Head' thread.

there's much more to this if anyone is interested, plus the book also discusses 'Jackson Whites' and Melungeons, so this all is for another post if i get enough encouragement to go into it
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I'd certainly be interested in reading more on the subject so yes, go for it! :)
 
I suppose i already knew it was the obvious that the US has a lot more rural areas than the UK, but since hydrocephalus is an actual medical condition, surely there must be some cases in the UK-- but maybe since there aren't that many rural pockets for them to hide in, people are more aware of them and thus not as inclined to start cruel legends (assuming US melon legends are just that). just a casual theory, i'm probably not going anywhere relevant here.

Thanks for merging the thread here TheQuixote, and i'll read the new working links Frobush added as soon as i have some free time (a valuable commodity these days that i tend to piss away on these boards AHH). BTW, weird nj and weird cleveland are part of the same works by mark moran-- he compiled everything into this terrific tome, Weird US.......with further posts on the jackson whites and melungeons, i will do that asap.
 
beakboo said:
I suppose Norfolk has that reputation RealPazza because people don't tend to move from there, it has quite a lot of poor areas, like Cornwall, but unlike Cornwall it doesn't attract millions of incomers. It's a lovely place though. It's also very flat and parts of it and Suffolk have a larger than avarage disabled population.
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like Gainsborough then :)

my daughter is special needs and attends a special school, when she went to school in bradford she was the only white child in her class, but in schools for "normal" children there is an asian/white mix. i was told that asians are more prone to special needs children, is this correct i wonder?

no im not being racist, cos im not!!! just passing on observations :)
 
RealPaZZa wrote:
my daughter is special needs and attends a special school, when she went to school in bradford she was the only white child in her class, but in schools for "normal" children there is an asian/white mix. i was told that asians are more prone to special needs children, is this correct i wonder?
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Certainly not. I think it was more of an unthinking throw-away comment by someone who had not taken into account the much wider racial diversity of Bradford. That mix of people could be said of some standard Schools of Bradford, Burnley, Leeds and the like.

Oh and good to see another Lincolnshire resident on the board.
Mr P
 
From the last White Paper on Learning Disabilities (Valuing People) which came out in 2002-3:

Page 16 - [i:1blb5g0n]Valuing People[/i] said:
Evidence suggests that the number of people with severe learning disabilities may increase by around 1% per annum for the next 15 years as a result of:

  • increased life expectancy, especially among people with Down Syndrome;

    growing numbers of children and young people with complex and multiple disabilities who now survive into adulthood;

    a sharp rise in the reported numbers of school age children with autistic spectrum disorders, some of whom will have learning disabilities;

    greater prevalence among some minority ethnic populations of South Asian origin.

[SNIP]
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Page 20 - [i:1blb5g0n]Valuing People[/i] said:
The needs of people with learning disabilities from minority ethnic communities are too often overlooked. Key findings from the study at the Centre for Research in Primary Care at the University of Leeds published alongside Valuing People included;

  • prevalence of learning disability in some South Asian communities can be up to three times greater than in the general population;

    diagnosis is often made at a later age than for the population as a whole and parents receive less information about their child's condition and the support available;

    social exclusion is made more severe by language barriers and racism, and negative stereotypes and attitudes contribute to disadvantage;

    carers who do not speak English receive less information about their support role and experience high levels of stress; and

    agencies often underestimate people's attachments to cultural traditions and religious beliefs.
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http://www.archive.official-documents.c ... 6/5086.pdf
 
Now all we need to do is find out why. Is it a dietary thing maybe? Like vitamin D deficiency? :? Or just genes possibly.
 
beakboo said:
Now all we need to do is find out why. Is it a dietary thing maybe? Like vitamin D deficiency? :? Or just genes possibly.
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Again, without being racist, or stereotyping our asian friends;

Personal observations show asians generally (but not always) marry asians, i suppose their gene-pool in the UK is smaller than those native to the UK have, could that be the reason????
 
As no-ones come forward with suggestions (maybe considered a dangerous subject to some), ive been investigating this myself, ive just read that more babies (under 1 year old) die in Bradford than in any other area, and the cause is povery, could poverty also be a cause here?

http://www.thisisbradford.co.uk/display ... overty.php
 
Interesting link. I'm just kind of upset that 'it' (the study) seems to be centred around 'race'. And someone posted a suggestion that implied (I might be wrong) that 'this' might be in-bred due to the limited size of the 'select' population. There might be some truth in this - my own limited (and probably inaccurate) knowledge leads me to beleive that there's a section of 'that' community - pre-arranged marriages and what not (as good a get-out clause as any) - could, to the 'westener' be used as ammo to fuel those death stats.

Er, that was a mouthful!

I'm just trying to say is that it's not just Asian kids in Bradford that are getting the sh*t end of the stick.
 
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