Encyclopedia of Horror Lore

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Govan, WA

Date of Establishment

After the construction of the Central Washington Railway in 1889, Govan was the spot to be. The town boomed in 1890 and sand extraction was a bustling business to support this railway town. Govan was a small farm town, with merely two churches, a post office, one school, and a handful of businesses. Even once the town boomed a disastrous fire claimed the town, sending it back into the ghost town era. This central Washington ghost town only has 3 residents to this day, a married couple and one other local.

Name & Location

Govan Schoolhouse

The abandoned town of Govan, WA sits about 50 miles west of Spokane, just down Highway 2 in Lincoln County. The town’s name is derived from R. B. Govan, who was an engineer for the Central Washington Railway.

Psychical Description

Govan was a large sandbank area in Lincoln County WA. With large plains of sands and minimal foliage to remove, it became easy to settle in the late 1800s. In the 1900s the town would have had full streets, schools, shops, and diners. Machines and railway workers digging pits of sand out of the countryside it would seem.

However, by 1933 Govan would be declared a passed by the town as US Route 2 came along. The town grew old, beaten down, and ghostly to outsides. Locals themselves ever relocated and moved on to better things. Leaving the barren mark of what was, and can never be again.

Origin

One haunting lead back to 1902 when a robbery leads to “the most brutal crime” committed in the county. Judge J.A. Lewis and his wife Penelope were murdered during a robbery, but being hacked with an ax. Mr. Lewis was known to keep large sums of money at his estate. Police concluded that was the motive, yet never solved the case and caught the killer.

Years later C. S. Thennes was killed by a masked gunman in the Govan Saloon. The saloon no longer stands today, as most of the business district of Govan, which was destroyed in the fire of 1927. Many believed that locals focusing on rebuilding the town, rather than avenging their dead helped to “haunt” this ghost town.

In 1941 a woman was founded murdered on her farm property, and her son went missing. Eight years later the son’s body was found in the fields on the property. Some claim this is the reported “shadowy figures” seen in the distant fields.

Along with the murders going on in the town, and the first fire, the town was once again seeing tragedy. A second in 1974 left the town unfixable in many local eyes and marked the end of Govan. Many homes and families were affected and even suffered losing loved ones. Within that fire burned most of the written records for the town, so linking any spirit to a real person is undoable.

Mythological and Lore

Although today most of the buildings from this ghost town are gone, a few remain that were from the town’s heyday. One of these is the Govan School which closed in the 1940s, but still gets visitors today. Some leave trinkets, shines, candles, and boxes of keepsakes at the schoolhouse. The residents the Sullivan’s reported have everyone from thrill-seekers to photographs come out to the property.

Various sites around the internet back up claim that the schoolhouse is haunted by shadowy figures. These figures are supposed to be the murder victims attempting to draw attention to the unsolved crimes. Yet, past a few bolstering claims there is little information on the Govan haunting. Few claim to see a shadowy or formless figure in windows or around the surrounding wheat fields. Most visitors claim to have a pleasant experience around the ghost town, however, that doesn’t stop urban tales. The creepy and rundown presence of the last few standing buildings surely adds belief to the “haunted” rumors and tales.

Many photographs visit the old schoolhouse to get some amazing shots of the skies. However, every few have commented past an eerie feeling and overload of spider webs. Some have claimed they may have seen, felt, or hear something ominous; but chalk it up to their minds playing tricks. Most visitors report known about the ax murderer as well as the saloon, which does lead them to be on guard for the paranormal. You will have to take a visit to make the choice between beautiful or haunted.

Modern Pop-Culture References
Movies
Index
  • Run of the River
  • Ghost Towns of Washington
  • King5.com
  • Pacific Northwest Photoblog

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Great Spider

Date of Discovery

First discovered in the 1890s, the Great Spider has been sighted as recently as 2014. The first sighting of the J’ba Fofi by a western observer was in the 1980s near Lake Nyasa when British missionary Arthur John Simes and his men stumbled upon one of the creatures. Having gotten themselves tangled in the enormous web, a male and female spider came out of their tunnel and attacked them. Despite being bitten, Simes managed to escape after shooting one of them with a pistol, but afterward exhibited symptoms that suggested he was poisoned—paleness, chills, and swelling around the bite. These symptoms worsened, Simes became delirious, before falling unconscious and ultimately succumbing to his wounds and dying.

Name

Giant Spider
Photography by Andre Tan

The Great Spider is also known as J’ba Fofi, or the Congolese Giant Spider.

Physical Description

The Great Spider is known to be a spider-like cryptid, but much larger than the average house spider.

Origin

This giant arachnid can be found in the Congo, Uganda, Papua New Guinea, Vietnam, the state of Louisiana, as well as Zimbabwe.

Mythology and Lore

Said to inhabit the forests of the Congo, it is suspected to represent a new species of arachnid—behaviorally speaking it is classified as a burrowing spider, digging shallow tunnels under tree roots and camouflaging it with large screens of leaves. Their webs are said to be nearly invisible when stretched between their burrow and a neighboring tree, which act as a network of trip lines and alert the spider when new prey is in the immediate area. This type of behavior is said to be reminiscent of a trapdoor spider, which leads investigators to believe that it really is just a new, unclassified species of trapdoor spider.

Natives to the area say that the J’ba Fofi lays pale yellow eggs, then the hatchlings are bright yellow with a purple abdomen, but as they mature, their coloration deepens, darkens, and browns. Many natives actually suggest that these giant spiders have always been in existence, that their prevalence used to be in much greater number, but they have since become more of a rarity. That encroachment of civilization has driven the spiders from their natural habitats.

A far more believed account, again by western sources, was in a book dedicated to cryptozoology by George Eberhart, where he relates the experiences of an English couple traveling through a region of the jungle in the Congo. He says that “R. K. Lloyd and his wife were motoring in the Belgium Congo in 1938 when they saw a large object crossing the trail in front of them. At first, they thought it was a cat or a monkey, but they soon realized it was a spider with legs nearly 3 feet (in length).”

William J. Gibbons, a cryptozoologist and naturalist believed he was hunting what was called the Congolese dinosaur, or Mokele-mbembe, when he came across natives who told him of their experience with the J’ba Fofi, in his narrative he said that “on this third expedition to Equatorial Africa, I took the opportunity to inquire if the pygmies new of such a giant spider, and indeed they did! They speak of the J’ba Fofi, which is a “giant” or “great spider.” They describe a spider that is generally brown in color with a purple mark on the abdomen. They grow to quite an enormous size with a leg span of at least five feet. The giant arachnids weave together a lair made of leaves similar in shape to a traditional pygmy hut and spin a circular web (said to be very strong) between two trees with a strand stretched across a game trail.”



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Grootslang

Date of Discovery

The first records of the Grootslang come from a rock painting in a South African province which has yet to be dated correctly. The first sightings started around 1867 and continued to multiple through the last 1890s. In 1963 newspapers began reporting the sightings sending locals into a frenzy.

Name

Grootslang, Grote Slang, “Great Serpent”, Kayman, Ki-man, !Koo-be-eng

Grootslang Painting - Big Snake

Physical Description

This giant snake is described as being 20 – 39 feet in length with a neck 8 – 10 feet long, and its head is 7 – 8 inches wide. It some tales its body is completely snake-like; however, in others, the body takes on a hippo or elephant-like shape with a long snake-like tail. Its skin or scales are pitch black from head to tail.

Origin

The origin of this legendary cyrtid snake comes from the African regions, most notoriously a deep cave in Richtersveld, South Africa. This creature has also made its way to treading water in the Orange River of the North Eastern Cape Province, as well as the Vaal Dam of Free State Province. It has even been said they dwell in the deep pits of the Congo.

Mythology & Lore

According to legend, the Grootslang is as old as the world itself crafted by the gods themselves in the early time’s creation. This giant primordial creature would prove to be a terrible mistake, as they filled it with tremendous strength, cunning, and intellect. The gods tried to split their creature into two smaller animals, elephants and the first snakes, but one of the original Grootslang escaped the gods. Hiding in the cave known as the “Water Hole” or “Bottomless Pit” it continued to live and breed creating more of its kind. It would lure elephants into the cave to feed itself and little ones.

According to the local legends living in the deep caves of Africa is what drives this great serpent to covet gems and diamonds. This lust of the gems curves the creature’s cruelty and dark nature leaving a bargaining room for its victims to gain freedom from certain death. In 1917 while searching for treasure in the Richtersveld, South Africa English businessman Peter Grayson and his party were attacked and disappeared. Locals blamed the Grootslang for claim yet again another victim from the lions and coveting the riches the party was rumored to have found.

Most of the other significant sightings report the creature attacking from the deep waters of rivers with few people surviving the encounters. Some gave details of a large wave rushing toward them or their boats before swallowing them down into the water. Other reports like Frederick Cornell’s in 1910 say the creature emerged from the wave raising its massive head 12 feet into the air before attacking them.

Many people have tried to rationalize possible explanations for the numerous reports of slightly different creatures. One being a large rock python, another water monitor lizard, or even an unknown species of monitor. Some have even claimed this is could be the same longneck seal that people mistake Nessie and other lake monsters for. Though some of these are good theories none have been proven leaving locals to go on fearing the dreaded Grootslang and its greedy need for the beautiful gem’s African lands hold.

 

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Gumberoo

Date of Discovery

First sighted in the 1900s.

Name

The Gumberoo, with a scientific name of Megalogaster repercussus.

Physical Description

This bear-like creature is described as being incredibly fat–in some cases, compared to the shape of a football–with no hair, and dark leathery skin. Oddly enough, this creature has a large grin with sharp teeth, a beard, and prominent eyebrows. Their dark complexion is said to be as black as coal, but there is speculation that this is due to rubbing up against the inside of the charred cedar tree.

Origin

The Gumberoo originated in the foggy region along the Pacific Coast from Grays Harbor, WA, the entire coast of Oregon, all the way to Humboldt Bay, CA as well as the forests of Wisconsin and Minnesota. Its origin is spun from the folklore of lumberjacks and forest workers–with particular emphasis on the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries.

According to Giants, Monsters, and Dragons: An Encyclopedia of Folklore, Legend, and Myth by Carol Rose, the Gumberoo belongs to a group of beings within this mythology called the Fearsome Critters. All of the Fearsome Critters are noted to have exaggerated proportions and activities which are believed to be the explanation of the strange sounds and bumps in the night when in isolated and remote locations. They also provided some amusement for the men in the camps, as they told stories to pass their down-time.

The Gumberoo is said to be a scarce creature due to the fact that it is quite combustible, and forest fires are relatively prevalent. They are said to be as flammable as celluloid film; during and after a forest fire within the heavily forested cedar region near Coos Bay, lumberjacks reported that they heard loud sounds that were not identifiable as well as the smell of burning rubber.

Mythology and Lore

When the lumberjacks, responsible for its discovery, attempted to kill it–except the Gumberoo didn’t die, its skin was apparently impenetrable. It is said to hibernate a majority of the time and it lives in old enormous, burned, and hollowed-out cedar trees. When it does come out, it only comes out at night and has an insatiable appetite when it does. The Gumberoo will devour anything that crosses its path, even reportedly a whole horse at one point, which was still not enough to discomfort nor satiate it.

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Hanako-san

Date of Discovery

Matthew Meyer, an author and folklorist, has dated the legend of Hanako-san back to the 1950s, but like the western counterpart, Bloody Mary, it is clear that the legend existed before official documentation.

Supposedly the urban legend began in 1950 as, “Hanako of the third stall.” In the 1980s, her story became widely known all over Japan, and in the 1990s a variety of movies and animes were made about her. She is now known as, “Hanako of the Toilet.”

Name

Hanako-san and Toire no Hanako-san in Japanese, which translates roughly to, “Hanako of the Toilet.”

Vaguely related to the legend of Bloody Mary.

Physical Description

Hanako-san, according to Japanese urban legends, is the spirit of a young girl who haunts the bathrooms of schools. Although her physical description varies across the different sources, she is commonly seen as wearing a red skirt or dress, with her haircut worn in a bob long enough to cover her neck.

In Japanese culture, she is known as a yōkai–which is a reference to a spirit in the form of a monster, or demon–or a yūrei, which is synonymous with what western culture considers a ghost. 

Origin

Over the last seventy years, Hanako-san has become a fixture of Japanese urban folklore, before the 1990s, it was just an oral legend, but it has since become a part of their pop-culture, being featured in movies as well as manga and anime series. Michael Dylan Foster wrote The Book of Yōkai: Mysterious Creatures of Japanese Folklore, in which he stated that Hanako-san is a well known urban legend associated with all schools across Japan.

Mythology and Lore

As a part of Japanese urban legends and folklore, Hanako-san is more versatile spirit than most, like Bloody Mary she comes to haunt only when she is called. Each reported case has different details of the haunting and encounter, but there are common themes across the board. In one version, she is a school child who was killed during an air raid, while playing hide-and-seek, during World War II–a variation on this is that she was starving, but agreed to play the game anyway, but her body gave in to hunger and died in the bathroom stall. In other versions, she either committed suicide or she was hiding from an abusive parent and upon finding her in the bathroom they killed her. Some stories suggest that she came to the school to play when it wasn’t in session, was followed by a pedophile, then was assaulted and killed. Depending upon the variant of the story, however, she can either appear as a ghostly, bloody hand or Hanako-san herself. Additional details about where her grave can be found are given in some scenarios, which suggest that she was either buried in a garbage dump in Saitama, or behind a school gym in Tokyo.

In Japanese schools across the country, the typical ritual goes, that you enter the girl’s bathroom (usually on the third floor) and knock three times on every door. From the closest door to the farthest door, after knocking, you would ask, “Is Hanako there?” After repeating this question three times the answer, “yes,” will come from the third stall in a small, soft voice. When you open the door to the stall, Hanako will be standing there, waiting to drag you into the toilet.

While it may sound like an odd trend, there are quite a few yōkai and yūrei that reside within bathrooms and toilets. Most any person from Japan will tell you that they have tried to summon Hanako-san while they were in elementary school.

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