Melonheads Part II: Why So Many Big Heads?

This is the second of two posts about the Melonheads. Read part one here!

One of the many interesting things about Melonheads is that in New England the legend is only found in Connecticut. But it is also found in the Midwest, particularly in Michigan and Ohio. Much like their New England cousins, these Melonheads also lurk in the woods and delight in terrifying teenagers.

In Ohio, the legend is found in the rural areas outside of Cleveland, and the creatures' origin is ascribed to a mysterious man named Dr. Crowe. Dr. Crowe allegedly experimented on children that he either kidnapped or acquired from a local insane asylum. He imprisoned them in his secluded house, where he injected them with chemicals and possibly radioactive materials. These painful experiments caused them to mutate. Eventually the children rebelled and killed their tormentor. They escaped into the surrounding woods where they have remained to this day.

There are several versions of the Dr. Crowe legend. In some he has a kindly wife who treats the children well, and the mutant children only rebel against him when they see him abuse her. In another, he actually experiments on children with hydrocephalus. Hydropcephalus is a real medical disorder that causes fluid to build up in the skull, giving its sufferers enlarged heads. Let's be clear, though: hydrocephalus does NOT make anyone into an insane monster.

In Michigan, the Melonheads are said to have either escaped or been released from an insane asylum near the Felt Mansion in Ottawa County. They didn't wander far from their old home, and now lurk in the woods surrounding the mansion.

Melonhead illustration from Joseph Citro's Weird New England.

I don't know why the Melonhead legend is only found in these three parts of the country. Did it spread from New England to the Midwest, or did it happen in the opposite direction? It's a good topic for a folklore master's thesis, I suppose. I do know that the legends in all three areas have one thing in common: they use the language of science to explain where the Melonheads came from. Inbreeding, evolution, mutation, psychology, radiation - these are all terms from the physical and social sciences. They give the Melonheads an aura of plausibility.

Ghosts, witches, vampires, fairies, werewolves - these creatures are all supernatural in origin. We live in a scientific age, so we deserve scientific monsters. The Melonheads are one of them.

Extraterrestrial aliens are another monster of the scientific age, and it's interesting how similar they are in appearance to the Melonheads. Although the Melonheads are feral and bestial, both they and the gray aliens often share a similar physical morphology. They are short, thin, and have really big heads.

Gray aliens.

A monster was seen in Dover, Massachusetts who also had the same physical appearance. This was the infamous Dover Demon, who terrorized several teenagers in 1977. Like the Melonheads and the gray aliens, the Demon had a disproportionately large head and a very small body. Its eyes also glowed orange when lights shone on them. In Connecticut, some people have said the Melonheads' eyes glow orange as well.

The Dover Demon!

The Dover Demon was never quite categorized as either supernatural or scientific, but in earlier eras, little supernatural monsters with large heads were also said to lurk in the woods. The fairies, gnomes and dwarves of European legend often were described this way. In Connecticut, the Mohegan Tribe has the legend of the makiawisug, small magical people who live in the forests. They are often called pukwudgies these days by paranormal investigators, and illustrations show them with small bodies and large oversized heads.

Illustration by Lupi, used without permission.

Fairies, gnomes and pukwudgies are not monsters of science, but they share similar traits with the Melonheads. They dwell outside the fringes of our civilized world, terrorizing those who trespass on their territory. One key difference is that there are ways to placate the supernatural creatures who live in the woods, such as leaving them offerings of food and milk. There is no way to interact socially with the Melonheads. They simply emerge from their hiding places and terrify trespassers. Some accounts from Connecticut say the Melonheads abduct lost hikers and transform them into new Melonheads; fairies and aliens also enjoy abducting humans. 

So what does all this mean? There are some practical, "commonsense" explanations for the Melonheads. Michigan's Felt Mansion was a seminary for boys in the 1940s, and one man who studied there claims that the local townies called the seminarians "melon heads" because they were so educated. (Egghead is a more common derogatory term for the educated, but you get the point.) In the book Weird U.S., writer Ryan Orvis claims to have met an Ohio man who used to scare teenagers out parking in cars at night when he was a kid. A friend who helped him had hydrocephalus, and supposedly this led to the legend of the Melonheads. Similarly, perhaps random encounters with hydrocephalic individuals cruelly gave rise to the legend.

I suppose any of these origins are plausible, but they don't explain the particular form the legend took or why it persists. It's a long road from someone being called a "melon head" to stories about cannibalistic mutants that live in the woods. Maybe there is something primitive deep inside us that fears the darkness outside our little circle of light and knows that monsters are out there waiting for us. It might not be rational, but I think the feeling is persistent and powerful.

That still doesn't explain why so many of these monsters have a particular shape though, does it? All these creatures are childlike and sometimes almost embryonic in appearance. That doesn't really seem like a shape that people would inherently find frightening.

If you like supernatural or paranormal explanations, maybe you're inclined to believe there is some force (or some entity) out there that takes this shape repeatedly over the centuries, materializing as small big-headed monsters to scare the pants off us before disappearing into the darkness. Right now sitting here at my computer, I don't find that explanation too compelling, but if you bring me out into the woods at night I might just change my mind.

Melonheads Part I: A Trip Down Dracula Drive

If you ever travel the back roads of Connecticut's Fairfield County late at night, you might see an old blue Ford Granada barreling down the road. In 2015 Granadas are officially antique cars, but that's not what makes this car so unique. It's remarkable for the the people - or creatures? - that ride in it.

Back in the 1980s, a group of girls from Notre Dame High School in Fairfield decided to go out joyriding after a Friday night football game. Their names: Megan, Sue, Kim, Deb, Jen and Karen. Just a group of all-American girls looking for harmless fun, they got into Deb's blue Granada and set off into the dark night.

After driving around for a while they decided to go someplace spooky: Velvet Street in neighboring Trumbull. The locals had given Velvet Street the nickname Dracula Drive because of the strange things that supposedly happened there. Megan told her friends that strangest of all, little monstrous humanoids with huge heads were said to live in the woods surrounding Dracula Drive. Why not try to find them?

The girls drove down Dracula Drive and parked the car. They left the headlights and climbed out into the cool autumn air. The woods were very still and very, very dark. Other than the headlights there was no illumination - no streelights, no houses nestled among the trees. The girls were alone in the night-time woods.

Laughing with nervous energy they started to walk down the road, hoping yet fearful of seeing the monsters who supposedly lived in the woods. After walking a couple hundred feet they heard the car door open and slam behind them. The engine started and the car barreled down the road towards them. Someone had stolen Deb's car!

The girls jumped into the woods to avoid the car as it charged towards them. The Granda's thieves were illuminated by the interior light. They were the size of children with disproportionately large heads and were clad in dirty rags. Their eyes glowed with orange light, and they cackled wildly as they drove past the girls. The tail lights disappeared into the distance.

Megan, Deb and their friends had found what they were looking for. They had found the Melonheads.

I first read about the Melonheads in Joseph Citro's Weird New England, which is where the story about the stolen car comes from. After doing some research, I learned two things. First, Melonhead legends are very localized in New England. Stories about Bigfoot, ghosts, witches and UFOs can be found everywhere in this region, but you'll need to go to the Nutmeg State to encounter Melonheads. (Melonhead legends are also found in Ohio and Michigan, but more on that later.)

Second, the legend is not that old, at least in New England terms. Some of our legends go back to the first English settlers or even to the Algonquin Indians. Melonhead stories can only be traced back to the 1960s, and don't appear in older collections of New England legends like Botkin's Treasury of New England Folklore or Dorson's Jonathan Draws the Longbow.

Melonheads are small, spindly little humanoids with heads the size of melons. But what exactly do they do? Mostly they terrorize teenagers, as so many American monsters do. The Melonheads lurk in the rural areas of Connecticut where they live a feral lifestyle, sustaining themselves by eating small animals, stray cats, and human flesh (when given the opportunity). A hiker gone missing in the woods? A runaway teen who never comes home? Blame the Melonheads. Some people say they eat anyone they catch, while others say they do something even worse: turn them into Melonheads. While that seems far-fetched, some people also claim the Melonheads communicate by telepathy, so if they are psychic they may have powers unknown to the average human.

Several towns in Connecticut have roads that pass through Melonhead territory. Velvet Street (aka Dracula Drive) in Trumbull and Monroe is the most famous, but other towns have their own special streets. Shelton's Saw Mill City Road, Milford's Zion Hill Road, and Marginal Road in New Haven are just a few of the streets where Melonheads lurk.

Where did they come from? One origin story ties the Melonheads to New England's Puritan past. Way, way back in the 1600s a family from the Trumbull area was accused of witchcraft by their town's elders. The family was banished into the surrounding wilderness, where it was assumed they would starve to death. They didn't. They survived by hunting and gathering, and when their young children reached maturity the brothers and sisters interbred. The family remained isolated in the woods, mutating from generations of inbreeding and a diet of wild animal flesh, but increasing their numbers to become the Melonhead tribe people encounter today.

An alternative story claims the Melonheads are really escapees from a mental asylum. According to this version of the legend, an asylum operated in the area from the 1860s to the 1960s, but mysteriously burned to the ground one day. Every staff member and most of the inmates perished, but a few were never accounted for. Locals claim they escaped into the woods, where they interbred and became the feral Melonheads.

I am not a debunker. I don't think it is an interesting or fruitful activity, and I don't want to discount what people experience. However, even if people are encountering something strange in the Connecticut woods, I don't think these two stories are historically true. There's no record of a disastrous insane asylum fire in the area, and there aren't any records of people being banished for witchcraft. People found guilty of witchcraft were flogged, jailed, or even executed, but they weren't usually banished.

The forests in southern New England are not old growth forests. They haven't been here for 350+ years. Most of the original forests in Connecticut were cut down to carve out farms, and only started to take over again in the 19th century when people abandoned the farms for the mill towns or moved out west to more fertile lands in New York and Ohio. In other words, I don't think there have been enough woods for a family of inbred monsters to hide in for three consecutive centuries.

But, having said that, I still think something interesting is happening with the Melonhead legends, and I'll write about that next week. Stay tuned!

*** UPDATE: Part two now online! ***

Hannah Cranna, or the Witch's Funeral: A Story From Connecticut

It feels like fall is coming. It's windy and cool today, and the apple trees in my neighborhood are dropping their fruit onto the sidewalks and the paths. This weather puts me in the mood for a witch story.

*****

After her husband of many years died, Hannah Hovey acquired the reputation for being a witch. Maybe it was because her husband, Captain Joseph Hovey, died under mysterious circumstances, being found at the bottom of a cliff with his neck broken. Maybe it was because after his death Hannah lived alone with no companion except a rooster named Old Boreas, who had the uncanny habit of crowing only at midnight. Or maybe it was just because Hannah was an irascible, demanding, cranky old woman who easily matched the stereotypical image of a witch.

Hannah used her reputation to her advantage, asking for favors and demanding food from her neighbors in Monroe, Connecticut. "If you know what's good for you, you'll give me that pie," she would threaten a farm wife who had just completed her baking. "No," she would say to a neighbor boy, "you can't fish in the stream that runs through my yard. I don't care if it is common property!"

The people of Monroe gave her the nickname "Hannah Cranna", which they thought suited her witchy personality. The educated people in town laughed at the thought of a witch living among them. After all, this was the 19th century, not the 1600s! But others whispered that the stories were true. That farm wife who refused to give Hannah a pie? She never successfully baked anything again. And the boy who fished in Hannah's stream never caught a trout again for the rest of his life.

It was also said that Hannah Cranna would help out people in need - if offered the right price. A desperate farmer once came to her house on Cragley Hill and begged for her aid. There had been a drought for weeks, and his crops were dying. Hannah agreed to bring rain, but only if he pledged his soul to her. Without hesitation the desperate farmer threw himself onto her floor and gave his soul into her aged hands. It rained that very night, and the farmer's harvest was rich and bountiful.

In early January of 1860, Old Boreas crowed his last midnight crow. Hannah wept at the loss of her beloved companion, and told her neighbors that his passing meant she would soon die too.

"When I die," she said, "this is how I must be buried. My coffin must be carried by hand to the graveyard, and I must be buried after sunset. Otherwise, evil and trouble will come to this town!"

Hannah died a few days later, and a heavy snowstorm covered Connecticut. The townspeople thought it would be easiest to transport Hannah to the graveyard by sled, so they hitched two big horses to a sled and strapped her coffin to it. As the funeral procession set off the straps ripped, and Hannah's coffin slid all the way back to her house.

Hannah Cranna's grave. Thanks Wikipedia!

Perhaps this was just a coincidence. Still ignoring her dying wish, the townspeople strapped her coffin to the sled again, this time with huge iron chains. Several men climbed on top to ensure the coffin didn't budge. The procession once again set off, but the coffin shook so violently that the men were thrown to the ground, and the chains started to burst.

Admitting defeat, and realizing Hannah was just as demanding dead as alive, the men lifted the coffin onto their shoulders and trudged through the snow to the cemetery. Because of all the delays Hannah's second dying wish was followed, and she was buried just after sunset.

As the mourners returned from the cemetery they noticed a fiery glow lighting up Cragley Hill. It was Hannah's house, which had mysteriously burst into flames. The fire burned for several days. When it finally died down the cellar hole had the reputation of being haunted. Strange moans and noises were heard there, and perhaps can still be heard there today.

*****

Hannah Hovey was a real person, who lived from 1793 to 1860. I'm not sure how much of this legend is true, but it's a great story. It's nice to read a witch story where the witch gets everything she wants!

I think it is implied that Old Boreas is her familiar, or perhaps an aspect of her own soul externalized in an animal form. The death of this animal naturally foretells her own death, an ancient motif in myth and folklore.

Burying a witch is often problematic in folktales. Usually the witch's coffin is unnaturally heavy (perhaps because of all their accumulated sin), or must be sealed with chains to prevent the Devil from stealing the body. Hannah's story comes from a later period when witches were not viewed quite so sinisterly, but her funeral still poses problems for her neighbors.

I got this story from David E. Philips book Legendary Connecticut, but you can also read about Hannah Cranna at the Monroe Historical Society page. Damned Connecticut has a nice piece about Hannah as well, including info about a possible ghost seen lurking around her grave in Gregory's Four Corners Burial Ground.

A Haunted House and Puritan Fornication

Instead of one big topic, this week I just wanted to share a couple interesting things.

First up, a horror movie called The Conjuring opened this week. It's supposedly based on an actual haunting that occurred in Burrillville, Rhode Island in the early 1970s.

The supernatural shenanigans started almost immediately after Carolyn and Roger Perron moved their family into an old farmhouse. Objects moved on their own, blood oozed out of food, and strange voices were heard in empty rooms. The wife Carolyn was particularly afflicted by the multiple spirits that haunted the house.


Eventually, Ed and Lorrain Warren (ghost hunters who later became famous for The Amityville Horror) showed up at the Perron's house to investigate. I won't tell you what they found in case you want to see the movie, but you can also read about their investigation in this article from The Providence Journal.

Although Ed Warren has passed away, Lorraine still actively investigates the paranormal and maintains an occult museum in her home in Monroe, Connecticut. This sounds like a great field trip, but don't touch the exhibits - most of them are cursed. Youtube has a short video tour of the museum:



Fast forward to 3:00 if you want to see a spooky possessed doll named Annabelle, and then watch to the end to see a sinister wooden statue found by a hunter lost in the woods of Newtown, Connecticut. Creepy!

Maybe all this is too scary for you and you want something a little more academic. In that case, I give you this article that appeared in Boston.com about fornication charges in colonial America. A professor at Louisville University has recently published a paper on the topic, and she notes that women were charged for fornication more than any other crime in 17th century New England. There was even a category of crime called "open and notorious fornication." I suppose Puritan sex laws are scary in their own way, but unlike the ghosts who sometimes haunt our houses the sex laws seem to be staying dead and buried.