Good stuff all, thanks for posting it
Daniel_ Interesting, most urban legends start from a true story and get blown up and distorted over the years to something more entertaining. In your case the overblown passed around legend turns out to be completely true. Kind of an interesting spin on the whole thing.
SSJTWIZTA Love it, not only do you get to experience the legend before you'd ever heard of it but you may have had a sighting in the process. Just out of curiosity does the whole skunk ape legend get passed around that area of Florida? If so it its kind of two local legends wrapped up in one.
The_Dunedan Interesting legend about Parris Island, I'd never heard that before. Great local legend with a hint of warning for young recruits who don't fall in line.
I just remembered a good one from my youth in Northern Maine. On the outskirts of town sat a rather odd looking piece of land, it was surrounded by a large fence lined with barbed wire, the gate was locked with a heavy chain and pad lock, and inside sat an old farmhouse surrounded all these modern, white outbuildings with flat roofs. One of the stranger aspects of the place was it looked like nobody lived there yet the lawn was always mowed and the buildings up kept. Needless to say this was constant fodder for local legends and creepy stories.
When I was very young in the 80's the story focused around satanist taking up residence in the compound, overlooked by local authorities, they supposedly only came out at night, abducted people and brought them back to the compound for ritual sacrifices. The other half of the legend told that if you drove by there at night they would chase you down, run you off the road and carry you back...again for ritual sacrifice. As I got older and satanism fell out of style the story soon focused around eclectic groups like the Klan, Nazi's, inbred rednecks and cannibals, all of which abducted people and brought them back to the compound to do whatever horrific things people imagined such groups might do.
Another lesser known story focused on the Air Force/Govt (it was located very close to the old Loring AFB) using the compound to conduct experiments on everything from mind control to recovered alien bodies. I always thought that was the cooler story but it never seemed to circulate as well as the other.
I drove by the place when I went home for a visit last fall and the buildings aren't there anymore, replaced by a farm of some sort. I never did find out what or who actually owned the place...I'm sure its very mundane and boring but it was a fun story nonetheless.