There is a line, however subtle, drawn between fiction and folklore. However, this line is not always so impermeable as some may suppose. For, occasionally, it may happen that the invention of one may be co-opted by others and given new meaning entirely. The following is one such instance
What happens when you cross New York City with Bram Stoker's Dracula? Well, some may argue something on the vein of a late 70s horror flick. This answer, while not necessarily incorrect, does not, however, described the following story.
Folklore boasts a vast and endless array of persons, places and things. These notions are carried from one person to another along a never-ending story of “he said,” “she said’ or “they say.” Each link in the chain may be likened to a stop along a bus route wherein new passengers, new ideas in this case, come onboard while others are dropped off.
Such is the fluidity of folklore analogous to a constant, ever-changing meandering stream. While rumors of an alleged “wild man,” swooping down from tree branches, is given to much folklore and Dracula is a fictional creation of a single author, Bram Stoker, these worlds need not remain separate and distinct. For the human mind gathers in as much fiction as folklore and can very well produce products drawn from both.
As it is with this curious tale, an amalgamation of the best bits of rumor and fantasy. And so, let one make of it whatever they will, if naught else, a good story.
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WILD MAN ROOSTS IN BRANCHES OF TREES.
Lang Island People Thrown Into Panic Over Antics of Creature Who Inhabits Nests..
They bar and bolt their doors at night and two or three of the inhabitants have set spring guns on their front porches.
Because the creature has been seen perched like a wild turkey the story has gained circulation that he has wings. Miss Sempronia Jenkins, principal of the Freeport high school, has called him Dracula, after the principal character in one of Bram Stoker’s novels, and the watchword of all Nassau is “Dracula alive or dead.”
Dracula has been wandering near the pumping station, which is used to supply a portion of Brooklyn. He has also appeared at dawn to Mr. Simpkin, who was gathering the products of his Plymouth Rocks. The wild man seized the rubber dating stamp with which Mr. Simpkin was about to imprint an egg, and with a fiendish cry tore across the railroad track and disappeared in a clump of blackberry bushes.
Young persons who are accustomed to visit the kissing bridge at twilight now shun it, for the unpleasant experience of a Freeport couple there has alarmed the community. They were leaning against the rail when the wild man approached and laid a heavy hand on the youth’s shoulder, and then laughing in his face suddenly swung himself into the branches of a weeping willow which was on the overhanging bank of the stream.
Miss Conway, who lives outside of the main portion of this village, declares that the other afternoon she saw a tall man emerge from the woods. His clothing, which was torn and threadbare, was black. His hair was intensely black, and he also wore a black mustache.
His eyes had a wild and restless expression, and she noted also that his feet, which were incased in patent leather shoes, seemed small and that he apparently had little or no toes. The wild man looked about him to every direction, and, catching sight of an automobile, gave vent to ribald laughter and receded into the underbrush.
Wild men have been seen from time to time in this vicinity, for several sanatoriums for the weak-minded are within a radius of ten miles, but this is the first one who goes to roost. Rude platforms of branches on which he had been in the habit of sleeping are in evidence.
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