Philadelphia Urban Legends

We've all heard them, these strange tales that happened to a friend of a friend. They're stories strained through too many broken telephones, warning you of the vanishing hitchhiker and the alligators in the sewers. Philadelphia is alive with wild, ever-shifting lore – it is, after all, one of the oldest cities in America. Some of these tales are fabricated, but most contain a grain of truth. The hauntings and happenings below are just a taste of Philadelphia's urban legends, walking a fine line between history and fantasy.

Acres of $0.57

One afternoon, a pastor noticed a little girl crying bitterly on the street corner outside a small crowded church. “Why are you crying?” he asked. Between sobs, the girl told him that she had been turned away from Sunday school because there was no more room. Two years later, the girl had died. Amongst her few belongings, the family discovered a ragged old purse. Inside, there were 57 cents and a scribbled note that read, “This is to help build the little church bigger so more children can go to Sunday School.”

The pastor carried this note to the pulpit, and challenged churchgoers to start raising money for the church. A local newspaper published the story. A realtor who read it offered the pastor a plot of land on Broad Street that was worth many thousands. But the church couldn't afford that sum, so he offered the land again – this time, for 57 cents.

Most of the story is true. There really was a pastor - you guessed it, Russel H. Conwell – and the incident is taken from his memoirs. A little girl had been turned away from Sunday School, and she had raised 57 cents for the church, as her parents told Conwell after her death. The scribbled note was invented later, and the two weeks became two years. As for the 57 cents, that had been the initial deposit for the plot of land that later became Temple Baptist Church. It was followed by $10,000 with a 5% mortgage – still a good deal.

Spin Doctor

In 1977, a Philly physician by the name of Arthur Lintgen made the outrageous claim of being able to identify the contents of vinyl records by touching and examining the record's grooves.

An avid lover of classical music, Dr. Lintgen could identify songs by studying the surface of records. Just by examining the patterns and spacing of the grooves, Lingen could describe the piece's movements, length, percussion and even relative loudness. Lintgen first showcased this talent at a party, where he successfully identified Beethoven.

Lintgen was a legend of his time. Although many thought that this ability was a hoax, numerous tests eventually proved that what some people hear, others can see.

The Hermit of Wissahickon

They slept under the stars. They ate only what they could grow or find. Some say that they were members of America's first Doomsday Cult – a secret order formed in the 1600s called The Hermits of Wissahickon. The hermits – who also called themselves the Tabernacle of the Mystic Brotherhood, or The Society of the Woman in the Wilderness – fascinated local residents with their esoteric practices. Ritual magic, herbal medicine, numerology, alchemy, astrology, shamanism, and body modification – those are just a few of the alleged practices of the Brotherhood.

According to legend, the hermits actually succeeded in creating the Philosopher's Stone – an alchemical feat that turns ordinary matter into gold. When the last hermit of the order was dying, he asked his friend to return the stone to the “lady of the lake” – in other words, to throw it into the Schuylkill River. The friend decided to bury it instead. The hermit anticipated this, and again he asked his friend to throw the stone it into the Schuylkill. This time, the friend complied. There was a bright flash, and the stone was gone. Thousands of glittering small garnets lay scattered on the ground. In another version of this legend, it was a not a stone but a “casket” that exploded in “flashes of lightning” when thrown into the river.

Did the Mystic Brotherhood really exist? Certainly. Not only are Hermit Street and Monastery Avenue named after it, but an eight-foot granite monolith built by the Rosicrucians stands in Fairmount Park in honor of the order's founder, a German immigrant named Johannes Kelp – known to his followers as Kelpius the Mystic. Kelpius is also the subject of America's first oil painting. Kelpius' concrete-lined cave, where he and his followers spend their days, still stands in Wissahickon. Did the order really create a Philosopher's Stone? That, like many other secrets, is one that the hermits took to their graves.

Hauntings

M. Night Shaylaman set “The Sixth Sense” here for good reason. Philly residents have been seeing dead people for over two hundred years.

The popular (and obvious) ghost site in Philadelphia is St. Peter's Church Cemetary on 4 th and Pine. Some visitors have spotted a horse-drawn carriage charging through the graveyard and through the church, while others report seeing Native American chiefs or an African American man dressed in colonial clothing roaming through the graveyard on moonlit nights.

In the Eastern State Penitentiary on Fairmount Avenue, staff regularly report seeing the “Soap Lady” (a real-life woman whose dead body turned into a soap because of a chemical reaction involving her fatty tissue – remember Fight Club?) dressed all in white haunting the last cell of the second floor.

Whether or not her ghost appears at the Penitentiary, the Soap Lady's body can still be seen at the Mutter Museum.

The Lie Detector

In the June of 1977, Philadelphia police had finally caught an alleged thief who had been eluding them for months. This man wasn't very bright, but what he lacked in intelligence he made up for with the firmness of his refusal to cooperate with the police. The police brought in two special detectives to get a confession out of the suspect. The detectives didn't have a real lie detector machine, so they came up with a ruse. They placed a colander (a strainer used to drain spaghetti) on top of the man's head and wired it to a photocopier. Inside the copier, there was a card reading “He's Lying.” Every time that the suspect gave the detectives an answer they didn't like, they pushed the “copy” button on the machine and a paper reading “He's Lying” came out. “Faced with such advanced-level police tactics,” an Internet rendition of this legend quipped, “the fellow finally confessed.”

This story appeared in the June 22, 1977 edition of the Philadelphia Inquirer. Though it was published by a news source, there are many questions about its legitimacy. First of all, different versions of this legend circulated as early as the 1960s. Subsequent re-tellings of the legend moved the police department from Philadelphia to Radnor, PA. Colander or no colander, one thing's for sure; urban legends love slow news weeks like plants love sunlight.

The Curse of Billy Penn

The statue of William Penn on top of City Hall was once the highest point in Philly. It was assumed that he would always stay that way – at least according to “the gentlemen's agreement,” an unspoken pact between the builders of Philadelphia that no building would ever rise above the statue of its founder.

Before the curse, Philly was the proud home of victorious sports teams. In 1974 and '75, the Flyers were the reigning champions. In 1980, the Phillies scored a big win for the city. And in 1983 – the last year before the curse descended on the city – the Sixers won the NBA title.

In 1984, city officials finally broke the gentlemen's agreement. They erected Liberty One, a building that surpassed William Penn by approximately 450 feet. Liberty Two came several years later.

Angered, Penn placed a curse on the city; it would have the worst sports record in the nation so long as Penn's view of his city was obstructed. And so it is; no city has gone longer without a win than the Philadelphia.

Philly sports fans have only fueled the fire of Penn's rage throughout the years. In 1993, when the Phillies went for the World Cup, the city put a giant Phillies cap on Penn's head. The Phillies lost. In 1997, the city once again made the mistake of dressing Penn in a Flyers jersey when the Flyers had their crack at the Stanley Cup. Again, the Flyers lost. Apparently, the humble Quaker didn't take kindly to being dressed in bright, modern sports apparel.

Nadya Lev
Philadelphia, PA
March 2004