Archive for Sunday, November 1, 2009
Poet’s Showcase: ‘The Myth of Stull, Kansas’
November 1, 2009
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If someone tells you to go to hell,
Take Highway 40
and proceed ten miles west from Lawrence.
But if you want to see the devil himself
make your brave voyage on the night of
the Spring Equinox or Halloween.
Satanic stories abound over Stull, Kansas —
a hamlet too small to have its own post office
but large enough to contain legions of evil spirits.
They say a little boy had been scorched to death
in the a field his father was burning,
and a man was found hung from an oak tree
after vanishing like a wisp of smoke,
while yet another at the old church felt
an unearthly gale while inside the building
But it’s the cemetery that is most feared
for they say it is Beelzebub’s gate,
The voices of the dead will strangle you
while evils spirits carve out your innards.
Legend has it that early settlers erased
the shame of their witchcraft practices
by erasing Deer Creek Community
and replacing its name with “Stull.”
Folks swear an old tree in graveyard
once served as gallows for condemned witches
who return each year as Satan’s army.
Pshaw! Look, see vandalized grave markers
and that church building leveled into limestone gravel.
Nonsense! There is no evil here in Stull, Kansas
So why did the Pope supposedly order his private plane
to avoid crossing Stulls’ path on his way to Colorado?
More like this
- CEMETERY LEFT PINING CENTURY-OLD TREE COMES DOWN IN STULL LANDMARK October 31, 1998
- Gateway to 150: Long subject to urban legend, Stull church opens new center for sesquicentennial 2 comments / May 16, 2009
- TOPEKA-LAWRENCE LINK IS TABLED November 30, 1999
- Rhetorical traps give devil his due September 30, 2006
- S CREEPY LEGENDS BRING CURIOUS TO STULL October 26, 1999
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1 November 2009
at 11:49 a.m.
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puddleglum (Anonymous) says…
the pope was having a hard time proofreading, especially lines like this:
“Folks swear than old tree”