Folk Beliefs

 When I was in High School, I learned the story of the Melonheads. A melonhead is a monster that started off as a human child that has a giant swollen head, probably from medical experiments. They are violent and eat human flesh.

It's a story that kids learn around the time they start driving, because parents learned it around the time they started driving. The kid gets their license, hears about the Melonheads then goes and drives to the melonhead road (Wisner Road in Kirtland, Ohio). The area in Kirtland is actually really nice. It's in the winding, steep valley of the Chagrin River. It's a great place to ride a bike.

The Melonheads legend is probably based on a medical condition: hydrocephalus, which enlarges the head and causes pain and brain damage. It's possible there was an unfortunate kid with the condition on Wisner Road, or it's possible the entire story is fabricated from a general understanding of hydrocephalus and set there because it's an interesting neighborhood that can seem spooky in the right conditions. The story also involves a mad scientist who possibly created the children through experiments.

The story is really similar to puppy pregnancy (Rabies legend in India), and also the Vampire legend (based on a condition called porphyria).

The organic folk beliefs and legends are interesting because they often contain factual information. That is, they're factual information in coded form. Like in the Vampire story, vampires hate garlic, which is a weird detail that never made sense to me; people with porphyria can't eat garlic because it has a high quantity of sulfur which causes a painful reaction.

Folk beliefs are often ridiculed because they are childish and simple and exaggerated. People who are sophisticated imagine they have a more complete or nuanced story. The "enlightened" person often thinks their duty is to present their sophisticated nuanced story to the unwashed masses. For example, the modern leftist thinks the masses don't understand trans people and they must be educated. Corporations spend millions of dollars a year on that project for some strange reason.

The folk understanding of trans people is really similar to the melonhead story. It's displayed in old movies and TV shows. We're watching the series Miami Vice (1984) lately. It shows trannies as demented psychos. Silence of the Lambs and the movie Psycho did too. The folk understanding includes some nugget of truth: "avoid people with severe mental problems even if it's not their fault". From the perspective of the average person, involvement with someone who is suffering severe psychological trauma is probably not worth it.