October 9, 2011

Myths & Urban Legends: The Buckley Family

This is the Buckley Family. The children’s names were Susan and John. As a Halloween joke, all the kids in the neighborhood were going to get a dummy and pretend to chop its head off. 

The Buckley children thought it would be hilarious to actually murder their mother, so when the kids walked up the the door, they got an axe and slaughtered her. 

Once everyone figured out what they had really done, they called the police, but the kids were long gone by then. The only picture of them was this photo, taken by a trick or treater. The mothers body was later found half eaten.

Now, I'm not much of a believer in myths or urban legends; but I can honestly see some validity to this one. I came across this on tumblr a few hours ago while I was at work and just had to post it in hopes of getting some sort of feedback and I'm finding that a lot of people have not only dismissed this story as being a hoax, but this picture as being a trick of photo shop as well.

To be honest I don't know what to believe but, for the sake of argument and it being the month of October, the ambiguousness of it is disturbing enough and I just felt compelled to share. 

4 comments:

Bandwidth Bastard said...

The head and the axe seem suspicious.

Drew said...

Sorry but no way. Allow me to explain why...

The girl does not seem to be holding the axe at a proper angle.

The boy's hand, as he holds the head, it does not have a firm grip on the hair; his fingers are not curled-up tight enough.

The severed area of the neck is too cleanly cut.

Finally, the story I have read online is that a trick-or-treater took this photo. Not possible. Photography back then was a complicated matter. The cameras used to take photos were large boxes on tripods and required a lot of knowledge to operate. Not like someone with a Kodak Instamatic just happened by and took the picture.

Anonymous said...

http://www.changingportraits.com/mmud.htm

It IS a "hoax" in that a photographer who specializes in altering pictures made a "changing" picture with the original photo to make it shift to this image.

Anonymous said...

Yes...because Trick or Treaters carried around extremely large heavy hard to set up cameras in 1912.....really? Do you know how LONG it took to take a picture back then? The exposure took FOREVER! They would have had to stand there a good while....common sense people...common sense....it's a flower that doesn't grow in everyone's garden!

Post a Comment