Machine Shop Legend/Horror Story

Title: Machine Shop Legend/Horror Story

General Information about Item:

Informant Data:

Feras Abdulla is a senior at Dartmouth College in Hanover, NH. He is a double major in engineering and mathematics, and is trying to finish his Bachelor of Engineering degree in four years. He is from Manama, Bahrain. He can almost always be found in Thayer, and he enjoys working on projects for his various engineering classes. I interviewed Feras in one of the Thayer classrooms on 11/5/17.

Contextual Data:

Social/Cultural Context: This was told to the informant by one of the machine shop technicians while they were taking part in a lesson about how use the lathe machine in Thayer, and is normally told in this context. It was during an ENGS 21 machine shop session designed to teach the students about the different machines and resources available in Thayer. The main purpose of this particular session was to discuss the safety precautions that you have to take anytime the lathe machine is used, and then the students completed a brief activity with the machine. The lath is a machine generally used to make circular cuts in metal, and it consists of a spinning piece that you clamp your metal into, and then a sharp cutting piece that you can manually move with controls to get the cut that you want. It’s important to note that this particular piece of folklore was transmitted from an older, more experienced person to a novice. Speaking from this position of power seems important to the actual function of this piece of folklore, as the story seems to be employed in an educational manner, where the shock of the story highlights the importance of absorbing the given rules. To understand the function, one must also note that one of the important safety precautions that must be taken in using the machine is that you must be wearing a hat that keeps all of your hair in it, and you must have other people in the shop at the same time in case of disaster.

Item:

The collected item is a horror story/legend that our informant heard from a machine shop instructor during their time in Thayer. The story can be read in the transcript below or heard in the video recording. The legend outlines a horrific accident that supposedly occurred in the Thayer machine shop, but it’s understood to not actually be true. The legend seems to be employed as a scare tactic so that engineering students will follow the machine shop safety rules.

Associated file (a video, audio, or image file):

Transcript of Associated File:

Feras: Hi, my name is Feras. I’m an engineering student here at Dartmouth. Basically, when I was getting introduced into the machine shop as I was beginning to take my engineering- or mechanics based classes, they would give you an orientation on how to use some of the machines, including the lathe. Now there are some safety risks with the lathe, and I remember them telling us very spooky story about that happening: One of the engineering students was using the lathe and was not wearing a cap, and she had long hair. So, as she was using it, she didn’t notice her hair getting caught into it and it started rotating, and started pulling her in. Now another girl tried to help her out, and she wasn’t wearing a cap either. So as she was reaching in to try to untangle the first person’s hair, the second person’s hair got caught in as well. It got both of their scalps cut of-or torn off.Aleck: Okay, so do you think that’s actually a realistic thing that happened?Feras: Definitely not at Dartmouth, but it’s a spooky story, and they want us to take care when we use the machine.

Informant’s Comments:

The informant noted that after hearing the story, they went home and looked on the Internet for any mention of this disaster. They found a couple of stories that involved accidents using the machine, but nothing this brutal, and nothing that took place at Dartmouth. He thinks that the machine shop instructor likely heard a similar story and exaggerated it to discourage students from ignoring the safety rules, and reinforced the importance of learning the material he was presenting.

Collector’s Comments:

After hearing this account, it seems as though it’s a classic urban legend, where some event that actually happened has been embellished or exaggerated, and the current telling of the story requires a suspension of disbelief on the part of the person hearing the story. It’s passed along as though its fact but isn’t actually completely true. It seems that the reason this urban legend is told in Thayer to a lot of the newer students is to reinforce the importance of following the safety rules through a scare tactic. I personally think that this could be effective not because the students actually believe the story, but because it is so distinct that anytime they use the machine, some recollection of the story will likely pop into their heads, and they will be more likely to remember the rules.

Collector’s Name: Alexander Sullivan

Tags/Keywords:

Dartmouth Folklore Archive