Title: The Doc Benton Story

General Information about Item:

• Verbal Folklore: Urban Legend
• Language: English
• Country: United States

Informant #1 Data:

• The informant is a Dartmouth ’18 male. He went on a first-year trip in September 2014 and was a member of Lodj Croo in September 2017.

Informant #2 Data:

• The informant is a Dartmouth ’18 female. She went on a first-year trip in September 2014, was a member of Lodj Croo in September 2015, and served as one of the two Lodj Croo Captains in September 2017.

Contextual Data:

• Social Context
  • Each trip culminates at the Lodge for one day and one night. During that night, the trippees all sit outside under the stars. They’re told that they will be hearing a true story about the history of the Lodge. The trippees do not realize that it’s a horror story.
• Cultural Context
  • The trippees are nervous about trips ending and returning back to Dartmouth to begin their freshman year. They’re also nervous because they’re finally among a large amount of people, not just the few people that have been on their trip with them.
  • Lodj Croo wants to expose them to Dartmouth traditions as well as give the trippees a bonding experience.

Item:

• Members of Lodj Croo scare the trippees with a horror story about Doc Benton. The story involves croolings scaring the trippees by screaming or running across the field at various parts of story.

Transcript of Informant #1 Interview:

“The most obvious one is the Doc Benton story. Trippees are told the horror story at the end of their night at the lodge, and all of the lodge croolings and any students that are helping out end up popping out and scaring the new students, which is a lot of fun. People are unsure how real the Doc Benton story is. There’s an addendum that’s supposed to be real, but there was a ‘12 named Naomi, or maybe they’ve hidden her name for security reasons, but she was working at Moosilauke and for some reason, she was there. I think her job was to clear the ice off of the roof of the Lodge. And she was on a hike. Her boyfriend was skiing but was going to meet her at the lodge at night. And he came back, the door was open. He was a little nervous about where she might be. And he ended up looking around the Lodge and found her in the freezer, clutching a knife, saying “He’s here. He’s here.”, which has been added to the Doc Benton story because people assume that it’s Doc Benton and that the stories are all real.”

Informant #1’s Comments:

• “We scare people during the Doc Benton story, and the addendum is a new and exciting thing that kind of freaks me out as well.”

Collector’s Comments:

• Informant #1 was able to shed insight into new variations of the Doc Benton story, showing the evolution of this piece of folklore.

Collector’s Name: Roshni Chandwani

Transcript of Informant #2 Interview:

“Trips is full of many Dartmouth traditions…one that’s particular to Lodj Croo is the Doc Benton story, and so there’s a scary story that’s told to the incoming class, and it has a lot of little parts of Dartmouth in it, and also is basically just meant to make people think about the history of the area as well as freak them out a little bit. There’s other traditions involved it, like Lodj Croo scaring all of them at one point and making them all scream.”

Informant #2’s Comments:

• Informant noted that the story was part of all three of her trips experiences.

Collector’s Comments:

• Informant #2 was able to give a detailed account of the way in which the story is told.

Collector’s Name: Roshni Chandwani

Tags/Keywords:

• Verbal Folklore, Urban Legend