Bizarre Stories: Melonheads

Urban legends have a tendency to be bizarre, though we know most of them to be false. That is Bizarre! tends to focus on that which we know is real. That is, of course, unless an urban legend is just too weird to overlook. Melonheads are an example of such. This urban legend contains all the medical, horror and backwoods oddities that Americans love in their campfire stories.

Melonheads are reportedly small human-like creatures whose defining features are oversized melon-shaped heads. They are apparently vicious and will attack people at random. Most of the stories of these angry little mutants come out of Connecticut, Michigan and Ohio. Each of these areas has their own legends about the melonheads. However, they are very similar and tend to differ only in small details about how they melonheads came to be melonheads.

One of the most important aspect of the legends to remember is that, while they are often called "humanoid," melonheads are actually human, according to every legend about them. Their odd-shaped heads are attributed to water on the brain in every instance. Their small stature is because they are supposedly children. In some cases, they are children who have escaped from an institution, sometimes said to have been horribly abused. In others, they are inbred children of institution escapees or a family that was banished into the woods for practicing witchcraft.

The most obvious holes in these stories are the apparent absence of institutions that could account for the stories in nearly every area in which the legend arises, the "children" aspect of it and the lack of any physical evidence. With the children part of it, it seems odd that only the children of these mutant colonies would attack. It also seems odd that they either stayed children for all of this time or that they had children of their own and stopped their attacks, letting the kids take care of it. All in all, it is unbelievable. However, it is creepy and bizarre enough to be a decent story.