Wednesday, June 4, 2014

The Dungarvon Whooper

There is nothing I like to do better on laundry day than watch TV shows and maybe cook something to eat; I hate cooking. So I had some chili on a hot ass day while I did laundry, making it even warmer. In contrast, I watched a TV show, can’t remember what it was called, and they mentioned the Dungarvon Whooper. I know, that looks like a Burger King whopper made out of a pile of shit, but it’s actually an old ghost story from Canada, New Brunswick I believe.
In short, this Irish kid works for a lumber camp, which apparently gets snowed in and they are running out of food. The kid, Ryan, is presented as a hard worker who saves his money to help pay for his mother’s medical care and I assume alcohol, since he’s Irish. One day, some of the men threaten the boss of the camp because they’re hungry, letting him know they’ll have his ass when they return from work if they don’t have any food. Once they leave, the boss decides what better way to feed them than to kill the kid and cook him, (because hunting in the woods, or fishing on the river, is apparently not an option and has never crossed any of their minds.) When the lumberjacks return, they brush their beards, tighten their jeans, downvote pre-2000 psych rock on reddit, and spin the latest Tame Impala album; lumberjacks love the manly sounds of Tame Impala. That night they hear the whooping sounds in the woods. The ghost of Ryan apparently calls out, something he couldn’t do before his death. Or maybe he was cooked in a kettle, like tea, and that was the sound he made when he was done?
Unfortunately, the Wiki article isn’t as entertaining and what little research I did on the internet also didn’t have such a revealing story. The kid dies, sure, but him being made into stew isn’t really covered. I also just now remembered the name of the show. It’s called Hauntings and Horrors and it’s on Destination America, which explains why half of the details were made up for the show. Still an interesting story.