The story that started the myth?

Contributed by Alex

ok here’s the story that kinda started the myth…its from http://www.cheapchange.com/Melonheads.html (dead link)

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

“Melon Heads”
I have been checking out your web site for a while now, but always felt left out since I am not from New Jersey. Now I finally feel that it’s time for me to tell a tale scarier than any I have ever read on either of your sites, or anywhere else for that matter. It comes from my home town of Kirtland, Ohio, and it is the mystery of the Melon Heads.
For as long as I can remember, I’ve heard tales of strange creatures that inhabit the woods in a few of the towns in this area. I’ve always been told to be careful when travelling down Chardon-Windsor Road in Chardon, Wisner Road, and near the area surrounding the Holden Arboretum in Kirtland. There are supposed to be deformed humans living in the woods with tiny bodies and large round heads. They’re known as the Melon Heads, and it is said that they hate all human beings and will kill and eat any they encounter.
The reason they are filled with such hate towards humans is because of one sick man! , Dr. Crow. It is because of his twisted work that they are in the physical and mental condition that they are. Dr. Crow was commissioned by the government shortly after World War II to treat children who suffered from a rare condition known as hydrocephalism, which causes large pockets of water within the brain. Crow ran a small institution of sorts for these kids, and donated not only his services, but his own land, for the venture. The government sent him these kids, thinking he was doing a good deed and a great favor to society. Little did they know what evil acts were actually occurring in the woods of Northern Ohio.
Dr. Crow was a vicious, malevolent, insane man, who took pleasure in the pain of others. Hidden out in the woods, away from anyone’s supervision, he began a series of cruel experiments on the sick children placed in his charge. He injected their brains with even more water, causing their heads to swell to ridiculous proportions. He mentally and physically ab! used them, and exposed them to radiation. He basically used them as the guinea pigs in all of the twisted experiments he conceived. Many of the tortured children died– you can still see numerous graves of babies in the nearby King Memorial Cemetery.
Needless to say, the Melon Heads suffered severe physical and mental retardation due to their brains being experimented on. They continued to devolve until they were hardly human anymore. They became little more than wild animals, and like all wild animals, they had no ability to reason, and instead acted purely on instinct. Their main instinct, that to survive, led them to attack Dr. Crow.
Supposedly, the Melon Heads became feral to the point where Crow could no longer control them. One day, they simply snapped and overran him while he was in his lab. They pummeled him, tore his body apart, and ate him. In the process of the attack, the Melon Heads destroyed electrical devices and knocked over vats of chemicals, causing a fi! re to start. This fire engulfed the buildings on Dr. Crow’s secluded property, and the Melon Heads fled into the surrounding woods. Nowadays, packs of Melon Heads roam the woods of this area. Dozens of reports come in each year of people seeing creatures staring at them from the woods on the edges of local roads in the dead of the night. Hikers and outdoorsmen routinely find slaughtered animals in the woods, and many have been attacked by Melon Heads, especially along the banks of the Chagrin River. The Melon Heads rule these woods.
I know all of this sounds manufactured and sensational, and as I was growing up, even I brushed off this story as nothing more than a legend. In fact, I used to get mad at people who spread such ridiculous stories. I would mock and scoff at anyone who told me they genuinely feared travelling in the area. I changed my ways in July of 1995 though, when I was 18 years old. While travelling down Chardon-Windsor Road, I came face to face with one o! f these beasts, and I can tell you, they are as real as real gets.
I was dating a girl from Chardon, and we often found ourselves driving many of the secluded roads rumored to be Melon Head territory, not because we were looking for the creatures, but because we were young, horny, and well… you get the picture. We often joked about the Melon Heads, and talked about how without them scaring everyone away and giving us some privacy, our relationship wouldn’t have – umm, blossomed – the way it did.
One night we were sitting in my girlfriend’s car off to the side of the road when I had to take a leak. I got out and walked to the edge of the woods to do my thing. Suddenly, I heard the car start up and lurch into gear, and out of the corner of my eye saw it move backwards as the headlights came on. I figured my girlfriend was playing a joke on me, moving the car away so I wouldn’t have the car blocking my public urination. She did that every now and then. Then she leaned on the! horn, and I figured she was trying to bring further public attention to my peeing. But she was not playing a practical joke at all. I found this out when I zipped myself up, turned around, and saw the scariest sight I have ever seen with my own two eyes.
My girlfriend was crying behind the wheel of the car, screaming, although I could barely hear her through the rolled up windows. The headlights were pointed into the woods, and through the foliage I saw the silhouettes of three or four shadowy shapes lumbering around. One was already on the edge of the road, moving through the bushes and tall grass toward me. From what I could make out, it was no taller than three feet, and it had the biggest, most bulbous head I’d ever seen. It wasn’t really running, per se, as the equilibrium caused by its disproportion only allowed it to move at a limited speed. I couldn’t really get a good look at the thing through the darkness and thick underbrush, but in a split second I realized that e! very childhood story I had heard about these woods may just be true. I really feared that if I didn’t act fast I would be attacked.
There was about 20 feet between me and the car at that point, but it seemed like miles. I ran towards the it, and as I did, I realized I wasn’t going to make it. The Melon Head, or whatever it was, was going to cut me off. As it emerged from the vegetation it was on the passenger side of the car between me and the door. Since the headlights were still pointing into the woods, the thing was now shrouded in darkness once again. But I knew that it was there. I stopped in my tracks and strained my eyes to see it, but mostly I listed to it. Over the muffled screams of my girlfriend in the car I could hear the Melon Head wheezing, and as it breathed it made a kind of gurgling sound. I don’t mind telling you that I was paralyzed with fear at that point.
Thankfully, my girlfriend didn’t freeze up like I did. She threw the car into reverse and swung ! it around to face me and the thing, kicking up a cloud of dust from the shoulder of the road. Then she flipped on the high beams, and when the light hit the beast, it recoiled. I seized the opportunity and took off past it toward the car. In the split second I ran past it I tried to get a better look at the Melon Head, but the cloud kicked up by the car wheels and the glare of the high beams obscured my view. I wasn’t going to wait around for the dust to settle though so that I might get a better look.
I jumped into the passenger side door and tried to get a glimpse of the thing through the windshield. Just for a moment I could make out the distorted form of it, and its two eyes glowing in the lights, then it disappeared into the underbrush. By this time the other Melon Heads must have retreated, for there was no more movement in the woods. At that point my girl floored it and we got the hell out of there, never looking back.
Since that time, I have never laughed when I hear ! stories of the Melon Heads. I don’t brush them off, and I never make fun of others who are scared of them. Heed my words as a warning: don’t mess around in the woods around Chardon or Kirtland, Ohio, or near the Chagrin River unless you too want to come face to face with the hideous Melon Heads. Or theirs’ might be the last faces you will ever see.