Pop a Squat in the Devil’s Chair for More from Wikipedia’s Urban Legends List [Guide to the Unknown]

Urban legends are just cozy. They used to be shared person to person, often in some sort of idyllic, spooky setting, like the ring around a campfire or at a sleepover. More recently, we’ve traded the light and shadow of campfire flames for the glow of a computer monitor, which is less romanticized but has its comforts and charms, lying low in the blankets, scrolling Reddit or Tumblr (RIP).

So it’s only appropriate that we’ve hit a cozy sitting place on this week’s show in our continued journey through Wikipedia’s page of alphabetically listed urban legends. We were midway through the D section in the last urban legends episode of our Bloody FM podcast Guide to the Unknown. This time, we finally hit the end, taking a moment to rest with a little legend known as The Devil’s Chair.

They’re listed as singular, but Devil’s Chairs are a category of gravesite chair sculptures. Sometimes, they serve as the headstones themselves (giving a kind of dedicated bench in the park vibe, but made of stone); sometimes, they’re off to the side as a secondary monument.

Initially made in the 1800s, they were called “mourning chairs.” Some were made for people to sit and visit with their dead loved ones, while others were just chair-shaped monuments. However, as time passed, cemeteries started providing benches for people to sit on, and they went out of fashion.

But of course, they’re a curiosity, so stories started to be told about them, and that’s where the urban legend of it all comes in. Stories vary by location, but people began to say that if you sat in the Devil’s Chair at midnight, you would hear Satan’s voice in your head. An especially unique version from Florida says that if you leave a full beer can on the Devil’s Chair in the Cassadega cemetery, you’ll find it empty by morning – and yet unopened. The devil does have his tricks!

Another Devil’s Chair from Missouri, known as the Baird’s Chair, is said to offer a few different options should you dare to sit on it at the stroke of midnight. You could a. be dragged to hell by a hand that rises from the ground or b. be rewarded for your bravery. It’s a real roll of the dice.

To split hairs, these are really more fun, creepy games/superstitions than urban legends. True urban legends are stories with a kernel of truth that usually have a moral agenda. But both are that perfect brand of creepy, scary-but-not-really that just hits the spot, whether heard at a slumber party or, say, from a podcast while you’re doing the dishes.

For more urban legends, including two ghost towns, join us, Kristen and Will, for this week’s episode of Guide to the Unknown. Subscribe on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or wherever you get your podcasts to get a new episode every Friday.

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