The Cropsey Legend in Slasher Films

The Tri-State region has long been familiar with the Cropsey urban legend, especially in New York State. Cropsey is said to be a demented drifter who wields an axe or, alternatively, has a hook for a hand. The story of Cropsey has been told to Boy Scouts and summer-camp attendees around campfires since at least the 1960s, and likely earlier. In the early 1980s, as a spate of slasher films hit theatres, the Cropsey mytheme came to life on the big screen, as well, providing narrative fodder for no less than three contributions to the subgenre.

Folklorists Lee Haring and Mark Breslerman cataloged numerous variations of the “Cropsey Maniac” legend that circulated during the mid-60s and 70s. A representative telling came from a former counselor and camper at Camp Lakota on Masten Lake near Wurtsboro, New York. It goes as follows:

George Cropsey was a judge. He had a wife and two children, all of whom he loved very much. He owned a small summer cottage along the shores of Masten Lake. His wife and children would go there for the summer months, and he would come up to visit them on weekends...One night two campers snuck away from the camp’s scheduled evening activity and went down to the lake to roast some marshmallows. The fire they built went out of control and there was a big fire on the lake. George Cropsey’s family was burnt to death. When Cropsey read the report in the newspaper, it is said he became completely white and disappeared from his home. Two weeks later one of the campers from Lakota was found near the lake chopped to death with an ax. There was talk of closing the camp for the remainder of the summer but they didn’t.

The camp owners insisted upon constant supervision of the campers, there were state troopers posted in the area, and each counselor slept with either a knife, an ax, or a rifle. One night at about three in the morning, one of the counselors was awakened by the screams of one of his campers. He put his flashlight in the direction of the screams and saw his camper bleeding to death, and, standing over him, a man with chalk-white hair, red bloodshot eyes, and swinging a long, bloody ax. When the maniac saw the light, he ran from the bunk, but the counselor chopped at his leg with the hatchet he was armed with. The man got away but left a trail of blood into the woods. The state troopers were called, and followed the trail into the woods. They called to Cropsey to surrender, but all they heard was a crazed laughter. They determined his position, and when he would not give himself up, they built a circle of fire around him. When the fire had subsided, they searched the woods for his remains but could find nothing. The police closed the file on George Cropsey, assuming him to be dead. 

It is said that on the evening of the anniversary of the death of Judge Cropsey’s family, you can see the shadow of a man limping along the shores of Masten Lake (Haring & Breslerman 1977, 15-16).

In some versions, Cropsey screams “I’ll have my revenge” (1977, 19). Cropsey generally works in a socially prominent profession (1977, 15). In the version above and in others, the death that sets the tale in motion is consistently accidental. Some alternative tellings have Cropsey’s offspring drowning: in one case, his only child meets this fate while boating with one of the campers; in another case, his daughter drowns during a cookout (1977, 17).

The makers of the initial Friday the 13th film drew upon the motif of a drowning child and a vengeful parent in formulating the central premise for their 1980 carpetbagger slasher. In this case the parent is a mother, Pamela Voorhees, whose hydrocephalic son, Jason, drowned while counsellors remained oblivious, allegedly caught up in romantic dalliances. The Cropsey legend more obviously informs the 1981 sequel, Friday the 13th Part 2, specifically in conceptualizing Jason. In early stages of the film, a senior counsellor tells the tale of Jason around a campfire:

I don’t want to scare anyone. But I’m gonna give it to you straight about Jason. His body was never recovered from the lake after he drowned. The old-timers in town will tell you he’s still out there, some sort of demented creature, surviving in the wilderness. Full grown by now. Stalking...stealing what he needs, living off wild animals and vegetation. Some folks claim they’ve seen him, right in this area. The girl who survived that night at Camp Blood, that Friday the 13th...she claims she saw him. She disappeared two months later. Vanished. Blood was everywhere. No-one knows what happened to her. Legend has it that Jason saw his mother beheaded that night, and he took his revenge. A revenge he’ll continue to seek if anyone enters his wilderness again. By now, I guess you all know we’re the first to return here. Five years...five long years he’s been dormant. And he’s hungry. Jason’s out there...watching. Always on the prowl for intruders. Waiting to kill. Waiting to devour. Thirsty for young blood (Kurz 1981).

At this point, the story is interrupted when a screaming, emaciated man jumps out of the woods brandishing a spear. The intruder is quickly revealed to be the jokester among the campers wearing a caveman mask. While there are some points of departure from the more standardized narrative, the filmmakers have drawn upon the Cropsey legend in imagining Jason as a denizen of the woods dead-set on revenge for a family member.

The Burning, another 1981 slasher film, draws directly from the Cropsey myth. Indeed, it employs the name of the legendary maniac for its main character, albeit with an alternate spelling of “Cropsy.” Released within a month of Friday the 13th Part 2, the film contains a comparable campfire scene where a senior counsellor relates the Cropsy story:

There was a camp not far from here, just across the lake. It was called Camp Blackfoot. No one goes there anymore. Everything burned down. There’s nothing left, except the ruins. Now this camp had a caretaker, a really evil bastard. And his name was Cropsy. Everyone hated Cropsy. For a start, he was a drunk. Two bottles of whiskey a day, no problem. Like, most of the time he was somewhere out in space, but if he caught you, look out! Because Cropsy could strip the paint off the walls, just by breathing on them. Now this Cropsy was a sadist. I mean, he got real pleasure out of hurting people, scaring them. And he had these garden shears,you know? The kind with long thin blades. And he carried them all the time, wherever he went. And he had this kind of demonic way of looking at you. One time, this Cropsy really went after this kid from Brooklyn. Followed him around night and day. He made this kid’s life a living hell. But this time he chose the wrong guy. Because the kid and some of his buddies had planned a little prank that would scare the living shit out of Cropsy. Only problem was, the gag went wrong. The next thing anyone knows, Cropsy’s trapped alive and burning in his bunk. They try to get him out but the fire’s so fierce they can’t reach him. All they can do is stand outside, and listen to him cry out in agony. They say he smashed his way through the bunkroom door, just a mass of flames. And as he screamed out, burned alive, he cried out, "I will return. I will have my revenge." They never found his body. He survived. He lives on whatever he can catch. Eats them raw. Alive. No longer human. Right now, he’s out there. Watching. Waiting. Don’t look, he’ll see you. Don’t move, he’ll hear you. Don’t breathe...You’re dead! (Weinstein & Lawrence 1981).

The burning incident described in this story has already been depicted in the film’s opening scene, though the revenge-related utterance has been interpolated by the storyteller. Here again, Cropsy has become a savage, at least in the nested narrative; in the main diegetic narrative, the actual Cropsy is a burn victim dead-set on settling the score. After the plot resolves itself and the murderous Cropsy is fully consumed by flame (as per standardized tellings), the film closes by dissolving to another telling around another campfire, with another group of campers and counselors:

They never found his body but they say his spirit lives in the forest. This forest. A maniac, a thing no longer human. They say he lives on whatever he can catch. Eats them raw, alive maybe. And every year he picks on a summer camp and seeks his revenge for the terrible things those kids did to him. Every year he kills. Right now, he’s out there. Watching. Waiting. So don’t look, he’ll see you. Don’t breathe, he’ll hear you. Don’t move, you’re dead! (Weinstein & Lawrence 1981).

The story has evolved, as Cropsy is now fully inhuman, persisting as a vengeful wraith with super-sensory omniscience.

Madman, another slasher film being made concurrently with The Burning at the dawn of the 80s, was also premised on the Cropsey legend. In fact, Madman’s Cropsey-related elements resembled The Burning’s so closely that its production team had to alter numerous elements of the film, which delayed its release until 1982. Nonetheless, the film provides yet another cinematic retelling of a Cropsey variant, opening with yet another campfire scene, and a camp supervisor of advanced age spinning a yarn for the campers and counselors:

My story deals with a man who used to live in that old dilapidated house behind those trees. We’re not supposed to be this close to it because many strange things happen around here. He was a farmer with his family, wife and two children. He was an evil man. Ugly and mean. He’d beat his wife. Brutally punish his children. He’d drink at the tavern and...Fight all the time. He once had a piece of his nose bitten off in a brawl and didn’t feel a thing. It was a night like tonight. Many, many years ago. Wait a minute, now that I think about it, it was the same night as tonight. The woods, quiet and dark. The farmer, for no apparent reason, went stark raving mad. He walked into his bedroom with an axe in his hand and chopped his sleeping wife into little pieces. Then with his bloodlust awakened, he walked down the hall to his son’s room and took an axe to him, but he still wasn’t finished. He walked across the hall to his daughter’s room. And without so much as a word, he chopped her into little pieces too. Then he calmly walked into the tavern, lifted the bloody axe onto the bar, and ordered himself a beer. Well it wasn’t long before the town found out what happened, and when it did, it was all over for the mad farmer, or so they thought. Ten men jumped him and dragged him screaming to the nearest tree, where they quickly looped a thick rope around his neck and hoisted him high into the air. One of them grabbed the bloody axe and swung it at the farmer’s head leaving a deep, bloody gash at the side of his face. They left him there hanging for dead. Next morning, when they went to cut him down, he was gone. It was then they noticed the bodies of his wife and children were missing. And their bodies have never been found. [...] [O]n certain nights, when the moon is full, he’s out there stalking in the woods. Searching for people so he can chop their heads off with an axe. Or hang them from a tree. [...] I have a good reason I haven’t told you his name. A very good reason. You see, it is said also that if you say his name above a whisper in the woods, he will hear you because he can be anywhere anytime. And if he hears you call his name, he’ll come for you. And if he comes for you, he’ll get you. One by one, you’ll start to fall before night’s over. [...] His name is Madman Marz. His name is Marz. Madman Marz. [...] No one is safe in the woods tonight. Anyone alone in the woods. You can’t hear him, you can’t see him. You smell his odor of death, and you turn around, and suddenly this horribly mutilated face stares down at you. It’s the last thing you see before zap! Off goes your head (Giannone 1982).

Again, the Cropsey analogue has inherited a supernatural power. And while he is said to inhabit a house, he maintains a ferality that is even more obvious than Jason’s or Cropsy’s, as he is depicted onscreen as shoeless, with claw-like fingernails and toenails. As he stalks his victims, he makes unmodulated chirrups and groans. His beard and hair are dishevelled and stark white, much like the features ascribed to Cropsey.

Not only did Friday the 13th, The Burning, and Madman appropriate and reiterate the Cropsey legend, but they also crystallized certain elements in the process of spurring on its evolvement. Visually, the Cropsey analogues of Jason, Cropsy, and Madman Marz solidified the demented drifter of the Tri-State area as facially disfigured (hydrocephalic, burnt, and scarred, respectively). Moreover, they are no longer imagined as having been prominent figures in their communities; rather, they are quite the opposite. These on-screen analogues were all established as atavistic, having reverted to a near-troglodytic state. Most notably, perhaps, the films attributed their Cropsey-inspired madmen with supernatural sensory powers or a spiritual ontological status that was theretofore only hinted at in the standardized campfire narrative itself. Haring and Breslerman’s sources did not describe Cropsey as a “ghost” (1977, 20). The ur-Cropsey* of urban legend was motivated primarily by vengeful psychosis, and not the supernatural capacities hinted at by the end of The Burning, from the outset of Madman, and in Friday the 13th Part VI and beyond. All told, all three films re-inscribe the Cropsey narrative via performance around the campfire, blurring the boundaries of legends diegetic and authentic, providing a regionally characteristic frisson, and then projecting it to a transregional audience.

NOTES:

*With the release of the 2009 documentary Cropsey, there has been increased discussion of the “real” Cropsey. This has been fueled by details surrounding convicted kidnapper Andre Rand, who subsisted during a period of homelessness in wooded areas of Staten Island. This has led many online sources to conclude that Rand was the source of the Cropsey legend. This is untenable for any number of reasons, perhaps most notably the fact that tellings of the Cropsey legend predate Rand’s known criminal activity, which began in 1972.