Horror & Hearsay of Oxbow Rd

Tales of murder, mayhem and the macabre have haunted Oxbow Road near for at least 30 years, making it one of the foremost urban legends of the Brantford area. But as is usually the case, the vivid imaginings of local teens with licenses can be broken down and rationally examined.

RUMOUR: A deranged hermit living in a farm on the dead-end road was responsible for various atrocities in the community from 1950-1975. Outlandish stories include everything from triple homicide to dead babies.

FACT: Bow Park Farm was established in 1866 and was the home of George Brown, a Father of Confederation and founder of the Toronto Globe and Mail. At one time, it was home to some 300 of the most prized and pricey purebred cattle in the province. It was actually believed, at the time, to be the largest herd of short-horns in the world. This required various 'sub-farms' to be built along Oxbow Road. One bachelor farmhand was eccentric and became slightly 'challenged' after suffering a fall in a barn. For decades, he lived in a van on the site of one of the old sub-farms, long after the house on the site was torn down.

RUMOUR: Groups of teens have witnessed headless ghosts in the windows of old farmhouses along the road.

FACT: A 39-year old woman has been a resident on Oxbow ever since her family emigrated in 1978. She recently recalled for a local newspaper an instance when she was reading in bed by the light of a small lamp. The lamp was not working properly and kept flicking off and on. She could hear a car engine rumbling outside and the excited laughter and squeals of teens in the vehicle as the light flickered, providing the voyeurs with mysterious flashing lights and glimpses of a ghostly female silhouette. She stated that all the mysterious happenings on Oxbow Road have been due to mischief and vandalism at the hands of disrespectful and drunken teenagers. They venture to the end of the road in search of a cheap thrill and have only succeeded in destroying her flowers and driving through her cornfield.

RUMOUR: Old remains of limbless bodies were recently discovered in a wooded area along the road.

FACT: Human remains were uncovered during an excavation for the basement of a new house in early January 2012. An investigation by an archaeological consultant concluded that the remains were of two aboriginal people - an elderly male and female - and that they had been buried between 150 and 200 years ago, when the Six Nations and/or the Mississaugas would have been in the area. This has led to a bitter property-freeze dispute, with one Brant County councillor recently calling on the Ontario government to step in and buy the property, as the family has not yet been able to build.

RUMOUR: The gruesome history of Oxbow Road has reached Hollywood, and a major mainstream horror movie is in the works.

FACT: A driving scene was shot on the road in 2011 for the film "Red Lights", starring Robert De Niro and Sigourney Weaver. The film follows veteran paranormal researchers as they debunk fraudulent claims of psychic phenomena by detecting 'red lights', the subtle tricks behind every staged supernatural occurrence.

RUMOUR: Bow Park Farm was the pastoral scene depicted on the back of the $2 bill before the toonie.

FACT: The bill actually depicts a rural area near Richmond, Que.

RUMOUR: One of the more remote sub-farms was home to a German spy ring in the 1920s.

FACT: Never disproven.