International Legend Trippers

Century old lost elephant burial site. 

 

This is an urban legend that's been passed down for almost a century in the small community located 20 miles outside of Marianna FL.  You may recognize this location  as it has been in the news recently.  Researchers from a Florida university are currently exhuming dozens of graves at a notorious Dozier School for Boys where inmates from the 1950s and 1960s endured  horrific beatings that lead to their untimely demise.  As many as 100 bodies may be buried in unmarked graves.  

 The Elephant burial legend story  is about a circus called The Might Haags Show Circus that showcased three elephants named Babe, Tip and Alice.  Babe was killed by Alice and as punishment Alice was harnessed and forced to drag Babe's corpse down a dirt road until she could go no further. At this point the Babe was put to rest on the side of the road in a large hole dug buy the distraught performers and circus hands. To honor Babe a large limestone marker was installed.  The location of this burial is to this day unknown. 

I reassured the tour dates and locations and found that Marianna FL was not listed as a show location nor a winter retreat.   This is the type of urban legend I love.  I believe legends are based in truth but this one has me stumped. We're the dates and locations incorrect? Was the name of the circus wrong?  Is there a burial of an elephant named Babe somewhere along a isolated trek of road long forgotten?   

The tie in to Babe's burial and the burial of the hundreds of forgotten young men seems serial. On one hand you have a community memorializing their beloved friend which happened to be an elephant and not far away another community who had buried young men with little regard to the life lost.