The Melon Heads
Several separate American regions each have their own local legend about disfigured, hydrocephalic children who allegedly escaped a nearby asylum and now live in the woods — and the story is different enough in each place that folklorists don't think they're actually the same legend at all.
Melon Heads is a regional American folklore legend describing groups of disfigured children, typically said to have enlarged heads from hydrocephalus, living in the woods near several separate specific locations, most prominently in Connecticut, Michigan, and Ohio. Folklorists studying the independently developed regional variations have found the different versions differ enough in specific claimed origin and detail that they likely represent separate, parallel local legends rather than one single shared tradition.
- →Distinct Melon Heads legends are documented in several separate U.S. regions, most prominently around Connecticut, Michigan, and Ohio, each with locally specific claimed origin stories and details.
- →Common narrative elements across most versions include children with enlarged heads, attributed variously to genetic conditions, medical experimentation, or abuse, who escaped or were abandoned from a nearby institution and now live wild in surrounding woods.
- →Folklorists studying the different regional versions have found sufficient variation in specific claimed origin, institutional connection, and local detail to conclude the different traditions likely developed largely independently rather than spreading from one single shared source.
- →No documented historical institution or medical case has ever been conclusively connected to any of the specific regional legends' claimed origin stories.