Written on 20 April 2019
Yes yes yes, Milton Keynes is, in the grand scheme of things, a relatively new town.
So you could argue that folklore can't exist there since the first generation of settlers to the roundabout utopia hasn't even had a chance to die out.
But the tale that is told in the area is surely going to live on for generations, such is its bone-chilling nature.
If you're a fan of your thumbs, you may want to stop reading.
The legend dates back to the heady days of 1983, as a minted old fellow named Greg Kelly hosted a summer garden party for a bunch of moneyed chaps wearing pinstripes and presumably slicking back their hair with generous portions of wet look gel. Cigar smoke hung lazily in the dusk air, the barbeque had burned itself down to embers, half drunk wine glasses littered every surface, and the group were feeling merry. Perhaps a little too merry.
There were 23 men and seven women at that party. The last thing any of them remember is the flash of a camera, set on a timer, to capture the party before the night fully took hold.
The next thing any of them remembered was all of the guests, to a man, lying on the dewy ground, the morning sun blinding them, all of them in tremendous pain. All of them missing their right thumb.
And no one remembers a thing.
Greg was arrested at the hospital. The police presumed that he had drugged the guests, but this didn't explain why Greg's thumb was also missing. The toxicology came back on the party guests revealing the only adverse thing in their collective stomachs were a few undercooked sausages and slightly too much wine. Greg was released.
None of the party guests were the same. All of them seemed to fall upon unrelenting bad luck. Redundancies. Divorces. Family deaths. Everyone was affected. None of them made it past the age of 65, with a good many, Greg Kelly included, taking their own life.
No one was ever caught for the crime. The only evidence the police had to go on came from the photo that seemingly triggered whatever events led to the crowd laying in the morning sun with stumps where their thumbs used to be.
A slight outline, human shaped, but an imprint, a whisper, 7 foot high, stood just to the side of the smiling group. Hardly enough to go on, but unsettling nevertheless.
Now tell me that Milton Keynes is too young to have folk stories?