The Char Man is a legendary horrible spirit from California, The Oji's Bridge.
History[]
Possibly a ghost, possibly a hideous monster, Char Man, is no longer the man he once was. Now horribly charred, he is rumored to be covered in black burnt peeling skin, wearing little more than charred bandages and supposedly emits a disgusting burnt smell. He use to haunt Signal Street and Shelf Road, but as those areas became more and more populated, the legend migrated to the lesser inhabited area on Creek Road. Part of the story involves stopping your car on the bridge, getting out and yelling “Help Me! Help Me!” to which an incensed Char Man will come rampaging out of the forest and attack you.
As with all good legends, there are three different yet similar origins. The first and second both occur in the fire of 1948. In the first story, a father and son are caught in the fire. Both are horribly burned beyond recognition, the father sadly passing away before help could arrive, the son mean while goes insane from his injuries. By the time rescue workers arrive, the son has skinned the father of all the burnt flesh and hung his lifeless remains from a nearby tree. The son, of course, eventually escapes into the woods and becomes the Char Man.
In the second story, a husband and wife are caught in the fire. The husband, horribly burned and injured, hears his wife trapped by the blaze yelling “Help me” over and over again. The husband due to the fire and his own injuries is unable to come to the aid of his wife and lies unable to move listening to her pleas for help as she is slowly consumed by the flames. Again the husband eventually becomes the Char Man. Supposedly the Ventura County Historical Museum claims that there were no victims in the fire in 1948, so these two origins already appear to have some flaws. There’s yet another similar version floating around that states that Char Man was specifically a fire fighter who lost his life fighting the same blaze.
Finally a last theory takes place in the early fifties. It relates a story of a bad automobile fire (some versions place the automobile accident actually on the Char Man Bridge) in which the driver is hideously burned beyond recognition, but manages to barely survive, escaping into the nearby woods to become the Char Man. Some police officers claim yet another origin. In the sixties there was supposedly an elderly man who had a very bad case of skin cancer. His face and arm were badly disfigured and deformed. As he didn’t like to be seen, he often took his dog for walks in the evening or late at night. During these strolls, he would occasionally be seen by local youth, who frightened, began propagating the Char Man stories. To muddle the tales even more, additionally later, there may even have been a Char Man hoax performed, which adds even more speculation on veracity of the entire Char Man legend.
The Char Man's Revenge[]
Char Man is such a famous local legend that there’s even a hot sauce named after him. Created by Chris Sutton, Charman’s Revenge Habanero Pepper Sauce is made by Highway 33 Foods and comes with the tagline “Just beware, with five fire-roasted Habanero Peppers in every bottle, Charman’s Revenge may become a reality.” So is the Char Man an elderly cancer case? Was he an elaborate hoax? Is he a monster or the ghost of a victim in the 1948 fire? Whatever, he is, the legend of the Char Man has now taken on a life of its own and just to be on the safe side, perhaps you should avoid stopping your car on the bridge along Creek Road.