RAYMOND ROBINSON: THE LEGEND OF THE GREEN MAN - CULTURE VOCABULARY - 2025

Raymond Robinson was an American who after suffering an accident with a power line lost much of his face. He was born on October 29, 1910 in Monaca, Beaver County, Pennsylvania and died on June 11, 1985 in Brighton Township, Pennsylvania.

This man's life probably would have passed in complete anonymity had it not been for an accident he suffered when he was nine years old. While playing with his friends at Morado Brigde, outside Beaver Falls, he was struck by a trolley's power line, seriously injuring him.

Although he survived against the prognosis of the doctors who treated him at Providence Hospital, Robinson was severely disfigured, losing both eyes, his nose and one of his arms.

According to some reports of the time, the same line would have electrocuted another child days ago. However, there are several versions of the events; the two most popular ones suggest, on the one hand, that a cable fell from the lines hitting Raymond in the face, and on the other, that the boy climbed the lines challenged by his friends to take the eggs from a nest, and that he accidentally he touched the wires passing 22,000 volts through his body.

According to Ken Summers, urban historian and author of the book Queer Hauntings, this case is one of the most influential in the popular culture of this region of the United States. Proof of this are the imaginaries that were built around the life of Robinson, whom some called "The Green Man" and others "Charlie No-Face" (1).

Why The Green Man?

There are two opposing hypotheses that explain the alias "The Green Man" that accompanied Raymond Robinson throughout his life.

The first suggests that her skin was a pale greenish hue, presumably affected by the accident. The second hypothesis proposes that Robinson always wore green and that her skin being so pale, it reflected the color of her clothes. The nickname Charlie No-Face requires no explanation.

This is not the only case in which popular culture shows interest in a color peculiarity of the skin. In fact, there is a legend of medieval British folklore, according to which in the small town of Woolpit, in Suffolk, two green-skinned brothers lived during the reign of King Stephen who spoke an unintelligible language.

This case was first documented in William of Newburgh's Historia rerum Anglicarum in 1189, and later in Ralph of Coggeshall's Chronicum Anglicanum in 1220. William Camden also mentions the incident in his 1586 book Britannia, in the same way as Francis Godwin in the novel The Man in the Moone in 1638.

The most contemporary record of the two British green children dates from 1935 in Herbert Read's novel The Green Child. By this time, Raymond had suffered his accident on the other side of the Atlantic.

The legend of Robinson in the 21st century

Although Robinson died in a nursing home in 1985, the legend of the green man has been updated and spread in the 21st century as well.

According to David Gerrick's "Ohio's Ghostly Greats" publication, there are reported sightings of a new green man in Ohio. According to local folklore, it is about a drunk who sneakily entered an electrical substation in an isolated area of ​​Geauga County, and was electrocuted by a transformer, despite surviving his skin turning green. This new case could provide evidence that there is a correlation between electrocution and the greenish color of Charlie No-Face's skin (2).

Ken Summers argues that the popularity of this urban legend is largely explained by the large number of sightings and photographs that exist.

According to his research, the only time that Raymond Robinson left the house in which he lived most of his life was at night, in which he took long walks in which he occasionally ran into local residents or tourists.

Indeed, a small tunnel relatively close to Robinson's residence is today a place of pilgrimage for the curious and fans of urban legends. The Piney Fork Tunnel was built in 1924 and was originally part of the Peters Creek branch of the Pennsylvania Railroad that served as a link between the coal mines scattered throughout the state and the city.

Today this site, officially abandoned since 1962, is part of an informal circuit called Zombie Land, in Hillsville Pennsylvania, which brings together urban legends of all kinds (3).

The effects of Robinson's story

Although originally the Charlie No-Face story was used consistently by parents across Pennsylvania to keep their children at home, it had the opposite effect.

Hundreds of teenagers during the 1940s, 1950s, and 1960s sneaked out of the house just to meet The Green Man.

Some of these encounters are photographically documented. According to his protagonists, Robinson was a very kind and calm man who had no problem with posing in front of the camera, smoking a few cigarettes, drinking a beer and then moving on.

The peak of the case's popularity came in the 1960s, when crowds of tourists caused major traffic jams on the road that Robinson used to use for his night walks.

State Route 351, between the small towns of Koppel and New Galilee, once welcomed wave after wave of onlookers who wanted to be photographed with Charlie No-Face. The impact of this phenomenon was very strong in an eminently rural population, which according to the most recent censuses does not exceed 800 inhabitants per town (4).

The Civil Life of Raymond Robinson

It is surprising that despite the notoriety of the case and the technological advances that emerged after the First World War, Raymond Robinson never used a copper mask like those developed by Anna Coleman Ladd in Europe to treat French soldiers who returned mutilated from the trenches (5).

In fact, by the time little Raymond suffered the accident, this technology was widespread in the United States and Europe, and helped a good number of French soldiers to return to civilian life despite the physical deformity that it caused them. war (6).

According to testimonies collected at the time, Robinson never complained about his condition, nor did he show interest in changing it. In fact, although most of his life he was a lonely character, most versions maintain that he never had negative encounters with the community to which his family belonged, despite the fact that during his youth his presence frightened the children of the neighborhood., it was very rare to see him away from home during the day.

Life was never easy for him. His father died when he was only seven years old and his mother remarried her late husband's brother.

Only two years after losing his father, he suffered the accident that disfigured him forever, and although he spent the rest of his life with family members who were always very understanding of his situation, he had to learn to make wallets and belts to earn a living..

As Raymond grew up, he earned many very cruel nicknames such as "The Zombie" and was accused of terrorizing neighborhood children, some reports even suggest that he was once beaten by a group of curious teenagers.

Possibly if Raymond had been born eighty years later, he would have had better luck. The rate of these types of accidents was so high in the early 20th century in the United States that the industry adopted much more efficient electrical transmission standards and safety protocols that demanded that urban trains operate at lower voltages and power cables. electrical transmission were buried.

Recent studies carried out in India, where some cables that transmit between 2.4 kV and 33 kV are not located underground, and are even close to the roofs of some houses, demonstrated the vulnerability of the child population.

Children tend to accidentally touch cables while playing with sticks, cricket bats or umbrellas, although now the mortality rate is lower for these types of accidents, in developing countries infections caused by burns have proven to be lethal (7).

Just to get an idea of ​​what Robinson suffered during the accident and his subsequent recovery, it is important to consider that the resistance of living tissue changes according to the flow of current.

In principle the skin offers an insulating barrier that protects the internal tissues, once the current touches the skin, the amperage rises slowly, followed by a sudden escalation. As soon as the skin breaks due to heat, the resistance that the tissues offer to the current, with the exception of the bone, is insignificant, the electrical flow only stops when the carbonization breaks the circuit (8).

Last years

The last years of Raymond Robinson's life were spent quietly in a nursing home. Although most of his life was spent in a house west of Koppel with his mother Lulu and some relatives, as the years passed and his family group declined, as well as his health, Robinson was transferred to the Geriatric Center from Beaver County (now called Friendship Ridge Nursing Nome).

It was there that Raymond died on June 11, 1985 at the age of 74. His body was buried in the Grandview Cemetery, in Beaver Falls, relatively close to the same bridge where he suffered that terrible accident that marked his life.

Although popular culture has made the case of Raymond Robinson little more than a legend that parents use to scare their children, adding even quaint details such as alleged supernatural (electrical) powers with the ability to break down the engine of any vehicle, Charlie No-Face's story is more tragic than terrifying in nature.

If sightings are still reported in Pennsylvania and Ohio, it is because the human imagination is capable of producing more wonderful creatures than all the accidents in history combined.

References

1. Summers, K. (2016). The Green Man: The Pennsylvania Legend of Charlie No-Face. Week In Weird.
2. Gerrick, D. (1975). Ohio's ghostly greats. 1st ed. Lorain, OH: Dayton Lab.
3. DailyScene.com. (2016). Investigator Uncovers Photos of Legendary "Faceless Ghost" That Haunts Abandoned Tunnel - DailyScene.com.
4. Bureau, U. (2016). Search Results. Census.gov.
5. Rare Historical Photos. (2016). Anna Coleman Ladd making masks worn by French soldiers with mutilated faces, 1918.
6. Youtube. (2016). Anna Coleman Ladd's Studio for Portrait Masks in Paris.
7. Mathangi Ramakrishnan, K., Babu, M., Mathivanan, Ramachandran, B., Balasubramanian, S., & Raghuram, K. (2013). High voltage electrical burn injuries in teenage children: case studies with similarities (an indian perspective). Annals of Burns and Fire Disasters, 26 (3), 121–125.
8. Emedicine.medscape.com. (2016). Electrical Burn Injuries: Overview, Physics of Electricity, Low-Voltage Electric Burns.