I want to build on this later but I wanted to get this on paper while I was thinking about it.
This is pretty much a word of mouth legend, but it is mentioned in passing in print (see Shadows of the Western Door, for one).
The first time that I heard this, we were driving down Elmwood Avenue when it was casually said to me that Buffalo is as strange as it is because it’s built on ley lines. The major roads are spokes that lead off of downtown. The energy channeled by this alignment makes everything in the city…weird.
It should probably be stated that I thought that this may have been the stupidest thing that I had heard in months…and completely fabricated, until I started hearing rumblings and hints at this story in different sources.
Ley lines, for those who may not know, are a controversial concept that places can fall on a series of lines and conduits that channel metaphysical power into areas. Part of the controversy is that when the concept was originally developed in the 1920s, even the man who generated the idea attached no significance to these lines other than being a type of ancient roadway to places of importance.
As the idea developed throughout the 20th century, it took on new significance. In the 1970s it was suggested that ley lines contained a metaphysical element- that the localities connected contained some amount of spiritual or magickal importance (think Stonehenge). However, again, it should be stressed that the original concept has nothing to do whatsoever with power and everything to do with traveling through the English countryside.
I can provide no real explanation why Buffalo would be considered an area of great enough power to warrant a ley line, and if that’s true, why (or how) the builders of the city knew enough to do this to build diagonal streets channeling this power. I can’t even begin to speculate what this is supposed even have accomplished. However, a google search on the term buffalo ley lines will bring up a series of random hits. What’s worth noting is that there’s references through several of them about Central New York, through Buffalo, is a nest of the things.
Whether or not it’s true, it seems like this is a legend (urban legend?) that seems to have some sort of appeal.
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