During the depression the government invented weird jobs like interviewing dead end kids about folklore on the lower east side of Manhattan. The following text is a scary story told by a child on the corner of 9th and Avenue C on December 15, 1938.

…the interviewer describes the rest of the telling:

The story continues on and on for over thirty minutes with the green hands murdering all people that come within reach. The climax comes when the green hands are trapped in a hotel where a fire breaks out and the green hands turn to ashes. Throughout the length of the narrative, the group of about thirty boys kept silent and listened avidly to every syllable and closely followed the mimicry of the story teller. Their faces registered the horror of each crime – as if they themselves were eye witness to the crimes of the “green hands”. The story teller felt the spell that he was casting over them and drew the story out a little bit by putting “new” victims within reach of the “green hands”.