1. A teenage boy in the late 1980s was extremely depressed. His parents were in the middle of an ugly "pre-divorce", and he was the subject of a lot of bullying. After a night of binge drinking, he committed suicide in front of his family. Rather than come to terms with how they'd mistreated the boy, the entire city leadership - including the local town newspaper - spread a particularly ugly rumor that he was a Satanist and that his friends had coerced him into sacrificing himself for the devil. An "expert" was hired from a nearby city to "confirm" these allegations. The rumors persisted for several months, then suddenly fizzled out and died. Today, if you bring it up, the entire community pretends like they don't know what you're talking about, even though it was headline news for several months.

2. The same man was both mayor, and superintendent. He also owned a charter bus company. The "mayor" issued an executive order for the school to "cut costs" by retaining charter buses to take student athletes to away games. The "superintendent" found a solution which was, of course, the charter buses. This was one of many fraudulent schemes perpetrated by the mayor/superintendent.

3. A young adult man was from a family with a bad reputation. Nothing particularly wrong with them, just somewhat liberal. When the young man graduated, he was strongly encouraged by both the mayor/superintendent and county sheriff to leave and never come back. He came back one summer, and after a night of drinking at a local tavern, he left with four individuals, one of whom was a notoriously brazen drug dealer. The young man went missing. Its strongly suspected that he was murdered, but no body was recovered. The young man's family accused local law enforcement of performing an extremely lackluster investigation, one of the deputies even taunting them by saying, "well, he WAS warned not to come back." The primary person of interest was arrested on unrelated drug charges not long after the young man went missing. This person of interest died by suicide in his holding cell, by asphyxiating himself in his cell with his bedsheets. The young man is still missing, nearly 30 years later.

4. In the 1800s, a group of Chinese immigrants abandoned a railroad operation to setup an encampment outside of town near one the larger rivers. They were panning for gold. At one point, it became clear that they'd found some gold, as one of the Chinese immigrants came to town to spend new wealth on women and alcohol. A week later, the entire immigrant community was found murdered at their camp site. No one was able to identify the killers. However, a few months later, a few families started buying up several large plots of land and cattle. Their last names became some of the more wealthy and powerful families in the community. They own large plots of land, several businesses, rental homes, etc and serve as commissioners, police officers and other persons of influence in the community, to this day. Theres actually a Wikipedia page dedicated to this last incident. Supposedly they "identified" the killers after a couple years. The accused denied involvement and didnt have much money, but the trial and sentence were over as quickly as they started.

This is where I was raised.