A little while ago, a friend relayed to me a true story from a little town in Poland I think it was, or maybe Lithuania, somewhere around that region. He had been there on a work trip and was staying in a family's guest room, and as he made friendly conversation with the residents of the house he began to collect parts of this story, little by little, until he had the whole thing, or at least something resembling a whole thing.
So, the gist of the thing is that there was a woman in this town, or maybe an adjacent town, it was never really made clear, who lived her entire life tied by one of her legs to a train. It probably sounds impossible, at least to me it does, but my friend says everyone swore up and down that it was true, that this woman really lived a full life with her leg tied to a train, from birth to death. Mind you, it was a moving train. They said she went wherever the train went. So I guess that means it wasn't really a story from this town, it was a story from a lot of towns, all the towns the train passed through. Anyways, this woman, seemingly impervious to the obvious physical consequences of being dragged from the foot by a train, lived a full life touring eastern Europe, becoming a bit of a folk tale in the process, considering I'm telling this story right now. Every time a train would stop in a different city, the locals would come to gift her with food, water, clothes, money, anything they could think to bestow upon her. My friend actually said the story is kind of inconsistent here, he told me that the little girl of the house told him that the woman was grateful for the gifts, saying over and over how she could never repay them, sometimes even refusing gifts out of kindness, while the father said something completely different, he said that the woman acted entitled to these gifts, never offering any sort of thanks as she felt that she deserved them, after all, she had lived her whole life tied to a train. But I guess that's just how stories like this go. The real mystery, which nobody in the house seemed to have a clear answer to, was who tied her to that train in the first place, or even why they did it. The mother suggested it was her parents, unable to take care of a child, hoping the train would prevent her fate as an impoverished vagrant. The teenage boy suggested it was a lunatic, only seeking to cause as much suffering as possible. The little girl suggested she was just born like that, with her leg already tied to the train. The father suggested she tied herself to the train, for no other reason than to pretend to be in danger. My friend said none of them would tell him how she died. Only the mother had muttered hesitantly, something about "the wrong sky," and all the other residents simply stared when asked.
In my opinion, none of this ever happened. After all, my friend loves to make up a good fairy tale.