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What's an urban legend from YOUR hometown?
Create your own urban legends and myths using Campfire! They're literally built for this sort of thing 😀 https://www.campfirewriting.com/write/for-novelists?utm_source=YouTube&utm_medium=video&utm_campaign=HFM_Q4_23
My hometown's legend used to be a bigger deal than it is now, it's actually kind of all we're known for. Louisiana Missouri is home to Momo the Missouri Monster, basically Bigfoot but he smells bad, has a big ass pumpkin sized head and like ate a dog or something. The town's featured on a few Monster Hunter type shows, some cryptid YouTube videos, indie movies, and back in the day there was even a country singer that wrote a song about Momo. Though even with all that it's still pretty obscure to a lot of cryptid fans, growing up there though everybody knows about Momo
0:41
That's the most American "here" I've heard
What's the clip at 10:46 of? Anyone know?
I was so giddy listening to this, and I think it gave me an idea for my series I've been stuck on for awhile
An amazing example of an urban legend in a show that I've seem is Mob Psycho 100. Early in the story there's this legend (that iirc actually exists in Japan) about a woman that drags you down to a swamp if you dare to walk alone in the streets. (Probably was born to scare young children and prevent them from walking too much away from their usual tracks, like home >> school) In the show, willpower and humans conciousness can make things into reality, with everyone having some capacity of psychic powers and being able to share them with others. Thanks to a bunch of people believing and fearing this woman, they made her into reality. And it also has another layer of importance, since it foreshadows a huge plot twist in the later seasons.
As a Chilean who used to vacation in the rural regions of the Andes as a child, I was freaking scared of "el cuero." Now as an adult it amazes me that people in rural areas truly believe in its/their existence.(in some places they would say is just one being in others they would say thay are many)
I live in a very small village in rural cornfield Ohio, there are 2 stoplights, about 8 churches all within a mile of each other, and in 'downtown' there is the 'main' stoplight with old shop buildings from when the place was settled over 200 years ago. One of these store fronts has a costume shop. Now obviously because we are so small and that's a very neich business there is a paper sign on the door with a number to call if you want to stop in. There are 4 mannequins in the window that get dressed up for all different holidays and times of year. I started a joke with my friends and family that it's a place where an eldritch being lives and when the costume shop is open it's hungry and looking for new victims. I've lived here for 3 years now and in that time I've only seen it have the open sign up a few dozen times and the building looks so creepy and some of the props are super vintage which just makes it so much stranger. The glass is old and so the edges of it are all smokey and makes seeing inside a little unclear. I love the idea of a story being written about this little small town actually having some horrible unknowable monster and just occasionally eating people, leading to a small town where people kinda know everyone but also don't?
Another thing I made up is on my drive to work I pass a big state park and so one section of the road has no cell service, and made up the idea that there is a giant 20 ft opossum who climbs up the cell tower and eats the signal and that's why there's a dead spot for just a little blip.
Feel free to use these!
We've got a positive urban legend in my hometown. I think many towns in my region have the same kind of myth. That long ago an American Indian chief pronounced a blessing on the land so that the town would never be destroyed by a tornado. Even though Oklahoma is the heart of tornado-alley. I have never seen one in my 29 years.
Alright i am totally going to use this for ny ttrpg campaign
As a Chilean, my heart skipped a bit when I heard you talked about el cuero ❤❤
I'm currently working as a Peace Corps volunteer in Cambodia. My village has several legends about a huge rock spire called "Fishhook Mountain." My favorite legend about the place was that long ago, one of the Hindu gods left behind a golden boat on the top of the rock. At certain times of day, you could see the glitter from the gold, tempting passersby to attempt to scale the sheer sides of the spire. However, for hundreds of years, no one ever managed to reach the top and claim the golden boat. Only the most daring hero could ever manage to accomplish that feat, or so everyone thought.
Then, the French arrived and colonized Cambodia. Years later, a greedy colonial governor allegedly heard of the legend and sent soldiers in a helicopter to land on the spire and carry away the golden boat. It was then brought back to France, where it remains hidden to this very day, waiting to be returned to its homeland. Yet, according to some of my friends, when the French left, flecks of gold were scraped off by the rock, and when the sun hits it at just the right angle, you can see them glow.
There are tons of other fun legends and stories in this area, but that one is my personal favorite for how it combines the mythic past with the traumas of colonization.
What this has done is freak me out and decide my readers can come up with the urban legends. I don't really want think about this stuff long enough to make it.
Where I grew up a couple, hundred years ago there were some churches that fell into the seas about a mile from where the coastline is now. When the tide is low enough it is said the old church bells can still be heard ringing.
3:16 WHAT REMAINS OF EDITH FINCH!!! PLEASE analyze the storytelling in this game
There's a building in my hometown which is an abandoned warehouse/office building called the Campana building. It's a horizontal rectangle with a big turret in the center several stories high. Real weird looking. I grew up hearing stories of a woman who jumped from.the top of that tower to her death and that's the reason the building is no longer used. But her soul still haunts the building, especially the basement. Guess where my school held our annual haunted house?
What is that scene at 1:35 from? I’ve seen a weird talk creepy ramshackle house that looks like that in real life too and I really dig the look. Reminds me of The Burrow from Harry Potter as well
Here in Salerno, Italy, near Naples, we have a legend calle d*" Pietro Barliario e il ponte dei diavoli" wich means "Peter Barliario and the bridge of the devils".The legend says that in the middle ages a crazy scientist and Alchemist called Pietro Barliario was famous in all the zone, from Naples to Benevento, he used to help the city but with the hwlp of the devil, he used to make deals with the devil , he woild help the devil but all the sexiest women in town woild fall at his feet, he loved Salerno so he decided to build a big Aqueduct but he couldn't do it alone so he asked the devil for help, satan amde a deal with him, but this time the peice for the devil was secret.The devil put hundreds of little devils a Pieyto's service to build he Acquduct.The devils could only work at night, in one night they hsd to build the bridge.The devil's price was to melt Pietro's nieces, his only family.Pietro, realising what happend, went to Saint Benedict 's church and prsyed for 3 night and 3 days.The Christ Crucifix of the church then started moving and gave grace to pietro, who became a Monk.The devil is still not happy because of Pietro's conversion so now whoever walks under the beige of the the devils at night or at sunset disappear and never appears again, no one believes this anymore but it's still a tradition not to walk under there at night or sunset
My hometown’s biggest legend originated from the Quinnipiac tribe, regarding the “sleeping giant.” There’s this small mountain in the north of town that has the shape of a sleeping giant. They say he went on a rampage, trampling crops and causing all sorts of havoc and even changing the course of the Connecticut river. So some (fairies I think it was? Can’t remember) magical ladies fed him a ton of oysters and once he fell asleep after eating so much, they put a spell on him to prevent him from waking up. They say however if you disturb him he may wake up again. There used to be a quarry on that mountain, but the legend was so ingrained in the town that people repeatedly petitioned the government to put an end to it, so as not to disturb the giant. The legend was utilized by the people in order to preserve this beautiful piece of nature. There’s also one dude who fell off a cliff there and survived without a scratch, claiming the giant saved him.
A relevant game pertaining to "how true events change through retelling in urban legends" is Paranormasight. In case you wanted to see how effective urban legends can be in stories.
CHILE MENTIONED 🗣🗣‼‼‼‼🇨🇱🇨🇱🇨🇱🇨🇱🇨🇱 WTF IS CORRECT SPANISH
jk, but a VERY real urban legend in Chile is the flute player in Valparaíso (or Viña del Mar, I can't remember). They're a hooded figure playing the flute, and they've been seen in the streets. He shows up and disappears as fast. idk if it counts as a myth, but no one knows who they are.
Also, in sixth grade my class went on a road trip for three days to a house in the mountains. We were told later that it was an old hospital for tuberculosis patients, and it has been abandoned for over fifty years. Of course, thirty five twelve-year-olds imagined ghosts wandering through the halls in those mysterious sounds we heard.
I watched this at 11:30 at night, while sitting in my car, outside my house in the country, surrounded by bush. I didn't think anything of it until he described him checking his back seat in almost the same scenario I was in, haha.
I actually have an entire world where the mythology is largely structured this way. It’s basically the real world but magic exists.
There’s an entire inquisition that kills people who accidentally discover magic. Their agents are everywhere and could be pretending to be anybody. They are extremely effective.
There are only a small handful of groups that practice magic in secret and they are all hundreds or even thousands of years old and predate the inquisition. The only reason they still exist is because they are either extremely isolated or they are adept at surviving in such a harsh environment.
One of them who sits in the latter group is a criminal gang. They commit all your standard crimes dressed as regular criminals in civilian clothes. However if they are cornered by the police they will throw down a smoke bomb and then teleport away (usually inside a nearby van waiting for them). Because of this there are myths spreading mainly around the eastern US but also worldwide of police chasing after bank robbers or muggers only for them to completely disappear behind a corner or in a cloud of smoke.
A good example of a positive modern urban legend is the story of the Butterfly people in joplin Missouri that arose in 2011 after one of the deadliest tornadoes in US History leveled the city there was dosens of report of storys told mostly by small children to thier parents about purple butterfly people that came to them during the storm and protected and comforted the children, to this day the purple butterfly is a symbol you will see all throughout the city.
What is the song in the beginning?
In South Carolina, we have the legend of the gray man who shows up on the beach before a hurricane.
My area has a story about "Road Doors".
Apparently it's a pretty old rumor, But it goes that "On pathways people travel, and when you're alone, you might find a door in the middle of the road. Those who walk through the door are never seen again, and those who pass by it will never find it again."
Some people have said they've seen them but I figure it's more likely to just be pranks based on the legend than it is anything paranormal. But who knows right?
Amidst the terraced rice paddies of northern Thailand live creatures that are horses with the heads of men. These are virgins young men tainted by bitterness of never experiencing love. They would stomp the living out of men who walked alone cross the starlit paths between the fields at night after walking their lovers home.
And here, folks, we have incel spirits here even before incel was ever a thing.
There was this mulch factory thing (I think?) not too far away from my elementary school, but us kids thought it was a flour mill. A story got told to me about it once. Supposedly, two guys used to work there. One got jealous of the other or something and pushed the second guy into one of the flour grinders, killing him. Later, the second guy came back as a ghost and pushed the first guy into the grinder and killed him as well. I was told that whenever smoke/steam/whatever it was rose from the building, that meant the two ghosts were there, continuing their jobs in life and making flour.
Scared me so bad as a child. 😂
I'm a big fan of The Bag Man in DnD
We have a legend in my hometown of Grandpa Mean, the meanest old man on the face of the planet. He runs around in some old pink long johns with a checkered tablecloth cape, a pair of spotted boxers, some oversized combat boots, and an old hat full of fishing lures. He has a 10,000v joybuzzer and an invisible turbo-powered steamroller – just let those pedestrians try to get away! Whenever awful things happen, you can always hear his evil cackling laugh, "Tee-hee-hee-HEEEE-hee-hee!"
There's a book by Aleksandra Arkhipova, "Dangerous Soviet Things" (dunno if it's been translated), which explores a couple types of urban legends and how they were informed by real fears and dangers. Some of them are amusingly ancient at their core – like the superstition against sweets and treats offered by foreign tourists to children (they might poison you or convert you into a spy!), which was just "don't eat faerie food" all over again.
I have a cryptid within one of my worldbuilding projects. It's pretty much a remake of a species I made when I was like four and I thought it'd be fun to put in as a cryptid, and people pretty much view it the same as we view Bigfoot, lots of believers and a lot of people who think said believers are idiots
When I was little my mum told me about the Black Volga Polish Urban Legend which was really popular in the 70s 80s etc.
It was about Volga Soviet car Coloured black that was kidnapping people.
It was all about the Russian Soviet NKWD which was pretty much really feared back then, because they were kidnapping people to torture them if there was rumors about some sort of anti communist movements done by that person
Lake Baikal is one of the major sources of amber. The actual lake itself. For real. The properties may be mythical but the stones are not.
In my hometown we had an old school on the top of the hill off of the bike trail at the edge of town. Oak park academy, it had been closed since the 80s I think, it was a 3 story building, all the windows were busted out, one of the walls on the outside was completely blown out from i think I fire because it had scorch marks. I’m not really sure, but going down the stairs into the basement it was just a boiler room and on the big metal door all it said was “welcome to hell” in really creepy letters. So that’s what it was known as to everybody, just “hell”. As a kid I heard all kinds of stories about that place, like it being an insane asylum and people had shock therapy done to them so it was haunted. Or that in the fire 3 people died. None of those stories were actually true but it’s kind of funny the things people make up about creepy places. That place used to scare the crap out of me. They ended up tearing it down in 2021 sadly but the memories are still cool.
Creepily enough though there’s a alternative school and juvie called Woodward academy that was about 40 mins from my home town and that place used to be a mental hospital and actually did use to do shock therapy on people and is known as one of the most haunted places in Iowa, so I think that’s where people got the asylum story for hell
Kinda an urban legend but might be history – kinda unsure
My hometown use to be named pundcake rock back in the 1800s. One day, bunch of cowboys climbed on top of our massive rock in our town, put their own flag and started shooting their guns off and drinking. They yelled “Castle Rock.” Shirley enough, castle rock sounds better than poundcake rock, so they changed iy
I will create as many weird myths as I can when creating settings different from the real world then. Thank you!
campfire is for people that don't like writing in a note book
I'm suddenly reminded of people living in remote areas who were asked as part of a study how they knew not to eat the poisonous fish.
They didn't answer 'because they're poisonous, duh', they said 'because you'll get cursed. Everyone knows that'.
That may sound similar but it's a difference between first hand knowledge and observation with second or third hand knowledge and information that is passed down from one generation to the next.
It's part of their verbal heritage in passing down stories that teach lessons and pass on important information in a way that will stick with children and adults alike.
I think it's pretty cool how important story telling has been for humans as long as we've been talking and maybe even before then.
I was out for a drive in the mountains with my aunt the other day, around the area she grew up in in the 1940s or 50s.
Now personally, I don't believe in Bunyips.
Crocodiles, snakes and evil people yes but not really Bunyips.
I'm not about to walk into a creek or anything if I don't know what to expect or have clear vision during the day.
But when we my aunt mentioned about watching out for a bunyip as we were crossing a small bridge over a creek I legit believe that she believes in them in some way or other.
For anyone who doesn't know, Bunyips are water spirits in Indigenous Australian Dreaming.
Basically their origin myths and ongoing stories.
Bunyip stories can be regarded as a practical tool in teaching people, especially young children, to stay away from dangerous and unfamiliar waters as well as respecting those waters and to not overfish otherwise the bunyip will come get your greedy as.
The practical dangers could be anything like crocodiles, riptides, deep n cold waters(the kind that cause cramps and drownings), as well as contaminated water.
Local urban legends?
I consider this one to be half true.
There have been many sightings of big black cats in my state over many years.
By big I mean panther sized.
The kind you don't wanna meet no matter what.
The theory is that they're escaped animals from circuses or private collections and not all the same cat.
I say half true because my mum, while working on a farm, had more than 200 cows spook and gallop all the way from their paddock up to the dairy yard and refuse to move.
It is the one and only time she has ever seen cows spooked so severely.
Also it's the worst case of heebie jeebies she's ever gotten as well.
Why does she think it's the big cat?
There were sightings in the area within the last week beforehand.
Also there's been video footage.
As far as I know it's always long distance tho.
I don't think I've ever heard of someone with an up close encounter having the calm to pull out a camera or phone.
After all, it's bigger than your average dog.
Human trafficking and kidnappings is a pretty big thing in China to this day.
As well as organ harvesting.
13:48 nice.
This has reminded ne of a small thing in the story im currently reading, 'I became a ruined character in a dark fantasy'. When the mc wants information about things that are nearby, he listens for rumors. Rumors a a pack of wolves that roam in the foest outside the city, that only hunt humans, for instance.
In a world with actual monsters, but not common due to public security, these are treated as simple rumors by officials until problems arise. The mc then becomes a 'fixer' for these problems. A bit of an urban legend himself since he unintentionally creates a safe trade route in the timeskip beofre the story starts. (He has a game system so he completes quests by doing these things). Its only a minor thing in the scale of the story, but its a way to implement a form of this that i hadn't really noticed.
Dont really have anything constructive to add. Just felt pike sharing for the heck of it. Hope wheovers reading this has a good day.
Though i believe they are moving it elsewhere, there was a cursed statue in the Denver Airport. It was a large blue horse with red eyes, that killed it's original creator when he was working on it. His son took up the mantle to finish it, and when he did he passed of a heart attack. Needless to say the horse, referred to as "Blucifer" Is definitely cursed.
The closest urban legend that's coming to mind is the whole "toss a pine cone into the dinosaur's mouth for good luck on your finals" thing from my college. Which is a bit surprising since I think I'd hear more about that lake I live near. I guess it's just accepted as background noise that if you fall in, you're very likely to drown and very unlikely to be found.
Tho in my worldbuilding this is one thing I've been having a lot of fun with. Sure there's the gods, but there are also other entities hanging about, and those are the things you can actually encounter. My MC and several of her contemporaries actually had. (And then I borrowed a bit from Earth, too, corn demons and Tailypo and such that the MC also would be familiar with; she's led a complicated life so far.)
Murder at the Theatre – the Architect, his Daughter, and the Cat:
If you lift up the carpet in front of the stage, you'll find a cat's paw prints in the cement. The cat is long gone now, but it belonged to the theatre's architect.
The theater was built in the 1930s as a Works Progress Administration project. During its construction, the architect's cat stepped on the wet cement – a charming little reminder of the theatre's history for future thespians.
But the theatre's history soon darkened. After the theatre opened, the architect's daughter was sadly murdered in the alley behind it, and the murderer was never caught.
Legend has it she haunts the backstage at night, and if you listen closely, you can hear mews and scratches when the theatre is empty.
1:22 here in the USA we have this popular urban myth that the government wants what’s best for us and can be trusted with the health and well-being of its citizens
My fantasy race is a tribe of Wolf people who walk on two legs like a human, but people from the neighboring country are frightened by them and thus starts the legend of werewolves in my book. I just thought it'd be fun to put in.