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An urban legend, myth, or tale is a modern genre of folklore. It often consists of fictional stories associated with the macabre, superstitions, ghosts, demons, cryptids, extraterrestrials, creepypasta, and other fear generating narrative elements. Urban legends are often rooted in local history and popular culture .
Nov 17, 2022 · Learn about the scary stories that have been told and retold for decades, from haunted houses to serial killers. Discover how urban legends have influenced movies, TV shows, games, and fiction tropes.
Snopes.com is a website that investigates and debunks rumors, misinformation, and urban legends. You can find fact-checks on topics such as news, politics, entertainment, and more.
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urban legend, in folklore, a story about an unusual or humorous event that many people believe to be true but that is not true.
Urban legends typically combine secondhand narratives, such as those heard from “a friend of a friend,” with contemporary settings and familiar everyday objects, such as shopping malls or automobiles. Similar to older traditional folk tales and legends, urban legends spread through word of mouth but are increasingly shared through print, digital, and social media. They occur in cultures worldwide, featuring common plots and themes with minor differences reflecting local knowledge and cultural mores. Although many urban legends are told for their shock value or humour, folklorists believe that urban legends reflect the anxieties and beliefs in modern society, such as fears related to technology or crime. Thus, they hold as important a place in the study and collection of folklore as older traditional tales.
The term urban legend began appearing in folklore studies in the mid-20th century, and it was used to describe the genre of modern “too good to be true” stories shared through oral accounts. The phrase was popularized in 1981 with the publication of The Vanishing Hitchhiker: American Urban Legends and Their Meanings, a book by American folklorist Jan Harold Brunvand. The title of the collection refers to one of the most well-known urban legends, that of a person traveling in a vehicle, usually a car, who meets a mysterious hitchhiker. The latter suddenly vanishes and is subsequently discovered to have been a ghost. The story of the vanishing hitchhiker typifies an urban legend in both its being widely shared through oral telling and its contemporary elements, such as the modern form of transport. As with other urban legends, the vanishing hitchhiker has many variants that differ based on local details. For instance, Chicago’s legend of “Resurrection Mary” is named after a ghost said to appear to drivers on a road past Resurrection Cemetery in the city’s southwest suburbs. Over time the legend may adapt or modernize further. More recent accounts of the vanishing hitchhiker often occur in subways or airports or incorporate recent events. For example, after the devastating tsunami of 2004, tuk-tuk drivers in Thailand began to share a common “wandering dead” story of picking up a fare (usually a Western tourist and his Thai girlfriend) urgently headed to the airport, only to find that the passengers had vanished upon arrival at their destination.
With the invention of the Internet, urban legends have become more frequently shared online through chain e-mails, social media posts, and video-sharing websites. Some websites, such as Snopes, were created specifically for investigating and debunking urban legends. Numerous urban legends have provided the basis for films, novels, short stories, radio and television shows, video games, and comic books, especially in the horror genre. Full-length dramatizations of an urban legend include When a Stranger Calls (1979), in which a babysitter discovers that the prank calls she has been receiving are coming from a phone line inside the house, and Alligator (1980), based on a persistent myth in New York City about abandoned pet baby alligators grown to monster size in the sewer system. The summer camp comedy Meatballs (1979) is a rare example of a film featuring an oral telling rather than a dramatization of an urban legend. In a campfire scene a counselor played by Bill Murray relates “The Hook” story about a mad slasher on the loose.
In 1985 English horror writer Clive Barker published “The Forbidden,” a short story about a graduate student who investigates urban legends in Liverpool and conjures up supernatural forces in a decrepit housing estate. In 1992 the story was transferred to Chicago in the horror classic Candyman, which explores the elements of racism and classism in many urban legends. The movie led to a series of sequels and a 2021 reboot of the original that was cowritten by Jordan Peele.
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Urban legends about media are as common as urban legends told through media, such as the many tales about ghosts unexpectedly appearing in the background of movie scenes and photographs or satanic hidden messages that can be detected in rock or pop songs when played backward. Likewise, urban legends abound about notorious incidents or mistaken identities involving celebrities despite the lack of any documented evidence that would prove they occurred. For example, the urban legend “The Death of Little Mikey” combines the themes of celebrities and food by claiming that a child actor who appeared in a famous cereal commercial died after consuming Pop Rocks candy with soda, which urban folklore maintains makes the stomach explode.
In the 21st century the popularity of various storytelling festivals and podcasts attests to the continuing interest in urban legends. Research on urban legends is likewise ongoing through academic studies and conferences such as the International Society for Contemporary Legend Research, founded in 1988, and its peer-reviewed journal, Contemporary Legend, published annually since 1991.
Learn about urban legends, stories that many people believe to be true but that are not true, and how they reflect modern society. Explore the origins, characteristics, themes, and adaptations of urban legends in folklore, literature, and media.
- The truth behind Mr. Rogers. A secret many have been dying to know: was Mr. Rogers, host of the children’s show “Mister Rogers’ Neighborhood” actually a U.S. Marine - or maybe a Navy SEAL?
- There are bodies buried in Hoover Dam. This is one urban legend that just won’t die. While there were many fatalities involved in the making of Hoover Dam, zero involved workers slipping into the mix and being covered up with concrete.
- Pools will turn red if you pee in them. We all heard this one as kids: you can’t pee in the pool because there’s a special chemical that turns the water around you red...
- Wedding rice makes birds explode. No one is quite sure where this particular urban legend originated, but there is nevertheless the pervasive fear that if birds consume rice they explode.
Jan 23, 2024 · Learn how some of the most popular urban legends, such as Candyman, the Killer in the Backseat, and the Goatman, came to be. Discover the facts and fiction behind these modern folktales that have terrified and entertained generations.
Urban legends (sometimes modern legend, urban myth, or simply legend) is a genre of folklore concerning stories about an unusual (usually scary) or humorous event that many people believe to be true but largely are not.
