Urban Legends

ILLYRIAN

ILLYRIAN

Druish Pervonian Wizard
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Black Thorn
As this site has a world wide readership what Urban Legends do you know of should be quite interesting?
 
The dead in America rise up once every four years in order to vote democrat.
 
ILLYRIAN
ILLYRIAN
Trump was a democrat but now he's a republican, someone's gotta make an Urban Legend from that.
AlphaFoxtrot
AlphaFoxtrot
It probably needs to be noted that several Big City Democratic Political machines, most notably Chicago in 1960, were infamous for 117% voter turnout and dead people usually had something to do with that.
My favorite one thus far:

The killer in the backseat.

Other than a select few popular ones though, I don't usually follow urban legends (both American ones or the local ones in Singapore). I know there's the "Vanishing Hitchhiker" that I mentioned in a recent post. There's the Bloody Mary and the Hookman, the Slender Man and the Big Toe (in the soup).

Singapore has a few fun ones regarding female ghost passengers and the Hungry Ghost Festival (kinda like an Asian version of Halloween but with Chinese opera and burning paper money for the dead). The latter one, we get a lot of stories about dumb fools who break certain taboos like stepping on the ashes of the aforementioned money (or just kicking them), eating the offerings of the dead, or (a weird one) swimming at night. Thankfully, the period for the festival has passed (I think).

We also have a lot of stories about hauntings at military camp sites. More foolish youths who break taboos and disrespect the dead, ending up missing or turning up dead. The most popular version of this tale involves a young recruit who went missing before his body was found the following day, his stomach ruptured from his body's high temperature. His spirit was rumored to hang around the camp site ever since, with the folks building a third door in the bedroom so that he could "find his way out." A lot of folks in Singapore, particularly the more veteran soldiers, have a lot of respect for the dead. They take these stories very seriously, unlike the more skeptical westerners. No offense. I belong to the skeptical bunch myself anyway, having never seen a ghost before and raised on American cynicism.

But to be honest, Singapore's urban legends just aren't as fun as American ones. While a lot of our local legends deal with unrealistic spirits and ghosts, at least American tales deal with something more grounded like hitchhikers and serial killers, both very real threats you could find in the realm of the mortal. They're a lot scarier that way. Don't get me wrong, I would probably still dash away from dark corners and abandoned buildings at night for fear of potential spirits of vengeance (even if I'm skeptical, there's still that subconscious fear of the supernatural), but I think a lot more people have double-checked their backseats than give any credibility to the existence of ghosts.
 
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Oromous said:
My favorite one thus far:

The killer in the backseat.
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My favorites are the variants on this theme, where it plays out just this way up to the point where the axeman in the back seat discovers that his would be victim is actually an unkillable werewolf or a space alien, or a Terminator sent back from the future in order to protect the future leader of all mankind. The look on the supposed bad guy's face is always priceless.
 
Too many jokes have been said about the menacing person in the back seat of a car.
I say this not intending to upset anyone but the axe man in the back seat will not get the driver, he is 'armless!
Many tales involve the ghostly hitchhiker, in many countries.
One of my favourites is of the ghost truck that drives directly at your vehicle then as it is about to touch your car it vanishes.
Another was the sighting of a doppelganger, guessing which one is the ghost was fun.
There are tales of the Devil's Bridge though when I investigated the story I found it was of a bridge near Princeton on Dartmoor England, and that it was named Devil's bridge because the person who built the bridge had a name for doing the work very quickly.

I have seen many ghosts that dictionaries say can't exist but those demonic sightings and instances of cases of the devil protecting his own were exciting.
 
Oromous said:
But to be honest, Singapore's urban legends just aren't as fun as American ones. While a lot of our local legends deal with unrealistic spirits and ghosts, at least American tales deal with something more grounded like hitchhikers and serial killers, both very real threats you could find in the realm of the mortal.
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I know very little about Singapore but I always understood the "spirit" thing to be a reflection of the importance some(?) countries in the East place on their ancestors and which manifests its self as ancestor worship. You see it as a conflict in the writings of Chinese/Japanese-Americans such as Amy Tan and Maxine Hong Kingston. Despite the hegemony of American Culture, I think it's sometimes an outlier in as much as it's a relatively "new country" (if you ignore the indigenous population). The same can be said of Australia (the colonizers had problems representing the red heart of the continent; the original people didn't because they had a different relationship with the land and a different concept of time).

In the UK, well - we're still waiting for the return of the Once and Future King who's buried under a hill somewhere in Somerset and will rescue the county in its hour of need (taking his bloody time about it and, TBH, I'm not sure whether he's on the side of those who voted to leave the EU or those who wanted to remain). There's a whole industry grown up around Arthur (and more recently Jack the Ripper). IIRC, we also have ghostly Roman Legions who walk the Roman roads.

In terms of truly "urban" myths, there was one involving the driver getting out of a car at night to investigate a noise on the roof and not returning. The second person hears a noise and also gets out - to find the noise is a mad man banging the decapitated head of the driver on the roof. We also have variations of the "wild animal" on the moor (often a big cat that's escaped from a zoo or private collection) and the "alligators" in the sewer. Then there's the woman (always a women) who returns from an exotic location and baby spiders erupt from her hair or a pimple on her face. As with traditional myth, there's usually an ideological basis to them.
 
TriBel
TriBel
I need new varifocals 'cos that foam under the word "dangerous" looks like a unicorn to me. I guess some legends/myths are probably stared by people who shoulda gone to Specsavers.
Sorry Hunga Munga but as that place isn't well known (I've never heard of it) it is only folklore. I know of a similar place, St. Nectan's Glen in Tintagel, Cornwall. It is where many catholic monks were put to death by the kings Royalists, as it isn't well known it is just a local folklore.
 
A unicorn ? 😱 You wouldn't be the first to get a horsey vibe from the Strid 😀
Bolton Strid: The Stream That Swallows Anyone Who Falls In

The Strid has been infamous for a thousand years . I think the 'spooky' legendary element of the Strid is that you don't get the bodies back .The notion of a hidden charnel cave full of bones is what creeps me out 😀 . However , if you look at the more recent tragedies , bodies are recovered downstream later .
 
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TriBel
TriBel
I'd agree with horse if it wasn't for the fortuitous white line on the bank. Alternatively, I need to pick up some screen-wipes on my visit to the opticians.
TriBel said:
In the UK, well - we're still waiting for the return of the Once and Future King who's buried under a hill somewhere in Somerset and will rescue the county in its hour of need (taking his bloody time about it and, TBH, I'm not sure whether he's on the side of those who voted to leave the EU or those who wanted to remain). There's a whole industry grown up around Arthur (and more recently Jack the Ripper). IIRC, we also have ghostly Roman Legions who walk the Roman roads.
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Yup, I'm still waiting too... love that one 😀
 
TriBel says the once and Future king is buried under a hill in Somerset, sorry but you are wrong, bad English there,
he is in a cavern in a hill with the others of his round table where he has been ready to ride to England's defence when it got/ gets invaded.
He and the Knights rode out when the Spanish Armada invaded England, people working the fields didn't know if to cheer or be scared at the sight of the ghosts of King Arthur and his Knights of the round table charged the Spanish army.
The hill as stated has a horse depicted in chalk on it. There was a mound just down from the trailing leg where the witches of Uffington met, where Merlin would meet old friends. (rumour/ heresay)
The poor English refers to the folk who say things like submarines go their way under the sea, they don't as under the sea is in the mud below where the water is.
 
I remember reading that a Bishop once denied the Undeath of Arthur, and incited a riot by doing so.
 
AlphaFoxtrot said:
I remember reading that a Bishop once denied the Undeath of Arthur, and incited a riot by doing so.
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Yeah...we tend to get carried away by things. Some of us are denying the existence of Covid. 🙄 As far as I'm aware and in terms of an English tradition, Arthur's generally considered to be the invention/re-invention of the "historian" Geoffrey of Monmouth (12th Century) who was kinda like the tabloid of his day and it all relates to the Matter of Britain and the consolidation of (royal) power (go further back and it's Celtic myth). Thomas Malory's Le Morte d'Arthur (15th C.) reworked - and importantly translated - European (French?) writings. The next real resurgence is in the 19th C. with Lord Tennyson's Idylls of the King. Later (1950s but based on stories written in 38-40) we get T.H. White's series The Once and Future King. I haven't really followed American writings though I've read (long enough ago that I've forgotten it) Twain's A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur's Court and -possibly - Berger's Arthur Rex. Doesn't the Camelot imagery re-emerge with JFK?

A new comic, Once and Future, emerged at about the same time as the Boom Buffy. I read the first couple (mostly because Dan Mora and the implied references to BtVS) and it seems to be a critique of Brexit and English exceptionalism. It's had good reviews, perhaps I should return to it.

"When a group of Nationalists use an ancient artifact to bring a villain from Arthurian myth back from the dead, retired monster hunter Bridgette McGuire pulls her unsuspecting grandson Duncan, a museum curator, into a world of magic and mysticism to defeat a legendary threat. Now the two must navigate the complicated history of the McGuire family, all while combating the deadly secrets of England’s past that threaten its very future".

While legends are interesting as stories in and of themselves, I'm more intrigued by their appropriation and mutability, their function and why they emerge/re-emerge at a particular juncture in time. Urban legend/myth is (by virtue of the word "Urban") different from traditional myth/legend (as far as I can establish, the phrase has only existed for 100 years). What's its purpose?
 
The Covid-19 thing is a real thing, some folk think it is of this earth though - it isn't a natural thing though. It comes from the Lunar dust that was gathered when China landed on the moon in 2013. The virus escaped the laboratory.

Sounds like a good urban legend in the making, if anyone survives the apocalypse that is.
 
TriBel said:
My brother's a nurse - he spent two weeks in hospital with Covid. Pneumonia damaged his lungs. His friend, a nurse in A&E, died because of Covid. I'm sure he'll be relieved to know it didn't really happen.
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Relief is a good thing. Glad I could be of service.
 
@TriBel The second wave started to spike when the universities were reopened. However, I think the virus might be starting to burn itself out. Covid is supposedly spreading faster this wave than it did during the first wave, and when a virus starts spreading too quickly, it runs out of people to infect which sort of kills it off because people develop immunity.
 
I think Covid-23 is could turn into an urban legend. I have trouble believing that songbird is real.
 
TriBel
TriBel
Agree with the first...not the second.
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