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The article “Modern Folklore: Cybermythology in Western Culture” by Darrell Joyce, is about the evolution of urban legends. It mentions that people often “embellished a story to make it more interesting, or passed on a story that they have heard secondhand, as if it was their own experience” (Joyce). Stories are embellished, therefore modified, and propagated. The author also talks about where the legends started, their progression through history.
“Folklore has probably existed for as long as we have had language” (Joyce). This article says that urban legends began at the turn of the twentieth century. They were originally told as a sort of heed or warning to certain groups of people to keep them from doing something that would actually have lesser consequences than the ones told in urban legends. They often had moral messages that would also have less dire consequences. Now, I do not think that urban legends serve these purposes anymore. I believe that they are passed on now solely for entertainment. There may have been a time when these types of legends were effective in keeping people for perhaps doing something that they weren’t supposed to do, (for example, as a child my mother told me that I can’t drink mountain dew, because it would make me jump out of my skin) but now such stories have gotten too ludicrous for anyone to think plausible. There are some cases when the legends are real, however most people have good enough judgment to distinguish between the two.
Joyce, Darrell. "Modern Folklore: Cybermythology in Western Culture." Antrhoglobe Journal 25 Oct. 2003 3 Apr 2009 .
The article “Urban legends spin tales of history, fiction and strange facts” by Marcelo Duran, is about urban legends and their validity. The author talks about how urban legends are most popular amongst college students, and that they have evolved throughout history to match with the era. The biggest topic of this article, however is snopes.com, a website that debunks many of the urban legends passed my mouth, written word or email. It goes over some popular legends such as the munchkin hanging in “The Wizard of Oz” and other legends revolving around certain popular movies.
When I started on this project, I wondered if I was going to be able to write about snopes.com; it didn’t seem to fit well with the question I was trying to answer. Now that I’ve read this article, I see that snopes.com is, in fact very important to figuring out why people are so in love with urban legends. In my opinion, people like to be scared. Or at least the vast majority of us do. We thrive on fear, anxiety, the unknown, and the rush that comes with that. However, we never want the fear to be too realistic. People want to jump out of airplanes, but only with a parachute. In his article, Duran says that “fiction-alized stories are easily passed from one person to another because of the belief in reliable sources” (Duran). I disagree with this statement, because, I believe that people are interested until they truly become frightened that something as horrible as some of the urban legends could actually happen. People thrive on the pretense of fear, not the reality. Snopes.com is a valid source to find out if such legends are true, therefore, either awarding comfort or terror to those who have sought after it.
Duran, Marcelo. "Urban legends spin tales of history, fiction and strange facts." 01 Nov. 2000 3 Apr 2009 .
One very frosty night in 1963 a group of friends got together in Norfolk, England, to entertain themselves with the latest fad of their circle of friends. It was at 11:30 that night that four of these friends discovered that it was their night to die. After asking many questions, the four friends new the exact place, time, and reason for their deaths. The board had told them that it would be a car accident on an icy road at a few miles away at exactly one o’clock. A little stunned, the party decided to do whatever possible to cheat their fates and left and hour later than it would take them to get to the location of the accident. As the party filed out the door, the prediction of the board was nearly forgotten until when in the car the announcer on the radio says “The time is exactly one o’clock Central European time”(Meyers, Rau & Macklin 341). They realized that they had forgotten to change their clock for winter. Surprisingly, the group avoided the wreck because they were prepared.
I have heard of Ouija Boards many times throughout my life. My mom is completely convinced that they work, but I’m not so sure. As a child, I wanted nothing more than to just try one out. Now I am terrified of the thought just because of my terrible new found superstition that seems to grow every year. Though I have never seen, heard, or felt anything that would give me reason to be superstitious, I am still cautious to avoid anything that could bring me in the path of something potentially eerily dangerous, as some people are because of stories or legends that they have heard from people they know, or even sources completely unreliable. Most people have a healthy curiosity of the supernatural, and some are just gullible enough to believe everything they hear - as long as believing it will get them a thrill out of it.
Myers, Rau, Macklin, The Little Giant Book of "True" Ghost Stories. New York: Sterling Publishing Co., Inc., 1998.
The “Mothman” is a legend that arose in the late sixties in West Virginia. Around the state, many citizens reported sightings of a strange grey colored man lurking amongst the rubble of an old army site used for storing explosives. One of the first families to see this strange man were the Wamsleys, who first coined the term “mothman”. They described it as “6 feet tall, with a wingspan of some six to eight feet“ (Meyers, Rau & Macklin 168) “and had a pinched face that didn‘t seem to have any other features except for huge red eyes” (Meyers, Rau & Macklin 168). After seeing the creature in the army field, it reportedly followed the Wamsleys to their home and crawled up to their porch and was gone by morning. Over the next few years, similar sightings were reported throughout West Virginia.
The legend of the “mothman” quickly disintegrated after the mid seventies after it disappeared from the public eye, and people began to question the validity of the witnesses. Scientist came up with few ideas as to what it may have been: a human mutation, or a prehistoric bird or perhaps something not yet discovered. However, none of these theories could have been proven because the creature left no remains of any sort. So what’s the big fuss? Why is it that people feel the need to publicize something that could not have possibly be real? Some groups believe in nothing more than hard evidence, and others don’t underestimate the validity of a true witness. This story is not unlike stories of the infamous Bigfoot, yetis, Nessie, and aliens. These are all legends that have existed throughout the years most likely out of people’s sheer curiosity. Most are fascinated by the lore of strange things like the “mothman”; that there are things out there beyond our understanding. Truth or fiction, the “mothman” does, in fact, exist in our imaginative minds. We as humans often let our imaginations get away with us, making reality boring, and allowing the sick pleasure of our fearful fantasies.
Little Giant Book of "True" Ghost Stories. New York: Sterling Publishing Co., Inc., 1998.
Myers, Rau, Macklin, The Little Giant Book of "True" Ghost Stories. New York: Sterling Publishing Co., Inc., 1998.
The article, “A Look at Urban Legends: the Gothic Outweighs the Enlightened” by Julie Perry, is at the core about anxieties and how they play the biggest role in the popularity of urban legends. However, in this article, there is much talk about gender roles in urban legends; how so often the women get the part of the damsel in distress, and the men are either the perpetrator or the savior. The article distinguishes (very minimally) between myths, folktales and legends. It talks a lot about boundaries and how they are the core of our anxieties, and that urban legends overstep our boundaries in numbers of ways because they are so outrageous.
This article, as long as it was, had little to help me with answering my question. However, what little it did have was exactly what I had been looking for. Urban legends are
“an outlet of our human fascination with the irrational and impossible, as well as a catharsis for our feelings of cultural anxiety. Anxiety is the backbone of urban legends. If they did not force us to look at our fears, rational or not, they would not have the lasting power of the hordes of followers who swear their authenticity” (Perry).This is the answer that I’ve been looking for: people love urban legends because they scare them to death. Each person has boundaries that can be crossed with urban legends, whether it be safety, sexual, space, or commercial. When one hears of the boundary being crossed that that person may find especially heinous, a shiver crawls up his/her spine and makes them aware of the danger lurking around. When a person realizes that the fear of this “danger” is somewhat irrational, he/she may be able to shrug it off and laugh thinking that it is too outrageous to ever happen to them.
Perry, Julie. "A Look at Urban Legends: the Gothic Outweighs the Enlightened." 3 Apr 2009 .
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