Urban Legend
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If you are ever driving along Wilfred Barrett Drive, heading towards Noraville in New South Wales, Australia, beware of picking up hitch-hiking women. This area, a narrow piece of land flanked by the trees of the Wyrrabalong National Park, itself flanked by two large bodies of water – the Tasman Sea and Tuggerah Lake, is…
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True or False. August 2014 will have five Fridays, Saturdays and Sundays. Such an event won’t happen again for 823 years.The rarity of such an event has been passed along on the Internet, and even a North Fort Myers church posted the story in its bulletin. But it’s not true… read more Just an urban…
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What happens when a man who is a master of playing a yūrei in kabuki dies and becomes a yūrei himself? That is the question answered in the strange story of Kohada Koheiji, the kabuki actor who finally assumed the role he was born to play… read more Guest Blogger: The Kabuki Ghost of Kohada…
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Ghost-less ghost stories, urban legends are modern day fairytales. Just as Little Red Riding Hood and Goldilocks were spread by oral tradition, urban myths are spread by word of mouth, creating contemporary folklore, often with a moral sting in the tail. Let’s face it, a sleepover isn’t complete without at least one candlelit tale of…
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The Internet doesn’t just help suspend disbelief. It rolls right over it.Exhibit A: Two 12-year-old girls from Waukesha, Wisconsin, charged with attempted murder for stabbing a friend 19 times and leaving her for dead. She miraculously survived. They appeared in court Wednesday. read more Why urban myths like Slenderman have become more deadly | The…
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While numerous White Lady stories like this have been dreamt up over the years, something about the specificity of ‘Teresa Fidalgo’ and her supposed but definitely phony links to a real accident that occurred on a Portuguese road have caught the imagination of easily-scared teenagers. read more Who is Teresa Fidalgo? Debunking the fake ghost…
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Dracula Untold – directed by Gary Shore “The Draft” and stars Luke Evans “The Crow” and Dominic Cooper “Captain America: The First Avenger”. The film is based on Bram Stoker’s “Dracula” and was previously known as, “Dracula” and “Dracula: Year Zero.”… read more Sink Your Teeth Into First DRACULA UNTOLD Poster With Luke Evans.
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To homeless children sleeping on the street, neon is as comforting as a night-light. Angels love colored light too. After nightfall in downtown Miami, they nibble on the NationsBank building — always drenched in a green, pink, or golden glow. “They eat light so they can fly,” eight-year-old Andre tells the children sitting on the…
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It was a story that had journalists salivating at their keyboards. “The bizarre secret of London’s buried diggers.”Yesterday, media outlets including the New Statesman, The Telegraph, and ITV news reported that thousands of JCBs are being buried under London homes undergoing basement excavations because it was cheaper than lifting the equipment back to street level.…
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The authorities of the city of Kazan, the Tatarstan Republic, have recently started to demolish the abandoned buildings of ZBI-2 armored concrete factory on Zorge Street. According to local residents, the place that was abandoned more than ten years, enjoyed ill reputation. The locals believe that the factory is a home to ghosts and other…
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Since his debut, Godzilla has remained a scaly dinosaur-like creature the scales themselves were meant to evoke the radiation scars that the survivors of Hiroshima and Nagasaki had. However, that was not the original plan. Was Godzilla really originally supposed to be a giant octopus? read more Movie Legends Revealed | Was Godzilla Originally Going…
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Yesterday, 500 years after Black Shuck first went on the prowl, archaeologists were examining the skeleton of a 7ft long dog unearthed in the remains of an ancient abbey.It was discovered a few miles from two churches where Black Shuck is said to have killed worshippers during an almighty thunderstorm in August 1577. read more…
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Alien was a brilliant fusion of science fiction and horror, as screenwriter Dan O’Bannon and director Ridley Scott had the crew of a spacecraft slowly killed by an alien creature that had essentially stowed away in the body of one of the crew members during a mission to a nearby planet. The film’s setting of…
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Houston is a big diverse city with a big diverse population, and that more often than not leads to a whole lot of different levels of bunk and bull that must be waded through in order to find the truth. On the other hand, some of those legends are true Unfortunately it’s usually the terrifying…
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Did you ever hear the one about the guy who fell out a window at TD Centre? Or what about the tale of whale bone under Queen’s Quay? Toronto is a hot bed of urban myths, some that are amazingly true, some that contain a tenuous strand of truth, some that are creative but, sadly,…
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From deals with the devil to blood transfusions to faked deaths, the music world has always been rife with rumour, conjecture and conspiracy. But how do you decipher the fiction from the fact? We examine ten of music’s tallest tales. read more: MusicNews | Ten of the best rock n’ roll urban legends – entertainment.ie.
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As TV’s Fargo begins its Channel 4 run, a film based on the mysterious story of a Japanese woman who froze to death in Minnesota – in pursuit, allegedly of the Coens’ original kidnap ransom – debuts at Sundance London read more: Kumiko, the Treasure Hunter – Fargo’s urban myth made into movie | Film…
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I’ve only just started this column, so I’m not particularly worried about running out of ideas yet, but I did sit down for this one thinking, “I hope I can deliver something suitably strange.”And here we are, a race of mischievous shape-shifting horses who terrorise the north of England: Brags.Imagine the scene: you’re a medieval…
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History is full of faked deaths and re-appearances of people long thought dead, but there are also a small number of people who did most likely die, but become the center of theories that claim they live. This list looks at ten of the most well know deaths that have fueled the fires in the…
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The Unicorn is a legendary animal that has been described in ancient times as a horse with a large pointed spiraling horn projecting from it’s forehead. The Unicorn is usually white in color, there have also been mention of Unicorns being a white goat with a horn projecting from it’s forehead. Leonard Lake – serial…
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There’s a mystery afoot in Essex. Don’t call for Scotland Yard. Nobody’s car has been spray-painted, yobs aren’t congregating around the village cross, the fields are free of flytipping.What has the people of Colchester talking is philanthropy. An anonymous donor has been stuffing hundreds of pounds through letterboxes, with shades of the returned convict Magwitch’s…
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The beautiful county of Yorkshire is the largest in Britain, and yet still possesses a strong and cohesive regional identity. Built on centuries of shared tradition, a characteristic body of folklore has thrived and endured well into the present day. Folklore of Yorkshire chronicles such beliefs throughout the whole county, identifying distinctive common themes, placing…
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Baltimore, Md., July 20. The statement that Captain E. J. Smith, commander of the ill-fated Titanic, was not drowned in the disaster, but was seen safe and sound Friday morning in Baltimore, was made to-day by a retired mariner, who claims to have been a shipmate of Captain Smith for more than 17 years. Read…
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Among the stories surrounding the sinking of the luxury liner Titanic in 1912 was a tale about an unlucky mummy whose curse was as responsible for that accident as that floating island of ice the tore open the ship’s hull. Though the story had been around for years, it spread rapidly in the wake of…
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The jackalope is an antlered species of rabbit, unfortunately rumored to be extinct, though occasional sightings of this rare creature continue to occur, suggesting that pockets of jackalope populations continue to persist in its native home, the American West. read more: The Jackalope.