Stories have existed since the beginning of time. Knowledge and wisdom was originally passed on from generation to generation through stories, long before writing took place. Let’s face it, on those dark winter nights there was no other entertainment, and family or clan would sit around the fire hearing the storyteller speak.
There are many words to describe stories: fables, tales, legend, history, rumor, folklore, and many more. Today we add another to the list: urban legends.
What exactly is an urban legend? It’s a more modern or contemporary term, used to describe tales that sound too incredible to be true. In fact, an urban legend is not known for its facts or fiction, but as a story that originates usually from some event, and is passed on, preserved in time even if it is not exactly true to its origin. These tales are usually scary, but we do love a good scary story!
What are some of the great urban legends? Remember the missing kidney, the story of the man who woke up in a bathtub of icy water, only to find an incision in his side where his kidney had been stolen.
The term “urban legend” has been around for a while, but it began its journey into popularity with the book, The Vanishing Hitchhiker: American Urban Legends & Their Meanings, published back in 1981, which is by the way a very good book.
Where do urban legend’s begin? They can start intentionally, a hoax meant to fool us into believing something that is far from the truth or never happened. The most popular has to be The Bricklayer.
Urban Legends: we live in a world filled with creative individuals, and given a little too much free time and boredom we’ve seen a whole lot of stories circulating around. Whether they are truth or not our urban legends are with no doubt very entertaining.
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Too Good to Be True: The Colossal Book of Urban Legends :: Amazon Have you heard the one about the new computer owner who mistook the CD-ROM player for a cup holder? Or the woman who thought her brains were |
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Urban Legends: A Collection of International Tall Tales and Terrors :: Amazon Don't get in that car without looking in the back seat! Everyone has heard the story about such-and-such, and while it sounds impossible, so |
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Be Afraid, Be Very Afraid: The Book of Scary Urban Legends :: Amazon An anthology of the most chilling urban legends of all time collected by the maestro himself. Urban legends are those strange, but seemingly |
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Creepy Urban Legends (Edge Books) :: Amazon Did you hear about the babysitter who received threatening phone calls from inside the house? What about the hitchhiker who vanished without |
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