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Why we tell each other urban legends
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Modern urban legends
Urban legends give people a way to focus and personify the anxieties that come from living in a modern city. It also creates a sense of community when sharing these tales.
Modern urban legends mix the normal and the supernatural, changing how we view our surroundings.
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Making sense of the city
People in 19th-century Britain used folk tales to adjust to the experience of city living. Folklore was continually updated. It expressed concerns about urban development, the threat of strangers, and a shrinking sense of community as people no longer knew one another.
In Victorian London, a tale was told about Spring-heeled Jack, a supposedly clawed, fire-breathing ghost that terrorised villages. The figure thrived in rumour. However, no person who had actually 'seen' the ghost could be found.
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Modern urban tales
- Iris folkloric monsters such as the banshee are still spreading in modern urban living. These stories act as a warning to help police the boundaries between safe and unsafe areas.
- In 21st-century Beijing, the city's night bus has become the focus of frightening stories about encounters with ghosts. Usually, an older, wise figure saves the rider by luring them off the bus, and then promptly disappears. The tale expresses the vulnerability of travelling the city at night.
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Old Vs New Stories
The stories in pop culture in the last century tend to be moralistic and have a clear demarcation of good and bad.
These stories have virtually the same structure of good guys fighting with...
Colour Vs Black and White
The old folktales didn't have a black-and-white narrative, and instead had nuanced characters with personality, and not necessarily morality.
In many old stories, the protagonist had a varied set of values, which were colorful and diverse.
Complex Vs Simple
The old complex storylines were not having a clear identification of what's good and what's bad. The reader had to figure out the details and the complexity which lead to endless discussions.
The modern tales provide a simplified 'colour by numbers' approach to understanding, with clear outlines as to who is the Hero with all the morals, and who is the bad guy who must be killed.
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Zombies Gaining Popularity
Zombies, a staple of pop culture horror, first started appearing in novels and pulp magazines in the 20s, finally debuting on celluloid in 1932 with the movie White Zombie, though many att...
The Origin Of The Zombie Folklore
The word ‘Zombie’ is derived from West African languages, with the Mitsogo language of Gabon describing them as ‘ndzumbi’, which means a corpse, to the Kongo language using the word ‘nzambi’ meaning the spirit of a dead person.
Pop culture and folklore from the Caribbean and Haiti seem to be the birthplaces for the concept of zombies that the American audiences crave so much.
Zombies From The Caribbean Region
- The Caribbean and its surrounding areas carried a large number of slaves, transporting them across the Atlantic, for making them work in farming. This created a mix of religions and infused many different traditions and practices like Catholicism, voodoo, Obeah and Santeria.
- Certain ‘bokors’ or witch-doctors in Martinique and Haiti created magic potions and used hypnotic spells to render victims dead, and then enslave or capture them, making them their personal slaves, The zombie, thus became a slave without any will or name, trapped forever in a living hell.
- The French Colony (later Haiti) where slaves were especially big in number and suffered the worst, witnessed a rebellion, and the rulers were overthrown in 1791. In 1915, when The US occupied Haiti, the native religion of Voodoo was spread even more. Stories of the vengeful dead coming out of the grave and chasing people became popular in pulp magazines of the 20s and 30s.
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The origins of Halloween
Halloween originated more than 2,000 years ago. Europe's Celtic people celebrated their New Year's Day on November 1.
On the eve - what we know as Halloween - spirits were believed...
Halloween costumes
According to the American Folklife Center, Celts often wore costumes to confuse spirits. Celts also wore masks or blackened their faces to impersonate dead ancestors.
An early form of trick-or-treating involved Celts, costumed as spirits, to have moved from house to house, exchanging food and drink for silly acts.
All Saint's Day
Samhain, the Celtic peoples New Year's Day, was changed by the seventh century Pope Boniface IV to All Saint's Day, or All Hallows' Day. Later it was name Halloween.
European immigrants brought Halloween to the United States, but it only became more known in the 1800s, when Irish-American immigration increased.