MYTH-MANIA

Spark Your Curiosity With 10 American Folk Stories and Urban Myths

Image: Michael Herren

Delve into the mysterious realm of American folklore and urban mythology, where reality blurs the lines with the supernatural. These captivating tales of mystery, passed down through generations, are now part of the very fabric of American culture.

From strange creatures of the forest to all kinds of unexplained phenomena, here are 10 riveting stories of the unknown that are as American as apple pie.

Image: Henry Lai

Location: Point Pleasant, West Virginia

The legend of the Mothman first took flight in the 1960s, in the quiet town of Point Pleasant. Witnesses reported encounters with a winged humanoid with glowing red eyes that induced a sort of hypnotic effect on onlookers. The most infamous sighting preceded the collapse of the Silver Bridge in 1967, leading locals to consider his appearances a bad omen.

While today most agree that the legend likely originated from sightings of out-of-migration sandhill cranes, for many the Mothman remains an enigma. Was it an evil creature or a guardian spirit that wanted to warn of impending tragedy?

Image: Timothy Dykes

Location: Pine Barrens, New Jersey

Legend has it that this supernatural creature originated in 1735 from a resident of the Pine Barrens called Jane Leeds, better known as "Mother Leeds." After giving birth to twelve healthy children, Mother Leeds' cursed 13th child was born with bat-like wings, hooves, a forked tail, and a devilish visage. But before anyone could recover from their shock, the devil child escaped, flying up the chimney and disappearing into the dense forest.

There are many versions of the tale, retold many times through the centuries, but what’s sure is that the Jersey Devil is now a permanent resident of both the Pine Barrens and New Jerseyans’ minds.

Image: Will

Location: Anywhere in the States

An urban legend so popular that there are more versions of it than anyone could remember, the Vanishing Hitchhiker’s Tale has hitchhiked through the whole country, from mouth to mouth. However, all versions agree on the following: Travelers pick up a hitchhiker who mysteriously disappears during the journey. In most cases, the ghostly hitchhiker leaves behind a personal item - later revealed to be from a deceased person - as a chilling reminder of their spectral presence.

Image: Markus Spiske

Location: Sleepy Hollow, New York

Washington Irving's timeless tale introduced the infamous Headless Horseman in the New York village of Sleepy Hollow. The ghostly figure, believed to be a decapitated Hessian soldier, roams the countryside seeking his lost head. The legend has inspired countless adaptations and remains a Halloween staple. Interestingly, Irving was also responsible for the popular story of Rip Van Winkle, a man who falls asleep for twenty years in the Catskill Mountains after being tricked by a group of mysterious Dutchmen.

Image: Robert Gourley

Location: Fairfax County, Virginia

Originating from two real incidents in Northern Virginia in 1970, the Bunny Man legend has taken a life of its own, becoming an urban myth throughout neighboring states. While there are many variations to the tale, most involve an escaped mental patient donning a bunny costume and wielding a hatchet, terrorizing anyone who has the misfortune of crossing paths with him.

The Fairfax County Police actually opened an investigation into the reported incidents, but the case was eventually closed for lack of evidence.

Image: Peter Neumann

Location: Chicago, Illinois

For almost a century, the Chicago Cubs MLB team endured a purported curse, allegedly stemming from the mistreatment of William Sianis, the owner of a local tavern called Billy Goat. Faithful to his business’ name, Sianis brought his pet goat Murphy to one of the games of the 1945 World Series at Wrigley Field. When the pair were asked to leave the stadium, he got enraged and declared, "Them Cubs, they ain't gonna win no more."

According to fans and believers, the tavern owner’s curse caused the team's prolonged championship drought, which was finally broken in 2016, after 71 years.

Image: Jon Sailer

Location: Pacific Northwest

In the vast wilderness of the Pacific Northwest, the elusive Bigfoot, also known as Sasquatch (an anglicized version of sasq'ets, meaning "hairy man" in the Halkomelem language), has been the subject of countless sightings. Bigfoot is usually described as a very large and bipedal ape-like creature covered in dense dark-brown hair.

Some Bigfoot believers attribute the reports to the survival of a relict population of the extinct southeast Asian ape species Gigantopithecus blacki, an animal of very large proportions certainly compatible with the sightings.

While scientists and skeptics dismiss these encounters as mostly hoaxes or misidentifications of known animals (particularly black bears), the allure of discovering this giant and mysterious creature persists, with dedicated enthusiasts exploring remote areas in search of conclusive evidence.

Image: Steinar Engeland

Location: Greenbrier County, West Virginia

In 19th-century West Virginia, Elva Zona Heaster’s testimony from beyond the grave played a pivotal role in solving her own murder. Elva's mother claimed her daughter's ghost revealed the truth about her suspicious death, leading authorities to reopen her case. Although it is unlikely prosecutors believed the ghost story, there was enough doubt about the case to justify a new inquiry. After reexamining the evidence, unmistakable signs of violence were found on her body, leading to the conviction of the main suspect, her own husband.

A unique blend of ghost story and true crime, the story of the Greenbrier Ghost remains forever etched in the memory of West Virginians.

Image: IQRemix from Canada, CC BY 2.0

Location: Anywhere with an Internet connection

A recent addition to the long-winded bestiary of urban mythology, the Slender Man is a faceless, extremely tall entity that stalks and traumatizes children. Born from internet forums and "creepypasta" tales (meaning viral spooky stories that are copy and pasted - and often enriched in a collaborative fashion by anonymous Internet users), this modern myth is influenced by the writings of various horror authors, including H. P. Lovecraft and Stephen King.

Image: Oliver Pacas

Location: Lincoln County, Nevada

Hidden in the Nevada desert, Area 51 is a highly classified United States Air Force facility within the Nevada Test and Training Range. The secrecy and isolation of the facility have fueled conspiracy theories and urban myths surrounding extraterrestrial life and government secrets for decades. Many conspiracy theories claim that the base hides evidence or remains of crashed UFOs, weather control devices, and even time travel technology.

Ironically, the rumors may have helped to maintain the secrecy over Area 51’s actual operations, mainly related to the testing of classified aircraft prototypes.

Language in motion

From Nerd to Robot: 10 words coined by famous writers

Image: Ghinzo

As masters of language, writers sometimes find that their imagination and creativity go far beyond the vocabulary the world has to offer. In order to put their ideas into writing, they have to create new words that eventually become part of the dictionary. Here are 10 terms and expressions used in modern language that you probably didn’t know were invented by famous writers.

Image: Vika_Glitter

Dr. Seuss’ talent for telling fantastic stories through rhymes is well known. But very few people know that the creator of The Grinch and The Cat in the Hat was also responsible for the existence of the word "nerd."

In his 1950 book, If I Ran the Zoo, a little boy daydreams about what kind of animals he would have if he were in charge of a hypothetical zoo: "a Nerkle, a Nerd and a Seersucker". Although the term described an imaginary being -and the exact origin of a slang word can never be certain- it’s believed it was later adopted by students to refer to anyone with superior intelligence but not many social skills.

Image: Pixabay

Nowadays, freelance work is very widespread, especially among young people. But did you know that the word "freelancer" originated in the 19th century? The term first appeared in the historical novel Ivanhoe by Scottish novelist, poet, and historian Sir Walter Scott.

In the book, published in 1819 but set in England in the Middle Ages, Scott refers to mercenaries free of all allegiance who offer their services to anyone willing to pay them to fight for any nation. Thus, from the mixture of the words "free" and "lancers" came the term that today is given to those who work independently rather than on a regular salary basis.

Image: John Martin, Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons

Merriam-Webster Dictionary defines the word "pandemonium" as a "wild uproar" or "a chaotic situation". The origin of this word dates back to the 17th century. In 1667, English poet John Milton first used the term to name the capital of hell, home of the main character of his epic poem Paradise Lost.

"Pandemonium" is a combination of the Greek prefix pan-, which means "all", and the Late Latin daemonium, meaning "evil spirit". Although today we no longer use the term to refer to the actual location of Satan and the fallen angels, the word continues to describe an infernal place or situation.

Image: Shahadat Rahman

Nowadays, there is no doubt that the word "cyberspace" refers to the online world of computer networks. While it may seem that the term has been in our language forever, it was actually first used by American-Canadian speculative fiction writer William Ford Gibson in the 1982 short story Burning Chrome.

Two years later, the author expanded the concept in his novel Neuromancer to describe a fictitious computer network containing vast amounts of information that could be exploited for wealth and power. Ring a bell? "Cyberspace" has since become a widely used word in many languages.

Image: Priscilla Du Preez 🇨🇦

While the feeling of being bored must have existed since ancient times, the word for it was not put into writing until the mid-19th century. According to the Oxford English Dictionary, the first written record of the word "boredom" appears in Charles Dickens' 1852 novel Bleak House.

However, some historians have found antecedents that predate Dickens use of the term. Lord Byron used "bores" and "bored" in his 1823 epic poem Don Juan. And a few years later, Herman Melville used other variations of the term, like "bore" and "bored to death". While we can’t be sure who wrote the word first, its literary origin is undeniable.

Image: McGill Library

"Serendipity" is known as a fortuitous and unforeseen finding or discovery, something that happened by chance but still has value. This term was coined in 1754 by British writer Horace Walpole. It derives from a traditional Persian story in which the princes of Serendip turn to chance to find the solution to their problems.

In this case, we can be absolutely sure that "serendipity" is a Walpole creation. The author himself explains how he conceived the term in one of the countless letters he wrote throughout his life. In those letters, we can find evidence that he invented at least 200 words, although most of them aren’t used in modern everyday language.

Image: Eric Krull

In 1920, when he was writing his next work, Czech playwright Karel Čapek desperately needed an original word that could define human-like machines created by a company to fulfill the hard tasks that people no longer wanted to do.

The first name that came to Čapek’s mind was "labori", from the Latin labor, meaning "work". However, his brother Josef was not very convinced and suggested "roboti", inspired by the Czech word robota, meaning "servitude" or "hard work." In 1922, the term "robot" made its way into our language when the play R.U.R. was translated into English.

Image: WikiImages

Well, maybe he didn’t invent it, but we have Mark Twain to thank for first putting in writing the term "hard-boiled" in relation to human character. As a writer of local color, Twain often used colloquialisms and regionalisms that he heard from other people and, by writing them down, made them familiar to the entire population.

In this sense, while the expression was probably known in some circles, the father of American literature was the first to use it as an adjective meaning "emotionally hardened, devoid of sentimentality".

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Although it comes from ancient Greek, the word "utopia" in its current sense was first used in 1516. Inspired by the New World, English philosopher and author Sir Thomas More imagined a fictional island society where everything worked in harmony.

"Utopia" literally translates as "no place", coming from the Greek οὐ ("not") and τόπος ("place"). The term popularized by More became so widespread that, over time, its meaning changed and is now used not only to refer to a specific place but to describe perfect scenarios or thoughts that are hard to attain.

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One of the most important pieces of English literature is also responsible for the name of a popular social network. We’re talking about The Canterbury Tales, a collection of 24 stories written by Geoffrey Chaucer in the 14th century.

In one of the tales, the English poet coined the onomatopoeia "twitter" to refer to the soft singing of a caged bird crying out for freedom. The neologism was later included by the Oxford Dictionary as a "short burst of inconsequential information". Fast forward to the 21st century, and American Internet entrepreneur Jack Dorsey uses the term to refer to the short, frequent posts on his now-famous platform. That also explains why Twitter’s logo was a bird!