In a daring act, facing frightful peril, Mark Twain exploited a legend to launch his onstage comic career. With his future as a lecturer on a knife’s edge, Twain decided to open with a worn-out narrative that had seen better days. A disgruntled audience nearly drove him from the stage … until they understood his brilliant manipulation of their own folklore.
Folklore changes and evolves with the peoples and their societies. It’s not rigid, it’s not concrete. As time passes, new characters emerge and others get their stories and features improved. Some may also disappear. This character (or monster!) I talk about in this post is quite modern – and scares many people, just by being so. Let’s meet A Loira do Banheiro (The Fair-haired Lady from the Toilet).
Deep in the heart of London, hidden away behind a protective grille, is a stone thousands of people pass by every day without even knowing it’s there. And it could well be the key to keeping the country safe…
Relentlessly sunny and known for a love of trend over tradition, Los Angeles is an unlikely home to a new incarnation of the old Alpine devil. It helps, perhaps, that make-believe is serious business in my town, and that it’s filled with creative people prone to see in an old tradition of folk Catholicism a revolutionary way to shake up the holidays.
In North America, legends of haunted places often claim they have been built on an “Indian burial ground.” Indigenous burial ground urban legends are so widely shared they’ve become a part of popular culture. Writers used them repeatedly as a literary device in horror until they became a comedic cliché and eventually a meme.
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