Are Myths + Urban Legends True?

[INeedAnswersPLZ]

I believe that Urban Legends and Myths aren't necessarily true. I do believe however they can be as well, I think that these Myths and Urban Legends feed on 2 things. Belief and Fear. What if you are believe in things and are scared of doing it? Such as the Bloody Mary challenge. You go into a bathroom, lights off and repeat Bloody Mary x 3 times into the mirror. I believe that if you truly do see Bloody Mary then its because you believe in her and are scared of her, know what I mean? What do you think?

[papageorge1]

4 hours ago, INeedAnswersPLZ said:

I believe that Urban Legends and Myths aren't necessarily true. I do believe however they can be as well, I think that these Myths and Urban Legends feed on 2 things. Belief and Fear. What if you are believe in things and are scared of doing it? Such as the Bloody Mary challenge. You go into a bathroom, lights off and repeat Bloody Mary x 3 times into the mirror. I believe that if you truly do see Bloody Mary then its because you believe in her and are scared of her, know what I mean? What do you think?

I think you answered the question yourself in your first line: I believe that Urban Legends and Myths aren't necessarily true. I do believe however they can be as well

[XenoFish]

8 hours ago, INeedAnswersPLZ said:

I believe that Urban Legends and Myths aren't necessarily true. I do believe however they can be as well, I think that these Myths and Urban Legends feed on 2 things. Belief and Fear. What if you are believe in things and are scared of doing it? Such as the Bloody Mary challenge. You go into a bathroom, lights off and repeat Bloody Mary x 3 times into the mirror. I believe that if you truly do see Bloody Mary then its because you believe in her and are scared of her, know what I mean? What do you think?

An urban legend or a myth may start off with a true event, but as time passes the stories change into something that doesn't resemble the original tale. And yes a lot of urban legends are just campfire/sleepover tales.

[rashore]

Yep... some of the best UL's and myths have a bit of truth to them. I just caught an interesting series about that recently called "Myths & Monsters", I think there was a separate "Urban Legends" one too... really quite interesting. They go into how these tales developed and how they have shifted over time to keep in stride with the social climate. Sometimes the grain of truth is an actual grain- like a crime really happened, or someone did find some really big fossilized bones and that turns into ghosts and cryptid stories. Sometimes it's a thought grain- like the fear out of parents about lovers lanes spawning hookmen legends.

There are also a lot of legends that have no truth basis at all. Lots of ghost stories where the tragic event that started the story never happened. Hoaxes that get regurgitated. Stories made up to spook each other out around the campfire. And in the more current era of the web, folks making up campfire stories for entertainment sometimes turn into UL's now- a good example of that is slenderman.

With something like Bloody Mary.. I think there always has to be a belief factor, but not necessarily a fear factor. Some kids do it out of curiosity without the fear part too.

[XenoFish]

I might be wrong, but the bunny-man urban legend was based on a real event.

[rashore]

33 minutes ago, XenoFish said:

I might be wrong, but the bunny-man urban legend was based on a real event.

Yes he was. A couple random weirdo events that spawned a legend. Killer clowns got Gacy. Halloween and killer candy has some backbone- stuff like an old lady giving out boxes of rat poison and shoe polish and a couple events of personal poisonings at Halloween time making the killer candy an enduring legend. 

One of my favorite ghost trackings is a lore shift- there originally was a farmhouse and a family killed. But over time the house was torn down and a shopping area built... and the legend shifted to another farm down the road with changes to the legend from the original crime. The original true crime has been pretty much totally forgotten during the shifts down the road. The farm where the legend shifted to has been mostly torn down in the last couple years.

Other lore shifts I've noticed before.. The Great Chicago Fire is something a lot of people have heard about- less heard about is the Midwest Conflagration, the other massive fires in Wisconsin and Michigan that happened at the same time as Chicago. Some ghost legends that seem to spawn in Chicago seem to show up later in the other conflagration areas, possibly a result of news and tourist/family accounts spread out from the city. European settlers of the werewolf beliefs can practically be tracked by when that werewolf lore starts showing up in the midwest, and what forms it takes. One that I've been tinkering with for a while is mapping out some of the highway and byway legends of the Midwest, and the true crime backbone or not associated with the legends. Some of the Chicago Mafia associations with that are fascinating to see unfold out.

And then there are ones that just have nothing. A parallel pair of roads that sandwich in a forest/park area that have amazingly similar legends of kids dying on the tracks, though no such accident ever happened in the area. Phantom houses and other structures showing up where there was never any such structure there. Hell rides that no one seems to have accomplished because no one disappeared or came back with a story of hell. Burnt down asylums and schools that every last speck of their existence was supposedly removed from public records- but the legend lives on.

[Piney]

The Jersey Devil had similar origins to Slender Man. It was a parody written by Ben Franklin and was then reported as a real event in another magazine. Daniel Leeds was a Quaker mystic who Ben didn't like and was in competition with so his family was added to the story as a kick in the groin from Ben.

[XenoFish]

7 minutes ago, Piney said:

The Jersey Devil had similar origins to Slender Man. It was a parody written by Ben Franklin and was then reported as a real event in another magazine. Daniel Leeds was a Quaker mystic who Ben didn't like and was in competition with so his family was added to the story as a kick in the groin from Ben.

If people don't think memetics is a real thing. Slender man is a good example of it. How far an idea will go and transform from it's original material. 

Edited January 12, 2018 by XenoFish

[NightScreams]

54 minutes ago, XenoFish said:

If people don't think memetics is a real thing. Slender man is a good example of it. How far an idea will go and transform from it's original material. 

There was a couple of girls the believed in slender man so much that they committed murder. I don't recall the details though and didn't realize Slenderman story ever changed. I hope whoever came up with it, at least copyrighted it. The Boogyman has certainly changed a lot since I was a kid. I'm aware of a particular family that tells their children that Trump will take them in the night if they don't straighten up.

[rashore]

14 minutes ago, NightScreams said:

There was a couple of girls the believed in slender man so much that they committed murder. I don't recall the details though and didn't realize Slenderman story ever changed. I hope whoever came up with it, at least copyrighted it. The Boogyman has certainly changed a lot since I was a kid. I'm aware of a particular family that tells their children that Trump will take them in the night if they don't straighten up.

No, didn’t commit murder. Attempted murder. Small details like this mistake are part of what changes a UL entirely over time.... and nope, the original creepypasta author didn’t copyright it. 

[XenoFish]

People have a tendency to exaggerate a story. It's like saying an old house is haunted. This plays on the psyche's of some people. They visit, get spooked, start spreading rumors. Other people visit, they get spooked, and spread their rumors. Eventually you end up with a story about a murdered family and/or satanic rituals. 

[GlitterRose]

Did it as a kid.

No Bloody Mary showed up.

[GlitterRose]

Also tried light as a feather, stiff as a board.

Nothing.

[XenoFish]

That's because none of those things are real. 

[NightScreams]

On 1/11/2018 at 8:27 PM, rashore said:

No, didn’t commit murder. Attempted murder. Small details like this mistake are part of what changes a UL entirely over time.... and nope, the original creepypasta author didn’t copyright it. 

Ok, I looked it up,  stabbed 19 times, 1 mm away from death...close enough. And yes apparently Slenderman is copyrighted. 

"Slender Man's copyright is owned under a standard copyright license."

Edited January 14, 2018 by NightScreams

[rashore]

1 hour ago, NightScreams said:

Ok, I looked it up,  stabbed 19 times, 1 mm away from death...close enough.

No, not close enough. This is the difference between slenderman claiming a victim or not in future mutations of the story. The attackers haven't even both been sentenced yet for the crime and you're already mutating the slenderman legend here.
 

1 hour ago, NightScreams said:

And yes apparently Slenderman is copyrighted. 

"Slender Man's copyright is owned under a standard copyright license."

I thought the original author gave up the rights to creepypasta when he submitted the photoshop and story to the site- so the original author wouldn't have the copyright, creepypasta would. I take it you have a link that shows otherwise? If so, it would be lovely of you to produce it.

[Scholar4Truth]

Urban Legends do tend to be based off true events, however over time as the story is retold new things are added and embellished as it is passed on.

[I'mConvinced]

I would have thought a clue was to be found in the names.  While there may be nuggets of truth at the core those nuggets wouldn't fill a share box.

[Minimalists]

On 1/14/2018 at 4:34 PM, NightScreams said:

Ok, I looked it up,  stabbed 19 times, 1 mm away from death...close enough. And yes apparently Slenderman is copyrighted. 

"Slender Man's copyright is owned under a standard copyright license."

I was surprised when I looked this up....It started in 2009! Some user on Something Awful forums came up with this...I think this started out as meme project or something...I do know that Nick Redfern has recently came out with a new book on this.

[Kota]

In social anthropology we learnt that in cultures; myths are considered to be events that happened and legends are stories passed down usually having some moral lesson. I wonder if we could tie that into urban legends and myths. Some could totally be things that happened or based off a real event, some are mostly just the product of word of mouth and collective consciousness 

[Carlos Allende]

I like it when people suggest that cryptos briefly appear from another dimension, then vanish again, as though that's some big revelation. What? I didn't actually think that one day Bill Oddie or Chris Packham would go in a barn and discover Mothman and El Chupicabra playing cards.