EXERCISE WORLDBUILDING Urban Legends

[Diana]

Bloody Mary, The Sandman, Light as a Feather, the Hooked man and the stalled out car! Amongst other spooky stories that get spread around, often with different details and retellings, are Urban Legends! Sometimes it's a story about the old abandoned house in town. Or it might be the story of a little girl that died in the local lake. Whatever the case, these stories are spread from generation to generation. Whether or not they are true is never relevant, the fact they exist can give any town or city in your setting some fantastic flavor content that can be used in passing conversation or even as a plot point.


Your exercise is to create your own Urban Legend!

Some Tips on creating an Urban Legend

• No one can pinpoint how this story started. The story often comes from a friend of a friend, a cousin, a random stranger detailing an event. Rarely are actual names of the people involved ever known, and if there are names they tend to be generic and unverifiable.
  
• The time of the event is often vague, with no clarity on how recent it was or exactly when it happened. Was it a few months ago? A decade ago? The time cannot be verified or proven,
  
• Urban legends are often centered around an area that is only famous or well known to the town locals.
  
• Rituals, special rules, and things you should or should not do are often involved.
  
• There is often just enough true parts of the story that makes it sound believable.
  
• Many urban legends have a hidden or not-so-subtle moral lesson.

 

[sele]

"ɢʀᴀʏ ᴘᴏsɪᴇ."
As presented by Jolene Lantry, a seasonal ghost tour guide.​

"Down this very road, back when it was only dirt and rutted by wagon wheels, began the legend of Gray Posie," Jo enthused to the small group following her Pine Knob ghost tour. She pointed down the street, inviting her guests to glance toward an arch of black, silhouetted trees. They hung shadows over a darkened stretch headed out from the downtown area. Some leaned, as if they might catch sight of something unnatural with the effort. In her other hand she held a single candle framed near to her sternum, adding a quavering wash of pale shadows across her neck.

"Can you smell the muddy earth, the decaying leaves? The air tasted just like this the night young Posie had to leave the dim lantern light that the inn kept out against what would have otherwise been all-encompassing darkness. Can you imagine that? Night solid to the edge of every door? Posie walked this way, where you walk now, down this road with only a candle in hand to light her way. The legend goes that she left to take a care package to an ailing relative outside of town. But! Once she left the safety of that inn's glow, she was never seen – alive – again." Jo paused to let the current weight of content sink in, and to let the tourists' minds fill in gaps with questions and their own curious fears and guesses.

Honestly, Jolene Lantry thrilled at the opportunity to tell tall tales and talk about strange mysteries. She'd always loved giving ghost tours back home in Deadwood, and the crowds had always been eager to participate there. Although her Pine Knob customers were fewer in number – hardly with the intense draw that a place like Deadwood had – she was still quite content with their attentive wonder. Whether it was one person or twenty who latched on to Jo's stories, she'd thrill at the interaction.

The night was crisp and tinged in a deep, brittle autumn decay; a whispery flurry accented the darkness in subtle white on the air. Winter threatened a place like Pine Knob with a grave frost like ghosts haunting only in one's peripheral – but so far, it hadn't yet fully materialized.

With a sense for how long to let a moment steep, Jo continued on. The group wouldn't walk out of town - this was their last stop for the night. But, the gathering could look down that old road and wonder, taking their questions and excited apprehension along with them after they all parted.

"Whatever happened to Gray Posie, it is anyone's guess. Some say old spirits disturbed by new settlers had taken her as a sacrifice for what had been taken from their lands. Some have said that she met the serial killer we mentioned earlier - the Pine Shadow Slayer. Others think it was merely a bear. You decide what you believe. But when you leave tonight, be wary if you see a small candle flicker in the darkness at the edge of town - you very well may cross paths with the spirit of Gray Posie. Answer her questions wrong, and you may never return to town again either!"

Jo blew her candle out, startling an older couple, who immediately broke into a cathartic, sheepish chuckling together.

"Thank you so much for joining the ghost tour tonight! If you enjoyed it, please consider leaving friendly ratings - and if you didn't, well, what ratings? We don't have anywhere for feedback!" It was cheesy, but it always made the group laugh a little at the end with her. Jo tipped her brown Stetson to the group, who clapped and began to dissipate. A few offered tips and thanks, which of course brightened Jo's spirits. She was already cheery for having been able to give a ghost tour, so the gratitude just gave her an extra boost.

Eventually, the woman dressed in a green pioneer dress and cowboy hat stood alone on that dark road. She wasn't afraid of her own stories - most of which she embellished anyway. There had been a woman named Posie who showed up in an old newspaper clipping who'd disappeared one night so many decades ago, and Jo had studied all that she could about her to share to her customers. Did a Gray Posie actually exist?

Jo liked to think that a version of all her stories were 'real' after people believed in her tales - no matter how much she pulled from myths, history, or made up.

She turned away from town and faced the night road ahead. Jo knew the route - she'd go for a ways, then break off toward the pack house. The woods felt familiar enough by now, and night didn't frighten her. She was the daughter and friend of wolves - she felt safe enough knowing that some of that pack might be out that very night. Even if none of them were, the idea was armor against any chill of concern seeping in.

Jo began to hum - only occasionally vibrating sounds into life now and then. Sometimes she paused around a thought, then resumed.

"When death'll close my eyelids, and my race on earth is run, will you miss me when I'm gone?" she tiptoed along ironically cheery notes to morbid Woody Guthrie lyrics. She always liked that old wanderer's songs from a bygone era. She hummed along over what the next lyrics should have been - a repetition of will you miss me, miss me, miss me.

In her peripheral, she caught an unexpected, small flicker and glanced reactively. When her green gaze set off through the dark silhouettes of the forest, nothing was there. Must have been a little bit of the town's lights still in her adjusting eyes, she figured. Jo continued onward, and resumed the humming Guthrie.

A rustling, subtle as timid awkwardness, lured her glance to the right again.

"Dutch?" She chanced, because sometimes he wandered up to town for coffee at Tilly's at odd hours. No one answered.

"Kate?" She chanced next. Nothing. If it'd been either of them, she didn't think they'd play pranks on her walking home alone like that. If anything, they were the kind to offer a bit of company instead.

Just a little bit of an uncertain chill slipped into her thoughts, though she didn't hold any supernatural possibilities for long - she wasn't gonna give any of her stories a chance at life with her right now.

Will....you..........miss me................miss me............?

The leaves rustled something that could have seemed like a weak, rasping whisper from amid the trees - beyond her ability to see. The dang song was on her mind and she figured she'd just imprinted the lyrics on the sound.

"Don't be silly," Jo scolded herself.

But that answer wasn't kind. Jo didn't make it back to the pack house that night.
x
x

 

[Miss Wendighost]

(Very late to the party, but better late than never)

The Wailing Mother of Falcon Haven

A Retelling by Diana Moore, Host of Ghostfinders Podcast

In my travels around small town USA, I have come across many tales of restless wraiths and spiteful specters. Whether they be a bride that still waits for her beloved or a victim of the local axe murderer that seeks justice, there isn't no tale that I haven't heard. It is here that I tell of a story I heard while traveling through the small, innocuous town of Falcon Haven, Massachusetts.

I was stopping for a coffee and to get some work done at a place known as the Misty Spring Cafe. It was a cozy little place, one where a college student could get some work done instead of the "get your stuff and get out" attitude of Starbucks. It was in this cafe that I found a patron willing to share another tale. They were an older man, who seemed to take interest in my work and offered me this story.

According to him, sometime from the mid 1940s to the early 1960s, a mother was driving home from a Christmas Eve service with her children. Supposedly, a mixture of a drunk driver and a patch of black ice had resulted in a horrific crash. While the mother survived with some injuries, the children were killed on impact. Local legend says that she was never the same after she left the hospital, often returning to the sight of the accident to pay her respects to her lost children. One day, it was said that the grief became too overbearing and she took her own life at the sight of the accident on Christmas Eve.

Since that day, people have reported strange activity on the road, espically around the memorial set up for the mother and her children. Such reports consist of a vanishing hitchhiker to strange interference on car radios. A common report, however, is heartbreaking wails and weeping from the mother searching for her lost children. Supposedly, there is a version of the tale states that if she asks you where her children are, you must either say yes or say that you know somebody who could help. If you say no, there are a variety of consequences from a year of misfortune to her spirit following you home and even death. In regards to the version where she kills you if you say you don't know, the manner of death is equally as variable from breaking your body in a way that would resemble a car accident to hanging you on a tree.

Whatever happened on that road, I hope that she eventually finds peace.