3 Ways Urban Legends Make Your Worldbuilding Better 

What's an urban legend from YOUR hometown? Create your own urban legends and myths using Campfire! They're literally built for this sort of thing :D www.campfirewriting.com/write/for-novelists?RU-vid&HFM_Q4_23

I like the way _Gravity Falls_ deals with urban legends, where sometimes they're true, sometimes they're not, and sometimes there are *things* out there that aren't written down.

Fantasy worlds with actual monsters tend to overlook this since the cryptids themselves are typically creatures or monsters to begin with

I actually created an "urban legend" in my childhood. Our old house was quite loud - floors creaking even when no one is walking, wind slamming doors shut, a cat that sometimes walked as loudly as an adult human (especially on the stairs), etc. So, when my two friends were staying over and got spooked by the noises, I just casually said "oh, that's my dead aunt". I never had any aunts - dead or alive - so it wasn't a specific person, just an unidentified aunt slamming the doors shut and making the calling boards creak. Somehow it stuck and now we say "oh, that's just the aunt" to calm ourselves when we hear an unidentified noise in the house.

I'm from Costa Rica. My favorite legends are about the duendes, little people who look like very small children and live in coffee plantations or woodland close to human dwellings. They can be helpful, like household spirits, or mischievous. They are said to lure children to play with them and get them lost. There is also El Cadejos (Kahdeyhos), a huge phantom black dog with goat hooves, that haunts men who walk at night in lonely roads. He was once a man, cursed due to his wild ways, and he must make sure other men keep to the good path by scaring them out of their socks. He never appears to women.

not sure this counts as an urban legend: but my family is from East Germany and my mother always told me, that you cannot do any laundry (especially big sheets or table cloth) between christmas and epiphany (january 6th). She never told me why, because this was just, what her grandmother had told her. years later i found out that this myth is acutally connected to the wild hunt, that chases through the sky in the time between the years (Rauhnächte in German). and when you hang out the laundry to dry, these spirits might get caught in the sheets, get upset and curse you for the next year. When I told my mother about it, she had no idea, that this was the origin of the laundy-ban - this part of the story had just been lost in time

The urban legends can vary through geography too. In my country (Belgium), we have tales of werewolves, ghosts and witches. But they're mostly pretty innocent, playful even. Werewolves jump on your back and make you carry them until you're tired. Ghosts are just sinners who need to do a task (and the living can help them). Witches are mostly talking cats, or flying women. There are two creatures that kill you, especially children. The necker (waterdemon with a LOT of variations), drags you down under water till you drown. And the Hopdevils (demons of the crops, with a some of variations as well), kidnaps or eat children. Why are these so malicious? First of all, they're ment to scare children. But, even as the country is full of towns and cities now, it used to be a place with a lot of rivers and swamps where most inhabitants were farmers. Water and crops were part of their daily life. And drowning and afternoon heat killed people. It makes sense their legends reflect that.

Never once had I considered to separate my fantasy monsters into existing and legend. The idea between “Be careful, there is a hideous monster dragon that lives in that lake. “ to instead “Legend of so an so serpent has made our people wary of those waters for centuries” leaves for sure a bigger impact to the character and the reader. The worldbuilding being important for sure, but the tension from the “unsure” is fantastic! Thanks Tim!!

In my hometown, there's an old legend about a lizard that became so so large that it started to devour the sheep and other animals, the town's people were scared and couldn't find any solution, except a famous thief, who forged a plan to create false sheep filled with dynamite inside of them (in some retellings he fed real sheep dynamite), he then waited for the lizard to eat the sheep and the thief beats the beast by making it explode. The legend is called 'El lagarto de la magdalena'.

If you think about it, innaccurate myths and legends in a world with magic would be much like science misinformation in our world Edit: one variation of this I haven't seen as often is when the accepted idea about the magic system, which are in-universe functional and useful in the same way newtonian physics is useful on earth, but actually an incomplete picture of what is going on, the way newtonion physics breaks down if you go too big and relativity breaks down if you go too small. But that's something I'm trying to do in my fantasy, where the magic system's official explanation proves to be flawed and limited, and discovering more about it expands the power sets of the characters in a way that is believable. They even discover a subset of magic that is entirely focused on helping the user understand magic, but which was too meta to be easily discovered on its own

I think is interesting how there’s this “trope” in American urban legends to have a place cursed/haunted bc “it was built on a Native American burial ground” or something similar. It almost feels like subliminal guilt in the collective consciousness. Like even the early pioneers were a little creeped out by the death and destruction required for them to occupy someone else’s land

I actually wrote one of those recently for my book. A story about a tribesman who lured his wife into a forest protected by wood elves, killing her and blaming the elves for his crime. He ends up getting punished twice, first by the elves and later by his tribe-in very different ways and for entirely different reasons. Its main purpose was to explain why the tribes treat the local forest the way they do, but there's also a lot of covert world building sprinkled in, like the fundemental differences between how humans and elves think and what they value as well as local customs. Its a secondary avenue of world building I love to include here and there

My hometown doesn’t have many stories attached to it anymore (it’s mostly become a suburb of a much larger city in more recent years), but the town is cut in two by a valley called the Hungry Hollow. It’s very marshy and forested with a creek and some trails going through it. That’s about all the legends we still have talk about. Anyways, the Hollow is generally treated as if it were an entity itself. During the day it’s perfectly content and even welcoming to people. However, come night if you live on one of the streets near the Hungry Hollow you lock your doors. If you cross the bridge, either do so with someone else around or in a car, and do not stop. Bring any and all pets inside. Even ignoring the folklore, pets do go missing around it. Do not walk it’s trails. The Hollow is much less friendly to the town at night. (Probably stems from the shenanigans of the local coyote population that lives in the Hollow and can’t be dislodged)

"When they tell them, Why they tell them, Who they tell them to. How they rationalize them, Weaponize them, Who listens to them, too." Poetry on point

My grandmother told me that when she was little girl in her home she was tortured by a monster called "Dydko Straw Legs". This monster looked like a hybrid of a human and a spider. He had a large head and moved on many legs made of straw. Dydko kidnapped children who were walking alone in suburban forests. My grandmother lived on the outskirts of Warsaw throughout WW II. My great-grandparents told her these stories so that she wouldn't go into the forest to look for food. Meeting soldiers or stepping on a mine meant death.

Did you do this on purpose? "When they tell them why they tell them who they tell them to. How they rationalize them weaponize them who listens to them, too." This is a melodic rhyme!

My grandmama is from Appalachia and she taught me that those mountains are old and we don't know what's hiding in them. So we were taught a few basic rules to stay safe from the ancient cryptids. Don't go out at night. If you do, stay on the path. If you think you heard your name, no you didn't. If you think you heard a baby crying or a woman wailing, no you didn't. Go out in a group. And if you do encounter something, don't panic and always back away slowly. Other things I'm sure I've forgotten

The black ambulance kinda unlocked a childhood memory for me. I'm from Poland, so central/eastern Europe, depends who's asking. In my childhood town, there were tales of a black car, but it wasn't an ambulance, it was a black Volga. Details vary depending on who's telling the story. The version I knew was that an old, fancy looking black Volga with white wheels is a ghost car, that shows up randomly and whoever is in it, is kidnapping children, but first asks them what's the time or how to get to a certain spot, to get them to come closer. Then, the doors open, the kid is pulled inside, and the car speeds away or even disappears into thin air. As a young adult, from friends from other cities, I've heard that in some versions the car is driven by Satan, that asks people about time and if you answer, he declares you'll die tomorrow at this time, and if you don't, he kills you on the spot. Some also said, that you can survive if you answer "It's God's hour". Other versions had the trafficking and organ theft element to them, because some said that the children are kidnapped to have their blood drain to treat rich Germans' leukemia. Another local tale, which isn't terribly specific, is of the ghost of White Lady, since my town has an XIII c. castle, that's extremely weathered and ruined, basically only outer walls are still left, which is a perfect background for the ghost story. The White Lady is supposed to be a woman, maybe a princess, that was engaged to someone for political reasons, but was in love with another. She committed suicide by jumping from the castle's window, either on the day of her wedding or when she heard her lover was killed in battle [the version probably depends on whether or not the person telling it knew, that white wasn't a wedding color back then] and you can still see her sometimes in said windows. This one is a local version of a common myth, but it's kinda special to me, because when I was on a field trip there in primary school, I decided to try and make other kids believe she's real, as many of them as possible and it worked so well, that not only many kids said they saw her, but at some point I psyched myself so much, that when I was taking a picture, I could have sworn I saw some white figure for a second on the walls - and I don't even believe in ghost, nor I ever did, so there's power of suggestion for you. Another local tale is related to Pan Twardowski, a mythical nobleman from Polish folklore, that was a powerful warlock that sold his soul to the Devil for magical powers. Where I come from, in medieval times, there used to be silver mines, but they were flooded, so, according to the legends, that silver was in fact all the riches that Pan Twardowski told the Devil to get from our region. The Devil was also told to hide the treasures for Pan Twardowski, so he covered it with sand and considered it done. [Un]fortunately, local people found out about the silver and started digging and mining the area. The Devil was trying to stop them with different tricks, but people would still always come back to the mines, so he decided to redirect a local river, called Baba [which roughly translated to hen/old woman/hag] and flood the mines. This made the mines completely unaccessible and unusable, but also costed Pan Twardowski his treasure. And from that tale we have the saying "Gdzie diabeł nie może, tam babę pośle", meaning "Where the devil can't go, he sends a woman".

In a D&D campaign I ran (which was a horror game set in an active but monster-overrun asylum), there was a legend among the asylum patients of a man who fell into a grain thresher and had most of his skin cut off, but he survived and got some of his skin sewn back on. After he (somewhat) recovered, he began killing people he blamed for his accident, causing him to be committed to the asylum, where he either eventually died, or remains locked up in isolation somewhere. This story is completely untrue. Or, at least it was until some unrelated stuff happened that made the asylum get infused with energies from the Dimension of Dreams, causing some dream mists to coalesce and form a dangerous imitation of this previously imaginary creature.

There's an older MMO called Secret World Legends which uses a lot of smaller-scale urban myths and legends as part of its urban fantasy worldbuilding. Sure you have big massive threats like world-ending Cthulhu-esque star-eating monsters, but just as often there's creepy moth monsters and werewolves and ghosts and other local-scale creatures roaming about the world that are just as much of a threat.

Haven't watched the whole video yet, so sorry if I talk about something already covered. If you're struggling to come up with these legends for your own story, I like to imagine I am not the creator coming up with these but an ordinary civilian of this world. I forget everything else and put myself in the shoes of people struggling to survive harsh lands, trying their best to provide for their families- scared of what may be lurking just out of sight... If you were them, how would you interpret the vast, scary world around you into a singular defining monster? Maybe a hunter was out looking for anything to make a decent meal, and came across a creature so terrifying he ran for miles all the way back to his village? Too scared to ever look back. Word spread fast, and soon people were barricading their doors at night, patrols sent out to hunt the beast, and young curious folk went off to find it despite their worried families warnings. You see these creatures aren't just fun to make, but also say a lot about the people inside the world too. What do they do in retaliation to such myths? Do they run? Fight back? Or do they just laugh it off as the make-believe stories of a child. It doesn't even have to be scary, it can be anything to show the minds of the people living there.

There was an urban legend once that this crazy cat lady had lots of cats in the neighborhood. One day her grandson started selling these delicious dumplings that everyone loved but her cats were mysteriously disappearing. Supposedly the cats were moved out of the house because of an incoming storm, and the area was prone to flooding, and they didn't want to have to worry about the cats getting caught up in the deluge. After the house got flooded, the grandson stopped selling dumplings because they had to repair the house from the damage. Then one day he started selling them again, but they tasted different but were still tasty. However now the old lady and all her cats were gone, and one day the grandson disappeared as well.

I live in the capital of Nova Scotia in Canada and the city's covered in old war forts and old historical buildings that keep being renovated to stay looking the way they did when they were first built. A lot of the houses are these huge Victorian mansions that have essentially becomes shared apartments for students now. The city's myths revolve around ghosts, more than anything- some examples being a priest's face forever stuck in a window because he died from glass shattering inward during the Halifax explosion; another being about a soldier's wife who appears in a war fort because her husband was a soldier and married before he died just a few months later. There's also a myth about tunnels running under Citadel Hill and into the harbour, but most people know this is false. Halifax does a lot of ghost tours, so I hear about these a lot. When it comes to the Halifax Explosion, we also have so many stories that they've all turned into myths themselves- myths about normal people trying to save each other. You kind of can't go anywhere without hearing at least one story.

One great example of an urban legend having a great impact on a huge fantasy world is The a puppet master episode of atla! This one random town won’t journey through the woods because people disappear during the full moon. One crazy old man has a first hand testimony and never got over it. Love it!

At the university I went to. In the science building. There are rumors of a haunted elevator. Back in the 50s, the school used to house cadavers for the med students to practice on. This was up on the 6th floor in a room you could access through the elevator. The front door in the elevator led to the main hall, and the back door led to the room where the bodies were stored. When they moved the med school to a different building, the cadaver room was turned into a normal storage room and was locked up. But sometimes, students in the building late at night will report that when they went to use the elevator. It wouldn't take them where they wanted to go. All the lights would flash, and the button for the 6th floor would be pressed. The elevator goes there, and the back door opens. Revealing the padlocked door leading to the storage room that used to house the dead. I've been on one of these rides.

In my home town there's a vacant lot on a hill where the biggest house in the neighborhood once stood. People called it the "big house on the hill." It was built by the village founder as a residence for his large family, but then it burned down a few years ago and the village tore down the remains as they were seen as an "eyesore." I always imagined going to explore the burned wreckage, but I wonder how many secrets were lost when it was demolished, and how many remain...

Hey your videos and OSPs trope series have been very instrumental in helping me write and build my own stories. I'm getting my sister your Catalogue for the End of Humanity for Christmas and am very excited to read it as well

Me: *does literally anything* HFM: *releases video* Me: “whelp gotta put everything aside again”

Great video! I saw Dracula in the thumbnail and I was thinking that I would love to see your analysis about Castlevania's subversion of themes. For example vampires should be the monsters in that world but actually humans do things just as bad or often worse than the vampires. The Church itself speaks of God while commiting terrible crimes. Also it's a great show to talk about imperfect characters that we end up rooting for

Love the opening

I'm from Illinois and we have not so much a myth but a story that all the adults tell kids about "corn demons" that live in the fields. It's meant to keep kids from going into the fields and getting lost/hurt (especially during harvest season, you do NOT want to get caught in a combine)

The only urban legend i can think pf in my area is from high school, where somebody found either an empty room or a pit that was accessed through a locker, and a mythology about the fight club that used to be in it sprang up out of nowhere. It probably helped that it was the first year of that student body being moved to a different, old building, so there eas nobody around to explain what was going on with strange structures. There was also the JROTC shootinv range in the basement, which was only used as a tornado shelter and still had old posters in it

In my city, Downey, CA, there is an abandoned neighborhood asylum that is fenced off. Some say the place was abandoned by patients and personnel, as if in a trance, simultaneously. Others say one of the inmates locked the doors and started a fire and you can still hear them pounding the doors at night. Others say they were spooked by something that the staff left even the papers, and left the patients at the mercy of the Spook. This has made many teenagers, paranormal seekers, and thrill junkies to jump he fences and explore the fenced plot of of land, but cops patrol the asylum.

In my fantasy world, nearly everly single legend or myth has a basis in reality. They are all real.

Good video. For those who want to learn more on this topic, the RU-vid channel Storied has a series called Monstrum where they cover creatures from folklore and analyze them. A great series. Also, nice Castlevania thumbnail. A good show and great game series.

In Mexico perhaps the most famous is La Llorona. The story says she was a woman who drowned and killed her own children, and after feeling regret she killed herself. Now her ghost wanders near bodies of water and cities, crying out loud "Ay mis hijos", (Ay my children). A cry so eerie and haunting. And the legend says if you hear the cry very loudly and close, is because she is far away, but if you hear the cry far away, she is very close.

I'm from Santiago (Chile), and my country (much like the entirety of Latinoamerica) is filled with legends of all kinds, and, like the landscape, vary a lot from region to region, though some are shared throughout. Probably the biggest, which exists from Mexico to Patagonia, is La Llorona (literally The Cryer), the mourning spirit of woman who's children drowned (or in some versions she drowned in a rage and then repented) now looking, always crying, for other kids near water (why also depends on the version). In my country, aside from el cuero, we have from fiery birds from the desert of Atacama, a shapeshifting witch trapped in the form of a black sheep with a woman's face. In my city, there is the belief that if the thorn crown of the Cristo de Mayo (May Christ, also known as Señor de los Temblores, or Lord of the Earthquakes), a statue of Jesus, which fell from the head to the neck in an earthquake during colonial times, is put back in its place, it will start another one equally devastating. The statue was then owned by a powerful colonial landowner, Catalina de los Ríos, who became another infamous legend in her own right; La Quintrala. And in the Archipielago of Chiloé in the south they have one for everything; ghost ships (el Caleuche), old magicians that whose head can turn into a bird and fly to kill (el Tue-Tue), a sea-woman that helps fishermen (la Pincoya), etc., etc. The mixture between spanish and other european, indigenous, and after a few centuries, distinctly chilean and latinoamerican cultures, is what determined most of our culture and traditions, including the legends. Sorry it's so long but all those stories are part of what inspired me to write my own book. Keep up the good work, you've really helped me! :).

I live In east Africa in Ethiopia. there is this myth in this district called terro mosque named after an imam who taught there, crows, ravens and vultures are no strange occurrence considering the many butcher shops and kurt restaurants around there, there is this legend of this creature called " Aba Wululu" an 8 ft tall man with two left feet wearing a black trench coat with the head of a crow or raven who kidnap's kids randomly to cutoff their ears for food and takes their right feet to see if he can fit his. i used to genuinely believe this as a kid still sends chills down my spine.

Highest point of my area is Webster Hills. We Potawatomi tribes call it Monster Mountain. Ghosts and wendigo have been seen and people go missing in the area. Realtors have a small issue of selling houses on the east side of the hills, where things are seen at night.

I love how much footage you used from What Remains of Edith Finch. That's a fantastic game that I absolutely love, and it actually fits really well with the theme with this whole legend of the family curse. I always thought it was a niche piece of media, so it's good to see it get recognition.

Local Urban Legend: Charlotte, NC The auditorium of Northwest School of the Arts is haunted by the ghost of Sadie. There are different versions of her life & death, but the most common is that she was a performing arts strident of some kind who was in the school after hours, went to the rafters above the stage where lights are hung, and fell. She was caught in the wires and strangled to death, and now continues to haunt the auditorium & other parts of the school where students learn theater, dance, & music. Almost all of her stories amount to childish jump scares, but in my favorite she was a benevolent ghost. Chris was starting their first day of Theater Tech, and arrived late. They were told they had to go to the grid, the upper portion of the school’s black box theater, but Chris only knew the building. As Chris looked for the door upstairs they heard a knock & opened it. It was the door to balcony leading to the grid, and both were empty. To this day my friend Chris says Saidie is a bro for helping them out

I used to live in a small town in Australia halfway inbetween two major cities, there was a bridge on a major highway built over an Aboriginal site wherein bad spirits lay. From 12am - 3am fog tends to creep onto the bridge exactly where the site resides. There was a woman who supposedly unalived on that bridge who can be seen standing in the middle of the road from time to time the survivors of firry crashes have accounted to seeing her, hell sometimes even I think I see her but from the hours of 12 - 3 you know you want to drive a little more cautiously

i'm from the bay area (around san francisco), and according to my dad, there used to be this ghost, murphy, who would just ransack stores for no reason (the first example i could think of was ToysRUs). I don't know much about murphy, but he's got a local marketplace named after him. Aside from that, my dreams feel more like urban legends more than anything real. I once had this dream involving a gift shop, and on one of the shelves was a doll thing, with a bobbling head with a really creepy face, similar to those cats with the wavy hands you see, except it was waving a knife up and down. if the knife is pointed upward, you shall live. if it's pointed down, you shall die on the spot. any attempts to remove the doll would result in the knife pointing downward. It's weird. It felt like some kind of japanese folktale. but yeah, i wish this sorta thing was a legit urban legend bc this terrified me

In my hometown, we have a national cemetery which was placed there after the American Civil War. That has its own legends, but interestingly enough there’s a much smaller private cemetery in town that is said to be so violently haunted that the city government has officially closed it and no one is allowed in there anymore. It’s not due to any environmental factors, it’s on very safe ground very close to the town center.

My town has two urban myths: a graveyard that you can only see driving one way down a certain road, and a scary stories to tell in the dark book that people have but no one knows how they got them.

I'm from Northeast Ohio and we have the Melon Heads; orphan children supposedly experimented on, given large heads and mutated bodies. They eventually kill the doctor and now live in the woods near the orphanage they burned down. There's also Crybaby Bridge, where a woman supposedly threw her unwanted child into the river and it's cries are still heard to this day.

Down here in Louisiana we have the Rougarou. A werewolf like creature with an alligator head, that can shape shift into anything. It lives deep in the swamp and tends to prey on pets that stray too far from home. Some people even believe that the Rougarou use to be a native. Because we have two native tribes that predated Morgan city. A peaceful tribe that lived mostly on clams and oysters and a more aggressive tribe that hunt and fight. Even the old part of Morgan city was built on top of the largest Indian shell mounds.

Well, weirdly enough, I’m from Sweden and the first thing I thought off was the myth of Blåkulla and the witches who lured children there. But I feel you’ve already heard of that one…

Something I've gotten really into recently is the Cafe and Diner archives, which is an arg about a group finding cryptids to return back to where they came from. It's super cool and has taught me a ton about lots of different urban legends, and believe me, this story is willing to go OUT THERE with its myths. My favourite is probably the Hatman

There's a building in my hometown which is an abandoned warehouse/office building called the Campana building. It's a horizontal rectangle with a big turret in the center several stories high. Real weird looking. I grew up hearing stories of a woman who jumped from.the top of that tower to her death and that's the reason the building is no longer used. But her soul still haunts the building, especially the basement. Guess where my school held our annual haunted house?

Love your videos, happy Christmas, happy holidays and Happy New Year.

One of my friends has complained at length about the lack of false legends & superstitions in fantasy settings. Because if magic is real, if curses are real, if creatures really are out there in the world, ordinary people will come up with any number of ways to keep themselves safe (or at least let them feel safe) whether or not those methods have any root in the reality of their world. Keep a pocket full of salt to toss over your shoulder, to purify your path and keep from being followed home by the things beyond. Honey will spoil if exposed to dark magic, so you better soak any new jewelry you get in a jar of it for at least a fortnight to check. A trained mage might tell you none of that will work, but on the other hand you’ve never been snatched by the fae or strangled by a necklace, so you’re probably going to keep doing it just in case, right?

In Tacoma WA we all grow up hearing about the gigantic octopus that lurks under the Narrows Bridge waiting to snatch night boaters. In Tuscon and Mesa AZ I saw lots of kokopellis in the decor and architecture. They're little trickster spirits native to the area and they're territorial, so if they see other kokopellis on the building they'll leave it alone.

Just learned that I can get your new books at my local bookshop! It's just a small town in Germany and I can buy your book from the local store! Made me really excited and happy for some reason XD Congrats on your successes!

So I'm from Wales and there used to be a legend about the devils bridge. Essentially a woman was travelling one day and needed to cross a river or gap. So the devil appears and offers to build her the bridge in exchange for the soul of the first to cross it. The woman agrees, but when it's built she gets her dog to cross the bridge before her. In Some tellings that's the end but in others the devil isn't pleased with the dogs soul and is still waiting for the first person to cross it still.

Great video, very festive! Merry Christmas!

I think it'd make you happy to know that your videos very often inspire some new story ideas for me. This one in particular has me working on a new short story, so thank you.

I was so giddy listening to this, and I think it gave me an idea for my series I've been stuck on for awhile

My town doesn’t have any interesting stories, unfortunately. Or at least none that I know. We do have the story about the church that split over fried chicken. Which is essentially that there was an argument over predetermination and it got heated during a church lunch and someone yelled out that they were predetermined to eat a piece of fried chicken they were holding and the person they were arguing with yelled “no you’re not” and snatched it and ate it first. The other story is the Bridge to Nowhere. Which sounds awesome but is actually just a footbridge built in the middle of downtown that was supposed to lead to an apartment complex but the developers ran out of money before anything was built on the other side so it was literally a bridge that lead nowhere. Just boring bits of mundanity.

I like reading about urban legends because of their unique take on things, and there have been times where I used several plots tied to those stories. Enjoyed the video 😊

Thanks for this help!

Saying tapestry after telling the El Cuero myth was an unintended pun. It really was to beware people about falling into the river (whool cloth, cold water, alone and no one to give you a hand, mortal trap). South Chile Is full of myths but I have some from the North that I like. The Princess and the Bull (La princesa y el Toro), about a maid screaming from help in the middle of the pampa (desert) to protect her from a danger, if you acept, a Bull like a demon comes running down the hill; you run, they clash and explode in flames. North was full of salitre, people starting fires without knowing it saw the blue flames spreading around and said it was the devil on the land; also the myth could come from the géisers and rocks falling down the mountain with esethquakes

Super excited to hear Volume III of Writing and World Worldbuilding is out! I love the first two and can't wait to add the third to my collection. 😁 As for urban legends, I don't know of any in my hometown, but I wholeheartedly agree that these legends are ample source material for writing, whether it's horror or fantasy, and I love researching new ones to play with in my own writing. 😃

I’ve been waiting for this one for a long time

Never thought I'd hear Tim talk about my good old state of New Jersey in any context, but here we are. Great vid like usual, I love your content Tim!

The timing is so perfect, I just began working on my world

I'm from La Paz, Bolivia I like how you incorporated this story, there's a film telling the story of one of the people who took this room, I do recommend you to watch it. Another legend here is the "s'ullus" that also shows up in the movie, they are people who are given alcohol as a friendly gesture by a friend and when they are blackout drunk, they are dumped into the foundation of a new building as a sacrifice to Pachamama to keep the building safe forever

This is such a cool topic! Ive never seen anyone cover it before.

Excellent video. Really enjoyed it.

Hey Tim, just wanted to say I've been following your videos for years as I've been trying to figure out my own world building (and writing, ha, see what I did there?) And I just wanted you to know that this was absolutely the video that I needed to understand the motivations behind my world building and my story. Thank you so much for this, it gives me so much clarity. 🖤😸 Also, I live in Springfield, Missouri and I haven't lived here long but one urban legend that I did hear was one of a young couple who were engaged driving down the road and the man was driving the woman's father's car. But he was driving too fast and they got in a wreck and the girl died. So now I'm told you can go down that road and wait for a certain time when the street lights come on and the shadows will do a little dance and it looks like a woman is hanging from one of the lamp post. 😳 Haven't tried it out for myself but one of my co-workers says that he did and he saw it and it's really spooky and totally awesome😅

Weirdly my town has a version of bloody Mary where if we were to call her out in a dark area alone she would appear, a bloody lady who begs for freedom since our country was struck hard by ww2 she was said to be a prisoner by the Japanese. Funnily enough each school had a different version of where to summon her and legend was continued by the upperclassmen tricking the kids, of which I am proud of in continuing since we use it to keep kids away from the dangerous part of the school like the trash dumps and storage rooms which have unstable towers of broken armchairs.

I appreciate this video! There’s a special charm that comes with stories like these, when grownups paint their porch roofs blue to keep the haints away or when kids don’t go alone into the swamp where the Searcy Monster lives - it’s being willing to believe in a little magic. I think that’s so important for people now (especially now) to hold on to these charms. Even in a technological, data-driven world, we are still the same kind of humans that once lived out in the woods somewhere.

In my town, we had a very creatively named creature, The Skull. It was said to be a skeleton haunting local creeks, and kids were warned not to spend too much time playing near bodies of water, or the Skull would take them. Given that those creeks can be deceptively deadly, with my gandpa still recounting how a rider and his horse fell and drowned into what seems like perfecty safe water, we can see where the stories originated.

One of the best pieces of advice for worldbuilding that I've ever heard is "Give your world its own mythos" Some things are true, some are exagerated, some false and some are left vague or not even written down and just hinted at

As a chilean, when you said "el cuero" I was like "hey! We have that." And it turns out you were talking about our thing. o.o

The southern part of my state has the same mountains that were apart of the mountains in Ireland and scottland. Both practice similar "magics" independent of each other

I'm from Arizona, and there are lots of Urban legends, but my absolute favorite is one that I know people who believe. The Superstition Mountains Gold. (There are many variations and even contradictory variations, but such is the case of urban legend.) A while back, there was a man who was obsessed with Gold. Now this man believed he could make the Arizona Gold Rush, just like California's if he only found the gold in some mountains. He was convinced that these mountains would have gold. Now he hired men, but as more and more got injured or killed from mining, no one found anything but rock and dirt. They all left or died. Not the man, see he was obsessed. He dug, all day, every day. So much so that no one even knew where his mine was anymore, as he kept changing locations. Eventually, there was a note. He found his gold. Worth more than millions of dollars. And he was going to keep it. All of it, never would any man see his gold, and then... the man died. People went looking for his gold of course, but they all died out in those mountains. So now they call it the Superstition Mountains, for the superstitious know to stay away. Any who look for the gold will find nothing or find obsession. Looking more and more until eventually, they get close and disappear. That is also why you must never go alone, the desert is dangerous and should you stumble across that gold, you won't make it back. Almost certainly a warning about hiking alone, as doing so is incredibly dangerous thanks to snakes and mountain lions and the heat. Many go missing every year from hiking alone here.

One of my absolute favorite spinoff stories is the novel "Marauder" from the Battletech franchise. A military science fiction setting lacking the supernatural and demonic forces of Warhammer may seem like a strange place to have urban myth and eldritch horror, yet the story adds an air of mystery to the setting without outright subverting it's hard(ish) scifi setting. Everything that takes place in it could plausibly be explained by a combinations of terrible luck, superstition, technology gone awry, madness and dismissed as a campfire story, yet it undeniably adds some depth to the lore of the setting to know that the unknown exists even in the far future. I also find the idea of haunted, malevolent technology to be fascinating.

Castlevania on the thumbnail? Based

Great video! It’s so interesting to learn how people can find meaning in the unknown.

In the book im writing, I take a total shift from the main story to write about a place called Parallel Forest. A total of five chapters are dedicated to this place; three chapters one way, cut back to the main story for two chapters, only for the main party to be taken back through the forest for 2 chapters. Parallel forest is a place that doesn't have any life at all, other than the grotesque, overgrown canapy that nearly blocks out the sunlight. It has a surreal and unnerving silence. I made up some urban legenda about the forest in order to build on the world I've built up and expand beyond it being a war-tirn nation. For the longest time, i thought maybe it wasn't necessary and would distract from the main story, but i kept it for the sake of worldbuilding.

When it comes to monsters, the implied or suggested existence of monsters is so much more gripping than the confirmed existence of them

My hometown has a werewolf story and the next town over has a wraith story, really neat that my home has such a rich local history.

I am from Kriens, Switzerland, at the foot of the mountain Pilatus. We have two stories here. Of course, there is a dragon on the top of the mountain. The other story is that the name Pilatus came from Pontius Pilate. Legends say that after his death, he was thrown into the Oberalpsee (Top Alp lake). That's why we have such harsh weather on the mountain.

damn, i never expected to see my city (La Paz, Bolivia) on one of your videos :) amazing vid, btw

Not interacted with enough, but I think I can use it into a ground work for a story I sketched out. Thank you. It's been bouncing around my head for years, and I excited this this option.

Where I grew up a couple, hundred years ago there were some churches that fell into the seas about a mile from where the coastline is now. When the tide is low enough it is said the old church bells can still be heard ringing.

I heard a nearly identical story to the Green Lady in the woods myth when I was living in Burnaby (Canada) with my sister and I used to take my nephew to the big park there. People said a woman lost her kids in the park and sometimes you could still hear her crying out for them. Honestly, I always thought they must have been hearing the sound of the skytrain's screeching off in the distance.

Thanks to this video, I have know learned about a whole bunch of urban legends from Toronto that I had NEVER heard of, despite living here all my life! Except the lighthouse ghost. I knew about the lighthouse ghost.

In my hometown there is the legend of the Big Rock. It was originally a Grizzly Bear that said he could jump from the mainland to Vancouver Island but just fell short and turned into a rock.

13:48 that rhythm and flow is fire

I'm currently working as a Peace Corps volunteer in Cambodia. My village has several legends about a huge rock spire called "Fishhook Mountain." My favorite legend about the place was that long ago, one of the Hindu gods left behind a golden boat on the top of the rock. At certain times of day, you could see the glitter from the gold, tempting passersby to attempt to scale the sheer sides of the spire. However, for hundreds of years, no one ever managed to reach the top and claim the golden boat. Only the most daring hero could ever manage to accomplish that feat, or so everyone thought. Then, the French arrived and colonized Cambodia. Years later, a greedy colonial governor allegedly heard of the legend and sent soldiers in a helicopter to land on the spire and carry away the golden boat. It was then brought back to France, where it remains hidden to this very day, waiting to be returned to its homeland. Yet, according to some of my friends, when the French left, flecks of gold were scraped off by the rock, and when the sun hits it at just the right angle, you can see them glow. There are tons of other fun legends and stories in this area, but that one is my personal favorite for how it combines the mythic past with the traumas of colonization.

My hometown doesn’t have many legends, but we do have a lot of stories of ghosts up in the local castle (former prison and hanging site.) I even know some people who've worked there and swear blind they've had some odd experiences - mostly just hearing footsteps in the upper halls when they were meant to be locking up at night, mind, but still spooky.

There's a road between my hometown and a nearby town that has had a ton of horrific accidents at one specific spot that isn't particularity dangerous. Many people who survived these accidents say they crashed after either seeing people appear in front of their car or heard random screams inside their vehicle.

In my hometown there is this old train station that my dad calls the ghost station. It was being made until it wasn't and was abandoned for unknown reason. safe to say I look out for it when ever we ride past it

Funny enough the mention of mental illness as super power trope got me thinking about and ready to recommend the (furry) visual novel Arches, which manages to explore that concept from several angles in a way that feels really grounded. And then I was like, wait, that's also about Echo, a fictionalized version of a real middle-of-nowhere town (and actually a mashup of elements from several others) with all kinds of legends and spooky ghost stories, explored further in the visual novel also titled Echo that preceded Arches, and it's really interesting how it manages to have the cryptids be real, but still kinda difficult to pin down, and created and perpetuated by people.

I actually remember an SCP story that was clearly based on the black ambulance urban legend. Most of its victims were never seen again, but a few would turn up somewhere later with anomalous body modifications, ranging from a couple that got stitched together following an accident that left only parts of their bodies functional, to a guy who turned up with something like 17 extra hearts, including one visible at the back of his throat, visible because his jaws were propped open and sealed with a round pane of glass. Any attempts to rectify or remove the anomalous modifications invariably resulted in death of the subject.

Alright i am totally going to use this for ny ttrpg campaign

I've found the uncanny valley helps a lot with the creation of these legends. Something that at first appearance looks normal, but on closer reflection, something is just slightly off. A deer with a neck slightly too long and eyes too close together. A lot of it mythology uses this too.

When I lived in provo the bus I took to elementary school always went over a bridge so when you look out the window, under the bridge, there was a house a really old and run down house. And every time we passed that house the kids on the bus would talk about the "Hooked Man", he was a man who killed his wife with a hook and died in the river next to the house back in the pioneer time and has been haunting the house ever since. Don't remember any stories of it beside that initial one though.