The Myths/Folklore Blog

Hadrian was a farm boy from the city of Corinth – he had always been told by his mother to be wary of the areas outside their lonely home, since she couldn’t be sure of what was out there. He had asked her one day, while milking the cow, why she had such trepidation to go outside the city limits. She responded with a matter-of-fact reply, “Because it’s dangerous”. She had always been that way with him, never taking any “talkback” and always demanding absolute obedience. Her favorite phrase had been, “so help me child I will throw you into the depths with Cronos if you speak back to me like that.” It had been that attitude that drove him away. He wanted to see what was out there, to experience all that the world had to offer. The night he ran away had been the hardest, sleeping alone on the side of a barren road, looking out for fellow travelers that might need some company. Hadrian made his way from Corinth to Athens to Sparti, further drifting towards the sea. Since he had laid ...

For my Storybook project this semester, I'll be diving into Texan urban legends, namely those that deal with ghosts.  Themes that I'll try to explore are going to be: loss, relationships and how they can spiral out of control, and family ties. Ghost stories, namely urban legends are "based" in reality, so each of the stories that I'll be telling will be heavily connected to real life, meaning less of a "myth" and more of a realistic fiction story. Story sources can come from a number of places - the best resource for figuring out the "basis" of the urban legends comes from Weird U.S ., a site that delves into odd American history, folklore, and culture specific for every state. They have a bunch of urban legends within the website (and I have the book at home) so this source will be extremely good for gathering ideas and how to tell the story.  The writing style that I'll be using is going to vary with each of the stories that...

I decided to delve a bit more into Texas Urban legends this week. The first story deals with the Donkey Lady  who is a fabled woman who lives beneath bridges, deformed after a fire ravaged her body, giving her stumps for arms/legs along with eventually giving her the infamous name Donkey Lady (since her face was unfortunately horribly burned). Now she stays beneath a bridge in San Antonio, looking for late night drivers to get her revenge on. An interesting way that this story could be told would maybe be from the perspective of someone who's related to her, whether it be her family, or someone who was simply a friend of hers. "Donkey Lady" From Weird Texas Another urban legend that I found highly interesting was the Woman Hollering Creek , which describes Hollering Creek as being haunted by a woman who drowned her two children in it - she now lurks around the creek, pulling anyone who gets too close in to their watery doom. This again works with my love for ho...

The first topic that I looked into was the mythological creature called a changeling . I first heard about this type of creature through the kids book series, "The Spiderwick Chronicles" which sparked my interest in all things related to fairies/ogres/trolls. Changelings in particular always fascinated me - swapping out a human child for some older looking fairy is crazy. Thinking how the parents would react, seeing it in action within the comic book, "Hellboy" when the main hero is called upon to check out an "unusual" child that the parents had been dealing with for the past few weeks. Overall, I think this would be one of the better topics that one could choose for the storybook project - there are tons of different ways that this could be told in modern/historical contexts. The next topic that I looked into was on the Wikipedia page over the vengeful Japanese ghosts called "Onryo". I've never heard this name before, but I've had a t...