If you think back to your childhood, and your early encounters with horror, one thing that might come to mind is the urban legend – those stories that spread on the streets or around the halls of school, all told with a (seemingly) earnest belief and delivered in hushed voices, often away from the ears of any adults.
The tales would often be – in the cold light of day – rather extravagant and lurid, but these sorts of dark, localised tales do spring up everywhere. They can leave a real impression upon us, and while the details of the experiences may be different there is a certain commonality within them. And that, of course, can make them a fertile ground for writing your own horror stories based on the concept.
So let’s explore how we can create a great urban legend, and in turn employ it in our fiction.
Urban folklore
Once upon a time, people tended to live in the countryside in smaller villages, and
