Folklore

Every society develops stories and myths, carried through the generations. We call them urban legends now and they can be a source of the strange, wonderful and horrific.

Fairy tales told to scare naughty children, all right, so they're not all horror stories, but talking bears, evil queens and baby stealing dwarves? You could be forgiven for thinking that way. Below are some examples from various countries.

In the north of England there are a tales of a monstrous dog with large teeth and claws. Anyone who saw this apparition was doomed to die. In Wales it's named the Dog of Darkness - Gwyllgi. This kind of story is a common myth and the tales are often called black dog stories no matter what the colour of the dog seen.

Germany has the Lorelei, a young maiden who committed suicide over a faithless lover. She threw herself into the Rhine and changed into a siren whose music could hypnotise and lure fisherman to their deaths. Greek mythology has similar stories.

Trolls are Scandinavian monsters with magical powers that turn to stone if touched by sunlight. In English fairytales they like to eat goats and live under bridges!

The Chinese have more myths and legends than any other culture, they have stories of animals that shed their skin and turn into human. If you steal the animal skin you can stop them turning back to their original form. A farmer got himself a wife this way, but she eventually found her pelt and turned back into a fox.

In Japan a monkey was reborn as human. His mission was to finish copying a holy book. Ghosts are popular too; there is a story of a dead maiden possessing the body of her sister so she could live with the man she loved for awhile; and a mountain goddess who bestowed eternal youth upon a young couple to repay the woman's previous kindness.

African folklore has tales of the dead returning in animal form. People could take special medicines to choose the animal they wanted to come back as. There are lots of legends concerning ghosts too. Apparently the ghosts live much the same life as they did on upper earth, (the spirit world is underground). Then there are the stories of mothers promising their next born child to animals who were going to eat them! One such child sprung fully-grown from a boil on his mothers shin and after several attempts by a Hyena to eat him, he managed to kill it!

One myth from the Mexico and Peru area concerns the Maya. They had a sinister bat-god called Zotzilaha Chimalman who lived in the House of Bats, which was on the way to the abodes of darkness and death.

All cultures are rich with this type of story and many have evolved from similar sources. Each tribe/country has adapted it's own little twist to the tales, handed down through the generations and flavoured them with their individuality. These are colourful forever-changing stories to wile away several lifetimes in the telling.