Contemporary Legend (Urban Legend)

Jan Harold Brunvand is, perhaps, the man who made urban legends the popular genre of folk narrative that they are today. In The Vanishing Hitchhiker, he states that urban legends are "realistic stories concerning recent events (or alleged events) with an ironic or supernatural twist. They are an integral part of white Anglo-American culture and are told and believed by some of the most sophisticated "folk" of modern society--young people, urbanites, and the well educated. The storytellers assume that the true facts of each case lie just one or two informants back down the line with a reliable witness, or in a news media report" (Brunvand xi-xii).

Click here to go to an example of an Urban Legend.

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Click here to go back to the beginning.

Click here to go to news:alt.folklore.urban, a popular newsgroup about urban legends.

Click here to go to http://cathouse.org/UrbanLegends to have some legends debunked for you.

Click here to go to http://www.legends.org.za/arthur, a site which has lots of information about South African urban legends.