Utah here. So our main thing is the ghosts of serial killers, ghost towns in general, a Wendigo or two courtesy of the Donner Party, and, of course, Skinwalker Ranch.
NTA but also a Utahn, skinwalkers are very popular folklore here.
Returned missionaries from the Mormon church often have some sort of ghost or supernatural possession story or something. Generally I think they are just running into extreme schizos having an episode or drug users experiencing excited delirium, but the missionary's lack the life experience cause them to misinterpret what's actually going on because they're 19-21 at the time, extremely religious, and likely quite sheltered, but that's beside the point. Good people though, great neighbors.
Anyway, they do tend to be good stories, if you meet one, see if you can get something out of them. The ones that go to Indian reservations for their missions always seem to have something regarding skin walkers.
They all have slightly different accounts so take this with a grain of salt. From what I've heard, they're people who are capable of transforming into beasts, and they're really into sacrifices. Someone told me once that to become a skinwalker you have to kill a family member. Someone who is a skinwalker or looking to become one might have a ton of animal parts and trophies around their place. I've heard of someone visiting an empty trailer with dead and rotting animals all over that were clearly tortured and mutilated. Someone claimed that they were driving along the road and they saw a man-wolf looking beast running alongside their vehicle on the freeway, nothing extra exciting though.
I've also heard that they become more like malicious spirits that take many forms rather than a human that can transform back and forth.
Not much I know, but maybe it'll tickle someone's creative bone
People spread rumors about Ted Bundy in Utah. Yes, he killed there, but there was a rumor about there being a "murder house" where he took people to be tortured and murdered.
No proof he did that though. No proof he had any designated "murder house." He just abducted people in his car and discarded them out in the wilderness when he was done.
Idaho doesn't need monsters. We have cocaine addicts running around at night trying to break into their EXs home Kate at night, but slip on a pile of potatoes and leave blood on the street.
I'm from Northern Germany. Only specific thing I can recall is from 400 or so years ago when a scaled fishman beast appeared in the harbour of a nearby small town. It killed a few sailours, but then the citizens got it drunk and cut off its head. The head was then gifted to the king of Denmark for some reason. (We live nowhere near Denmark.)
Virginian here, we don't have much to brag about. For some reason West Virginia not only consumed more debt than us but they also consumed more of the crazier Cryptid
We have, the bunny man. We also have Bigfoot but what state doesn't have a variation of Bigfoot. There's the Richmond Vampire which is just a horribly burnt victim from a Mining collapse who died later on in a hospital. We have a lot of Ghosts floating around, Virginia has more hauntings than cryptid sightings
Gol'tesch: or "Cannibal-Man", not to be confused with the wendigo or "man-hungry spirit. Basically a vampire ogre that would drain people and leave their skins hanging in the trees. If you are able to locate their secret heart and kill them, they erupt into mosquitos.
The native tribes in the southeast based their entire existence on the sea. Fishing was the main occupation and food source. The legend goes that orcas are the embodiment of vengeance. You insult someone's honor enough, they give up their humanity for the power to destroy you and get the ability to transform in a killer whale. It's not clear whether this boon is granted by witch doctors, deals with shapeshifters or given by the spirits. Either way, this person who you wronged waits until you and your boys go canoeing to fish/trade/raid another tribe and he strips down, jumps into the ocean and becomes a killer whale to frick up your boat and rip you apart.
Reminds me of an obscure movie where a guy in Maine ended up getting into a blood feud with a killer whale. Killed it's mate that was pregnant with calfs in front of it, and the Killer Whale decided to go into full on John Wick mode on his ass. Was smart enough to cut underwater power lines in the town, and overhunt the waters to deprive fishermen of livelihood until he could lure out the guy so they could have a mano-a-mano fight at sea.
Shapeshifter otter-men, hairy, needle-teethed and big luminescent eyes. Basically nature's enforcers. You kill game without eating it, you cut down trees and let them rot, you disrespect hunted game, you trespass on sacred places, nature sic's Kushtakaas on you. If your are lucky, they kill you and remove your eyes, tongue and finger/toenails from your body. If you tickle their fancy, they imprison you and give you a potion of fermented flesh. From there you choose to abstain and die or drink the mixture and become a Kushtakaah.
The story I was told came from inuit (eskimos). A man and his brother went out hunting for seal on the icepack. The guy fell through the ice and his brother found him trapped underneath. He cut him out presuming he was dead only to find that he seemed alive and well. The hunter put his visor on (ekimos developed visors to shield their eyes from glare) and told his brother not to worry, lets keep hunting. They returned successful and the hunter's wife invited him to their bed. He refused to take off his visor and fricked her in complete darkness. After making love and laying in the dark, she heard something strange, like grating or scratching coming from her husband. She took off his visor, lit a whale-oil lamp and put it to his face to see that his eyes were gone and replaced with clawing shrimps that oozed in and out of his skull.
As I was told, the shrimp wanted to know the lives of men, so when one drowned they took over his body to enjoy and understand the human experience.
Ogopogo is the most famous, a Loch Ness-like monster in Okanagan Lake. More locally is Cadborosaurus, a sea monster said to live in Cadboro Bay. There's a playground by the shore there with a theme playset based off the rumour.
America still has a touch of frontier superstition, and extremely recent (by historical measures) frontier history to draw from.
You know how Finland is weird? Part of that comes from isolation and the fact that the average Fin lives miles from any other Fins and looks out into the dark woods in the winter. When you can't see your neighbors through the trees, you make up new neighbors in your mind.
I want to stress again, to those of us who are not native to the US or have only visited, that the majority of land in the US is so sparsely populated as to effectively be wild by European standards. Wildlife Parks in Europe are more urban than most American Suburbs. That isn't even a joke, or hyperbole. Of course people are gonna act weird, that's the norm for humans under these circumstances.
Despite what you may see on TV, about 99+% of the country is just completely undeveloped. Every direction, it can be miles and miles of desert, wood, rolling prairie. To give you a perspective, there is an evergreen forest that starts a little north of California's capital and continues, basically uninterrupted, all the way up to the north pole. The US is unfathomably huge. Even relatively developed states still have places where you could just walk into the woods and disappear forever. In Texas alone, you can drive in a straight line for ten hours at 70+mph and still be in texas when you're done. Empty space and lots of wilderness makes people have very isolated experiences and, possibly, paranormal ones. Being alone, driving your car on a dark interstate, house sitting in a forested area, etc. the US just has a lot more opportunities and places where weirdness can occur and there isnt a lot of people nearby to see it besides the "witnesses".
>Paris
The tapestry workshop there, dating back to the middle ages, is supposed to have received teaching from goblins. The district where the tapestry workshop is located is still called "The Goblins".
I've met a guy who swore vampires were haunting the Père Lachaise cemetery.
Well, there's the Phantom of the Opera. And if popular culture figures count, there's another phantom in the Louvre, called Belphégor.
There's plenty of spooky skellies in the catacombs, begging to be reanimated.
And if you want to go the reanimated route, well, there's lots of fun to be had in the natural history museum (including but not limited to: a few two headed animals; a mammoth, or a diplodocus).
I have seen more than my fair share of weirdness, too.
I used to live in Scotland. Particularly Edinburgh. Lot of game of thrones shit that went on back in the day, so there's a lot of good ghost stories. People mostly know of Scotland for stubbornly fighting the English, what tends to be less well known is how Scottish lords would constantly murder one another up until the English showed up to invade.
So there's a good number of 'this lord murdered this guy, and his ghost still haunts the castle'. There's also the Edinburgh underground, which according to myth (and ghost tours) was just completely walled off when the Black Plague rolled into town. And after everyone in that section of he city died, rather than tear down the walls and remove the bodies they just built over it, leaving the underground to be, well super haunted. Like I said, there's plenty of ghost tours you can go on exploring them.
There's also a number of things that inspired classic gothic horror plots. The guy who inspired Dr. Jekyl and Mr. Hyde was a Deacon in Edinburgh who'd dress up as a highwayman to beat people up at night. When it was discovered it was quite the scandal, and now there's a pub themed after him.
There's also the Burke and Hare stories- they were two gravediggers who dug up corpses to sell to universities for dissections back when it was still religiously taboo. This happened all over Europe at the time, but Burke and Hare were the most prolific of these grave diggers. They ended up serving as inspiration for Frankenstein.
Not necessarily from my area but my wife's from South Africa and they have the Tokoloshe; an evil soul-stealing critter that would sneak into huts and kill those it found sleeping on ground-level, hence the tribespeople sleeping on raised beds as the Tokky is a shortarse (about hip height on your average man) and can't reach them.
I think cause a lot of urban fantasy written in the 90's were trash. I figure mostly from the writers using the genre as an excuse to explicitly not worldbuild.
>I want to write a story about vampires! >But I don't want to shell out the budget for a fantasy movie, nor do I want to write the backstory for a fantasy setting that'd make it believable. >So instead I'll just take the set of Beverly Hills 90210 and just shove vampires in it!
And that works initially, people know what our world is, and they know what vampires are, so they don't need much explained to them. But as time goes on, more things do need explaining (like- how come people don't know vampires exist?) and most of these writers don't have the skill to either adequately explore or answer the question.
I'm actually writing a modern fantasy story myself, and I decided to write it that people are just incapable of comprehending that they are looking at something magical in order to both justify the masquerade, and keep more than a handful of characters have to question the nature of reality.
why urban fantasy disappeared in the last 20 years?
in the 90s it was super poplaur. Now There are none.
because people hate the current world, and adding magic to it while keeping the world mostly the same on the surface just mean that even magic wouldn't be able to change it.
So they prefer to escape reality to wildly different settings instead.
>South Texas
Lechuzas: shapeshifting owl witches. La Llorona (eternally weeping mother wraith) going on and on down by the resacas and canals. Duendes (sometimes malicious gnome-goblins) jacking everything from errybody. Supposedly there's a nun ghost at a chapel because, over a hundred years ago, priests at a mission would rape the sisters and made them bury the infants on the chapel grounds. There was a riot when it was exposed and 2 priests were hung on the mission's facade (which still stands atop the hill by the chapel). Well, the original chapel was destroyed in a flood and was rebuilt shortly after. A Catholic school is on the hill by the mission's remains.
Iowa has the Van Meter Visitor. 15 ft long, brown, scaly, wings. Shot beams of light from a horn on its head. Stank bad. One terrorized the town for 5 nights and disappeared down a mineshaft with a second beast when chased. The beasts did not emerge the next day so the mine was sealed. Many witnesses means it was quite an episode.
Saint Petersburg, Russia.
Ghosts, ghosts everywhere. Emperors haunting their former palaces, nobles haunting their former mansions, ghosts of the workers who died constructing the city, ghosts haunting subway tunnels, ghosts of the people who starved to the death during the Siege of Leningrad, ghosts of the priests buried alive by the bolsheviks, ghosts haunting old apartments, ghosts of the soldiers, ghosts of the criminals who died in brutal turf wars of the 90s - the list goes on.
There is also at least one cursed egyptian mummy in the Hermitage museum, invisible griffons guarding the tower of the court apothecary who was also rumored to be a master alchemist, genuine 3500 years old sphinxes on the enbankment who sometimes come alive and eat unlucky people.
According to the myths, the city is built upon ancient shrines dedicated to horrible and bloodthirsty gods worshipped by finno-ugric pagans long ago, and the entire city is cursed.
Other myths tell about the ruins of incredibly ancient antediluvian city underground.
In fact, there are a lot of underground passages around, sometimes explorers discover disturbing things there - see picrel.
By the way, dismemberment is currently the most popular method of murder among locals.
>tfw no Russian sphinx with blue eyes and a taste for vodka who wants to eat you >you share a bottle with her and give her wrong answers but anything goes because she's tipsy >she falls asleep on you and you can't move all night because you don't wanna wake her up
This is a pain my heart wasn't prepared for
>ghosts of the people who starved to the death during the Siege of Leningrad
Shouldn't they be like, in Leningrad instead? Also, just imagine that city is super-cursed as well
Lenin renamed St. Petersburg to Leningrad under the USSR (Stalingrad also got it's name around the same time) and the Russians changed it back after the USSR collapsed.
The city was renamed to Leningrad shortly after Lenin's death in 1924, and renamed back to Saint Petersburg 2 months before the collapse of the Soviet Union by the popular vote. We had an unfortunately brief period when we had something distantly resembling a functioning democracy during that times.
>tfw no Russian sphinx with blue eyes and a taste for vodka who wants to eat you >you share a bottle with her and give her wrong answers but anything goes because she's tipsy >she falls asleep on you and you can't move all night because you don't wanna wake her up
This is a pain my heart wasn't prepared for
Well, those sphinxes are definitely not Russian and are male - they depict Pharaoh Amenhotep III. But we have 4 Russian female sphinxes guarding the Egyptian Bridge - they are much smaller, definitely female, and nowhere as mystically powerful as genuine Ancient Egyptian ones - at most they could make you lose your mind if you look in their faces at inappropriate time (usually at dusk or dawn), according to an another legend. They are also just 200 years old.
I could also give short descriptions of the most famous local ghosts.
Ghost of the Emperor Paul I - haunts St. Michael's Castle, looks for the people who assassinated him by strangling with a scarf and crushing his temple with a heavy and ornate snuffbox. Likes to play a flute. Mostly harmless unless you offend him.
Ghost of the Emperor Nicholas I. Haunts the Winter Palace (Hermitage Museum). Completely harmless, but looks impressive.
Ghost of the first Emperor, Peter the Great, the founder of Saint Petersburg He is closer to a guardian spirit than a simple ghost. Can appear anywhere in the city, but prefers hanging out near the Bronze Horseman monument dedicated to him. Mostly benign, but deadly if you disrespect him - he had an infamously fierce temper in life. Bowing and addressing him as "Your Imperial Majesty" usually works. Can possess the statue and go for a wild ride.
According to a 200 year old legend Saint Petersburg can't be conquered by enemy forces while the statue proudly stands in the very heart of the city. The monument survived the Siege of Leningrad without a single scratch despite 3 years of constant shelling and bombing. The monument stands on the 1500 ton Thunder Stone - the largest rock ever transported - which used to be an ancient pagan shrine.
Ghost of Rasputin. Still retains his magical powers and can help you if you bring him an appropriate tribute.
Ghost of Sophia Perovskaya, a girl who was a part of the group which assassinated Emperor Alexander II. Haunts Obvodny Channel.
Ghost of a forgotten knight which haunts his old armour displayed at Knight's Hall of the Hermitage Museum. Likes to possess his armour and walk around the museum.
Ghost of the bodyguard of Peter the Great. He was a huge guy with acromegaly, 7'6" tall, and after his death his skeleton was displayed in the Kunstkamera - the first Russian museum. A hundred years later his skull was lost in some forgotten incident. Still haunts the museum looking for his head.
>West Virginia
We used to have a lot, but methheads invaded the local ecosystem and out competed them for resources. Now the cryptids are an endangered species.
Chesapeake and central Virginia. Not gonna cover Appalachian monsters/cryptids because they get plenty of attention already.
There's Chessie of course, the serpentine monster and cousin of Nessie which lives in the Bay.
A more recurring cryptid is the Goochland (yes that is the area's name) Devil Monkey. It's been sighted over a dozen times and is variably described as a large ape-like beast with wolf characteristics, with pale or black fur. It stood on its hind legs at about 6 feet tall, and had pointy ears, a flat snout, and a long thin tail. Its primary prey are deer and rabbits but it's been known to eat dogs or livestock.
A recent addition to the lineup is the Richmond Vampire. Allegedly, when the Church Hill Tunnel collapsed in 1925, rescue workers discovered a humanoid figure drenched in blood eating one of the victims, with flayed skin hanging from its body. The creature escaped and fled either into the James River or into the nearby Hollywood Cemetery. It's connected to one W.W. Pool, buried in a mausoleum in the same cemetery, who was rumored to have fled England in the late 1800s on charges of vampirism and emigrated to Richmond.
I live on bell island, we have two main tales here, the fairies and the bell island hag.
The fairies that live on this island aren't the fairy tale kind, their the kind that drown kids for shits and giggles.
Speaking of, the bell island hag is the ghost of a girl killed by the fairies, the story goes that young girl went into the bog without taking any bread to bribe the fairies with, so they drowned her, lots of people heard her cries but none helped, assuming it to be a fairy trick. Now she's monster that crawls on all fours and scares people away from the bog so they don't suffer the same fate.
Theres also the supposed alien ship crashed just off the island, in the sixties there was an explosion over the island and of course people say it was aliens.
Depends a lot of how back in time you want to go. At brisk walking distance I have a little hill where the count killed a dragon in medieval time. At the next mountain, a giant walking treemen died becoming an "oak palace".
Several witches were hanged, some spirits/ghosts in an abandoned farmer house, household spirits legends, and a haunted hospital in one of the big cities at 15m in car. A hill where a wolf father was hanged with his wolves (my ancestors loved hanging magic users for some reason) and some water ladie than had a very tragic tale be a peasant. Soma bandits too, but nothing magic about them (apart some towns have them as they giants).
Netherlands here.
We've got "Witte Wieven" which roughly translates to white wives, they're ghostlike entities often asociated with mist, hence the name. Said to haunt cairns and dolmens. They can be friendly, but most of the time they'll lure you into the swamp/bog/forest kinda like will o' wisps.
Utah here. So our main thing is the ghosts of serial killers, ghost towns in general, a Wendigo or two courtesy of the Donner Party, and, of course, Skinwalker Ranch.
Oh, there's that old bookstore in Salt Lake. The basement has d '70s bathrooms with graffiti and a stripper pole. It's something else.
And a serial killer liked the place or something. My Xanax-addicted girlfriend loved that place. It's a long story.
Please, some cannibal/Skinwalker stories are very interesting.
Up in the Yukon, we have some hummers.
NTA but also a Utahn, skinwalkers are very popular folklore here.
Returned missionaries from the Mormon church often have some sort of ghost or supernatural possession story or something. Generally I think they are just running into extreme schizos having an episode or drug users experiencing excited delirium, but the missionary's lack the life experience cause them to misinterpret what's actually going on because they're 19-21 at the time, extremely religious, and likely quite sheltered, but that's beside the point. Good people though, great neighbors.
Anyway, they do tend to be good stories, if you meet one, see if you can get something out of them. The ones that go to Indian reservations for their missions always seem to have something regarding skin walkers.
They all have slightly different accounts so take this with a grain of salt. From what I've heard, they're people who are capable of transforming into beasts, and they're really into sacrifices. Someone told me once that to become a skinwalker you have to kill a family member. Someone who is a skinwalker or looking to become one might have a ton of animal parts and trophies around their place. I've heard of someone visiting an empty trailer with dead and rotting animals all over that were clearly tortured and mutilated. Someone claimed that they were driving along the road and they saw a man-wolf looking beast running alongside their vehicle on the freeway, nothing extra exciting though.
I've also heard that they become more like malicious spirits that take many forms rather than a human that can transform back and forth.
Not much I know, but maybe it'll tickle someone's creative bone
People spread rumors about Ted Bundy in Utah. Yes, he killed there, but there was a rumor about there being a "murder house" where he took people to be tortured and murdered.
No proof he did that though. No proof he had any designated "murder house." He just abducted people in his car and discarded them out in the wilderness when he was done.
Idaho doesn't need monsters. We have cocaine addicts running around at night trying to break into their EXs home Kate at night, but slip on a pile of potatoes and leave blood on the street.
That's why all your cryptids are at the vacation spots where the tourists go instead of Idahoans. Bear Lake Monster can attest to that.
So is this the mythical cave-dwelling israelite?
It's the mythical Grabbler.
There are mushrooms that eat people.
Where/why/how?
I already gave as much as OP did, sorry.
I'm from Northern Germany. Only specific thing I can recall is from 400 or so years ago when a scaled fishman beast appeared in the harbour of a nearby small town. It killed a few sailours, but then the citizens got it drunk and cut off its head. The head was then gifted to the king of Denmark for some reason. (We live nowhere near Denmark.)
Caught some of these frickers in my trash. Wife said it was probably just a possum but I know what I saw.
You have a Dover demon in you trash, no cap?
Well something's been making a mess of my shit and if it's not a dover demon or a possum I'm out of ideas.
Virginian here, we don't have much to brag about. For some reason West Virginia not only consumed more debt than us but they also consumed more of the crazier Cryptid
We have, the bunny man. We also have Bigfoot but what state doesn't have a variation of Bigfoot. There's the Richmond Vampire which is just a horribly burnt victim from a Mining collapse who died later on in a hospital. We have a lot of Ghosts floating around, Virginia has more hauntings than cryptid sightings
I live in northern Italy, we've got wannabe witches here. Severed goat heads, bloodless chicken, the work
You first, be detailed and specific.
Live in Southeast Alaska, lot of crazy shit here.
Gol'tesch: or "Cannibal-Man", not to be confused with the wendigo or "man-hungry spirit. Basically a vampire ogre that would drain people and leave their skins hanging in the trees. If you are able to locate their secret heart and kill them, they erupt into mosquitos.
Also, werewolves, werewhales, miner ghosts (Scooby-Doo style), shapeshifting otter-men, sentient shrimp colonies, draugers, lots of shit.
How does a were-whale work?
The native tribes in the southeast based their entire existence on the sea. Fishing was the main occupation and food source. The legend goes that orcas are the embodiment of vengeance. You insult someone's honor enough, they give up their humanity for the power to destroy you and get the ability to transform in a killer whale. It's not clear whether this boon is granted by witch doctors, deals with shapeshifters or given by the spirits. Either way, this person who you wronged waits until you and your boys go canoeing to fish/trade/raid another tribe and he strips down, jumps into the ocean and becomes a killer whale to frick up your boat and rip you apart.
Reminds me of an obscure movie where a guy in Maine ended up getting into a blood feud with a killer whale. Killed it's mate that was pregnant with calfs in front of it, and the Killer Whale decided to go into full on John Wick mode on his ass. Was smart enough to cut underwater power lines in the town, and overhunt the waters to deprive fishermen of livelihood until he could lure out the guy so they could have a mano-a-mano fight at sea.
Kush' Taah' Kaas
Shapeshifter otter-men, hairy, needle-teethed and big luminescent eyes. Basically nature's enforcers. You kill game without eating it, you cut down trees and let them rot, you disrespect hunted game, you trespass on sacred places, nature sic's Kushtakaas on you. If your are lucky, they kill you and remove your eyes, tongue and finger/toenails from your body. If you tickle their fancy, they imprison you and give you a potion of fermented flesh. From there you choose to abstain and die or drink the mixture and become a Kushtakaah.
tell me more about the sentient shrimp colonies anon
The story I was told came from inuit (eskimos). A man and his brother went out hunting for seal on the icepack. The guy fell through the ice and his brother found him trapped underneath. He cut him out presuming he was dead only to find that he seemed alive and well. The hunter put his visor on (ekimos developed visors to shield their eyes from glare) and told his brother not to worry, lets keep hunting. They returned successful and the hunter's wife invited him to their bed. He refused to take off his visor and fricked her in complete darkness. After making love and laying in the dark, she heard something strange, like grating or scratching coming from her husband. She took off his visor, lit a whale-oil lamp and put it to his face to see that his eyes were gone and replaced with clawing shrimps that oozed in and out of his skull.
As I was told, the shrimp wanted to know the lives of men, so when one drowned they took over his body to enjoy and understand the human experience.
Arizona
skin walkers
and yes they are real I have spent enough time on rez
Ogopogo is the most famous, a Loch Ness-like monster in Okanagan Lake. More locally is Cadborosaurus, a sea monster said to live in Cadboro Bay. There's a playground by the shore there with a theme playset based off the rumour.
dont need urban myths when there are already cougars on the prowl for fresh meat
Why are americans so superstitious? Why is there super cool donut steel monsters everywhere in your country? Explain yourselves!
>americans
more like, where the hell you live that there's not local cool and weird critters?
America still has a touch of frontier superstition, and extremely recent (by historical measures) frontier history to draw from.
You know how Finland is weird? Part of that comes from isolation and the fact that the average Fin lives miles from any other Fins and looks out into the dark woods in the winter. When you can't see your neighbors through the trees, you make up new neighbors in your mind.
I want to stress again, to those of us who are not native to the US or have only visited, that the majority of land in the US is so sparsely populated as to effectively be wild by European standards. Wildlife Parks in Europe are more urban than most American Suburbs. That isn't even a joke, or hyperbole. Of course people are gonna act weird, that's the norm for humans under these circumstances.
I thought Finns were weird because they were elfs.
Despite what you may see on TV, about 99+% of the country is just completely undeveloped. Every direction, it can be miles and miles of desert, wood, rolling prairie. To give you a perspective, there is an evergreen forest that starts a little north of California's capital and continues, basically uninterrupted, all the way up to the north pole. The US is unfathomably huge. Even relatively developed states still have places where you could just walk into the woods and disappear forever. In Texas alone, you can drive in a straight line for ten hours at 70+mph and still be in texas when you're done. Empty space and lots of wilderness makes people have very isolated experiences and, possibly, paranormal ones. Being alone, driving your car on a dark interstate, house sitting in a forested area, etc. the US just has a lot more opportunities and places where weirdness can occur and there isnt a lot of people nearby to see it besides the "witnesses".
lots of ghosts, a banshee, thunderbirds, "not bigfoot", also there's a mound full of tiny pixie devils
>Paris
The tapestry workshop there, dating back to the middle ages, is supposed to have received teaching from goblins. The district where the tapestry workshop is located is still called "The Goblins".
I've met a guy who swore vampires were haunting the Père Lachaise cemetery.
Well, there's the Phantom of the Opera. And if popular culture figures count, there's another phantom in the Louvre, called Belphégor.
There's plenty of spooky skellies in the catacombs, begging to be reanimated.
And if you want to go the reanimated route, well, there's lots of fun to be had in the natural history museum (including but not limited to: a few two headed animals; a mammoth, or a diplodocus).
I have seen more than my fair share of weirdness, too.
Surprised you didn't mention the giant dog/wolf/cat-mistaken-for-a-canine.
You mean the Beast of Gévaudan ? It's pretty far from Paris.
I used to live in Scotland. Particularly Edinburgh. Lot of game of thrones shit that went on back in the day, so there's a lot of good ghost stories. People mostly know of Scotland for stubbornly fighting the English, what tends to be less well known is how Scottish lords would constantly murder one another up until the English showed up to invade.
So there's a good number of 'this lord murdered this guy, and his ghost still haunts the castle'. There's also the Edinburgh underground, which according to myth (and ghost tours) was just completely walled off when the Black Plague rolled into town. And after everyone in that section of he city died, rather than tear down the walls and remove the bodies they just built over it, leaving the underground to be, well super haunted. Like I said, there's plenty of ghost tours you can go on exploring them.
There's also a number of things that inspired classic gothic horror plots. The guy who inspired Dr. Jekyl and Mr. Hyde was a Deacon in Edinburgh who'd dress up as a highwayman to beat people up at night. When it was discovered it was quite the scandal, and now there's a pub themed after him.
There's also the Burke and Hare stories- they were two gravediggers who dug up corpses to sell to universities for dissections back when it was still religiously taboo. This happened all over Europe at the time, but Burke and Hare were the most prolific of these grave diggers. They ended up serving as inspiration for Frankenstein.
Not necessarily from my area but my wife's from South Africa and they have the Tokoloshe; an evil soul-stealing critter that would sneak into huts and kill those it found sleeping on ground-level, hence the tribespeople sleeping on raised beds as the Tokky is a shortarse (about hip height on your average man) and can't reach them.
why urban fantasy disappeared in the last 20 years?
in the 90s it was super poplaur. Now There are none.
I think cause a lot of urban fantasy written in the 90's were trash. I figure mostly from the writers using the genre as an excuse to explicitly not worldbuild.
>I want to write a story about vampires!
>But I don't want to shell out the budget for a fantasy movie, nor do I want to write the backstory for a fantasy setting that'd make it believable.
>So instead I'll just take the set of Beverly Hills 90210 and just shove vampires in it!
And that works initially, people know what our world is, and they know what vampires are, so they don't need much explained to them. But as time goes on, more things do need explaining (like- how come people don't know vampires exist?) and most of these writers don't have the skill to either adequately explore or answer the question.
I'm actually writing a modern fantasy story myself, and I decided to write it that people are just incapable of comprehending that they are looking at something magical in order to both justify the masquerade, and keep more than a handful of characters have to question the nature of reality.
Twilight single-handedly killed it.
"Bright" helped kill it a little bit.
Urban fantasy with people in trenchcoats needs to come back.
Too many goonets use it for they perversion, and it has become corny and lame.
because people hate the current world, and adding magic to it while keeping the world mostly the same on the surface just mean that even magic wouldn't be able to change it.
So they prefer to escape reality to wildly different settings instead.
>South Texas
Lechuzas: shapeshifting owl witches. La Llorona (eternally weeping mother wraith) going on and on down by the resacas and canals. Duendes (sometimes malicious gnome-goblins) jacking everything from errybody. Supposedly there's a nun ghost at a chapel because, over a hundred years ago, priests at a mission would rape the sisters and made them bury the infants on the chapel grounds. There was a riot when it was exposed and 2 priests were hung on the mission's facade (which still stands atop the hill by the chapel). Well, the original chapel was destroyed in a flood and was rebuilt shortly after. A Catholic school is on the hill by the mission's remains.
Iowa has the Van Meter Visitor. 15 ft long, brown, scaly, wings. Shot beams of light from a horn on its head. Stank bad. One terrorized the town for 5 nights and disappeared down a mineshaft with a second beast when chased. The beasts did not emerge the next day so the mine was sealed. Many witnesses means it was quite an episode.
Saint Petersburg, Russia.
Ghosts, ghosts everywhere. Emperors haunting their former palaces, nobles haunting their former mansions, ghosts of the workers who died constructing the city, ghosts haunting subway tunnels, ghosts of the people who starved to the death during the Siege of Leningrad, ghosts of the priests buried alive by the bolsheviks, ghosts haunting old apartments, ghosts of the soldiers, ghosts of the criminals who died in brutal turf wars of the 90s - the list goes on.
There is also at least one cursed egyptian mummy in the Hermitage museum, invisible griffons guarding the tower of the court apothecary who was also rumored to be a master alchemist, genuine 3500 years old sphinxes on the enbankment who sometimes come alive and eat unlucky people.
According to the myths, the city is built upon ancient shrines dedicated to horrible and bloodthirsty gods worshipped by finno-ugric pagans long ago, and the entire city is cursed.
Other myths tell about the ruins of incredibly ancient antediluvian city underground.
In fact, there are a lot of underground passages around, sometimes explorers discover disturbing things there - see picrel.
By the way, dismemberment is currently the most popular method of murder among locals.
>tfw no Russian sphinx with blue eyes and a taste for vodka who wants to eat you
>you share a bottle with her and give her wrong answers but anything goes because she's tipsy
>she falls asleep on you and you can't move all night because you don't wanna wake her up
This is a pain my heart wasn't prepared for
>ghosts of the people who starved to the death during the Siege of Leningrad
Shouldn't they be like, in Leningrad instead? Also, just imagine that city is super-cursed as well
It's the same city.
Lenin renamed St. Petersburg to Leningrad under the USSR (Stalingrad also got it's name around the same time) and the Russians changed it back after the USSR collapsed.
The city was renamed to Leningrad shortly after Lenin's death in 1924, and renamed back to Saint Petersburg 2 months before the collapse of the Soviet Union by the popular vote. We had an unfortunately brief period when we had something distantly resembling a functioning democracy during that times.
Well, those sphinxes are definitely not Russian and are male - they depict Pharaoh Amenhotep III. But we have 4 Russian female sphinxes guarding the Egyptian Bridge - they are much smaller, definitely female, and nowhere as mystically powerful as genuine Ancient Egyptian ones - at most they could make you lose your mind if you look in their faces at inappropriate time (usually at dusk or dawn), according to an another legend. They are also just 200 years old.
I could also give short descriptions of the most famous local ghosts.
Ghost of the Emperor Paul I - haunts St. Michael's Castle, looks for the people who assassinated him by strangling with a scarf and crushing his temple with a heavy and ornate snuffbox. Likes to play a flute. Mostly harmless unless you offend him.
Ghost of the Emperor Nicholas I. Haunts the Winter Palace (Hermitage Museum). Completely harmless, but looks impressive.
Ghost of the first Emperor, Peter the Great, the founder of Saint Petersburg He is closer to a guardian spirit than a simple ghost. Can appear anywhere in the city, but prefers hanging out near the Bronze Horseman monument dedicated to him. Mostly benign, but deadly if you disrespect him - he had an infamously fierce temper in life. Bowing and addressing him as "Your Imperial Majesty" usually works. Can possess the statue and go for a wild ride.
According to a 200 year old legend Saint Petersburg can't be conquered by enemy forces while the statue proudly stands in the very heart of the city. The monument survived the Siege of Leningrad without a single scratch despite 3 years of constant shelling and bombing. The monument stands on the 1500 ton Thunder Stone - the largest rock ever transported - which used to be an ancient pagan shrine.
Ghost of Rasputin. Still retains his magical powers and can help you if you bring him an appropriate tribute.
Ghost of Sophia Perovskaya, a girl who was a part of the group which assassinated Emperor Alexander II. Haunts Obvodny Channel.
Ghost of a forgotten knight which haunts his old armour displayed at Knight's Hall of the Hermitage Museum. Likes to possess his armour and walk around the museum.
Ghost of the bodyguard of Peter the Great. He was a huge guy with acromegaly, 7'6" tall, and after his death his skeleton was displayed in the Kunstkamera - the first Russian museum. A hundred years later his skull was lost in some forgotten incident. Still haunts the museum looking for his head.
>West Virginia
We used to have a lot, but methheads invaded the local ecosystem and out competed them for resources. Now the cryptids are an endangered species.
Just chillin in dirty jersey with the goons
Chesapeake and central Virginia. Not gonna cover Appalachian monsters/cryptids because they get plenty of attention already.
There's Chessie of course, the serpentine monster and cousin of Nessie which lives in the Bay.
A more recurring cryptid is the Goochland (yes that is the area's name) Devil Monkey. It's been sighted over a dozen times and is variably described as a large ape-like beast with wolf characteristics, with pale or black fur. It stood on its hind legs at about 6 feet tall, and had pointy ears, a flat snout, and a long thin tail. Its primary prey are deer and rabbits but it's been known to eat dogs or livestock.
A recent addition to the lineup is the Richmond Vampire. Allegedly, when the Church Hill Tunnel collapsed in 1925, rescue workers discovered a humanoid figure drenched in blood eating one of the victims, with flayed skin hanging from its body. The creature escaped and fled either into the James River or into the nearby Hollywood Cemetery. It's connected to one W.W. Pool, buried in a mausoleum in the same cemetery, who was rumored to have fled England in the late 1800s on charges of vampirism and emigrated to Richmond.
I live on bell island, we have two main tales here, the fairies and the bell island hag.
The fairies that live on this island aren't the fairy tale kind, their the kind that drown kids for shits and giggles.
Speaking of, the bell island hag is the ghost of a girl killed by the fairies, the story goes that young girl went into the bog without taking any bread to bribe the fairies with, so they drowned her, lots of people heard her cries but none helped, assuming it to be a fairy trick. Now she's monster that crawls on all fours and scares people away from the bog so they don't suffer the same fate.
Theres also the supposed alien ship crashed just off the island, in the sixties there was an explosion over the island and of course people say it was aliens.
A Sea Hag could get it. I don't even care.
Depends a lot of how back in time you want to go. At brisk walking distance I have a little hill where the count killed a dragon in medieval time. At the next mountain, a giant walking treemen died becoming an "oak palace".
Several witches were hanged, some spirits/ghosts in an abandoned farmer house, household spirits legends, and a haunted hospital in one of the big cities at 15m in car. A hill where a wolf father was hanged with his wolves (my ancestors loved hanging magic users for some reason) and some water ladie than had a very tragic tale be a peasant. Soma bandits too, but nothing magic about them (apart some towns have them as they giants).
the slenderman stands in my room at night 🙁
I'm sorry what your uncle is doing yo your bussy at night anon.
don't shatter anons coping mechanism
Netherlands here.
We've got "Witte Wieven" which roughly translates to white wives, they're ghostlike entities often asociated with mist, hence the name. Said to haunt cairns and dolmens. They can be friendly, but most of the time they'll lure you into the swamp/bog/forest kinda like will o' wisps.