American Folktales 2.0

On the night of May 26, 2019, two teenagers from Seneca High School were on the tracks of a railroad trestle east of Louisville, Kentucky. A Norfolk Southern train hit them at about 9:10 p.m. Savanna…

In August 1987, volunteers searching for a missing twelve-year-old found her buried on the grounds of the Willowbrook State School. For years, Staten Island children had been told that a man called Cr…

A folklorist traces the Bunny Man from two documented nights on Guinea Road in 1970 to the railroad underpass he now haunts, and the murders the story added on the way.

A folklorist traces Resurrection Mary from a local road story and uncertain historical echoes to newspaper collection, television, and Chicago’s present civic memory.

A folklorist traces the Hodag from Eugene Shepard’s 1893 newspaper tale through lumber-camp storytelling, national publicity, and Rhinelander’s present civic identity.

The Wendigo is often drawn as an antlered snow demon. That image is relatively new, and it obscures an older cultural argument about hunger, reciprocity, and social breakdown.

This episode explores “Bigfoot: From logging road joke to regional icon”. It is presented as a solo narration, and the source list lets you revisit the original material.

A locked gate in northeastern Utah became one of the most productive thresholds in modern American legend-making. This episode follows Skinwalker Ranch from the Sherman family's first public accounts…

It starts with a mystery in the snow.

The ritual goes like this. You're at a sleepover. Someone dares you. You go into the bathroom alone, turn off the lights, face the mirror, and say her name. Three times is standard — but the earliest…

Most people who grew up in the American Southwest heard this story from a grandmother, a neighbor, or a babysitter trying to get them to come in before dark. A woman drowns her children in a river aft…

In August 1995, a woman in a small suburb outside San Juan looked out her window and saw something she could not explain — a four-foot creature walking upright, three long fingers, spines running down…