Urban legends are some of the earliest scary stories many of us can remember experiencing at a young age because of their staying power. Let's dissect what makes these timeless terrors so titillating!
My friend’s friend told me you like scary stories. Well, you’ve come to the right place because we built an entire candle business around tales of terror! Urban legends are some of the earliest scary stories many of us can remember experiencing at a young age because of their staying power. Chances are you’ve checked your car’s back seat, under your bed, or locked your doors because of one at some point. So like a mortician, I’m going to dissect what makes these timeless terrors so titillating!
1. Ah! It seems the first clue in our allegorical autopsy is plausibility! Urban legends don’t take place on space stations with alien infestations, or feature world-ending apocalypses that are easily debunked just by turning on the news. Heavens, no. They happened to a friend of a friend while they were babysitting, and started getting strange phone calls. A couple your mom knows who was necking at the top of a private overlook at the edge of town, while a killer just happened to escape a nearby asylum. A former coworker who was driving down a lonely, dark road at night and stopped to give a woman dressed in white a lift. All yarns believable enough to make you wonder if that noise you heard behind you a moment ago was really just your imagination…
Did you look?! Well, no matter. They’ll come out from under your bed tonight when they’re ready.
2. Now we’re getting to the meat of it! The next tasty tidbit every good urban legend abides by is presenting information little by little to make your hair stand on edge. Presenting information properly is true for any good story, but especially horror to build maximum suspense! As Alfred Hitchcock once said, “There’s no terror in a bang, only the anticipation of it.” Who is this crazy person on the phone, and why do they keep asking me if I’ve checked the children who are upstairs asleep? Why does this truck riding my tailgate keep flashing its high beams at me? What was that scratching noise on the side of the car as we drove away from our romantic parking spot? Great urban legends told properly only reveal just enough information to torture you, and never enough to show their hand. This is because of the third thing many urban legends have in common…So let’s get down to bare bones.
3. The victims are often in more danger than they first thought! The calls have been coming from inside the house the whole time! That truck was flashing its headlights because a psychopath was hiding in your backseat! That scratching noise was the sound of a killer’s hook hand reaching for your car door! You want that ending to pack enough punch to turn your audience’s blood to ice when they hear it for the first time! If you’ve ever had to stop a friend from spoiling an urban legend because they weren’t telling it right, I have a bone to pick with them!
Well, there you have it! It seems you’re ready to start writing some urban legends of your own, and we can finally lay this corpse to rest! What are some of your favorite urban legends? Share them with us on Instagram and Facebook, and if you love a good spooky short story remember all of our candles and wax melts come with original tales written by the Hex and Wax team!