Rumours, gossip, tall tales and contemporary legends used to be so much fun. Then along came the Internet era with its deleterious effects on discourse and gentler emotions. Now, the craziest beliefs and ideas spread by the most deranged and unedifying people, are amplified on social media engines designed to market whatever might spark conflict and have gone mainstream with the acolytes of Donald Trump and other such figures turning everything into an excuse for divisiveness, self-seriousness, mockery of the weak and outbursts of violence.
Once upon a time, however, and speaking with a degree of nostalgia, most childhoods involved some light-hearted compendium of weird tales opening minds up in entertaining ways to questions of how we weigh truth, the authority of a source, the likelihood of an event or chain of events. Credit is due to adjunct professor Gail de Vos for her engaging, insightful volume, The Watkins Book Of Urban Legends, for rekindling a lot of that joyousness in the contemplation of the “it’s true, I swear!” secondhand stories we all tell.
De Vos maintains an even and amused tone throughout, her introduction laying down an appropriate framework for understanding the structure of the work and the ideas it tackles. While clearly determined to elevate critical thinking about the tales she shares here, de Vos does so without hectoring or lecturing the listener; well-placed conclusions and summaries allow the ‘so what?’ underpinning a story to sink in gently and there are no heavy-handed morals to unpick.
The categorisation of tales into specific categories tied to particular contexts and tellers could sound like a dry exercise. Instead, having been taught about ‘cadaver stories, a category of stories that medical students are told to help them desensitise themselves when approaching some of the more “gruesome” aspects of their education…’ it was immediately possible to think of similar tales serving that purpose; removing the taboo around the emptied-out shell of our physical form. Storytelling of this kind persists because it is teaching deeper messages to prepare individuals for something they will some day encounter, for some, sadly, sooner rather than later.
The way in which stories morph between cultures, across generations and eras as technologies and experiences evolve, is a consistent drumbeat. It was also fascinating to learn that newspaper stories about adulterated sweets and food stuffs reach a peak around Halloween, and that real news stories can live on as tales transplanted to new locales and times. It was amusing to realise I’d accepted the supposed dangers of radiation from microwaves without question when, if I’d engaged my critical faculties, maybe I would have asked why tens of millions of households would ever be allowed to house a miniature mind-frying Chernobyl on their kitchen units?
It’s a weighty book meaning, with so much material to digest, it’s likelier that one would sip rather than gulp; there’s so much to take in. Luckily, chapters are of sensible length so there are natural breaking-off points at the end of categories and concepts, or one can read just a few of the short tales — this would likely make for a good experience with younger readers. The one challenge of the book is simply that it, perhaps, branches out so far and tries to wrap in too much: if the definition of a contemporary myth or legend is all we say that is untrue through good intentions, bad intentions or simple ignorance, then it becomes impossible to grapple adequately with the topic because it can encompass near anything.
In rapid succession, the reader bounces through songs and musicians, scams and frauds, memes and online ‘wisdom’, chain letters, hidden markers made by burglars or hobos, ghosts… In another section, there’s a moving mention of the author’s own encounter with breast cancer and the casual or fervently relayed nonsense regarding causes and treatments she had to contest. The challenge is that this left behind the easy story-telling style and became a debunking checklist. It then moves onto a discussion of heart failure before, suddenly, segueing onto couples attaching love locks to bridges — I felt I needed a section on neck injuries so I could fact-check if such rapid-fire and incongruous topic transitions could give me whiplash.
The book continues to reward, however. I had never realised humans were scared enough of tunnels that they had come up with so many stories about them — it sent me off double-checking that the Balvano train disaster of 1944 was a real event (I doubted my memory of reading about it), then made me wonder why there was no story or legend associated with the tunnel in question, given 500 victims suffocated in that case. Beyond the glib answer of someone bothering to tell a tale and others willing to repeat it, are there conditions that make it more likely that one incident will breed legends while another does not?
The book ends, after a rapid and effective introduction to the similarities between modern-day politicised conspiracy theories like QAnon and similarly fact-resistant tales of the past, with an enthralling section bringing us up to date with legends seemingly bred within our new online world — Killswitch, the Blind Maiden, the Red Room Curse — which read as updates on older themes transposed into the era of screen-based living. I was also amused to learn the term ‘creepypasta’ for the first time, excellent.
WRITER
Gail de Vos
PUBLISHER
Watkins Publishing
RELEASE
12 November 2024
