8 More Horror Novels Based on Urban Legends
Urban legends, myths, and folklore are all stories that come from a similar bucket.
They can’t be verified but they also can’t be summarily dismissed as fantasy. They have just enough ‘normal’ elements in them to make them seem plausible. And they make us feel as if life isn’t as cut and dried as scientists like to make us think.
Handed down through oral storytelling, whispered in the dark around campfires, spread like viruses on the Internet, these types of stories are fantastic in the hands of horror authors.
Following on from our 2022 post, 6 Horror Novels About Urban Legends, we’ve spotted another 8 horror novels based on urban legends.
These stories include Bigfoot, murderous grannies, cursed movies and video tapes, hungry plants, vanishing hitchhikers, a bunch of Marys, and a grieving ghost.
So, dig in. We hope you enjoy these new twists on some old tales.
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Table of Contents
Devolution – Max Brooks
Bigfoot urban legend horror
The legend
Wild man myths and legends can be found all over the world and tell of large humanoid creatures who live in isolated forests, walk upright, and look like large versions of humans. They are usually described as being muscular and covered in shaggy hair, like an animal.
There are alleged photographs, videos, and audio recordings of such creatures, as well as hair samples and evidence of large footprints, however there has never been any definitive proof that such creatures actually exist.
The elusive creatures are known as Bigfoot, or Sasquatch, and are thought to be the warmer-climate versions of the Himalaya’s Abominable Snowman, or Yeti.
The story
As the ash and chaos from Mount Rainier’s eruption swirled and finally settled, the story of the Greenloop massacre has passed unnoticed, unexamined, until now.
The journals of resident Kate Holland, recovered from the town’s bloody wreckage, capture a tale too harrowing, and too earth-shattering in its implications, to be forgotten.
In these pages, Max Brooks brings Kate’s extraordinary account to light for the first time, faithfully reproducing her words alongside his own extensive investigations into the massacre and the legendary beasts behind it.
Kate’s is a tale of unexpected strength and resilience, of humanity’s defiance in the face of a terrible predator’s gaze, and, inevitably, of savagery and death.
“Bigfoot destroys town. That was the title of an article I received not long after the Mount Rainier eruption.”
The Black Tongue – Marko Hautala
Serial killer urban legend horror
The legend
Grandma Kuokkammo (or the Hoe Granny) is an old Finnish urban legend from Suvilahti. The author of this book, Marko Hautala, says he asked people on Facebook about the legend, and it seemed like many had forgotten it until he jogged their memories. While the origin of the legend is shrouded in mystery, the legend is about an old lady chasing children away from her garden with a hoe and killing them.
The story
For generations, the urban legend of Granny Hatchet has plagued the quiet residential area of Suvikylä in northern Finland. As the story goes, this immortal killer murders her victims with a hatchet, then buries the hearts in a potato field and eats them after they’ve rotted black. But not everyone is convinced it is just a story.
Maisa Riipinen has returned to her hometown to complete her dissertation on urban folklore at the same time that Samuel Autio has come home to arrange his father’s funeral.
As hazy, disturbing memories from their pasts meld with strange events in the present, Maisa and Samuel attempt to make sense of the town’s fearful obsession with the mythical Granny Hatchet.
But if it’s only a legend, then why are people still vanishing without a trace?
“You’re all sitting here wondering what Granny Hatchet does.”
Burn the Negative – Josh Winning
Cursed movie urban legend horror
The legend
Hollywood is a superstitious place and many movies have been the subjects of speculation that they were cursed because of tragedies, difficulties, and weird happenings that occurred during their production. Some of the real movies that have been said to have been cursed include Poltergeist, The Exorcist, The Crow, The Omen, Apocalypse Now, Twilight Zone: The Movie, and The Wizard of Oz.
The story
Arriving in L.A. to visit the set of a new streaming horror series, journalist Laura Warren witnesses a man jumping from a bridge, landing right behind her car.
Here we go, she thinks. It’s started.
The series she’s reporting on is a remake of a ’90s horror flick. A cursed ’90s horror flick, which she starred in as a child, and has been running from her whole life.
In The Guesthouse, Laura played the little girl with the terrifying gift to tell people how the Needle Man would kill them. When eight of the cast and crew died in ways that eerily mirrored the movie’s on-screen deaths, the film became a cult classic, and ruined her life.
Leaving it behind, Laura changed her name and her accent, dyed her hair, and moved across the Atlantic. But some scripts don’t want to stay buried.
Now, as the body count rises again, Laura finds herself on the run with her aspiring actress sister and a jaded psychic, hoping to end the curse once and for all, and to stay out of the Needle Man’s lethal reach.
“She should have seen it coming. Hollywood was all about rebooting. Remaking. Regurgitating.”
The Vine that Ate the South – J.D. Wilkes
Plant urban legend horror
The legend
Kudzu is a highly-invasive plant introduced into the USA in the late 19th century. If you’ve ever travelled across southern USA, you’ve probably seen it blanketing hillsides and climbing telephone poles and trees along the roadsides. Over the years, myths have sprung up about its unstoppable growth being somehow sinister. It is believed by many that that it covers millions of acres, and it could consume a large American city in a less than a year.
The story
In a forgotten corner of western Kentucky lies a haunted forest referred to locally as “The Deadening,” where vampire cults roam wild and time is immaterial.
Our protagonist and his accomplice, Carver Canute, set out down the Old Spur Line in search of the legendary Kudzu House, where an old couple is purported to have been swallowed whole by a hungry vine.
Their quest leads them face to face with albino panthers, Great Dane-riding girls, protective property owners, and just about every American folk-demon ever, while forcing the protagonist to finally take stock of his relationship with his father and the man’s mysterious disappearance.
“This humble weed defied expectation.”
Sparrow Hill Road – Seanan McGuire
Ghost urban legend horror
The legend
The vanishing hitchhiker is an urban legend in which people travelling by car meet or pick up a hitchhiker (usually a girl) who subsequently disappears. The hitchhiker is usually believed to be a ghost that appears often on the anniversary of their death. Another variation is that the hitchhiker is a goddess.
The story
Rose Marshall died in 1952 in Buckley Township, Michigan, run off the road by a man named Bobby Cross – a man who had sold his soul to live forever, and intended to use her death to pay the price of his immortality. Trouble was, he didn’t ask Rose what she thought of the idea.
It’s been more than sixty years since that night, and she’s still sixteen, and she’s still running.
They have names for her all over the country: the Girl in the Diner. The Phantom Prom Date. The Girl in the Green Silk Gown.
Mostly she just goes by “Rose,” a hitchhiking ghost girl with her thumb out and her eyes fixed on the horizon, trying to outrace a man who never sleeps, never stops, and never gives up on the idea of claiming what’s his.
She’s the angel of the overpass, she’s the darling of the truck stops, and she’s going to figure out a way to win her freedom. After all, it’s not like it can kill her.
You can’t kill what’s already dead.
“They’re all the ghostroads, and they’ve all got one thing in common: they’re all physical evidence of the scars mankind leaves on the world.”
Pretty Marys All in a Row – Gwendolyn Kiste
Mary urban legend horror
The legends
Resurrection Mary is a Chicago area ‘vanishing ghost’ urban legend. The legend says that Mary was a young woman who was killed by a hit-and-run driver in the early 1930s. Since then some men have reported picking up a young female hitchhiker only to have her disappear when they near the Resurrection Cemetery.
Bloody Mary: The legend says that when you say Bloody Mary thirteen times (or some other specific number of times; depending on who’s telling the story) into a mirror in a dimly-lit room, she will then appear in the mirror. She may be a corpse, a witch, or a ghost, and is usually covered in blood. In horror stories, she tends to be evil and murderous and hard to get rid of once she’s been summoned.
Mary Quite Contrary: Mary, Mary, Quite Contrary is a nursery rhyme about a Mary and her garden that some believe refers to Mary 1 of England (aka Bloody Mary).
Mary Mack: Miss Mary Mack is a clapping game about a woman dressed in black with silver buttons. Nobody is sure what the song is about but the way she’s dressed implies she’s in a coffin.
Mari Lwyd is a Welsh folk custom usually performed around Christmas time in which a horse’s skull is decorated, mounted on a pole, and then carried by a person under a sheet.
The story
Mary, Mary…
Always hitchhiking the same lonely highway, she calls herself Rhee, but everyone else knows her as Resurrection Mary. And when she’s transported home each night to the same decrepit, nowhere mansion, she’s always got her sisters.
Call her name three times, and Bloody Mary appears.
In the poisoned garden, Mistress Mary, Quite Contrary.
Downstairs, Mary Mack, forever building her own coffin.
And brooding with her horse skull, the restless Mari Lwyd.
They are the Marys, embodiments of urban legend and what goes bump in the night, every child’s nightmare. But as the walls between their realities start to crack, the shadows threaten oblivion.
To save herself and her sisters, Rhee must unravel who the Marys are before the darkness claims them.
“And I was worried tonight would be boring.”
The Haunting of Alejandra – V. Castro
Ghost urban legend horror
The legend
La Llorona, also known as the Weeping Woman, is a Mexican urban legend about a woman who drowned her children after seeing her husband with another woman. She then drowns herself but cannot get into Heaven so she roams the Earth near bodies of water, trying to find her children.
The story
Alejandra no longer knows who she is. To her husband, she is a wife, and to her children, a mother. To her own adoptive mother, she is a daughter. But they cannot see who Alejandra has become: a woman struggling with a darkness that threatens to consume her.
Nor can they see what Alejandra sees. In times of despair, a ghostly vision appears to her, the apparition of a crying woman in a ragged white gown.
When Alejandra visits a therapist, she begins exploring her family’s history, starting with the biological mother she never knew. As she goes deeper into the lives of the women in her family, she learns that heartbreak and tragedy are not the only things she has in common with her ancestors.
Because the crying woman was with them, too. She is La Llorona, the vengeful and murderous mother of Mexican legend. And she will not leave until Alejandra follows her mother, her grandmother, and all the women who came before her into the darkness.
But Alejandra has inherited more than just pain. She has inherited the strength and the courage of her foremothers, and she will have to summon everything they have given her to banish La Llorona forever.
“Beyond the beaded veil of water on glass, a white form appeared in front of the towel rack.”
Scanlines – Todd Keisling
Cursed video tape urban legend horror
The legend
As with the cursed movie urban legends, cursed video tapes are movies that, when watched on tape, cause the watcher to die. The tape then winds up in the hands of the next watcher and the curse continues.
The story
In 1987, Congressman Benjamin Hardy III died by suicide on live television amidst accusations of political corruption. Years later, rumors of a recording surfaced among VHS trading groups and urban legend chat rooms.
Dubbed the “Duncan Tape,” after the deceased cameraman who attempted to sell the video, the rumors allege that anyone who watches the tape is driven to suicide.
Or so the story goes. In truth, no one has ever seen the supposed Duncan Tape, presumably because it doesn’t exist. It’s a ghost story perpetuated on the forums and chat rooms of the internet, another handful of bytes scattered across the Information Superhighway at blistering 56K modem speeds.
For Robby and his friends, an urban legend is the last thing on their minds when a boring Friday night presents a chance to download porn. But the short clip they watch turns out to be something far more graphic and disturbing, and in the coming days, they’ll learn even the most outlandish urban legends possess a shred of truth.
“He’s here again. Inside this time.”
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Published: 21 February 2024
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