Forbidden Lore

The Old Stories

Folklore & Legends

Stories carried through generations. Haunted roads, legendary creatures, cursed places, witches, spirits and traditions rooted somewhere between history and belief.

These entries document folklore as folklore. Historical people and places may be real, while supernatural claims, oral traditions and legendary details may be impossible to verify.

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Traditions & Legends

Urban Legends

Stories passed from person to person until nobody remembers where they began.

Regional Folklore

Legends rooted in specific towns, landscapes, communities and traditions.

Legendary Creatures

Creatures preserved through oral tradition, mythology and regional belief.

Cursed Places

Locations surrounded by warnings, tragedies and stories that refuse to disappear.

Supernatural Legends

Ghosts, spirits, witches and unexplained forces preserved through generations.

Dark Folklore

Older traditions shaped by fear, death, superstition and the unknown.

From the Archive

Latest Folklore

Folklore & Legends
FolkloreLondon and other locations, England

Spring-Heeled Jack: The Leaping Terror of Victorian London

In 1837, stories spread through London of a bizarre figure attacking people on lonely roads. Witnesses described a tall man in a cloak who could leap extraordinary heights. Then two young women reported encounters with something far stranger: a clawed attacker with fiery eyes who appeared to breathe blue flame. Newspapers called him Spring-Heeled Jack. Nobody ever established who—or what—he was.

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Folklore & Legends
FolkloreNew Jersey Pine Barrens, United States

The Jersey Devil: The Monster That Haunted the Pine Barrens

For centuries, stories have described a winged creature stalking the forests of southern New Jersey: a horse-headed, bat-winged thing supposedly born as the cursed thirteenth child of Mother Leeds. But the history behind the Jersey Devil may be stranger than the legend. Religious feuds, colonial politics, Benjamin Franklin, newspaper hysteria, hoaxes, and a remarkable week in January 1909 all helped transform the Leeds Devil into one of America's most famous monsters.

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Folklore & Legends
FolklorePoint Pleasant, West Virginia, United States

Mothman: The Winged Creature That Haunted Point Pleasant

In November 1966, two young couples near Point Pleasant, West Virginia, reported a towering winged figure with glowing red eyes beside an abandoned World War II munitions plant. Over the next thirteen months came more sightings, UFO reports, strange phone calls, Men in Black stories, and warnings of disaster. Then the Silver Bridge collapsed into the Ohio River, killing 46 people. The creature became known as Mothman.

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Folklore & Legends
FolkloreGreat Lakes and Northern Woodlands, United States and Canada

The Wendigo: The Insatiable Hunger in the Northern Woods

Long before the Wendigo became an antlered monster of modern horror, stories across several Algonquian-speaking cultures described something more disturbing: a cannibalistic being of winter, starvation, greed, and endless hunger. Humans could become Wendigos, communities feared them, and historical cases ended in real deaths. The legend has survived for centuries—but the creature most people picture today is not the one found in the oldest traditions.

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