The index / Lore / Folklore
Careful, contextual reporting that separates documented evidence from allegation, theory, and speculation.
Lore & Explained · Folklore
Who Baba Yaga is in East Slavic folklore, from her chicken-legged hut and flying mortar to Vasilisa, disputed origins, scholarly interpretations and the John Wick misconception.
Aug 25, 2026
Lore & Explained · Folklore
The real story behind the Backrooms: a 2002 renovation photo from a Wisconsin hobby store, a 2019 anonymous 4chan post, and how the internet built a shared mythology around both.
Sep 2, 2026
Lore & Explained · Folklore
What is a banshee? Explore the Irish bean sí, death omens, keening, family traditions, Lady Fanshawe, the comb motif and modern horror myths.
Aug 25, 2026
Lore & Explained · Folklore
Between 1764 and 1767, a series of deadly animal attacks terrified Gévaudan. Here is what the records say about the Beast, the hunts, Jean Chastel, wolves and later werewolf legend.
Sep 16, 2026
Lore & Explained · Folklore
Where the Bloody Mary mirror legend came from, what older mirror-divination customs may have influenced it, and why people can genuinely see strange faces in dim glass.
Aug 27, 2026
Lore & Explained · Folklore
What is the Boiúna? Trace Brazil’s Amazonian Cobra Grande through river folklore, Cobra Norato, regional traditions and the 2026 horror film Beware Boiúna.
Sep 29, 2026
Lore & Explained · Folklore
Who were the Casket Girls of New Orleans? Separate the filles à la cassette, Ursuline history and small travel chests from the later vampire legend.
Sep 29, 2026
Lore & Explained · Folklore
In 1970, rival self-proclaimed vampire hunters, a televised exorcism claim, and a mob at the cemetery gates turned ghost sightings at Highgate into Britain's best-known modern vampire legend.
Sep 11, 2026
Lore & Explained · Folklore
Krampus isn't documented before the 16th century, and the popular 'son of Hel' backstory traces to a 2012 fantasy novel. Here's the actual Alpine history.
Sep 10, 2026
Lore & Explained · Folklore
Who is La Llorona? Trace the Weeping Woman from Nahua death omens and nineteenth-century Mexican literature to regional folklore, Xochimilco and modern horror.
Aug 25, 2026
Lore & Explained · Folklore
British and Irish folklore warns against picking blackberries after Michaelmas. Here is where the Devil’s spit story comes from, what Old Michaelmas Day means, and what the historical sources actually say.
Sep 29, 2026
Lore & Explained · Folklore
Search for Mormo today and you'll find a vampire, a demon king, Hecate's consort. Ancient Greek sources describe something smaller and stranger: a nursery bugbear.
Sep 5, 2026
Lore & Explained · Folklore
Pontianak and kuntilanak are often treated as one fixed female ghost. Older Malay sources, modern ethnography and horror cinema show a tradition that changed by place and period.
Sep 28, 2026
Lore & Explained · Folklore
Robert Johnson really did disappear and come back a far better guitarist. The deal-with-the-devil story wasn't originally his -- it belonged to a different bluesman first.
Sep 11, 2026
Lore & Explained · Folklore
What does Skinwalker mean in Diné tradition? A careful guide to yee naaldlooshii, the 1878 witch purge, Skinwalker Ranch and the modern myths that changed the story.
Aug 25, 2026
Lore & Explained · Folklore
Slender Man was invented in a 2009 Something Awful Photoshop contest by Eric Knudsen. Here's the documented history of how a deliberate creation became a shared internet legend.
Sep 2, 2026
Lore & Explained · Folklore
Teke Teke is a modern Japanese school legend about a legless spirit that drags itself on its arms. The railway accident said to have caused it has never been documented -- it's part of the story, not a confirmed event.
Sep 13, 2026
Lore & Explained · Folklore
Vampire traditions were never one universal mythology. Balkan revenant beliefs, New England practices and later fiction each have different histories.
Sep 21, 2026
Lore & Explained · Folklore
What is the Wendigo? A careful look at Algonquian wiindigoo traditions, cannibalism, greed, the disputed idea of Wendigo psychosis and the antlered monster created by modern horror.
Aug 25, 2026
Lore & Explained · Folklore
Werewolf traditions range from ancient transformation stories to early-modern trials and modern horror rules. The full moon was not an original universal feature.
Sep 21, 2026
Lore & Explained · Folklore
What Gerald of Wales recorded about the werewolves of Ossory: the seven-year curse, a priest and communion, and the limits of the medieval evidence.
Oct 8, 2026
Lore & Explained · Folklore
The Friday the 13th superstition appears in nineteenth-century records. Trace its older ingredients, false origin stories, and the evidence about bad luck.
Sep 27, 2026