This week: Where do Urban Legends start? Edited by: Prosperous Snow celebrating  
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"I've had a lifelong obsession with urban legends and American folklore."
Eric Kripke
" I'm going to check the world's best source for spawning new urban legends, the Internet. What, you thought I couldn't even type? The Web is just another threshold between one world and another."
Nalo Hopkinson
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I always wondered where urban legends came from. Today I realize that some of these legends begin in childhood. Stories we are told by our friends or family that we believed, when we first heard them. We heard the story and--no matter how illogical or unproven it was--we accepted it without bothering to investigate or ask questions.
I grew up in Blackwell, Oklahoma, not far from the Chikaskia River and a dam that created a lake on the river. I do not remember what the lake was called because we always referred to it as The Lake. My Grandfather rented a lot of land on the shore, put a mobile home on the land, and built a boat dock on the lake.
One of the urban legends I remember concerns Cottonmouth Water Moccasins. According to this story, there were nests of the venomous snakes in the lake, and it was dangerous for a water skier to fall off their skies and into one of the nests. As an adult, I know that is illogical and impossible, but as a young person, it frightened me when I would swim or go skiing.
Another story was about a catfish. According to this legend, there was a catfish big enough to eat a human being somewhere in the lake. In all the time my siblings and I swam and fished in that body of water, we never encountered a catfish that big. Some of those we caught were large and made good meals at fish fries, but none of them were gigantic.
The only other urban legend I remember about my hometown involved Bonnie and Clyde. It was said that during one of their crime sprees, they stayed in Blackwell overnight. I do not know how true this was, because I do not remember Blackwell being mentioned in the movie about them.
What urban legends have you heard about your hometown? Would any of those legends make a good story line, enhance a plot, or reveal something about your protagonist or antagonist?
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Fantasy: April 13, 2022 Issue [#11309]
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