Traditional Legends

Yet with autumn’s beauty comes the early dark. Long before electricity, this season meant a growing, almost sentient night. To the ancients, twilight was not merely the end of the day, it was a threshold. Fires were kindled, shutters were drawn, and people whispered stories to keep the shadows at bay. Today, we forget what it means to live on the edge of the dark. But the people of old had their own lights to guide them: the mysterious Will-o’-the-Wisp, the Hinky Punk, and th

I thought again of the stories told by those who once feared the cold more than the dark. They said that every home kept a spirit: a quiet watcher who tended the fire when no one else could. They went by many names — Domovoi in the east, Brownie in the western isles, Tomte beneath the snowbound rafters of the north.

Traveling through the quiet backroads of Appalachia, it’s not uncommon to stumble across the weathered ruins of old farmhouses.These paired entrances were known as death doors: one reserved for the living, and the other for the dead.

In 2008, a woman named Lerina Garcia Gordo posted on an online forum something extraordinary. She claimed to have woken up in a world that wasn’t hers. Her sheets were different. Her job had changed. Her relationship status was not what she remembered. The differences were subtle, but undeniable. She was convinced she had somehow shifted into an alternate reality.

Whispers in the mists. Songs from unseen lips. Footsteps echoing in empty woods. In the highlands of the American Southeast, such signs may mark the presence of the Nunnehi—the Hidden People.

Before the name "hurricane" entered our everyday vocabulary, before weather apps and Doppler radar, the indigenous Taíno people of the Caribbean had their own way of explaining the violent storms that ripped through their islands. They feared and respected a force of nature embodied not as a storm system, but as a wrathful, commanding deity: Guabancex The Furious Goddess of Storms.

Along the quiet coast of South Carolina, where Spanish moss drapes from old oaks and sea breezes carry the scent of salt and sand, a ghost is said to walk.They call him the Gray Man of Pawleys Island, and locals know that when he shows up, trouble isn’t far behind.

When we think of witch trials in America, the infamous Salem witch trials of 1692 often come to mind. However, lesser-known episodes of witch hysteria also unfolded in other corners of the early United States, including the rural heart of South Carolina.

In the heart of New Orleans lives a legend—one whose influence reaches far beyond the French Quarter. Marie Laveau.

Known across the Middle East, North Africa, and South Asia, these supernatural entities have long haunted the edges of human experience—neither angels nor demons, but something more ambiguous, more unpredictable.

High in the deathly quiet of the Himalayas, where the air thins and the snow never melts, something watches. Something ancient.

Throughout history, humanity has been fascinated by spaces that exist on the boundaries—places neither fully here nor there, where the lines between reality and the unknown blur.

Lizard people may sound like a recent internet-fueled conspiracy, but the belief in reptilian humanoids goes back centuries and spans cultures around the world.

West Virginia’s motto has always been Wild and Wonderful. West Virginia’s alleged werewolves live at the blurry edge between folklore and fact.

In the ancient forests of Finland, lives a goddess whose presence predates history itself—Mielikki.

During the 1800s, vampire panics gripped communities. West Virginia, too, has its own lesser-known tales of vampires.

In the shadowy corners of Appalachian folklore lies a practice that sounds like it was pulled from a horror movie script—but it’s very real.

Deep in the North Carolina Blue Ridge Mountains lies the Devil's Courthouse. It’s not subtle. It warns you.

The Appalachian Mountains are home to a deep and unsettling folklore, whispered from generation to generation.