Today's Myths and Legends

I am a huge fan of urban exploration. I am also a sci-fi and fantasy geek. I am a photographer. I am a history fanatic. I am a programmer.

Once I put all these things together, the rest was obvious. I just had to create an online community for people such as myself as well as a centralized database for all things scary, made up, or forgotten.

The point of this project is to collect as much data as possible about current history – abandoned sites that present historical interest, urban legends, modern fairy tales, etc…

The site will hopefully go live by the end of February – I will announce more details as the date draws nearer. For now, the following is the “official” statement for the project.

Webster’s dictionary defines “history” as “a continuous, systematic narrative of past events as relating to a particular people, country, period, person, etc., usually written as a chronological account.” The keyword in this sentence is “PAST”. We concentrate on recording and trying to understand events that happened years, centuries and millennia ago, often forgetting that yesterday is part of the past as well.

Historians often overlook the modern past, ignoring the urban legends, the “old wives tales” and myths that are part of today’s culture.

As a child, I spent countless hours reading fairy tales by Hans Christian Anderson and the Grimm Brothers. My parents had an extensive library of folk tales from different countries and they had to hide books from me so I would go to sleep at night. In my imagination, I fought dragons, rescued princesses and stood my ground against vicious pirates.

The legends of today are no less interesting or fascinating than the ones that have been written hundreds of years ago. Unfortunately, most of them get ignored or discarded as simple superstitions that are not worth anyone’s attention. It would be a great shame if future generations would be denied the wonderful world of today’s folklore.

As a science fiction and fantasy genre geek, I was inspired to create this site by many amazing books that I’ve read throughout my life. The authors that had the biggest impact on this project are Terry Pratchett, Neil Gaiman, Christopher Moore and, more recently, Elizabeth Kostova with her book The Historian. These authors did an absolutely incredible job researching folklore, mythology and urban legends for their books and integrating centuries of history into their stories.

I’m hoping that this website would collect modern myths and urban legends in one repository that could be used by historians, anthropologists and writers for their research and preserve today’s folklore for future generations.