It’s Halloween, time to dress up and prepare to be scared with some haunting urban legends. While there are many types of urban legends (from those involving Disney to ones about the military), Halloween is the ideal time to recount those stories that send chills through your bones.

An urban legend can be defined as a lurid story based on hearsay which people generally take to be the truth, according the Merriam-Webster Online Dictionary. More specifically, however, people use urban legends to talk about beliefs, fears, and taboo topics such as sex, drugs and alcohol. Urban legends are told all over the world in all different types of cultures and so can be called “contemporary legends.”

These “contemporary legends” have been around for hundreds of years. People such as the Brothers Grimm, who made a book of common fairy tales told around the world, would collect legends they heard. Urban legends are generally told in conversation format, usually starting out with, “This happened to a friend of a friend.” From culture to culture, the general format and plot of these legends remain the same, but who the characters are may change. For example, in Germany the “bad guy” may be the devil or troll-like creatures, but somewhere else it may be an alien, the men in black, or even those of other beliefs or races.

Urban legends play another major role on Halloween. They allow people to confront their fears by telling these scary stories. Plus, on Halloween we relish in scaring ourselves, as Halloween is based on the Mexican holiday Dia de los Muertos, or Day of the Dead, during which the souls of dead relatives supposedly come out to visit the living. What can be really scary, on the other hand, is that people may take these stories and make them true by acting out something they heard in the legend, such as a satanic ritual. This is called ostension, according to University of Wisconsin Folklore Professor Camilia Mortensen.

“I realized that folk stories were not dead stories from a long time ago, but stories about everyday people and the world around us, and sometimes the everyday is quite beautiful,” said Mortensen.

Another scary fact is that urban legends can be used as a form of control. When studying the governments of Stalin and Mao, Mortensen discovered that these dictators would change the story or the story’s outcome in order to rework what people thought or believed.

Mortensen believes there is one major factor that can make a legend good. “There has to be something about the legend that makes people want to keep retelling it and passing it on from generation to generation.”

While there are tons of Halloween urban legends out there, here is one to get you into the Halloween spirit (from www.snopes.com):

A dozen miles outside of Baltimore, the main road from New York (Route Number One) is crossed by another important highway. It is a dangerous intersection, and there is talk of building an underpass for the east-west road. To date, however, the plans exist only on paper.

Dr. Eckersall was driving home from a country club dance late one Saturday night. He slowed down for the intersection and was surprised to see a lovely young girl, dressed in the sheerest of evening gowns, beckoning him for a lift. He jammed on his brakes, and motioned her to climb into the back seat of his roadster. “All cluttered up with golf clubs and bags up here in front,” he explained. “But what on earth is a youngster like you doing out here all alone at this time of night?”

“It’s too long a story to tell you now,” said the girl. Her voice was sweet and somewhat shrill — like the tinkling of sleigh bells. “Please, please take me home. I’ll explain everything there. The address is 17 North Charles Street. I do hope it’s not too far out of your way.”

The doctor grunted, and set the car in motion. He drove rapidly to the address she had given him, and as he pulled up before the shuttered house, he said, “Here we are.” Then he turned around. The back seat was empty!

“What the devil?” the doctor muttered to himself. The girl couldn’t possibly have fallen from the car. Nor could she simply have vanished. He rang insistently on the house bell, confused as he had never been in his life before. At long last the door opened. A gray-haired, very tired-looking man peered out at him.

“I can’t tell you what an amazing thing has happened,” began the doctor. “A young girl gave me this address a while back. I drove her here and … ”

“Yes, yes, I know,” said the man wearily. “This has happened several other Saturday evenings in the past month. That young girl, sir, was my daughter. She was killed in an automobile accident at that intersection where you saw her almost two years ago … ”

For more urban legends from Halloween and all others, go to www.snopes.com.