Lately I've got a love growin in me for supernatural Americana and old folktales...

It's always kinda too bad when you find out that some of the more well-known American folktales (i.e. Paul Bunyan and Pecos Bill and those kinds) are all from like the 20th century. Very disappointing. I want to believe that the Paul Bunyan myth was something that fur trappers told each other in the 1750s, not just some character created for a mall advertisement.

I think a overlooked part of folk Americana is the colloquialisms. Really gets you into the heads of the people back then, and serve to highlight what was important to their culture

Shit like shool, tivis, wadgetty, and meeching really gives color to these long gone times

As someone who likes the series and have never seen this. Thanks. I'm liked it. Any other (mini)series like OtGW?

Same here, all the stuff I can find from earlier are far too short, or like ghost ships

Fearsome critters are always fun, and at least a few of them like the hidebehind certainly have some pedigree.

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fearsome_critters

But once again, not a lot of stuff about them unless you really dig

Gravity Falls is another cartoon with a bit of Americana in it, mostly focused on the Pacific North-West.

Are you actually from the US, or are you from elsewhere?

I'm up in Ohio, right on the lake

I feel like Ohio is a prime spot for American folklore.

That and the hills of upstate New York (mostly because that's where Rip Van Winkle and Sleepy Hollow are set)

>I feel like Ohio is a prime spot for American folklore.
I wouldn't have got that from my stay here, but I don't travel, so maybe other states don't have the same amount of local museums and attraction stuff. I guess it is one of the older states, and was the middleground for a lot of history, though

I mean, I haven't been there either, but it just feels like it would be.

Maybe it's just the name. Ohio.

Supernatural stuff and folktales are mostly all relegated to the East Coast while the classic American mythos setting is the mid-west, what with the prairies and the dry, flat, deserts.

I've never heard any southern folklore that wasn't old slave stories. Any southerners around that know any?

There really isn't much in the way of legitimate supernatural folklore in the US.

This is largely due to the time period we were founded; enlightenment era literature wasn't big on the supernatural.

Wouldn't devil stories, and other religiously involved ones count as supernatural? And Hell, there're hundreds of ghosts stories from each state

I disagree, but a lot of it is mistranslated from the native americans. The Navajo for example have a cosmology that rivals much bigger civilizations.

You should read Edgar Huntly, or: Memoirs of a Sleep-Walker.

Well, you shouldn't read it, because it's not a very well-written book, but while it doesn't have any supernatural stuff, it's dripping with Gothic flair, and also mountain lion attacks since it's set in Pennsylvania in the mid 18th century

Voodoo stuff, probably. Was the big black dude that built the railroad with his hammer northern or southern? Can't remember.

Oh, and that one guy that rode a tornado. But that might just be from a kid's book, can't remember.

It's alright. The plot and characters you can take or leave, but the aesthetic and tone is superb. If you watch it, watch it for that.

>Oh, and that one guy that rode a tornado. But that might just be from a kid's book, can't remember.
Yeah, Pecos Bill. He was just from a collection of short stories from like the early 1920s. Still fun stories, though

>Was the big black dude that built the railroad with his hammer northern or southern? Can't remember.
John Henry was a freed slave getting paid in land from the rail company, who was being in land by the federal government, in turn

I aint gonna lie, I actually get really emotional over that stupid old story. Personal favorite

John Henry really is such a great story about industrialization/technology in general

Yeah, we aren't really taught any real southern folk tale stuff, to be honest. We learn stuff like that and Paul Bunyan, basically. Some Native American stories too, which are neat.

You could easily make up stuff about people like Davy Crockett and the like, though.

No local/regional guys? I'm pretty sure Johnny Appleseed is only taught in like a 4 state wide area

Ah, old Johnny. Heard he planted apple trees on the Oregon trail as well as Appalachia.

We did learn a little about him. If there's anything state-specific (I live in Louisiana), then it'd probably be Cajun or Creole or whatever, and we aren't taught any of that stuff where I live. I live in the upper leg part of the boot. Texas probably has some shit because it's Texas, but I can't really see any of the other southern states having real folklore. Maybe Florida? Florida always has shit like that.

To give you perspective, this is the wikipedia page on it:
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Category:Folklore_of_the_Southern_United_States

In my defense, I have read a couple of the Bre'er stories.

In Massachusetts our folklore mostly centers around that time Salem went apeshit and started executing witches.

... none of it is pleasant.

>Supernatural stuff and folktales are mostly all relegated to the East Coast
What about the spooky northwest coast stuff? Or the mexican-influenced stuff from the southwest?

>Hatfield-McCoy feud
I guess it makes sense, but it never sat well having Appalachia stuff lumped into the south.

I feel you man, of all the folk tales, tall tales and American legends john was always my favorite. I tear up a little bit when I think about him pounding away at that mountain until his hear explodes

>I'm up in Ohio
Fuck you Ohio. You and Michigan fucked each other so the US gave Michigan some of my state's land.

>implying it was ever yours
Ohio-Michigan war is the true civil war

Brought apples and apple trees to America, s'what he did

>he posts the second worst song in the series
I can respect that you have different tastes than I do, but that song doesn't express the feeling of the series.

there's plenty of folklore and ghost stories from the seattle area - and that all mixes in with Yukon stuff as well.

Here's a collection of some spooky stuff in America. It's organized by state and county too.

>upstate new york
I mean yeah its rolling hills and dales with thick forests and small isolated towns.

Try "dont enter winter woods" its a simple rpg (you can find a beta version in the web, or ask for the newer version in a sharing pdf threath). its a rpg based in a town in the 17 or 18 century in the us, with a lot of folktales. Think of sleepy hollow. The game system is very simple, to do anything, you roll 1d6. If you roll higher than your coldpints, you succes. You get one cold point for enter the winter woods, and ypu get one every time you fail your roll. Once you get 6, you are out of game (either dead or mad).
Its a small gem

There's a few stories about the devil, the clay eaters, briar rabbit and his crew, some local monsters, there's also a few pirate stories about people like the lafette's and blackbeard. Also legends of big ass animals in the swamps. Just about every small town in the south has some old monster story. Many of the best southern folklore is buried into blues songs too.

I've actually been running a WoD Hunter game using a bunch of Americana monsters. Started off with some 50's era aliens, mixing in some Hopskinville Goblins and Flatwoods Monsters into memory stealing spooksters.

Went over pretty well.

Gonna put my shill hat on

"Lore" by Aaron Mahnke doesn't deal exclusively with American folklore, but features a great deal of stories from the American folk tradition.

That thing is MASSIVE. Pretty damn cool, but

>what did he mean by this

I'm getting flashbacks to when I downloaded Privateer Press faction rulebook PDFs and they inexplicably had a page of Bible quotes shoved in each of them.

Just regular fedora-tipping, nothing to see there

I'll have to check it out

>I downloaded Privateer Press faction rulebook PDFs and they inexplicably had a page of Bible quotes shoved in each of them
what

books.google.com/books/about/Who_Fears_The_Devil.html?id=1keQCwAAQBAJ&source=kp_cover&hl=en

knowledgenuts.com/2014/01/03/the-taxidermied-canid-no-one-can-identify/

Have a real creature from American mythos

You're the second-worst song of the series

My folks used to have a little tiny cabin in the Catskills that was deep in the woods and pretty far away from everything. We used to walk around in the woods and my dad would tell us stories about ghosts and were-animals and the like that used to spook the hell outta me, because it's all so believable when you're in those old woods like that.

Bump!

>Sleepy Hollow
>upstate
Sleepy Hollow is literally half an hour from Manhattan.

Which makes it upstate

Plus I mean it has the upstate feel since back when Washington Irving was writing everything was still just those rolling hills and misty dales. No Westchester back then