The Other

Files

An investigation of ghosts, aliens, werewolves, and other urban legends

Jessica Berget ~ Editor-in-Chief

they originated. The Other Press investigates these myths and the real-

FE veryone loves a good urban legend, but very rarely do people know how

life experiences of people who have claimed to see them.

Vampires

he legend of vampires come from
a famous Romanian ruler, Vlad the
Impaler. During his reign from 1456 to

1462, he was known for being brutally cruel,
and even got his name from his favourite
way of destroying enemies—impaled on
a wooden stake. In legends, Vlad would
wash his hands in the blood of his victims
before dinner. There’s no telling if this is
true, but it does show how Bram Stoker got
the inspiration for the book that began the
vampire urban legend—Dracula. Legend
also says that during a battle in a valley, he
retreated his troops so that the sun would
be in the enemy’s eyes. He then released
rabid bats who would fly away from the sun
and towards the opposing army. There is no
source for this which may point to it being
false, but this is where the vampire turning
into bats myth came about. Nowadays, the
legend of vampires continues with many
people claiming to be vampires, blood
drinking and all.

 

Werewolves

t’s hard to pinpoint where exactly the
| myth about people turning into wolves

came about. Some scholars believe the
myth originated from the oldest Western
prose, The Epic of Gilgamesh. In the story,
Gilgamesh rejects a lover after he finds out
she turned her ex into a wolf. Werewolves
also make an appearance in a Greek
mythological story called the Legend of
Lycaon. After Lycaon, son of Pelasgus,
serves God Zeus the remains of a boy, Zeus
is offended and turns him and his sons into
wolves. Many also believe that early serial
killers were the origin stories behind this
legend. In the 16th century, a few Frenchmen
claimed to possess an ointment that turned
them into wolves—and while under the
spell they would murder and sometimes
eat children. They were all burned at the
stake for this, but the threat of werewolves
was still looming. Much like the witch
trials, hundreds of thousands of accused
werewolves were put to death in horribly
gruesome fashions.

Aliens

he first publicized account of an
alleged alien abduction was in 1961.

The story is that Betty and Barney
Hill were driving home late one night when
they saw a bright light following them. They
got home at 5 am, not able to recollect what
had happened to them. After getting terrible
nightmares and unexplained anxiety, they
went to a psychiatrist. After a while, they
remembered that they were abducted by
aliens and used for experimentation—and
then had their memories erased. There have
been thousands of reports of aliens and
Unidentified Flying Objects (UFOs) since
then. According to Global News, four out of
five Canadians believe in aliens, and almost
half of all Canadians believe they have
visited Earth.

       
    

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