What About Worldbuilding? #31 - Folksy Fears

Happy… October? How the f*ck is it October already?

I guess I have to do something Halloween-related.

Got to be on-topic or whatever.

Folksy

I just love that word.

Folksy

Rolls off the tongue, don’t it? And you know where the best monsters come from? The folksy folk who tell tales to other folks.

The best monsters are conjured by the mind, not by idiots in robes. Do you want to frighten someone? Tell them a story about a story about something odd across the street and two houses down.

Doesn’t particularly matter what, you just need to keep spreading it around. Let curiosity and paranoia play footsy in their subconscious as the sun dies down.

Let this churn over time, and you end up with the horrors that persist in a civilization.

La Llorona.

Bloody Mary.

The White Lady.

Okay, there might be a theme there, but let’s ignore that for the moment. The common thread here is there is a universal theme applicable in the background of a folk-fear (yes, I’m making up words now), something that draws on emotions from the person hearing the story and their own life.

It’s a two-part process. Maybe three? I don’t know, we’ll see where I end up at the end of this thing.

Start with Tragedy

For this example, we’ll look closely at the people of Nowhereville. It’s a small town, community-focused with a lively night culture. A farming community at its core.

Now, say a century back, a couple of fellas go missing. They’re last seen the night before their absence is noticed, piss drunk and stumbling into the back of a wagon parked in a side alley to try and sleep off their stupor.

The next morning the wagon is gone, and the two men with it. It’s a bit odd, right? Not frightening, not in the least. Wagons have wheels, after all.

The families of the lost men are confused and concerned, they want to know what happened. Time passes, the mystery grows.

Add Stupidity

Perhaps they ran off in the night for a better life, who knows? Odd, not spooky.

But what if the wagon is seen again, maybe a month later? What if it stops at the same spot, idle for the same hours? A bit odd, but there may be an explanation.

Then again, what if someone takes this opportunity to abscond with their secret lover in the night? The wagon is there, the two guys went missing before… why not run off yourself?

So you do, and your family worries. Someone mentions in the local tavern that there was a wagon in that particular spot that evening. Odd, that’s two months in a row.

Then it happens again, for the third month in a row. This time it’s a domestic abuse victim disappearing in the night. Good for them, great. But that damn wagon was there again.

Now by the fourth month, you’ve got constables involved. They’re watching for this wagon. They catch the driver, finally, and this poor bastard trying to manage a mail route is burned alive in the town square.

Flash-forward some decades, the spot where the wagon stood is infamous. <Insert clever mythological ghostly figure name here> is a story that’s told around this town. People still go missing from time to time, one or two in a dozen years (maybe), but it’s enough for the local… let’s not call them lunatics. Uh...the local color?

Yeah, that works

It’s enough for the local color to justify their fears, and the story marches on from generation to generation. People claim to see a ghostly wagon parked in that same alley the night some kid goes missing, and on and on it goes.

Now you’ve got a folk-fear.

Spooooky. Or not. But that’s usually how stuff like this shakes out. A couple of jackasses go missing one night and suddenly you’ve got a recurring horror story.

People want to explain the unknown because the unknown is the real fear. Give me claws and teeth any day.

But, you know, not in a weird way.