Have you heard the story about that guy who got his head stuck in a bottle bank? What about the girl whose tinder date fed her laxatives? How about that unfortunate someone had one of their organs stolen whilst travelling..?

You might have heard these stories, or ones like them, told by a friend about some remote relation of theirs: a second cousin, a co-worker of an old housemate or the classic friend of a friend. Whoever vindicated, their personal account is always just out of reach.

Their story might even sound true, they probably swore by it, you might believe these events actually happened — you might really want to — and they might very well have happened (to someone somewhere). But the thing that triggers your bullshit alarm is hearing the exact same story for a second time under all too similar circumstances.

Whether these stories are true or not doesn’t get in the way of their entertainment value. ‘Never let the truth get in the way of a good story’, as the old adage goes — that exact phrase may as well be scrawled on a cave wall somewhere. Sensational by nature, you can often imagine them published in the Daily Mail, especially when recounted in support of prejudice.

They might be so good that you’re even compelled to retell them yourself. And to improve your own validity, you’ll tell them it’s about someone you personally know — or if you’re super scandalous, you’ll shift the story into first person. A lust for gossip and shock is an innate part of being human. We are eager, even desperate, to entertain. So someone else’s tale becomes our own, the torch stays lit and is passed on, anything to validate a good story.

Pieter Brueghel the Elder — The Dutch Proverbs

What these stories represent is a specific form of contemporary folktale, folktales we want to believe and actually can. Like the oral traditions of the past these stories are spread by word of mouth and although they are believable to more than just the young and naive, they are no less bizarre.

They are distinct from other forms of contemporary urban legends, for example: Slender-man, saying bloody Mary three times in the mirror or the impregnating spider bite. Those generally invoke the supernatural and impossible, that isn’t needed here. We can distinguish these stories by their semi-plausible, semi-verifiable quality — the possibility that they could actually be true.

Despite lacking the supernatural elements of traditional folklore, these ghost-less ghost stories tap into our superstitions and unfounded beliefs. Palatable to the modern mind, they instead express underlying fears about strangers, new technologies, sex and locations; to define more generally, a culturally situated unknown. They contain similar tropes and can have a vague sense of morality, at the very least providing warnings against such blatant stupidity.

*So we see this sensational subset of contemporary folklore, obviously nothing new but nonetheless our CRAZIEST, real life, true stories. Further away from ‘the myth’ or ‘the legend’, they overlap more with fake news, anecdotes and tabloid journalism. You can’t help but be ensnared by their delicious scandalous yoke. You want to believe them, to share them and for them to be in-turn believed.