In The Watkins Book of Urban Legends, Gail de Vos merges her background in library science with her considerable experience and skill as a storyteller. She draws from her extensive writing on legends to provide a thorough presentation of contemporary legends. She is writing for a popular audience, but her book also includes numerous texts and commentary that will appeal to students, teachers, and researchers interested in legends. There is a wide variety of legend genres and types, and this new resource includes older, classic contemporary legends while emphasizing the narratives that are in current circulation. Although “contemporary legend” is the more accepted term for these stories, de Vos (and I) also use “urban legend,” as both terms remain current.
She organizes her book into ten chapters. The first two present urban legends that were documented when initial scholarship on urban legends (ULs) was done. She provides interesting versions of older texts as well as documentation of older stories that remain in circulation today. Following a chapter on legends connected to health and wellness, de Vos then provides three chapters on supernatural legends, with an emphasis on ghost stories. She looks at haunted sites in the United States, Canada, Europe, and Asia, and her discussion of an instance of ghost tourism and legend tripping illustrates the range of treks that people take to putative haunted sites. She includes a discussion of the vandalism that can occur in these activities, and it is important to bring this aspect into the scholarship on ghostlore. She also provides interesting examples of interconnections between legend and belief, and this presentation of legendry is manifest in engaging memorates as well as legends told in the third person. One of the most intriguing tales involves a story that legend scholar Bill Ellis told in the first-person that has now become a supernatural legend, thus bolstering Carl Wilhem von Sydow’s original formulation of a memorate as a proto-legend. Chapter 8 gives a good discussion of monsters and cryptids and treats many familiar figures. The next chapter is titled “Conspiracy Theories,” and it includes some of the strongest writing in the book. De Vos incorporates more scholarly sources in this section of the book, and she also offers her own insights into the dynamics of belief and ideology within conspiracy theory and narratives. This chapter would work especially well as a stand-alone reading assignment in the classroom. She concludes her book with a chapter on ostension and internet folklore in a presentation that also will spark a variety of interests among readers.
The Watkins Book of Urban Legends is highly readable. Some of the texts are clearly drawn from de Vos’s performances as a storyteller. She also includes information that introduces and comments on stories that she likely drew from live presentations. She sets up the text with sections of bold-faced type. These introduce many of the ULs, but they also blend into the presentation of narratives. In general, this format works well, but it can be somewhat confusing to attempt to sort out her versions of stories versus texts told by others. Nevertheless, the strong feel for her live storytelling is an excellent element of her presentation, and it is valuable to discover other storytellers who blend narration into their presentation of folklore. She includes a discussion of some of her favorite tellings as well as a consideration of some of the performance contexts for her stories, including reflections on how the COVID pandemic affected her presentations.
There is a good balance between her presentation of familiar legends and her interest in providing new material, much of it gleaned from her perusal of internet sources. She has interesting discussions of legendary figures and practices associated with legends. Presentations on La Catrina, love locks, Goatman, the Devil at the dance, and Sasquatch are especially interesting, and she also provides in-depth commentary on the various types of Vanishing Hitchhiker legends. There are limited scholarly citations, however, and the book could be complemented with in-depth bibliographies that would provide strong background on many of the legends and beliefs that she has documented. She offers analysis and interpretation of the legends that also could use some expansion.
Although I agree with most of her conclusion about the veracity and significance of the ULs, de Vos tends to assert her own commentary without fully identifying sources useful for developing critical thinking and conclusions about the legends. It is important to recognize that she wrote the book for a popular, rather than academic, audience. Consequently, those who teach the book will want to include additional sources for students who will be reading the texts. De Vos’s own commentary could spark discussion, or disagreement, among students, so the limited academese might be useful in stimulating more inquiry into the scholarship on legends.
Gail de Vos has provided a solid addition to books on folklore recently published by Watkins Media. She has drawn from her own teaching and scholarship to give readers a current resource on legends that are indeed told in contemporary discourse. De Vos has been a longtime contributor to scholarship associated with the International Society of Contemporary Legend Research, and the book includes references to presentations that she and others have made at their annual conference. The sense of a community of scholars with interest and expertise permeates the tone of her writing, and it is rewarding to discover how ideas discussed and papers presented at these meetings are placed into print in this new contribution to the writing on contemporary legends.
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[Review length: 924 words • Review posted on March 5, 2025]