Urban Legends 

Urban legends are humorous, horrific stories, or pieces of information circulated as though true, especially ones portraying someone vaguely related to the teller. There are many urban legends about many different things, including Christmas. Such as the urban legend of Ol’Higue and the legend of Krampus. 

      Ol’Higue is an urban legend about a lady named Ol’higue or Old Haig in Guyana. She would turn into a ball of fire at night and would go into people’s houses and would suck babies' blood. Parents would put salt around their kids' beds because Ol Higue could not go through salt. Ol Higue found her way around this by calling the kids names in their mothers' voices 

 “You think I like this stupidness-

Gallivanting all night without skin 

Burning myself out like cane fire 

To frighten the foolish”  

This is the beginning of the poem of Ol’Higue.  A lot of people find this urban legend strange and stomach-turning. Someone who agrees with this is Sokya Jeason. “ When I heard about it I thought that this is a very strange urban legend but a very interesting one that .” 

This is the beginning of the poem of Ol’Higue. This urban legend was told by the guyassa who has been telling the urban legend for decades. Ol’Higue has said that she never liked walking around towns at night and drinking babies' blood. This legend would most likely scare parents to pay attention to their kids more to protect them from getting killed. I think this urban legend is a great story to tell and I believe it needs more attention. 

https://poetryarchive.org/poem/ol-higue/  

Here is the link to the rest of the poem.

         Krampus, German for “Claw”, was a central European tale in which Santa’s demonic partner would punish naughty children by beating them with a stick or sometimes eat them or take them to hell. Jerraun Dunham, an 8th grader at OMMS says, “Krampus is pretty scary, I feel like a creepy thing crawling down my chimney at night would be pretty terrifying”

 This tale originated in Germany during the 12th century; the tradition then spread to Austria, Slovenia, the Czech Republic, and Hungary. It was said that the half-goat demon would come around at the beginning of December Although the Christian church attempted to get rid of the tradition it is still celebrated today with parades and festivals 

As you can see, these urban legends are super creepy and cool. Ask someone in your family if they know any urban legends and maybe you will learn a whole new thing about your culture. Either way, urban legends are a great thing to listen to and learn about.