Hoaxbusters from snopes.com interviewed on

Part of it is a lot of these are just really great stories; they're horrifying, they're titillating, they're funny.

But legends that we tell are an expression of what's going on in society's heart at any given moment. They're not just random bits of lore that get dropped in here and there. It's amazing because the stories we tell, although they generate spontaneously, end up through the process of natural selection becoming a very finely honed body of lore that reflects current society's concerns, fears, apprehensions, morals.