There are a lot of things that we’re living through right now that could be considered the Dark Ages. We’re living through a Dark Age of racism and class disparity. We’e also living through a Dark Age of American human rights.

But I decided to get my kratom on and I thought I’d do something upbeat — primarily because I want to get away from real life for a while. And that’s when it hit me: we live in a Golden Age of mythology.

The Labours of Hercules was one of the most popular myths of the Classical Period. It had it all: a man who was half-God, tons of crazy tasks, as well as unique, rare creatures that posed existential threats to the greatest humanity had to offer.

Myths like that walked the line between drama, religion, and at times, assumed fact. People still tell myths about Hercules today. And both Greek and Roman religions were impacted by those tall tales.

Of course, we didn’t have to just look at Hercules for the power of myths. So many famous mythical monsters came from that era: cyclopian giants, minotaurs, sirens, and of course, my personal fantasy creature — cyanocephaly.

In the past, myths were spread through word of mouth or through the pens of wizened writers to their readers. For centuries, myths just kind of dwindled.

While we had a spate of “tall tales” during the 19th century with stories of ghosts on the railroad and such, the truth is that the art of telling myths kind of just petered out. By the 1980s and 1990s, new myths and ghost stories weren’t a thing.

There was a serious dearth of new mythology, folk tales, and ghost stories during the past 40 years. I remember going to the library as a kid, finding all of ~15 books about ghost stories, cryptids, and the like, and realizing that most of those stories were about the same stupid creatures.

Remember when I said that myths start to spread when people talk about the strange things they’ve seen or people start to write about things? Well, the internet helped usher in a new wave of neo-mythology.

As a highly “woo woo” person, I watched how so many different myths started to bubble up to the surface. From the About.com/Paranormal stories of the early 2000s to the 4Chan’s /x/, to Reddit’s myriad of message boards, people are starting to talk about their own paranormal encounters and local folklore.

The end result is something spectacular.

People are starting to talk about myths they believe are true, learning about other cultures’ mythologies, and even creating new versions of older tales that match what they may (or may not) have seen.

For the first time in human history, we have access to an endless range of stories, myths, and sightings. It’s a new golden era of local legends, stories, and culturally impactful legends.

As a fan of paranormal stories, I’m always happy to hear about another weird, spooky, or strange experience. I mean, who doesn’t like to read a spooky story that people swear is true?

However, the armchair anthropologist in me couldn’t help but notice something different going on with how they have evolved. And yes, they’ve started to evolve.

The internet is where many people first heard about wendigos. Wendigos, in the traditional Native American tales, are spirits of people who were exceptionally greedy and craven in life.

When they passed on, they became spirits that could take over peoples’ bodies to make them greedy or violent. They have no body of their own. They are just hunger and avarice, personified.

Today, most people assume wendigos had a “look” to them — most often a tall, lean, zombie-like figure with a bare skull and deer antlers. That was never part of the original myth.

People just started to add that look to the myth because people kept using a deer-zombie-person as an illustration of it online. Now, people just assume that wendigos have horns and corporeal beings.

I’ve written about this at length, but it’s worth talking about here, too. With the new boom in tech roaring forth, it’s not surprising to hear that technology started to have an increasingly high impact on the new wave of paranormal myths.

There have been countless stories of loved ones who use technology as a way to reach out, such as phone calls from the dead or tech equipment picking up spirit activity. There’s also a new genre of games that explores haunted video games and forgotten software that hide dark secrets.

Technology remains an incredible source of inspiration for modern myths — to the point that some people have even begun to incorporate AI and other forms of tech into their religions.

To a point, this was bound to happen. Humanity has always added tech into legends — though this may be one of the more striking eras of that phenomenon.

Sometimes, the way neo-mythology evolves isn’t that clear-cut. In recent years, online viewers started to turn to Appalachia for their fix of the unsettling, the creepy, and the crawly.

Of course, there’s a certain limit to how many old school myths you can hear from a particular region. So, once in a while, you’ll see a person who gets a little creative, makes a new creature, and gets people talking about it until the myth gains a life of its own.

Such is the case with Not Deer, a cryptid that first got mentioned on Reddit. Not Deer are said to look like a normal deer at first glance, but people start to feel like something is wrong with them. The more you look, the less deer-like they become.

They’re said to have deeply unnatural appearances, like forward-facing eyes, human hands or feet instead of hooves, or an extra eye. The legend goes that people who have seen them realize they’re “Not Deer,” and run because of the sheer panic they elicit in humans.

From what I could glean, the original writer of Not Deer admitted that they got bored and started the legend. Other Appalachian posters and Redditors never heard of them prior to the viral post.

Oddly enough, since that post went viral, more people have come forth saying they have actually seen Not Deer. Some seem faily adamant (and shaken) over what they’ve seen. So perhaps this one started as a hoax that later became a bit more real.

Another slice of neo-mythology comes from the many, many photo and video posts from people who spotted things they couldn’t quite understand. Crawlers have become one of the most common examples of this.

At first, crawlers were assumed to be skinwalkers. Then, people started to notice that this wasn’t the case because they weren’t shapeshifting into animals. They all had the same appearance.

Nowadays, crawlers have become a major online myth — a modern cryptid never discussed prior to the internet’s advent.

Finally, the other major evolution in myth we’re seeing is all about what the government is hiding from us. This genre of stories all involve some kind of coverup with the government, often with aliens, psychic abilities, or secret projects.

We all know the US government has been hiding stuff from us. The declassified documents alone paint a very surreal, bizarre picture. Yet, none of us know how much we’re being lied to.

It’s unsurprising to see how much our collective imagination has run amok. I mean, considering the New Jersey Drone thing, it’s easy to see why more and more of us have started to delve into the high strangeness coming out of Uncle Sam.

To a point, memes have also become a part of the new myth pantheon. However, unlike the other genres we see in the subject above, most memes are generally considered to be fully fabricated — not real by any means of the word.

This doesn’t always stay that way, though.

For example, Slenderman is an online meme monster that was first created on 4Chan’s /x/, then became a part of the “Marble Hornets” series on YouTube. It became a bit more real when two preteens killed for the sake of pleasing Slenderman.

Neo-mythology is my term for all the paranormal stories, cryptids, and conspiracies that are emerging on online boards right now. And yes, those stories are a major cultural revolution of their own kind.

Classical mythology was a pivotal part of Greco-Roman culture, leading to a multitude of stories, plays, songs, and operas. They became a pivotal part of the lore attached to their cultures.

Neo-mythology is no different. Many of the tales we started to talk about online have been turned into YouTube series (“The Backrooms”), noted books (Hunt for the Skinwalker), television series (Stranger Things) as well as full-blown movies (Wendigo).

Also like Classical mythology, many of the myths that we’re seeing online have people who genuinely believe in them. In the past, Hercules wasn’t just a mythical man. He was also worshipped as a god who protected the home and hearth.

Neo-mythological topics often have people who wholeheartedly believe in them too, sometimes because of something they experienced or because of their own personal convictions. Or, sometimes it’s because they want to believe.

You can tell a lot about a society by looking at their myths. They depict what we value, the shadow sides of our cultures that we try to avoid discussing, and at times, parts of our history that would otherwise be lost.

Right now, our society’s mythos is blossoming. Sometimes, it’s meant to give us hope. Other times, it’s about reminding us of the shadow side of our world or about the many reasons why we should be thankful for modern comforts.

So what does this mean for the average reader? Not much. Just, well, you know, recognize how awesome it is to live in an era when everything can happen in the modern mythos.