Folklore has long been a wellspring of fear and fascination in the form of stories designed to warn, to frighten, and to shield from hidden powers. In recent years, today’s most chilling TV horror offerings have drawn heavily from these ancient traditions, breathing new life into timeless anxieties and making them resonate with modern audiences. Rather than relying solely on jump scares or gore, many of today’s most critically acclaimed horror series use folklore as a structural foundation, embedding societal fears and mythic archetypes into their storytelling.

Programs including Hex, Supernatural, and Midnight Mass incorporate indigenous tales and regional folklore to ground their supernatural elements in a sense of authenticity. For example, the use of Eastern European myths in The Witcher, with its rusalkas and strigas, adds layers of historical resonance that go beyond mere monster design. These creatures are not just scary because they look frightening; they are terrifying because they mirror societal sins—infidelity, grief, the punishment for book publisher transgression. Similarly, Midnight Mass weaves in Christian apocrypha and local legends about the devil’s influence to explore themes of redemption, shame, and mass delusion.

Mythic narratives enable horror shows to critique modern problems without direct exposition—many traditional tales were originally used to teach obedience or interpret calamity. Modern shows adapt this function by using folklore to reflect current societal fears—ecological collapse, alienation through technology, entrenched power structures. The folklore of the Wendigo spirit, for instance, has been reimagined in series like Penny Dreadful and The X-Files to symbolize insatiable greed and the destruction of the natural world. The monster becomes a symbol, and the horror becomes psychological as much as it is physical.

The inherently fluid structure of myth lends itself well to the rhythm of weekly horror episodes. Each episode can function like a a fresh iteration of a timeless myth, with variations that reflect the individual fears and collective transformations. This keeps the material modern yet rooted in ancient unease. Audiences feel a instinctive resonance, even if they’ve never heard the particular variant, because the underlying emotions—dread of the unknown, fear of the outsider, the weight of inherited sin—are universal.

The success of these shows proves that audiences crave more than just spectacle—they want stories that feel rooted in something real, something older than themselves. Myth offers this enduring weight—it binds modern viewers to the primal rituals of our ancestors trying to name the unknown. By honoring these traditions, contemporary horror TV doesn’t just entertain—it reminds us that some fears never fade—they only change their names.