BTW, Bloody Mary is a real urban folk legend? I wouldn't have thought.

It may not have been *Bloody Mary* but I do remember the mirror folk legend. There's quite a few variations on it. One is if you go up the steps backwards at midnight and look in the mirror you'll see the devil. And there's another if you say the name three times -....

It's not so much a legend as an urban horror tale. The show seems to mix and match them. And I remember reading that the writers were deliberately using the urban horror legends and stories as their *monsters* of the week. Their mythology appears to be that all those urban horror stories we told? Are based on fact with a decidedly supernatural twist. So instead of killing vampires or ghosts - they are going after the urban legend killers and find them through oral narratives - also figure out how to kill them through folk legends.

The man with the hook
Vanishing hitchhiker
Bloody Mary
the Scarecrow

And the old, bury your wallet at a crossroads at midnight and you can bring someone back from the dead.

I used to study and collect this stuff in college - been a long time since I've thought about it though - about twenty years.
(Sigh, feel old now.)

Also, someone once said in an lj post something along the lines that if John Winchester were to transfer to the Jossverse, he'd be Daniel Holtz, and despite only having seen glimpses of the man so far, I see the point.

Definitely. Or Principal Wood - who was BTVS' version of ATS' Holtz. Found Holtz more interesting. In some ways Dean reminds me a lot of Wood in Whedon's shows.

It's interesting - both shows are comments on the old Western and slasher horror flicks - a la Carpenter and Roger Cormen and
Sam Rami (who made fun of them). Buffy seems to be a send-up of those flicks, while Supernatural appears to pay homage to them. Angel also paid homage but in a different way. Watching Supernatural makes me miss Angel quite a bit, actually. Angel felt more innovative and adult to me. SPN feels very cliche at times in comparison.