Focalore and superstition are fluid, flexible things.

There's no set formula for how they're born.

No rules or recipes to create them.

They just sort of happen.

Focalore is instructive, it comes first and teaches us how to behave.

Other times it's reactive, it sprouts up long after a key historical event, like a sapling

that grows from an acorn buried by a forgetful squirrel.

But either way, it's always a mirror showing us who we all really are.

There have been times though when people have crafted their own tales and then set out

to convince everyone else of the truth.

Winterfitt Focalore, sometimes it's done for money, and sometimes for that drug we all

seem to be addicted to.

Attention.

Dick George Hullford example.

In 1868 he purchased a 10-foot long block of gypsum from Aquari in Iowa.

Then he had it shipped to New York, where he paid a sculptor to carve it into the likeness

of an enormous human corpse.

Finally, he transported it to the small New York town of Cardiff, where he buried it on

his cousin's farm.

When the cousin, William Newell, hired two men to dig a well about a year later, he pretended

to be shocked when they uncovered the stone figure.

They pulled it from the ground, and locals quickly decided that it was a petrified man.

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