Hexham bunyips, haunted houses and UFOs in Hunter Region skies.
These are all well-known local stories you can learn more about on Instagram, Facebook and TikTok through Oh My Folklore, a new initiative started by Emily Connell and Thomas Kelly.
With their creative backgrounds and love of lore, the young couple could easily star in their own contemporary fairytale. Connell and Kelly both work full-time, Connell in business development and Kelly as picture framer and independent filmmaker.
Last month they launched their passion project which Connell describes as a "living archive", where the two preserve oral myths, legends and unexplained local tales in a new way, bringing them to life for a new generation.
Two months ago they won a $1000 cash grant after pitching to Awesome Newcastle. The funding gave them the financial ability to get the idea off the ground and the confidence to know other people believed in their idea.
Connell studied English, creative writing and history and spent a year interning with the archives at the University of Newcastle. She was the inaugural Vera Deacon intern in 2022, where she worked with archivist Gionni DiGravio.
Kelly studied media and communication with a speciality in film production.
To tell the stories, Connell writes scripts and does the camera facing and behind the scenes; Kelly does physical filming, audio and editing. They both do research and they both love storytelling.
"A lot of it is orally told; there's actually not a lot written down," Connell says.
"You get a few resources of ghost stories being told in the papers.
"There is a lot that lives orally in our city, told through pub stories. That's something we want to capture, from a generation when we didn't have globalisation."
Since they started they've gained close to 2000 followers on Instagram.
Connell has been intrigued by which stories have been the most engaging. She thought it would have been the two-part bunyip story, but the story of the haunted house with "ghostly tappings" in New Lambton from 1913 has been the winner.
"So many people are asking what street and cross-referencing 'Is this house still there?'," she says.
The pair are excited to roll out their upcoming series about local communities involved with bushrangers. They aim to release this in September and it will be in a documentary style.
Their plan is to continue to grow a rapport with the audience in the hope that it makes them want to stick around for longer-form content.
"We kind of share one brain, so it's pretty good; I'm proud of our communication," Connell says of herself and Kelly.
"It's been a joy to work with him. It's something we both independently love."
They do a lot of cross-referencing in their stories to make sure they're accurate. Connell stresses they're good stories but not necessarily actual history. It's local folklore with a creative license.
"Whether you believe in ghosts or what you've heard is a bump in the night or something real, it's how your brain moves forward with what you've seen," she says.
