Well, folks, Halloween is upon us. As we prepare for this season of tricks and treats, it’s fair to say that this is the time of year when we are subjected to those many "tales of the supernatural" and "urban legends" about ghosts, vampires, hobgoblins and more.

In the "good old days," you could tell a ghost story (or listen to one) around a campfire. It was really a good old fashioned American tradition, just like baseball (but without the bats and balls). However, the drought being what it is these days, you don’t see too many campfires. What has replaced this time-honored tradition of ghost-tale-telling is that greatest of all havens of half truth and legends, the World Wide Web.

How many ghost stories and Halloween tales can you find on the Internet? That probably depends on how hard you look. Heaven knows every other type of falsehood can be found there. Most stories circulated by e-mail probably already have a shelf life of 20 years and it will only increase as the technology gets older.

You know the types of falsehoods that I refer to. There’s the Nigerian, Botswanian or Argentinean Princess, recently widowed, who wants to give you one hundred million American dollars from the estate of her deceased grandfather twice removed, if you’ll only send her four thousand dollars in cash first. Then there’s the promise that if you will circulate a particular e-mail to 1000 of your closest friends that Bill Gates will write you a check for $10,000. Let’s also not overlook the perennial "Mars is about to come as close to Earth as it has in 15 billion years, and it will be so large that it will be the size of a grapefruit, even to the naked eye."

These yarn-spinners deserve credit for persistence if not total honesty. It’s a fairly simple recipe. All that is required is a story with possibly a grain of truth (or one that is too difficult to disprove easily), an Internet connection, an e-mail list, and it’s off to the races.

As one who appreciates the dubious value of an occasional tall tale (remember, I work in the field of public relations and am a former newspaper reporter/editor, so my career choices have given me actual hands-on practice in the art of embellishment), I suggest to you that places like Salem, MA unfairly get all the glory and all the fun, around Halloween. What do they have that we don’t? I mean, besides a history of a few witch trials. Other than that, they’re a lot like us. They have their issues with taxes, with clogged traffic, and they are even trying to charge a fee for trash pickup, according to the newspapers (Kingston officials, please disregard this). In short, they’re no better than we are – but they do have all that folklore that comes alive every Halloween.

We could change that, with a little help from the World Wide Web.

We could enhance Kingston’s reputation as a "cool place to be on Halloween" with the distribution of a few urban legends of our own. With that in mind, I offer you a few to get started. For the record, as far as I know, these are completely false. But that doesn’t seem to stop others – and as Ripley once said, believe it or not.

Urban Legend #1

The Governor Bradford House is haunted, and there has been documentation to prove it. In fact, not unlike Roswell, New Mexico (where the government continues to hide evidence that would show once and for all that aliens from outer space visited here), Kingston’s government keeps the documented hauntings of this house very hush-hush. It is known in some circles that the only reason that the Jones River Village Historical Society continually elects not to host a "Halloween Dinner" there and instead opts for a series of summer brunches, is their belief in the conventional wisdom that "ghosts don’t like hot weather."

Urban Legend #2

Edgar Allan Poe, famed master of the horror story, was a big fan of Kingston, MA. In fact, early records show that the Grim Reaper of Words used to summer here in what is now Rocky Nook. It is said that the ghastly tales of Kingston politics, even back in Poe’s day, served as inspiration for some of his more riveting tales, including "Cask of Amontillado" and "Fall of the House of Usher." Poe apparently got into an argument with one of Kingston’s earliest assessors over the value of his land and vacated his summer property. Attempts to lure him back, even with the promise of an "Edgar Allen Poe" day, were unsuccessful.

Urban Legend #3

The Alfred Hitchcock thriller "The Birds" had a Kingston connection. The famed British horror-meister was reportedly stuck in a traffic jam on Route 3A many years ago while traveling through our fair village and a bird (not one of the brightest of its species) flew into his windshield. That served as the spark for the story that became a thriller movie. Unsubstantiated rumors suggest that Mr. Hitchcock had originally viewed Kingston as a prime site for the filming of the horror movie but could not find enough open coastline and was forced to go with his second choice, California. Also, in those days, Massachusetts was not as movie-friendly as it is today.

Urban Legend #4

Rip Van Winkle is alleged to have slept for 20 years in the Catskills. But that is not actually where his Big Snooze happened. A recording error mistakenly identified the location as Kingston, New York, which is in (or at least near) the Catskills. In fact, little-known historical evidence suggests that it was Kingston, MA, where Mr. Van Winkle’s cure for insomnia occurred. He was one of the earliest residents of this town. As the real story goes, he was attending an early town meeting, where budget deliberations were particularly lengthy, and he dosed off. Ironically, what awoke him two decades later was the sound of a neighbor saying, "Mr. Moderator, we’ve debated this budget long enough. Let’s vote on the question."

There you have it, folks. A start on making Kingston as appealing a Halloween choice as Salem. No doubt there are many even better tall tales than these four.