Pre-colonial and early Colonial America was, in many ways, a VERY creepy place. Survival was hard, and the indigenous peoples had many stories that we today would recognise as horror stories. Ritual sacrifice, use of hallucinogenic plants in religious ceremonies, communion with spirits on a day to day basis, and cannibalism-which may have been much more myth than reality-atleast before the Donner Party-but was no less frightening-Add to that the stories about devils, witches, and ghosts that the Pilgrims and other settlers brought over from Europe, and it's no wonder that we're fascinated by the scary, creepy, gruesome and gory-we inherited that fascination from our forefathers!
Ofcourse, everybody's heard of the Chupacabra-if you haven't, it's a part lizard, part frog, part vampire, that exanguinates goats and other livestock, as well as often removing the livestock's internal organs with surgical precision, in the SouthWest-but here's a few more legends that may be part myth, part urban legend, and part fact-or atleast truth:
1: There are stories, fairly recent ones, about a mysterious city that lies somewhere in the Grand Canyon, in an area that is closed off to the public due to supposedly "unsafe" conditions-so unsafe infact that they won't even allow expert rock-climbers into the area. It's pretty easy to Google this one.
http://www.xpeditionsmagazine.com/ma...on/canyon.html
Years ago I read a version of this story that suggested the city was infact a "city of ghouls", and that the "ghouls" came out at night to steal people-which is why the area has been sealed off, to contain the hordes of nightmarish, immortal CHUDs.
2: Other stories from the 18th and 19th century concerns settlers and farmers discovering gigantic humanoid bones buried in various "Indian" burial grounds. This one can also be Googled.
3: There's supposedly a ranch in Utah, known as the "Skinwalker Ranch" where mysterious supernatural and UFO events supposedly occur. This one's in Wikipedia (the article is a bit vague, but contains lots of interesting ideas). The Ute Skinwalkers themselves are pretty interesting-being either a sort of monstrous lycanthrope, an extremely powerful shaman, or both at the same time. Apparently, the Skinwalkers were either sent by the Gods to punish the Ute, or the Ute all used to be Skinwalkers, but they used their power for selfish reasons, and were cursed, so most of them set their powers aside, but a few held on to them and hid themselves away.
I've often thought that it would be interesting to have either a nation of ghouls, or a Native American undead nation (or both!). Maybe with Skinwalker and giant units/summons.
Here are a few links to sites with Native American stories:
http://www.livingmyths.com/Nativesum.htm
http://www.ilhawaii.net/~stony/loreindx.html
http://www.firstpeople.us/FP-Html-Le...egends-AB.html