Melissa, o la realtà dei fantasmi
Melissa, or the reality of phantasms

Summary/Abstract: Whereas horror and neogothic fiction often coincide with the literary or cinematographic re-elaboration of folkloric beliefs, Melissa’s case – a typical urban legend, possessing, nonetheless, a quite peculiar origin: the first testimonies of ‘Melissa’ are actually not to be found in local newspapers, nor even in the bush advertising coming from ‘a friend of a friend’, but in the works published by the neogothic writer Danilo Arona since the mid-2000s – inverted the process: from the parole of the written page, a literary creation had re-entered the langue of shared belief. This article analyzes the genesis and development of Melissa’s legend: as a variant of the ubiquitous urban legend of the ‘Phantom Hitch-hiker’, Melissa corresponds to a turn of the screw in the hypermodern relationship between Gothic fiction and popular culture.

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