Urban Legends

I was reading some urban legends and i think they are just stories, strange and scary, some very scary stories, that were told to warn people. Because while i was reading,  something came to my mind.
when
 i was a kid my family and i used to go to the countryside. I remember there was, or i imagine it´s still there, a big lemongrass tree. My family and neighbors used to tell us  that  at nights on the tree there was a  "man with no head", just because they didn´t want us to get away from the house in those nights without electricity cause it was so dark.
And this is funny cause we didn´t pay attention to that and we took it as a game: we used to go there together, very close to each other, and  almost getting to the tree somebody screamed and then all of us ran screaming too. That was scary but funny at the same time.

So, i think that if some of  urban legends were true, people changed or added something to created warnings, so that we are careful.