The story that shook up school-age kids in the ’70s was that their pink piece of bubble gum was packed with spider eggs. The one that made moms shudder was that kids were licking Mickey Mouse stickers laced with LSD.
Now the rumor that’s got knees knocking concerns vacations south of the border. It is there, after pausing for a nap in a third-rate hotel, that a female tourist awakens shivering in a tub of ice only to discover that one of her kidneys has been carved out. At that moment it’s being sold for transplant on the black market.
Beware the urban legend, the tried, untrue tale that somehow, somewhere, sometime almost everyone has fallen prey to, if only momentarily.
Experts in folklore who track the outlandish yarns over generations and geography say they are more alike than different, reflect society’s deepest fears and may even be a form of therapy for the teller and the listener.
Like ancient sailors who feared the sirens and their seductive songs, citizens now hear about the gangbanger recruits who hide under teenage girls’ cars and slit their ankles before raping them.
Other legends touching on less serious topics are just about as creepy, and occasionally downright gross.
A stranger breaks into a hotel room while the rightful occupants are out and sticks their toothbrushes into an unmentionable orifice, documenting the prank with their camera. Only much later, after the film is developed, do they discover what happened.
A tourist in Tijuana takes pity on a stray dog and smuggles it back to her California home, cuddling it beneath her clothes across the border. When she awakens the next morning to see its eyes oozing mucus, she takes it to the vet. His call later is curt. “This animal is dying,” he says. “And it’s no dog. It’s a Mexican sewer rat.”
Wending its way along the Internet is the story of “Jen,” a serious-minded college computer-programming student, who lets herself have cybersex with “Jeremy,” someone she meets in a chat room. The relationship continues for a year and the two decide finally to meet in a hotel room. Jeremy turns out to be Jen’s dad.
Fast becoming a classic is the one about the woman who dined at a Neiman-Marcus restaurant, then requested the recipe for the cookies she had indulged in for dessert.
“Two-fifty,” the waiter told her. Seemed reasonable. Until her Visa bill came–with a $250 charge. For revenge, she allegedly has been publishing the recipe hither and yon, clogging up e-mail systems nationwide.
Nieman-Marcus, in fact, receives so many inquiries about the story that it has published a rebuttal on Web sites: “We have no idea who keeps spreading this rumor, but we do know it’s absolutely untrue.”
The Internet, not surprisingly, has aided the proliferation of urban legends, according to those who devote hours to tracking the rascals. With a single tap of the keyboard, users can hurl tall tales simultaneously at all their friends and even ensure that each version is the same. Few things are simpler than tacking a bogus dateline on a message to make it look like a newspaper story, then sprinkling in a few timely details to give it even greater credibility.
America Online recently added a lively feature packed with the latest yarns.
For example, the tale about that well-organized kidney-snatching team includes testimonials to its validity in the form of e-mails claiming that it really happened . . . to a friend . . . or a friend of a friend–a “foaf,” as it is known in the industry.
That term was coined by the prominent scholar and avid collector of urban legends, folklorist Jan Harold Brunvand. He encountered the kidney-stealing story six years ago, he reports in his book, “Baby Train,” and traced how the myth spread as new technology gained momentum–fax machines, cellular phones, the World Wide Web–accumulating twists along the way that seemed to be tailored toward different kinds of audiences.
A version in Playboy recounts as factual how a fraternity boy vacationing in Manhattan awakens after a night of debauchery to find the woman gone, but a fresh surgical wound etched deeply into his back.
Yet, according to the “Urban Legends Reference Page” (http://www.snopes.com), vacationers aren’t the only ones who need to worry. A salesman in a New Orleans bar gets drugged with a Mickey Finn at the end of a long day and awakens to find his kidney count cut in half.
The Greeks and Romans created myths to explain the mysteries of life. So too do we. “These are defense mechanisms, outlets,” said Alan Dundes, a professor of anthropology and folklore at the University of California-Berkeley.
“You realize the fear you’re having is the same as other people have. These are stories that bond us.”
Dundes even contends that urban legends reveal more about a society’s worries and beliefs than any formal research instruments that social scientists could use. He calls them “the pulse of the people.”
A British journalist quoted in Brunvand’s book “The Mexican Pet” scoffs at the interest in urban legends in the U.S.:
“Americans are notoriously concerned more with verisimilitude than with truth. They are gossip-mongers, collectors of scandal, thrive on rumor, and manifest a childlike belief in any story, no matter how incredible or outrageous, so long as there are enough `facts’ inserted to give it credence. . . . (These stories) are a sad comment on Americans’ naivete and lack of self-confidence.”
Many of the myths mock a tendency toward materialism that seems particularly powerful in America. The stories sometimes are fashioned something like a fable, with the victims often finding their downfall connected to pride, depravity or self-indulgence.
Another vacationer tale finds a woman and her son passing through a desert of Arizona (Nevada, Mexico). She decides to dig up a large cactus as a souvenir, against the advice of her son. Once home, she plants it and positions it in her living room. One day, she observes the stem trembling curiously, and calls the horticulture department at the University of Louisiana (Nebraska, Idaho) for an interpretation. “Get out of the house now!” the expert orders. At that moment, the cactus bursts to expel a bounty of scorpions, having recently completed their gestation inside the plant’s system.
Some urban legends–a misnomer because people in all areas of the country spread them–enjoy longevity because they are loosely based on reality.
The kidney story, for example, might have as its root a recent book, “One Man’s Crusade Against China’s Cruelty,” in which the author, Harry Wu, alleges that China harvests organs from prisoners who have been killed to provide body parts for government bigwigs or wealthy foreigners. Wu’s claims have yet to be verified.
But particular legends may drift in and out of style, as seems to have happened to a venerable Chicago favorite, Resurrection Mary. According to Richard T. Crowe, a longtime specialist in things haunted and weird, in the 1930s a young hitchhiker died in an auto accident along Archer Avenue on her way to a dance.
For 50 years hence, male drivers in the vicinity of Resurrection Cemetery in Justice have reported seeing a distressed young blond in an old-fashioned white prom dress begging for help and then vaporizing. The supposed sightings and pleadings usually have occurred at about 1:30 a.m., closing time for ballrooms of yore.
Mary’s plight captures the fascination of fewer people these days. After all, not many hitchhike anymore, but, as reflected by the kidney- or cookie-caper myths, most of us like to travel and shop.
Moreover, in these times of suspicious minds, urban myths must stand up to a higher standard of plausibility to survive. They likely will continue to evolve and endure, partly because they manage to betray gullibility among even the most sophisticated sorts. In that way, they might be providing a vital social service.
