Urban legends strike fear in many of us–but are they for real?
Your buddy e-mailed you George Carlin’s hurricane rules.
Your boyfriend sent you that video of the bungee jumper who’s bitten by an alligator when he hits the water.
Great stories.
Too bad they weren’t true.
Carlin never wrote those rules, and the bungee jumping video is from an Australian beer commercial.
Both live in the pantheon of urban legends, almost sure to be repeated and likely never to die.
Urban legends used to simmer across the culture, slowly passed along by word-of-mouth from one friend to another before finally reaching critical mass.
Then came the Internet.
Now, urban legends move silently around the globe at the click of a button, landing in the in-boxes of hundreds of people at once–each with the ability to pass it to thousands more.
A common e-mail urban legend promises–falsely–that hundreds of dollars will be sent to you by Microsoft’s Bill Gates just for forwarding an e-mail to test a new product.
That is just one of hundreds of urban legends to cross the public consciousness in recent years, but it won’t be the last.
“I’m fond of saying that there probably were urban legends back in prehistoric times about those darned Neanderthals across the ridge that were abducting and killing babies,” said Bill Ellis, professor of English and American Studies at Penn State and past president of the International Society of Contemporary Legend Research.
Those who study urban legends say the stories usually evolve out of peoples’ fears, which helps explain why many of them center around Halloween. Not all of them are false, however.
“There are true urban legends,” said Barbara Mikkelson, who along with her husband, David, operates snopes.com, a Web site that tracks urban legends. “Most people think they must be [false] because just about every [urban legend] they run into is false.”
One of the most popular Halloween urban legends is the story of trick-or-treaters getting poison-laced candy. False urban legend? Not entirely.
In 1974, Texan Ronald Clark O’Bryan was dubbed the “Candy Man” after killing his 8-year-old son with cyanide-laced Pixie Stix to collect more than $60,000 in life insurance, according to news reports.
“Halloween has been the date that has been mentioned in a lot of what we call rumor panics,” Ellis said. “It’s an interesting kind of urban legend that says, ‘hasn’t taken place in the past, but is going to take place in the near future.’ “
A variation of a Halloween story began shortly after Sept. 11, 2001, when e-mails claimed an Arab man had told his girlfriend to stay out of airplanes on Sept. 11 and out of malls on Halloween. According to snopes.com, the FBI heard the rumors and investigated. It found the rumors “not credible.”
“It was tremendously popular for a while, but I think it tended to die of its own obviousness,” Ellis said. “Halloween doesn’t mean anything to the Middle Eastern mind. It’s just not a holiday that’s a part of their calendar.
“Secondly, why a shopping mall? There are all kinds of things that happen in shopping malls, but it’s not a logical place for a terrorist attack.”
Barbara Mikkelson recalls writing about Sept. 11 rumors within 24 hours of the attacks, but as the news changes, so do the rumors.
“I’ve spent the last month on Katrina,” she said.
The Mikkelsons have tracked down hundreds of urban legends under dozens of different categories since starting their site in 1995. Snopes.com gets 250,000 unique visitors a day, the Mikkelsons say.
“It was our hobby,” Barbara Mikkelson said. “It just grew out of that and was never meant to be more than just our hobby. We’re satisfied with it. I was a housewife, and David worked with computers. David got laid off. It came at a wonderful time because it gave him a lot of time to work on our site.”
After investigating, the two typically give a status report calling them “True,” “False” or “Unsubstantiated.” Making a living off the Web site was not what they intended.
The Mikkelsons are constantly tracking stories they hear from many sources, including hundreds of tips they get each day from readers.
Urban legends often reflect the state of the world.
One that surfaced in the ’80s told the story of a man waking up after a one-night stand and finding a note left for him on his bathroom mirror: “Welcome to the wonderful world of AIDS.”
“A lot of these urban legends have moralistic overtones,” said Jim Underdown, who investigates paranormal claims as executive director of the Center for Inquiry West.
“In that your decadent behavior is somehow responsible for the new predicament you’re in. A lot of these involve being drunk or getting out of control somehow and then paying the price afterward.”
To be sure, some of the urban legend stories are disturbing and horrifying. But that’s the point.
“The reason the stories live so well is because they’re good stories,” Underdown said.
“They’re sort of enticing or exciting anecdotes that people tell. You never hear of a boring urban legend.”
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You be the judge …
Barbara and David Mikkelson have been compiling urban legends at snopes.com since 1995. Many of the stories turn out to be false, but not all of them.
Part of the lure of urban legends is that you can’t immediately tell if they’re fake. Take the story of the couple who encountered a foul smell in their hotel room and then found a dead body under their bed.
True or false?
“Not only is that legend true, it’s happened a number of times,”
Barbara Mikkelson said.
Get that one wrong? Well, here’s a chance to redeem yourself.
Take this quiz of urban legends compiled from snopes.com.
1. The word “golf” is an acronym formed from “gentlemen only; ladies forbidden.”
2. Cuban leader Fidel Castro (below) was once given a tryout by the Washington Senators baseball team.
3. Walt Disney arranged to have himself frozen in a cryonic chamber full of liquid nitrogen upon his death so he can be reanimated once medical technology makes it possible.
4. A man rose 3 miles above L.A. in an aluminum lawn chair tethered to helium weather balloons.
5. FBI transcripts reveal a hysterical conversation between agents holed up in a psychiatric hospital who were attempting to order pizzas and a skeptical deliveryman.
6. Nike will send you a new pair of shoes if you mail them any old, worn-out pair of sneakers.
7. Atheist groups are petitioning the FCC to get religious broadcasting banned from American airwaves.
8. A new directory will make all cell phone numbers available to telemarketers.
9. During a UN meeting, President Bush was photographed writing, “I think I may need a bathroom break. Is this possible?”
10. “The Bachelor’s” Aaron Buerge (right) got three contestants from the show pregnant.
11. The actor who portrayed the “Marlboro Man” in print and TV cigarette advertisements died of lung cancer.
12. Mikey (below) of Life cereal commercials died from the explosive effects of mixing Pop Rocks candy with soda pop.
13. Najai Turpin (right), a contestant on NBC’s “The Contender,” committed suicide after being bumped from the boxing reality show.
The answers
1. False
2. False
3. False
4. True
5. True
6. False
7. False
8. True
9. True
10. False
11. True
12. False
13. True
— Jimmy Greenfield
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jgreenfield@tribune.com
