Did you hear about... the urban legends that won't die
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Independent Minds
IN PICTURES: THE THIRTEEN BEST URBAN LEGENDS
Most of us have told stories to the tune of “Well, my mum’s cousin’s best friend says [insert tale here] happened...” without having any first hand knowledge of the story we’re telling.
Urban myths or legends are by definition stories or facts which are repeated as true by people unfamiliar with their origins. By the time such tales have travelled by mouth across geography and generation the stories are often either so remarkable or so absurdly exaggerated that they have indeed become myth.
Whether they involve ghosts, organ theft or murderous intrigue, these stories are all related by a faint sensation when listening to them that you’ve heard them before somewhere.
There are huge variations across culture and different generations. Such stories now circulate via email and chat rooms as well as in the playground, workplace and at home.
Click the image on the right to view my pick of the thirteen best urban legends.
Please leave your comments and your own urban legends below.
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Comments
This happened after the same newspaper sent letters to all MPs asking them to divulge any fraudulent expenses claims they'd pulled off (really).
This newspaper has been making a loss for so long, nobody knows how it's still trading :-(
http://www.snopes.com/photos/natural/pa
Of course, their forum, like any other, is full of comments which they have little control over.
As far as flowers in Thailand go then, I can see no reason to doubt them.
Please do explain how their or their readers political views affect they ability to report on Far Eastern flora and fauna urban myths though.
Is the Republican party so powerful that they would be involved in the Parrot flower?
That would make Chinese web censorship seem quite subtle in comparison.
As for bobbelinhell, what a typically stupid American comment. Give me one instance where Snopes has lied for political reasons. I dare you.
Now hie thee to thine broomstick and see if you can find Serafina for me. :)
New calculations show this indeed is happening because of previously undetected wobbles in planetary orbits.
If the data and the calculations are right, there wwill be a catastrophic or near-catastrophic event in about three billion years.
The modern version is made of a plastic material, not organic gum.
So swallowing it is like swallowing any piece of soft plastic. It'll pretty well show up in the next day or two.
But a Yougov poll before the start showed that over 50% were for the war, UN mandate or not. Check it out if you doubt my info. So is this media supported denial of support just an urban myth .........
The modern one is about the immigrant/asylum seeker who buys a new car and pays for it with a social security cheque given to him for that purpose. This one was always observed by "my mates friend", and occured in whichever town you live in. Despite the relevant government minister appearing on TV and categorically stating that social security do not, and have never issued such cheques, a large percentage of the population still believe it to be true. One theory is that it was started by members of the BNP.
Maybe not started by them, but there are various racial myths that feed into their mindset; the immigrants feeding their families on cans of dog food, the Asians washing their dead at the local swimming baths, the half-Alsatian in the Indian restaurant freezer.
"Since the 1930s, several men driving northeast along Archer Avenue between the Willowbrook Ballroom and Resurrection Cemetery have reported picking up a young female hitchhiker. This young woman is dressed somewhat formally and said to have light blond hair, blue eyes, and wearing a white party dress. Some more attentive drivers would sometimes add that she wore a thin shawl, or dancing shoes, and that she had a small clutch purse, and is very quiet. When the drive nears the Resurrection Cemetery, the woman asks to be let out, whereupon she disappears into the cemetery. According to the Chicago Tribune, "full time ghost hunter: Richard Crowe claims to have collected "three dozen...substantiated" reports of Mary from the 1930s to the present.
The legend says that Mary had spent the evening dancing with a boyfreiend at the Ballroom. At some point, they got into an argument and Mary stormed out. Even though it was a cold winter's night, she thought she would face a cold walk home than spend another minute with her boorish boyfreind.
She left the Ballroom and started walking up Archer Avenue. She had not gotten very far when she was struck and killed by a hit-and-run driver, who fled the scene leaving Mary to die. Her parents found her and were grief stricken at the sigh of her dead body. Thye buried her in Resurrection Cemetery, wearing a beautiful white dancing dress and matching dancing shoes. The hit-and-run driver was never found."
Please leave your comments and your own urban legends below. There are huge variations across culture and different generations. Such stories now circulate via email and chat rooms as well as in the playground, workplace and at home.
Lady there are also advertisements by the Google and these loads the page very slowly Ant more stories let me know have in my mail it saves our tine OTHERWISE HOW ARE YOU?
I thank you
Firozali A. Mulla
It was actually taken seriously, and became enough of a staple in this area that I got fed up and contacted the benefits agency to ask for their response. Their response was to inform me that it was not and never had been true, and to demand to know when and where this policy was enforced so they could take legal action against whoever instigated it. They were not amused. When the person responsible for spreading this story told it again in public, I explained that I'd got in touch with the agency, and offered to provide the contact details so that the matter could be dealt with properly. The response of the whole group? To say that of course the government would cover it up, that it might not be policy now but it must have been at one point - would this old friend of an old friend lie? And I was patted on the head, and eyes were rolled at my having actually checked.
It's not the only time I've run up against this sort of thing. The people involved are not stupid by any stretch of the imagination, but I am apparently insane for actually checking facts instead of sitting around bitching about how persecuted people like me are. Clearly, evidence is the sort of thing that only fools base opinions on. I'm not bitter.
No wonder people have stopped buying newspapers.
I spent 3 years in Preston at University. One night I was going home from the bus station towards Deepdale. It was dark with not many people around.
I went out of the bus station over the bridge at the ring road near Rock FM.
As I was walking over the bridge I went past this blind man with a white stick who asked me to help guide him to the church.
At first I thought he meant the new church further down the road, but he was insistent that he wanted to go to the Rock FM church as there was a service on there.
I kept explaining to him that the church that Rock FM is now in is no longer a church and is all part of the radio station now, but he kept saying to me no it is a church and he even asked if I wanted to go in for the service.
I helped him and guided him to the gates of Rock FM and left him there as he wasn't having any of the fact that Rock FM is no longer a church, and I thought at best security at Rock FM will probably help him out.
As I walked away from the church I put my radio back on (which was actually tuned to Rock FM). As I was walking away on the radio they were playing Joan Osbourne - What If God were one of us? Which I thought was so freaky.
I turned back to the church/Rock FM studios to see if someone at Rock FM had come out to help him, and the strange thing was the guy had just totally disappeared. I hadn't walked that far from where I left him and he wasn't walking fast enough to have got to the entrance to Rock FM so quickly, so I really don't know where he went to.
My only thought about it was could it have been one of the Rock FM DJ's playing a practical joke? Surely not? If it was them would they not have identified themselves once we reached the church or something?
One other urban legend I've also heard of that wont die is the one about flashing your headlights at motorists who have forgotten to turn them on.
The urban legend is that you should never flash headlights at people who are driving round with no lights on as some gangs drive around like this and if you flash your headlights or make signs at them to tell them to switch them on they will drive after you and shoot at your car. I have heard this legend loads of times, I don't know whether it's true or not, can't see it being true in the UK, although I never risk flashing my headlights at any driver who has forgotten to turn their lights on. I think this one was probably invented by the police to make more money from fining drivers for forgetting about their headlights, luckily in my car I have automatic headlights so I don't need to worry.