What Was Your First Urban Legend?

[The Great Escape]

Which belief or bit of faux pop culture do you remember hearing fist? Maybe you really believed it for a while or didn't know it was an urban legend.

Mine was the one about the alleged "Love Rollercoaster Murder"...the story that a scream that is captured on tape during the Ohio Players rendition of Love Rollercoaster was actually the death scream of a woman being murdered right outside the studio. I first heard this in the seventh grade in 1976. I believed this one for many years.




http://www.snopes.com/music/hidden/roller.htm

[flamingyouth]

1. The one abou the caller telling the babysitter: "Go check on the kids!"

And the call was supposedly coming from upstairs. :D

[The Great Escape]

3. I Remember That Movie Scaring The Hell Out Of Me!

*

[flamingyouth]

10. Snopes has a page on it (of course)

http://www.snopes.com/horrors/madmen/babysit.htm

[RebelOne]

48. Same here.

One part of the movie caught me by surprise and I jumped and spilled cherry cola on my date's white pants.

[mcscajun]

2. Alligators in the NYC Sewers...

...supposed to originate by people flushing those tiny baby alligators you could buy in pet stores. I only believed it briefly, but still...

I should point out....this was DECADES ago! :)

These days, I'm a major debunker for friends who send stuff to me they're not quite sure about.

[Seabiscuit]

41. Ditto. I remember that one first. Those pesky alligators!

[Dogmudgeon]

4. That LSD was causing millions of horribly deformed babies

--p!

[Nikepallas]

5. Bloody Mary/Mary Black depending on your area

You stand in front of a mirror in a totally dark room and scream Mary Black(in my area) 13 times and she will come out of the mirror and mess with ya in some way.

[Shadowen]

6. Bloody Mary.

Heard it when I was 6.

[yellowdogintexas]

7. the roach nest in the beehive hairdo ...I heard this in the middle

60's, when I was in high school

[kohodog]

9. I remember that!

They ate into her head and she died. Moral: wash your hair!!

[Nay]

23. That is the first one I remember, too! Then the one of the Corvette

being sold for $100 -- because someone died in it and they couldn't ever get the smell out.

[Seabiscuit]

42. I remember that one from the early 60's when I was in high school.

Almost none of the girls at my school had those hairdos... they were mostly portrayed on TV from other parts of the country.

[kohodog]

8. 7th grade (1965)

Someone (perhaps Castro) had poisoned the water and anyone who drank from the water fountain would die within a few days.

[CO Liberal]

11. 8th Grade (1966)

That Jeanne Dixon had predicted that on a certain night in February or March of that year, space ships would land from Mars and take away all the virgins. We tried to use that as an excuse for getting out of a homework assignment in English class.

Needless to say, everyone showed up for school the next day.

[BrotherBuzz]

18. LOL, homework? You mean you didn't try to use this as an excuse....

to deflower all the virgins to protect them from being abducted? ;)

[CO Liberal]

19. Hey, We Were Only in EIGHT GRADE!!!!

We had our priorities - and no homework was TOP PRIORITY!!!!

:-)

[BrotherBuzz]

20. Ummm, you may be three days older than me but...

even though no homework was a high priority for me, it was not my the top priority. :evilgrin:

[CO Liberal]

21. Where I Grew Up...

...we talked about sex, but that's all it was - talk.

[Nay]

25. Holy shit, I forgot that one. Yes! We were actually all nervous!

I was in high school.

[CO Liberal]

44. My Older Sister Was In High School, Too

I rememebr her saying there was a lot of speculation about which girls were gonna show up for school the next day, and which weren't. :-)

[DS1]

12. The old car flashes its headlights as you pass near dusk and

if you flash back some gang members follow you and bust caps in your ass.

Always thought that was bullshit, I be right :-)

[The Great Escape]

13. I Have Known Some Very Intelligent Reasonable People....

who just believe that story no matter what. You cannot convince them otherwise.

[Maddy McCall]

14. Coats made in China had baby snakes sewn into the lining.

When I was in second grade, I refused to wear my coat.

[HuskiesHowls]

15. The one armed guy with a hook

attacking couples in cars parked on the local lovers lane.

Got me to finding some REALLY out of the way places to go park!!

[immoderate]

16. The old lady who put her dog in the microwave to dry it off.

--IMM

[T Bone]

17. the one where the couple parks on a dark road to make out

and during the make out session, on the radio, they hear a dj break in with a story about a one- handed lunatic escaping from the local asylum. Shortly after, they hear some noises outside the car so the guy starts the engine and drives away from the secluded spot. When he gets to the girl's home and they get out of the car, there is a metal hook (hand replaced with) hanging from the passenger's side door handle of the car.

Something like that. It's an oldie.

[njdemocrat106]

22. Health department raids Chinese restaurant and find cats in the freezer

:wow:

[underpants]

24. "Hippies" put LSD in Pixie Sticks and razorblades in apples

I remember hearing those every year at Halloween.

[Left Is Write]

53. I'd forgotten about that!

I heard about the acid-laced Pixie Sticks when I was a kid too.

[Midlodemocrat]

26. The rat in the KFC

...I didn't eat fried chicken for years.

[Left Is Write]

52. I remember hearing about the chicken sandwich with the

tumor in it - must have been a teenager the first time I heard that.

[thedailyshow]

27. it was about how dangerous it is to drink soda with pop rocks

in your mouth.

[SmokingJacket]

34. Because Mikey from the Life cereal commercials

died that way.

[tjwash]

36. That was my first one also...

...and of course when I heard about it, I just HAD to try it.

[Norbert]

28. Paul McCartney is dead because...

there was a hand over his head on the Sgt. Peppers album cover and he was the walrus, among other clues.

[nostamj]

30. yes! and he's barefoot on the Abby Road cover!

god, I remember talking about all the 'clues' back when I was in HS...

[Tikki]

29. White furred Big Foot type thing was...

supposed to be hanging out around the levees causing mayhem outside of the Northwestern desert community we grew up in.

Geez, why would anything want to hang out there? Summer temperatures were over 100 degrees and winters below zero!! I noticed that he didn't follow us to Southern California when we moved, so he might still be there.

Maybe it was an urban legend started by parents to discourage kids from parking out at the levees for a little, after the movies, extracurricular activities.


The Tikkis

[amazona]

31. the golf ball

For some reason I actually believed the urban legend about the acid in the golf ball that if you cut one open, it would burn down into the center of the earth because the acid was so strong.

I heard most of the ghost stories like the hook, the hitchhaker, and other urban legends of that type, but I knew they were fiction.

Oh, and we believed the one about Morning Glories having LSD in them, which we disproved quickly enough by consuming some one morning.

[gollygee]

32. The one where some lady stops for gas

and a guy sneaks into the back seat of her car.

[yardwork]

39. I still lock my car doors whenever I stop for that reason.....

...so I guess I could say that I still believe that one!

[alarimer]

33. The one about the Life cereal kid

Supposedly he died from eating Pop Rocks and drinking Coke. It wasn't true of course. I am not sure if that qualifies as an urban legend.

[arwalden]

35. The One About The Blood-Curdling Scream In The Song "Roller Coaster"

The song was sung by the R&B group 'Ohio Players'... in one part of the song, you hear the scream of someone riding a rollercoaster, but the legend tells us that it was a MURDER in the studio, and that the scream wasn't discovered until AFTER it was released to the public.

[The Zanti Regent]

37. Eddie Haskell grew up to be Alice Cooper!

...and Frank Zappa's Dad was Mr. Green Jeans!

[Mz Pip]

38. "The Hook"

Heard that on in 7th or 8th grade back in the early 60s. In high school the cockroaches in the bouffant hairdo was going around a lot. Big overteased hair was popular back then.

Mz Pip
:dem:

[yardwork]

40. Kid found cockroaches in a Hershey's bar

and got a lifetime supply of Hershey's chocolate. I used to hope it would happen to me.

Other variations involve rats in the bottom of coke bottles.

[brentspeak]

43. Bubble Yum is made with spider eggs

Late 70's urban myth that exploits the "crunch" that all Bubble Yum chewers first experience when putting it in their mouths. (It's really just large sugar crystals, but 'spider eggs' had me wondering).

[Danocrat]

45. The poodle and the peanut butter

No, I will not elaborate.

[skygazer]

46. The babysitter who had dinner made when the parents returned

And brought out the baby on a platter with an apple in its mouth.

[RebelOne]

47. The infamous Neiman-Marcus Cookie Recipe

This is when I first came on the Internet. Being gullible, I believed it and started posting the recipe to everyone I knew.

http://www.snopes.com/business/consumer/cookie.asp

[barackmyworld]

49. Gum stays in your liver for 7 years

I believed this until I was 18 :(

[Zomby Woof]

50. Cruise Control

I remember this one in the late 70's... about the guy who thought once he kicked in his cruise control, he could take a nap in the back seat. His car ran off a cliff and he died.

Which begs the question, how did we know what a dead guy was thinking concerning his cruise control? :crazy:

Although with the true stories I have learned from the Darwin Awards, I wouldn't be surprised if some morons with cruise control have actually come close to the above. :-)

[Left Is Write]

51. I think mine was the escaped lunatic with the hook hand

who preyed on young couples who were parked. I think I may have been as young as 10 when I heard that.

The first "modern" urban legend I remember hearing is the one about the kidney thieves. Someone actually sent me an email describing this "horror" when I was about to go on a business trip to Orlando.

[Liberal Veteran]

54. I'm stuck between the Jesus Movie petition and The Missing Day.

Since so much of my life centered around church as a child, I remember hearing all kinds of whackjob crap at church, most of which is still being passed around today.

There is the so-called missing day being discovered by NASA scientists and being traced back to a biblical tale, which logically makes no sense if you think about it.

The second is the petition which showed up in my church that said Hollywood was getting ready to make a movie portraying Jesus as...*gasp*...a HOMOSEXUAL! (insert scary music here) and I should sign it to stop them. That one has been going around forever too.

Both legends were soundly dismissed by my usual trip to the library.

I don't remember which one I heard first, but it was crap like that which started to make me question the church altogether. If they couldn't be trusted to present information that was real on those little things, why should I trust them on the bigger things?