# Urban legends you heard of as a kid **URL:** \ **Category:** In My Humble Opinion\ **Created:** [April 26, 2007, 5:42pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/urban-legends-you-heard-of-as-a-kid/401758 "2007-04-26T17:42:05Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 20\ **Page:** 1
**Author:** ![Subway\_Prophet](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/ecb155/32.png) [@Subway\_Prophet](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Subway_Prophet)\ **Post date:** [April 26, 2007, 5:42pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/urban-legends-you-heard-of-as-a-kid/401758/1 "2007-04-26T17:42:05Z")
What urban legends do you remember talking about or heading when you were a kid? I remember this one: when I was about 6 or 7 my dad brought home a ream of continuous fan-fold printer paper, which I used as a canvas for my crayon masterpiece: Spider-man climbing a skyscraper to stop the villian at the top. The villian was **tossing Kleenex off the roof of the skyscraper, which would kill people when they hit bottom because they were falling so fast**. (Yeah, this post is inspired by [this thread](http://boards.straightdope.com/sdmb/showthread.php?t=418380) pondering the effects of dropping a basketball off the Empire State Building.) I also had a buddy in the 3rd grade who went on and on about how the **car makers had cars that got 100 miles to the gallon, but didn’t sell them because the oil companies bought them off**. Since I didn’t even know what a mile per gallon or an oil company was (and, I now suspect, neither did Nathan), this really pissed me off. ---
**Author:** ![Trunk](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/t/87869e/32.png) [@Trunk](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Trunk)\ **Post date:** [April 26, 2007, 5:50pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/urban-legends-you-heard-of-as-a-kid/401758/2 "2007-04-26T17:50:30Z")
I distinctly remember hearing : 1. Woman/dog/microwave! 2. Spiders in the cactus! 3. Dammit, Jim, I’m a rat, not a chihuahua! ---
**Author:** ![cher3](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/da6949/32.png) [@cher3](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/cher3)\ **Post date:** [April 26, 2007, 5:53pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/urban-legends-you-heard-of-as-a-kid/401758/3 "2007-04-26T17:53:21Z")
There was an old cemetary in my town and one of the graves had a marker with a life size statue of a young girl. I was told by classmates that the girl had died after having her entire body painted as part of a Halloween costume. Sounds suspiciously similar to this: > **[Did an Actress Die During the Filming of 'Goldfinger'?](https://www.snopes.com/fact-check/goldfinger-actress-death/)** > > An actress in the 1964 James Bond 'Goldfinger' film did not die from being covered with gold paint. ---
**Author:** ![delphica](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/e9a140/32.png) [@delphica](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/delphica)\ **Post date:** [April 26, 2007, 6:06pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/urban-legends-you-heard-of-as-a-kid/401758/4 "2007-04-26T18:06:02Z")
The ones I remember: 1. poodle in the microwave 2. various quasi-celebrities dying from eating Pop Rocks, possibly with Coke 3. fried rat found in bucket of Kentucky Fried Chicken, with bite already taken!!!1 4. and a local one … our town had a very gothic-looking psychiatric hospital. Us kids developed our own local urban legend about a notorious murderer (often specified as the _real_ murderer some famous horror movie was based on) who served his prison sentence, but after his release from prison, was nearly lynched in any neighborhood where he tried to live because of the heinousness of his crimes. Finally, the state decided to provide housing for him in the psychiatric hospital … he lived like a mental patient on one of the wards … BUT WALKED FREE ON THE LOCAL STREETS AT NIGHT (muahahahahaha). This was the late 70s/early 80s. ---
**Author:** ![fishbicycle](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/f/aeb1de/32.png) [@fishbicycle](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/fishbicycle)\ **Post date:** [April 26, 2007, 6:12pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/urban-legends-you-heard-of-as-a-kid/401758/5 "2007-04-26T18:12:01Z")
I heard about the man who would hang around the schoolyard or playground, offering candy to kids, to get them to do something horrible with him. Has one documented case of this ever happened? Or was it parental paranoia and overactive imaginations? ---
**Author:** ![Jeff](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/j/e19b73/32.png) [@Jeff](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Jeff)\ **Post date:** [April 26, 2007, 6:12pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/urban-legends-you-heard-of-as-a-kid/401758/6 "2007-04-26T18:12:51Z")
The usual one that person X in _that house right over there_ was really a psychopath, and that he waited for your frisbee or ball to land in his yard. Then he would shoot you when you went to retrieve it. Veerrrryy effective when you’re 8 years old. ---
**Author:** ![BrainGlutton](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/82dd89/32.png) [@BrainGlutton](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/BrainGlutton)\ **Post date:** [April 26, 2007, 6:29pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/urban-legends-you-heard-of-as-a-kid/401758/7 "2007-04-26T18:29:32Z")
I remember the one about Walt Disney being frozen for later revival. And I was living on an Air Force base in Germany at the time – rumors travel far. ---
**Author:** ![Yorikke](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/yorikke/32/4335_2.png) [@Yorikke](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Yorikke)\ **Post date:** [April 26, 2007, 6:38pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/urban-legends-you-heard-of-as-a-kid/401758/8 "2007-04-26T18:38:34Z")
We supposedly had roving vans full of killers dressed as clowns looking to kidnap us as we were walking home. Joe ---
**Author:** ![MadTheSwine](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/9fc29f/32.png) [@MadTheSwine](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/MadTheSwine)\ **Post date:** [April 26, 2007, 6:43pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/urban-legends-you-heard-of-as-a-kid/401758/9 "2007-04-26T18:43:41Z")
The ones I remember are; Cookie Recipe. Pop Rocks and Coke. Bubble Yum contains spider eggs. McDonalds using kangaroo meat/worms instead of beef. Diver afraid of gigantic catfish. Only one I remember believing was the catfish one. I called the guy who told me about his mom and the cookie recipe a liar. ---
**Author:** ![JohnT](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/johnt/32/15048_2.png) [@JohnT](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/JohnT)\ **Post date:** [April 26, 2007, 6:49pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/urban-legends-you-heard-of-as-a-kid/401758/10 "2007-04-26T18:49:20Z")
Kentucky Fried Rat and McWorm burgers are the top two that I remember. ---
**Author:** ![Anne\_Neville](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/b9e5f3/32.png) [@Anne\_Neville](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Anne_Neville)\ **Post date:** [April 26, 2007, 6:54pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/urban-legends-you-heard-of-as-a-kid/401758/11 "2007-04-26T18:54:50Z")
Vans driven by kidnappers (don’t remember anything about them being dressed as clowns, though) Poisoned Halloween candy given out by strangers The one about saying “Bloody Mary” three times in front of a mirror A friend of mine in middle school claimed that his young cousins microwaved a pet My grandfather firmly believed that the sausages at a local bar were made of earthworms ---
**Author:** ![Litoris](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/l/9f8e36/32.png) [@Litoris](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Litoris)\ **Post date:** [April 26, 2007, 6:55pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/urban-legends-you-heard-of-as-a-kid/401758/12 "2007-04-26T18:55:37Z")
Far too many to count, being from a small rural town and having 2 older (and very delinquent) brothers who liked to scare my sister and me at every opportunity. (and my kids wonder why it is that I have no fear!) The funniest/most memorable, looking back, was the one that said that putting a penny on the railroad tracks will derail an oncoming train (my sister believed this one til she was 17 and I _forced_ her to come with me to do it and watch so as to fight one small corner of her ignorance!) **fishbicycle** , sadly, this is the MO for many child molestors. I do actually know a girl who had to have years of therapy because her parents never explained that she was not to accept “candy from strangers” and when she was 8, a stranger picked her up from her playground and let her “lick his ice cream cone.” Yeh, it happens. On a side note, one of our neighbors hanged himself in his shed. I was 5 at the time. I happened to witness the event, and told my brothers. They didn’t believe me and never told the adults – it took a couple weeks of sweltering summer heat for the stench to be such that the body was found and he was laid to rest. No details given as to why I didn’t tell the adults – suffice it to say that is part of my history that is irrelevant and discarded. There are a few urban legends about this incident that sprang up with the neighborhood kids, and I hate to admit that many of them were truer than those kids could have known. Edited because I forgot to point out that growing up within an hour’s drive of Adams, TN – we had all kinds of Bell Witch urban legends that are just plays off the Bloody Mary ones. ---
**Author:** ![Bobotheoptimist](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/919ad9/32.png) [@Bobotheoptimist](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Bobotheoptimist)\ **Post date:** [April 26, 2007, 7:00pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/urban-legends-you-heard-of-as-a-kid/401758/13 "2007-04-26T19:00:21Z")
The ice-cream man was a razor-blade wielding drug dealer (maybe this was just my cheap parents trying to avoid buying me anything) Batteries that would last forever, but Eveready owned the patent. Might have been an everlasting light bulb, too. I think I heard the 100 mpg carb on _Barney Miller_, but it was common knowledge that the Detroit and the oil companies were in cahoots. ---
**Author:** ![cher3](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/da6949/32.png) [@cher3](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/cher3)\ **Post date:** [April 26, 2007, 7:04pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/urban-legends-you-heard-of-as-a-kid/401758/14 "2007-04-26T19:04:18Z")
I still can’t make myself look in a mirror in a darkened room. (Actually I just came back in to write “cemetery.” Sigh.) ---
**Author:** ![Dante](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/dante/32/9673_2.png) [@Dante](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Dante)\ **Post date:** [April 26, 2007, 7:04pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/urban-legends-you-heard-of-as-a-kid/401758/15 "2007-04-26T19:04:59Z")
Peanut butter & the dog at a surprise party. Rod Stewart and an ungodly amount semen in his stomach. Gang members driving with their lights off. Just the other week one of my co-workers was telling me all about Lee Marvin, Captain Kangaroo & Mr. Rogers’ respective military endeavors. He’s in his mid-forties. I pointed him in the right direction. ---
**Author:** ![Earl\_Snake-Hips\_Tucker](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/earl_snake-hips_tucker/32/3269_2.png) [@Earl\_Snake-Hips\_Tucker](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Earl_Snake-Hips_Tucker)\ **Post date:** [April 26, 2007, 7:17pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/urban-legends-you-heard-of-as-a-kid/401758/16 "2007-04-26T19:17:00Z")
[QUOTE=Subway Prophet] I also had a buddy in the 3rd grade who went on and on about how the car makers had cars that got 100 miles to the gallon. [/QUOTE] I never heard 100 mpg, but I did hear [84](http://www.caranddriver.com/columns/9154/patrick-bedard.html). This was most definitely widely reported. Not saying it was legit, just that it did get a lot of press for a short time. ---
**Author:** ![Earl\_Snake-Hips\_Tucker](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/earl_snake-hips_tucker/32/3269_2.png) [@Earl\_Snake-Hips\_Tucker](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Earl_Snake-Hips_Tucker)\ **Post date:** [April 26, 2007, 7:21pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/urban-legends-you-heard-of-as-a-kid/401758/17 "2007-04-26T19:21:04Z")
But for my own, before Al Gore invented the Internet, urban legends often traveled by photocopier. One that I recall recounted a welder whose contacts were fused to his eyes by microwave radiation from his arc welder. He attemted to remove them, and ripped his corneas. ---
**Author:** ![Slypork](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/9fc29f/32.png) [@Slypork](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Slypork)\ **Post date:** [April 26, 2007, 7:39pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/urban-legends-you-heard-of-as-a-kid/401758/18 "2007-04-26T19:39:00Z")
Yup, heard all of those. How about: - A maniac with a hook for a hand is on the loose. Teens are making out in their car when they hear a scratching on the door. They drive off in a panic. When they get home they find the hook attached to the door handle. - Pouring coke on a steak forces worms up out of the meat - Woman goes scuba diving. Weeks later she is having stomach pains. Goes to the doctor who delivers a baby octopus - If you force your eyes to stay open when you sneeze then your eyes will pop out of your head - Playing with yourself will make you go blind or give you hairy palms (if that was true then I’d be soaking my hands in Nair so I could get a better grip on the leash of my seeing eye dog). ---
**Author:** ![pinkfreud](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/pinkfreud/32/17603_2.png) [@pinkfreud](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/pinkfreud)\ **Post date:** [April 26, 2007, 8:29pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/urban-legends-you-heard-of-as-a-kid/401758/19 "2007-04-26T20:29:10Z")
When I was a Girl Scout, every year at Camp Scott we would hear, from the counselors, horrific legends about a man who lived in the woods like an animal and occasionally approached the camp to snatch girls out of their tents and murder them. In the spooky, shadowy campfire light, a tale like this was mighty believable. In 1977, three young Girl Scouts were raped and murdered after having been snatched from their tents at the camp. A man was accused, tried, and acquitted, but no one has ever been convicted of the crime. The camp was subsequently closed forever. ---
**Author:** ![AuntiePam](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/f19dbf/32.png) [@AuntiePam](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/AuntiePam)\ **Post date:** [April 26, 2007, 8:41pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/urban-legends-you-heard-of-as-a-kid/401758/20 "2007-04-26T20:41:49Z")
[QUOTE=erie774] Yup, heard all of those. How about: - A maniac with a hook for a hand is on the loose. Teens are making out in their car when they hear a scratching on the door. They drive off in a panic. When they get home they find the hook attached to the door handle. [/QUOTE] Yep, we had that one. Bouffant hairdos were popular when I was a teenager. Some girls would douse the do in hairspray and not wash their hair for a week or two. Did you know that spiders will nest in your hair, and you won’t know it until one day you’re sitting in class, and blood pours down your forehead because the spiders hatched and they’re eating your scalp? 🙂 [Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/urban-legends-you-heard-of-as-a-kid/401758.md?page=2)