Urban legends you heard of as a kid

As a kid I heard the “bubble gum stays in your stomach for 7 years” one, as well as The Choking Doberman, The Mexican Hairless Rat/Dog, The Hairdo Spider, and The Singing Dental Fillings. A science teacher told us the one about the car door with the bottle in it and a note saying “You found out what was rattling, you rich bastard!”

And of course we all knew that certain fast food restaurants used worms in place of ground beef and that if you poured pop rocks into your ear and then poured soda into your ear your head would explode. And that bar codes on cigarette packages could be used to operate dialysis machines.

There were also certain local legends, such as that there was a Satanic church on 3rd Street and the Satan Worshippers hung around downtown handing out free drugs and porn to kids. And there were spooky places where some sort of deranged psycho was said to live and lure his/her victims to their doom. Somebody’s brother/mom’s boyfriend/best friend’s cousin supposedly had seen something weird there, so that was proof the place was haunted.

Oh, and the good old “Led Zeppelin or the Rolling Stones or Kiss sold their souls to get a recording contract and if you play their records backwards you can learn how to sell your soul too.”

Its not exactly unknown ( See the Glasgow Ice Cream wars. 2 of the men involved have now been released as a potential miscarriage of justice.)

When I was 9, in the early 60’s, we used to play Laurie, named after a “teen angst” song (“Last night at the dance, I met Laurie…strange things happen in this world.”). We believed this song because we thought she was buried in a local graveyard. On the tombstone was “…as you are now, so once was I. As I am now, you soon will be. Prepare to follow me.”

So funny to read about these. They seemed so true at the time!

We had:
Kentucky Fried Rat
Killer Clowns in Vans
Bubble Yum Full of Spider Eggs
Babysitter with the Clown “Statue” (who turns out to be an escaped convict)

Also, if you see candy lying on the street, you should never pick it up and eat it because someone probably laced it with drugs. Who are all these people whom we believe are just giving away their drugs like that?