Local news outlets actually had to issue stories debunking the urban legends alleging that owners of Middle Eastern-themed restaurants were celebrating the 9/11 attacks. In the days following 9/11 those stories spread around here like wildfire…
My favorite (in a scary way) is the “Humans can lick too” Ugh. Now I won’t be able to sleep tonight.
lieu, you are my hero
I worked at a North side Chicago Hospital from '93 to '98. My first couple of years was as a file clerk. To pass the time sometimes we played a game where we tried to trump each other with the worst patient names.
Shithead was one of them.
Lexus, Acura, a few billion Shaquilles rounded out the collection.
The one about the lady, a cat, peanut butter and a surprise party.
“In the butt, Bob.”
Regards,
Shodan
Okay–not my favorite, but here’s one I have been grappling with for two years. I am a teacher, and since September 11th I have heard the following story countless times from my 8th grade students, but I never know how to respond. Whenever 9.11 is discussed, somebody always raises their hand and tells a version of “the hand story.” Here it is , in its shortest, and least sentimental form:
Searching through the rubble, an adult’s severed hand was found. Inside the hand was…the hand of a child.
Yes, heart-wrenching if true. But something in my cynical nature says “urban legend.” However, I have not been able to prove, or disprove this story, so I usually let it pass with no comment.
It’s almost certainly an urban legend, if just because only one small child was killed in the attacks on the WTC. A four year old girl was traveling with her parents to Disneyland and was killed.
It sounds a lot like a news report that I’ve read that indicated that a pair of hands was found bound together on the roof of a building near the WTC, and fingerprints showed they were from a stewardess. Might be the source of the story. Assuming for a moment that that story is true…
I’ve always wondered if this was one of the reasons the “real” Mikey agreed to do that Life cereal contest in the Eighties where you had to guess which of the people in a photo montage was him, grown up.
When I was a teenager, a pretty amusing urban myth story popped up every year from 7th grade all the way to 12th grade.
It was always the same:
“Did you hear what happened to a girl who went to our school like 10 years ago? She was screwing herself with a frozen hot dog and it got stuck! Then she had to go to the hospital and have it removed, but it started rotting before she could get there and maggots got all up inside her and she died.”
Actually, partially true. An adult’s severed hand with a child’s hand inside it was found at Waco, TX after the compound fire. I don’t know if there is anything on the web about, but I just finished the book No Bone Unturned by Jeff Benedict, and that was mentioned there.
My favourite is one that I heard in the 1970s at school, but only once, and doesn’t seem to appear on the internet. It’s a favourite because it’s so inexplicable. It happened in the Black Forest in Germany (as did the boyfriend’s head banged on the roof of the car, when I was told it).
It was a dark and stormy night… and a woman was driving alone through the huge, oppressive forest. As she rounded a bend, her headlights picked up something moving behind the long grass at the side of the road. She drove a few hundred yards on, but curiosity got the better of her, and she turned the car around and drove back the way she had come. Again, her headlights shone on something moving by the side of the road, and as she passed it, she realised it was a small boy, running as fast as he could. She was horrified that a child should be out in the isolated woods alone, and running seemingly in terror, so she turned the car around again, and drove past the boy. She stopped the car and got out, with her arms outstretched to catch him. He approached her, and she called to him: “come to me, I’ll look after you! Don’t be frightened”. The boy got closer and closer and she went to hold him, but as she grabbed for him, he fell on the ground. And carried on running, even though he was lying down. She bent down to pick him up, and as her hands touched his skin, she recoiled in horror: his skin was smooth and wooden, and painted. He was a clockwork boy.
According to Snopes, it is. 
my favorite, which i read, was the toothbrush bandits.
The only one i heard in real life (when little) was the don’t open a golf ball or it will explode one.
I heard this whopper when I was a kid and although it set off my Jr. BS detector, it still gave me the creeps.
A couple is preparing to leave for vacation and are waiting for the nanny to arrive to care for their baby. The nanny is due to arrive at any moment and they are running late. Instead of waiting for her to get there, they do the most logical thing imaginable and leave the baby in the high chair, leave the door unlocked and drive off to a sunny, fun-filled two week vacation, thinking that the nanny would soon be there. Unbeknownst to them, the nanny was involved in a fatal accident and never made it to their house.
They return home after their vacation to find the corpse of the baby still sitting in the high chair.
shudder
Snopes agrees, though obviously, who knows…?
How bout the one where the really fat lady flushed the airplane toilet when she was sitting on it and it sucked the intestines out of her due to her large ass cheeks creating a vacuum on the toilet.
My favorite is the one about the lady who stopped at a gas station, and was followed home by a man in a truck that was at the same gas station. The driver of the truck scared her shitless by tailgaiting her and repeatedly turning on & off his high beams. When she finally makes it home, the guy pulls in behind her, the cops are called, etc, and they discover a man crouching in her backseat weilding a knife. The man in the truck saw the guy sneak into her car, and so he followed her, turning on his high beams every time he would rise up to attack the girl.
I heard this one too when I was in high school but it didn’t include maggots and the girl lived. It was told about a girl who attended my high school. She went on to feature in other urban legends, always with a sexual bent. One was about a broom handle that left behind splinters which had to be removed at the ER of a local hospital.
I heard one when I was a kid but I can’t prove or disprove it. I lived in a semi-exclusive neighborhood in Houston until I was 9. Every year we would trick-or-treat in the neighborhood except the year I was 7. My family always hosted rather elaborate haunted houses and that was the year all our neighbors gathered at our house instead of letting the children trick-or-treat. We weren’t even allowed to go to friends’ houses. At the time there was a story going around about a serial killer who beheaded children, put the heads in burlap sacks and hung them from light posts or street signs. For some reason it was believed it would get worse on Halloween night. All of the parents were in a panic and decided to attend our haunted house/party instead of letting the kids roam around in search of candy.
I always liked this one too about spiders under the toilet seat.