It's an Urban Legend

“Studies have found people turn to conspiracy theories when they’re anxious or feel disempowered. Psychologists say urban legends that prompt feelings of disgust...are more likely to spread.”

Tove Danovich on the darker history behind cattle mutilation reports.
orionmagazine.org/article/ghos...

We need more family-friendly urban legends.

I'm assuming it's an urban legend but there was that story of the Bride who cut her tongue on an envelope and end up getting bugs in her tongue. Y'all ever hear that one?

Happy Valentine’s Day, folks. (Zachary Kanin for @newyorker.com)

WWI example of the 'friendly warning' urban myth: "A German nursed by an English nurse —and extremely grateful; he said, “I can do nothing for you—I have no money, and I shall never see you again, but during July and August if you live in London, do not travel in what you call the Tube Railway."

I am looking at a photo of Ayr Baths in the early 1980’s before the flume and the urban myth about someone sticking a razor blade in it.

Tony Todd, an imposing man with a hook hand opens his coat almost seductively to reveal a mass of gore beneath

Black view of a man wearing a long black coat. His raised arm reveals a hook instead of a hand

More Black American folk horror for Black history month. Candyman (1992) made Tony Todd an icon, and with Candyman (2021), Nia DaCosta made history as the first Black woman director to debut a film at number one at the US box office.

Screenshot of a New York Times headline announcing "Alligator Found in Uptown Sewer"

February 9th is Alligator in the Sewers Day

🐊

An unofficial annual holiday marking the birth of one of New York City’s greatest true urban legends. On this date in 1935, a live alligator was found in an East Harlem storm sewer. An article about the discovery was printed in the New York Times

Origin of the urban legend about the tourist who asked a cabby for "Tutenkhamun" and ended up at Tooting Common.

It’s a not-uncommon academic urban legend, though I’ll have to check out what’s said about Nottingham University’s library!

200 have drowned in Austin’s Lady Bird Lake since 2004. A serial killer isn't to blame, study says. The study from Texas State University done in partnership with the Austin Police Department found neither direct evidence nor indirect warning signs of a serial murderer.

New study finds 'no evidence' of Rainey Street Ripper | KUT Radio, Austin's NPR Station

Study results never get in the way of a good story. It will be hard to squash the contemporary legend.

www.kut.org/crime-justic...

We're so happy to announce that Adam Allsuch-Boardman's An Illustrated History of Urban Legends is shortlisted for the British Book Design and Production awards, in the children's trade 9-16 years!

Huge congratulations to Adam and our fabulous book design team!

One thing that always tickles me is how urban legends formed and proliferated in the pre-functional internet era. Like, in 1999/2000, there were 11 year-old kids all across the country who insisted they had the rare blue pikachu card, but how were they even aware of it?

(Shades of “The Sinking Library” — “they forgot the weight of the books”)

January 20, 1976: The Ohio Players' "Love Rollercoaster" hits #1 in America. The scream in the instrumental section is rumored to be the sound of a woman being killed in the studio, an urban legend that persists for decades. #AT40

A lovingly horrifying illustration done in wispy black and white lines of a woman screaming in a field

"YOU HAVE IT!!"
(iykyk)

One of the lines from the 3-book collection of folklore and urban legend inspired stories, perfect to tell in a dark room with a flashlight shoved under your chin.

📚 Scary Stories to Tell in the Dark
collected by Alvin Schwartz & illustrated by Stephen Gammell

#BookWormSat

Herald headline: hydroslide incident: Finger severed as ring snags on bolt

Jfc it's the razor blades in the joints of the hydroslide urban myth come true.

I love this. BTW, how did you come to research this so thoroughly? (Are you a folklorist, journalist, or similar, or just a person who shares this same interest in contemporary legends? In any event, I’m glad to have bumped into you.)

Hmm, I’ll go looking tomorrow. We may be surprised!

version as his own (as if it happened to him). He was having a bit of fun. Tweet thread went viral and he was berated for stealing “something that really happened to Douglas Adams!” The delicious irony, of course, is that Adams — consciously or not — had “adapted” it as his own from elsewhere.

Yes, I went looking for those, too, but came up empty. I’ll try some 🇺🇸 databases tomorrow, but I think this version is at least European. Don’t think it made it over here until much later. BTW, years ago on the other place, a user in London posted a long thread essentially recounting Adams’s …

Congratulations, Paul, on finding those forms that predate Smith’s letter. I could never take this one back further in time.

Important and interesting thread on “The Stolen Biscuits,” a migratory legend popularized by the late Douglas Adams …

(A legend generally known as “AIDS Mary,” which usually includes the line “Welcome to the World of AIDS” written in lipstick on the mirror.)

Remember that urban legend about a woman sitting in her car holding her “brains” in, because she thought she’d been shot in the head - only it was a tin of pastry dough in her shopping which had exploded? Just had that only it was mashed potato in my hair, presumably from over enthusiastic whipping.

This was reported happening in 2022 (also in France) and 2021 (in England), so is it an urban legend or a specific fetish?

I miss when Snopes was all about urban legends and spooky stuff instead of fact checking political shit. It sucks that version never got archived. The internet has had so much of its soul ripped out of it.

Was anyone else told urban myths about telephone boxes and weird phone numbers? Another 100-word horror story written for @mulgraveaudio.bsky.social

At last we have recreated the “dead granny on the roof rack” from the classic urban myth “we put our dead granny on the roof rack and the car got stolen”

One of my favorite short stories that feels UL-ish is Horacio Quiroga’s “The Feather Pillow” (1907), shortstoryproject.com/stories/the-...