You've heard the stories. The $250.00 Neiman Marcus cookie recipe (or was it $695.00?). The parking lot stalker. Urban gangs killing people who flash their lights. Bill Gates giving away millions on the internet.

No one has first hand information. No one can cite the actual article where it first appeared. But everyone has heard the story (often from a friend of a friend) . . . they must be true.

Of course, they aren't. They are urban legends.

Urban legends have been around for decades. But the internet makes it possible for them to travel at lightening speed.

For more information on urban legends: 

Urban Legends and Folklore: This website is devoted to urban legends. It includes the latest legends, links to other articles on the legends, a large legend history section and much more. (urbanlegends.miningco.com/)

In the meantime, below is what happens when all the urban legends are stirred together in one big pot.

I Know This Guy . . .

I know this guy whose neighbor, a young man, was home recovering from having been served a rat in his bucket of Kentucky Fried Chicken.

So anyway, one day he went to sleep and when he awoke he was in his bathtub and it was full of ice and he was sore all over. When he got out of the tub he realized that his kidneys had been stolen, and he saw a note on his mirror that said "Call 911!"

But he was afraid to use his phone because it was connected to his computer, and there was a virus on his computer that would destroy his hard drive if he opened an email entitled "Join the crew!"

He knew it wasn't a hoax because he himself was a computer programmer who was working on software to save us from Armageddon when the year 2000 rolls around.

His program will prevent a global disaster in which all the computers get together and distribute the $600 Nieman Marcus cookie recipe under the leadership of Bill Gates.

(It's true-I read it all last week in a mass email from Bill Gates Himself, who was also promising me a free Disneyworld vacation and $5,000 if I would forward the email to everyone I know.)

The poor man then tried to call 911 from a pay phone to report his missing kidneys, but reaching into the coin-return slot he got jabbed with an HIV-infected needle around which was wrapped a note that said, "Welcome to the world of AIDS."

Luckily he was only a few blocks from the hospital-the one, actually, where that little boy who is dying of cancer is, the one whose last wish is for everyone in the world to send him an email and the American Cancer Society has agreed to pay him a nickel for every email he receives.

I sent him two emails and one of them was a bunch of x's and o's in the shape of an angel (if you get it and forward it to twenty people you will have good luck but ten people you will only have ok luck and if you send it to less than ten people you will have bad luck for seven years).

So anyway the poor guy tried to drive himself to the hospital, but on the way he noticed another car driving along without his lights on. To be helpful, he flashed his lights at him and was promptly shot as part of a gang initiation.

And it's a little-known fact that the Y1K problem caused the Dark Ages.

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This page created:
before
Wed, 16.Aug.2000

Last updated:
16:45, Fri, 27.Jun.2008