February 4, 2010 • 32 mins
In this episode, amateur anthropologists Josh and Chuck discuss urban legends, from how they're defined to some classic examples you've probably heard yourself.
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Speaker 1 (00:00):
Brought to you by the reinvented two thousand twelve Camray.
It's ready. Are you welcome to Stuff you should Know?
From house Stuff Works dot com. Hey, and welcome to
the podcast. I'm Josh Clark. There's all right, this is
stuff you should know. Let's get to the intro. Yeah,
(00:22):
Jerry said, we're wasting too much time at the beginning. Yeah.
She said that she wished she had a third mix
so she could ask a question every once in a
while so we could get to the intro. Right, So
what you have for lunch? Josh? I have not eaten
lunch yet, actually, CenTra. I had a Gara Deli square
chocolate caramel in sibs for I had a baby baby ruth. Um.
I a granola bar courtesy of Discovery Channel. Thank you, yeah,
(00:46):
raising d bar. Um. I had a cherry coke and um,
that's healthy. My think that's it I've had forever. Had
a green apple and some almonds, yeah, and green tea.
You're all about the almonds right now, aren't you. It's
a super food that reminds me. I've got to give
you a recipe for roasted almonds. One of my friends
(01:07):
told me last night it sounds really good, don't you
just roast him? Well, there's some other stuff mixed together,
so Alton Brown recipe. He's on the Alton Brown diet.
I watched me the Seaweed Salad last night, and I
was just like, he's gonna weep at any moment. Jerry
is so frustrated, right she is. Her calf muscles are
about to burst out of her legs. Well, maybe we
(01:29):
should send her to Vegas. No, no, no, I got
something else, Chuck. Yes, did you know that National Gang
Week has come and gone? Is there such a thing
that just ruined the whole thing? Well, Josh, tell me
about National Gang Week? Okay? Um. National Gang Week is
when all of the gangs around the United States get
(01:50):
together and come up with a clever, pant plan to
murder unwitting and innocent people. Some of the crips and
the bloods get together. One imagines what the Mongols and
the Hell's ain't jewels and M fourteen, M thirteen, I'm
gonna get shot in the head for this again? What
is it? I can't remember? Like MS thirteen? Sure, man um. Anyway,
(02:14):
all the gangs get together and they come up with
the plan that they're all going to perpetrate this year.
This December. It was a baby, a fake baby or
possibly a real live baby if they had any female
gang members who are willing to give up their infant
child for a little while in a baby seat on
the side of the road, covered in blood, although uninjured,
(02:35):
just just kind of doctored to look like they're bleeding
in an effort to trap female motorists. Who would you know,
inevitably stop female what female motorists? Yeah, that curse my
thick tongue. Um. The drivers by, not to be confused
with the drive by, which is a gang activity. Um,
(02:58):
the too to trap female to risks um who would
stop and try to, you know, see if the baby's okay,
help it? And then out of the bushes comes from
gang members who beat and rape and murder her. That
sounds to me like an urban legend, Josh too. Two
police departments issued warnings about this. Really, this past December
(03:21):
is so ridiculous. When pressed about their sources, they both said,
you know, actually we can't verify any of this, so
don't pass it along. It was just an idea somebody had, Yeah,
you know, the other big gang. When I remember hearing
this one myself was if someone flashes their headlights at
you and you flash them back, then it's a gang
and they'll turn around and follow you and kill you.
The one I heard was, um, if they if you
(03:41):
see somebody driving without headlights on and you flash them,
they'll turn around and kill you. It's part of a
gang initiation. It's so not true. No, it's not. And
what we're talking about obviously are urban legends, but more specifically,
the article is called how Urban Legends Work. We decided
to call this podcast, why do we Believe Urban Legends? Yeah,
you know, yeah, we'll get to that for sure. I
(04:04):
mentioned Vegas early on though, because of the very popular
old story that the man goes to Vegas and he
chats it up with a nice lady at the bar
and goes back to the room with her, and then
he wakes up dazed and confused in a tub of
ice the next day with a side hurting and uh
with a note saying call nine one one and clearly
his kidneys have been removed. Yeah, upon examination, as kidneys
(04:26):
are removed. This actually gave me a moment of terror, chuck,
because if you remember in the organ donation podcast. We
talked about a guy named Mohammed Seline Khan who had
his kidney removed, and I thought, Um, did we get
taken and pass along bad information that tom she right?
Turns out Tommy was right. I went and double checked
(04:47):
his sources, and I saw a picture of the guy
with like the huge sewn up um incision where his
kidney was removed. It was an ABC News story. Yeah, yeah,
that was real. That is pretty much fair fiable, right,
But that that story was around long before that happened
to him. Yeah, And I think we even um postulated
that that urban legend gave rise to actual fact, right, Yes, yeah,
(05:10):
and that does happen. Sometimes life imitates art and the
other way around. Sometimes it's uh, something from a plot
of a horror movie, or sometimes an urban legend is
inserted into the plot of a horror movie, like the
hook Killer. You want to tell that one? Well, yeah,
that one's been around since the nineteen fifties when um
teenagers first started going parking, which is when they would
(05:31):
drive out to inspiration Point and and make out neck
and m The story goes that the they hear the story,
it's always some someone who's escaped from an insane asylum
back when you hooked hand hooked hand. And then the
they hear someone scratching on the car and they don't
do anything and they just leave and they get home
(05:52):
later and find that a hook is sticking into like
the door handle. Not no, and it's a that and
the biggest one, the Vegas kidney one are considered cautionary tales. Right.
You have very common hallmark of many urban legends that
they are called cautionary tales, right. And and most cautionary
tales also involve some sort of morality twist to him, right,
(06:13):
Like in in the most extreme cases, the guy who
was in Vegas who was chatting with the girl was
actually married and he went back to her hotel room.
So the moral of the story is don't cheat on
your wife, right, or else something really horrible is going
to happen to you. Uh. In the case of the
teenagers in the fifties, um, it was teenagers necking as
(06:34):
you put it, old man, um and uh, the the
the more, the moral of the story is don't have
premarital sex. Right, we'll go park your car and do
things like this. You shouldn't know, um nothing right, So
the the the What's interesting about this is that urban
legends um reflect our own morality, our own values. Think
(06:58):
about that, from the fifties to the when the first
folk folklorist um I Guess chronicled that Vegas kidney story.
Right in forty years, it went from necking to cheating
on your wife, right, And one could argue that our
values had expanded like that or devolved to that same
degree in that same period of time. It's a good point. Yeah,
(07:20):
did you hear a bunch of them when you were
first going to college? When I look back on some
of the stories I've passed along as fact, I couldn't
be more ashamed I heard these. I never passed them along.
You didn't. Even if I didn't pass them along, I
believe some of them. Yeah, that there's a couple of
common ones. One is the be careful if you're in
a dorm room man with someone you don't know, because
(07:43):
you wake up every day and feel all groggy and
like you've been taking advantage of for a very good reason,
because your roommate was knocking you out and performing indecent
acts on you. What you slept not true very much
an urban legend, as is the the if your roommate
(08:03):
kills themselves, you get straight. A's that quarter, which I
have to say, forms the premise of one of the
greatest um Zach Morris movies of all time, what's that
Dead Man on Campus? Dude? Did you ever see that? No?
That was a great movie. That was the plot though, Yeah,
that was the whole plot. He smokes a bong in
(08:24):
that movie. It's kind of startling for having grown up
on Saved by the Bell? Oh he is that his
character name? Is that his real name? Yeah? I don't
remember his real name? Oh? Zach was his character? And
Saved by the Bell? Is Zach? A blond guy? Zack?
If you're listening, um, send us an email telling us
your real name. Now we we'll look it up in
a second, So don't bother email. I prefer an email
from him. Okay, So um, Chuck, Like, we said that
(08:47):
these things kind of tend to reflect our own morality,
our own values, and you said they reflect our fears,
and that's absolutely true. There's a lot of urban legends.
I would even say the vast majority of them have
to do with some sort of fear, right right, And
that's one reason we pass them along is because they
resonate with us. We have loved ones in our lives.
(09:08):
There's people we care about, or at the very least,
we're having a good day and we don't want some
stranger to fall into some horrible misfortune. So we pass
these along. And if they're passed along to a person
who maintains the same kind of fears and maybe the
same level of fears and the same um dope believability um,
they'll absorb them, fear them, and pass them along themselves.
(09:30):
Many times, it's also regionalized, so what maybe if you're
in Seattle, it could be a neighborhood in Seattle where
this happened. If you're in Atlanta, it could be East Lake.
So they get regionalized, and all of a sudden you think, well,
I it may not be true, but I should tell
my friends this um on the internet, such as in
an email out just in case, because it's happening right here,
right and because it's in a place that you can visualize,
(09:53):
it has that much greater of an impact on you. Fear.
Once again, sure, I mean, if you can visualize your fear,
you can fear even more. Yeah, good point. Thanks, that's
gonna be on my tombstone. Should we talk about some
some dead giveaways that you're in fact hearing an urban
legend and not the real thing. Tots, Uh, it happened
(10:13):
to a friend of a friend. That's the classic definite
is what they call it. And actually, um, if it
happens to a friend of a friend, usually when you
pass it along, you're not gonna say a friend of
a friend because you just immediately lost credibility right there. Um,
so you're going to say it happened to my my friend,
Chuck's friend, or it happened to Chuck's friend. You know, Chuck,
(10:34):
it happened to one of his friends who neither one
of us have ever met. Right. That that personalizes it
a little more, brings it home a little further. Or
if I were a real liar, right or really desperate
for attention, I would say it happened to Chuck, even
though Chuck told me it happened to a friend of his.
But I'm just gonna gloss over that part because I
really want you to believe what I'm saying, because if
(10:56):
you believe what I'm saying, then I can more easily
believe what i'm saying, Right, and people innately want to
believe their friends when they hear things, and people innately
want to tell a good yarn. So a couple of
those together spin a good yarn, and then, uh, is
that what the it's called spinning yarn? Put those two
together and you get urban legends. Yeah. I actually remember
(11:18):
the first urban legend I heard. And my buddy rad
in Montana, my best friend in high school, actually Radford.
He uh he told me, I remember this so distinctly
about the Eddie Murphy and the elevator. It used to
be Reggie Jackson before that. The story is the lady
gets on the elevator and it's it's some African American
(11:39):
with his large entourage or a dog. It's a dog.
It's a dog. Dog. Yeah, it's the crux of it. Okay, well,
and see it changes. That's the hallmark of an urban
legend to it changes per story, but the lady will
clutch her person fear, and then later on she finds
out it's at a hotel that her hotel stay was
paid for. It's like, courtesy of Eddie Murphy. We got
(12:00):
the best laugh I've had in weeks because we scared you.
Oh yeah, that's not how a mom told it. She
said that, um, and I think, if I remember correctly,
she told me that it had happened to a friend
of hers or someone she works with. Friends. Well, that's
what Rat said. I remember it was his mom, someone
his mom worked with. Well, in this case, it was
Lionel Ritchie or Reggie Jackson. I think the other variation
(12:22):
I heard was Reggie Jackson, Lionel Richie. I never heard
Eddie Murphy. But he's in there there in like a
very nice hotel that allows huge dogs, and the guy
has a dog with him, so he's he's even more intimidating,
and uh, the the woman is trying to avoid eye contact,
is scared clutching her first, that kind of thing. Um.
And then all of a sudden, the guy goes sit lady,
(12:44):
and the woman sits down in the elevator and the
guys like I was talking to my dog. And then
her hotel stay is paid for by Reggie Jackson or
Lionel Ritchie or Eddie Murphy or one imagines P Diddy, yeah,
or jay Z. But I just rad, if you're listening,
you lied to me, buddy, way back when when we
were eating turkey sandwiches after school. You lied to me,
(13:06):
I remember distinctly, and I'll never forget it. So, Josh,
that was a lot of time to uh, to give
up the one dead giveaway friend of a friend. So
we'll go through some of these other ones quickly. Actually
we already did. There are many variations. That's a dead giveaway.
The topic is one that is often on the news
or one that people gossip about. Yeah, that's a big one.
(13:28):
Like we Got Stuff podcast, got a forwarded email about
UM census workers. Yeah, yeah, the census is about to happen,
so now don't open your door unless they have a
confidentiality agreement and certain other things. They'll murder you. Yeah,
we got it this morning. Okay, was that when that ironic? Yeah,
but that actually happened when the census worker we thought
was killed, but it turns out it's a suicide. So
(13:50):
oftentimes it will spin off of a real news story
and get morphed. Yeah, which is kind of scary because
a lot of urban legends have been portrayed as fact
in the news the newspapers. Well, that's another reason people
believe them is because they trust the news when they
ought not, which is sad because really, frankly, you shouldn't.
You shouldn't. You should take all news stories with a
(14:12):
green as salt. You know, it's just some dude or
chick reporting something kind of file a story, just like
we do. We get things wrong all the time. Clearly,
why shaking your head? Just people know, we call ourselves out.
But it's true. I think it's funny that we do that,
and we need to do that because in the in
this day and age, pretty much our entire job, or
(14:33):
at least a significant portion of it, chuck is avoiding
giving out false information. Yeah, we have to go through
and verify it, which is getting increasingly harder. Yeah, we try,
We definitely do. We were talking about pop culture, and
sometimes movies will work it in or the other way around.
In the movie Goodwill Hunting, remember they tell the story
(14:54):
about the guy who gets pulled over by the cop
because he's drunk, and then an accident happens in the
cop as to run to the accident, and the guy
jumps in his car goes home. The cop comes the
next morning and the guy denies that he was ever
out drinking until he looks and notices that in his
driveway he had jumped in the squad car by accident.
Not true, but it's an urban legend. It was in
(15:15):
good will hunting the Simpsons, which one. You know how
you always hear the story about like a mouse in
a in a coke bottle? Remember the Simpsons when they
Barney and Homer visit the Duff Brewery and the guys
on the line fills on the line checking the bottles
as they go by. He's like, good, good nose, good needle.
And then he turns his head and like Hitler's head,
(15:36):
it goes by the bottle. That's a good one. Did
you see the YouTube clip of Hitler finding out that
Scott Brown won the Massachusetts Senate seat? I did? You
sent it to me? Good? Is that an urban legend?
Or did Scott Brown really win the Senate seat? He
really did? I thought was made up? Um? Oh, there's
a pretty It's pretty much impossible to trace the origin
(15:57):
of a um any urban legend, really, no one ever
knows where they come from. One of the reasons why
is because it follows oral tradition or it used to
generally right right folk It is folklore, and it's actually
studied by cultural anthropologists and folkloreist, which I think is
probably a sub set of cultural anthropology. UM. And the
(16:18):
the Hey, Dave, have you seen the Encyclopedia of Urban Legends? No.
I used to have a cartoon book though, of urban legends.
It was pretty cool, nice. Well, the Encyclopedia of Urban
Legends is fairly anthropological in nature. It's pretty thick tone.
It's on Google Books. We can check it out. But
the author of it, Jan Harold brun Van, Harold, why
(16:39):
are you doing this to me today? Are you talking
to your mouth or to me both? Um? The the
author Jan Harold brun Van Um kind of laments that
the the internet has removed that aspect the oral tradition
by digitizing it. And now I'll just click forward and
(16:59):
and uh broom Van suggests that the golden age of
uh of um urban legends was the sixties of the eighties,
although they've been around a lot longer than that, right, yeah,
since the thirties and forties. I said, I found even
further back than that. Um. Apparently at Scott Fitzgerald and
the twenties referred to contemporary legends the the the critic
(17:22):
took to mean the same thing as an urban legend. Sure.
And then even before that, I think in uh the
eighteen nineties there was a French columnists who asked to
cities maintain folklore just as rural areas to interesting the
answer that is a big fat yes obviously. Yeah. So
that's when they were actually called out as urban legends.
Like we said, it goes back centuries tradition of folklore.
(17:44):
Historians are big on verifying and writing things down, and
folklore's tell stories with their mouths. Yeah, like we do, right,
that sounds like a T shirt. Folklore's do it with
their mouths. Um. And like you said, check, these things
go back centuries, if not further. Um. And again, all
legends reflect um, the feelings, the fears, that kind of
(18:07):
thing of the culture at the time. So we're before uh,
in the you know, pre industrial age. Most fairy tales
that had something bad happening to them, we're set in
the woods, like Handling Gretel or snow White or whatever.
These fairy tales were set in the woods because the
woods were still very scary places, filled with bandits and
bears and scary monsters, super freaks. Yeah. Yeah. One thing
(18:31):
I thought was interesting is the famous website snopes dot
Com clearly can put an end to a lot of
these Internet if you're smart enough to good look at
Snopes these Internet rumors that get started. But one thing
I thought was interesting was reading this article is that
Snopes evidentally gets a lot of angry emails because people
want to believe their friends so much that their friends
(18:52):
not made this up, that they will email Snopes angrily
and say, you're calling my friend a liar. This really happened.
He said, it happened to his best friend, and snubs
just like doubt. They even respond to those, and they like,
send us your address so we can send a guy
to come hit you with a tack hammer. Right, and
I have some swamp land in Florida, I can tell
you exactly. Um. We were talking about the origins of
(19:13):
these things, chuck right. Um. Right, So folklore's anthropologists and uh,
pretty much any smart person can point to actual advance
that are maybe misinterpreted or expanded upon become the source
of urban legends. E g. Uh, temporary tattoos laced with LSD. Right,
(19:33):
that could have been birthed out of the real practice
of a chemist who make LSD would oftentimes put it
on I guests still do put it on like a
stamp with a cartoon character, and so that might have
gotten confused with um temporary tattoos. So the word spreads
and all of a sudden, And what I love is
that the story goes is they give them these LSD
(19:54):
tattoos to get the kids hooked on LSD, which is
just silly. Yeah, it's not physically addicted ing at all,
north psychologically addicting. I imagine it's much more psychologically aversive
than anything I'm getting nostalgic Halloween. Lots of urban legends
around Halloween. Yeah, with the tainted candy and the razor
blades in the apple. You know it's crazy is we
(20:16):
were talking about how the Oregon thief actually probably got
the idea from the urban legend. There have been instances
of people tainting Halloween candy after the the urban legend
was around. Interesting, most of the ones that have like
razor blades, and I have to say this is from Snopes.
(20:36):
There's a pretty long article on Halloween candy with razor
blades and needles. But um, most of the ones that
have actually been perpetrated were hoaxes or they wanted to
get attention or something like that. Um, but poison candy
actually does. It's come up many many times around Halloween,
(20:56):
and you know, in non Halloween days, the other three
sixty four days where kids have died. Apparently, yes, and
this is not an urban legend. Apparently uh in. I
don't remember what state it was in, but a friend
of a friend told me, um that a little kid
died after getting into his uncle's stash of heroin, and
(21:17):
so the family actually sprinkled his candy Halloween candy with
hero with heroin from the uncle's stash to protect the uncle.
Uh to make it look like somebody had poisoned the
kid with with heroin and that really happened. It happened.
What if Snopes is wrong about all this stuff? I
don't know. I've had that horrible feeling before, horrible thoughts,
sat upright in bed, been like tis roll pops, Like
(21:40):
Snopes is just this one dude, He's just like this inclusion,
he's like the wizard behind the curtain. That'd be pretty cool.
I guess we should point out a few of these
email urban legends, just so you don't forward them around
to your your friends and family. Be wary of anything
free obviously that's a that's a dead giveaway. Usually. Well,
(22:02):
that's just like the pigeon drop. Yeah, sure, yeah, you
just you if anybody starts talking to you about money
and you've never met them, you don't want to respond, right.
Another dead giveaway, Josh, is if you ever get an
email that starts with a line if you for this email, colon,
or if it says this is not an urban legend, colon,
then it's probably an urban legend. Yeah. And then of
(22:25):
course there is a the famous Nemon Marcus cookies email,
which I've actually received. I have received this one as well.
I've never made him of you. No, well, they're just
regular cookies. Tom Harris is they're delicious. I think he
made them before this article. That is research pal. Yeah, well,
detail this one. This is a very famous one. So
(22:45):
back in I think the nineties, uh late nineties, there
was an email that was sent around where it talked
about the Neiman Marcus chocolate chip cookie recipe which made
some delicious chocolate chips they say, or chocolate chip cookies. Um.
And a woman apparently asked for name and Marcus, uh
somebody at the store to give her the recipe for
(23:06):
the cookies and they gave it to her, but they
charged her for it, they said to fifty And when she,
you know, gets her bill later that month, she sees
that they charged two hundred and fifty dollars instead of
two dollars and fifty cents for this recipe. The woman
finds it outrageous. Contact Name and Marcus and they're like, well,
our cookies are really good. We're not going to refund
your money. Uh. So she decided that to get them back,
(23:28):
she would forward the email with the recipe and an
email to everybody and spread it around to get back
at Niman Marcus, you were my crutch, Chuck. Not true, Josh.
They didn't even make the chocolate chip cookie at the time.
In the eighties it was Mrs Fields, not Name and Marcus,
and before that it was the Waldorf Astoria Hotels red
(23:50):
velvet cake. Take that. Stupid people who believe forward an
emails who I'm sad to say, not only did my
mom pass along bunk information with the line old Richie
slash Reggie Jackson story. Um, but my dad, I found out,
is a birther. Really are you kidding me? Yeah, he's
not in any kind of structured to organized capacity in
(24:13):
As a matter of fact, he wasn't even aware of
the term birther, but he believed af forwarded email that
was birth in nature, which again that was a real occurrence.
There were people out there who wanted to see Barack
Obama's birth certificate claiming he was not born in this country.
Is originally said that his birth certificate was doctor that
he was really a born in Kenya. Um YadA, YadA, YadA,
(24:37):
and therefore he shouldn't be president. Right, But the the
that has taken on a life of its own, so
out of this original idea, it's become an urban legend
and a forwarded email urban legend, which are really the
dregs of urban legend society because you're not even taking
the time to spend a good yarn at that point. No,
and that's why um brun Van was saying, like it
(24:57):
was best from the sixties of the eighties. You know,
there's there's spider eggs and bubble yam and co can's
hanging from car doors and the calls coming from upstairs
and the great part about it was that everybody was
personalizing it because it happened in East Lake or it
happened in Peoria, Illinois, depending on where you are, And
so there was it took effort, and there was there
(25:18):
was personalization done to it, and so people were engaging
in oral folklore tradition without even realizing it, and it
kept it alive and vital. Now it's just forwarding. That's it. Well,
you and I remember clearly. I remember Rad lying to
me in the night that I'm sorry ten or eleventh grade.
You remember your mom telling me stories like I remember
this specifically in his kitchen. I remember that day specifically,
(25:40):
but I don't remember whatever Jack asked for? Did me?
The the gang headlight thing? Should we talk about a
couple of real ones real quick before you wrap it up? Yeah?
These are great, Chuck. Chuck found some on cracked dot
com and uh, the more fantastic ones we actually did
go and double check with Snopes, the big fat guy
who doesn't check any thing. Right. Yes, okay, so Chuck
(26:02):
take it away. Well one of them, um has happened recently?
Is that the famous Halloween when there's all manner of
Halloween ones like we said, where someone hung themselves in
their yard? Yeah? We when what podcast? Did we talk
about that? I can't remember. I can't either, but we
definitely did. And the story goes that someone hung themselves
and people thought it was a Halloween Halloween decoration, so
they the body stayed there for several days until they
(26:24):
realized it was real and this actually really did happen. Yeah.
And then there's the uh, the one about the couple
who spend the night in a hotel room and they
can't figure out where the stench is coming from, and
when they finally go downstairs to ask for their money
back the next morning, the hotel management investigates and finds
a dead body under the bed. Apparently it's happened a
(26:45):
bunch of times. Kansas City, Atlantic City, Florida, California. It's
very distressing. Yeah, and and the Cracked blogger makes a
good point that in these cases, in just about all
of them, what's insane is that the people spent the
night in the room the whole time, the variably and
they're so great. Tell him the best one, Cracked is awesome.
They're so funny. Yeah, I love that website and that
(27:05):
it's one of your faiths. Uh, the fun House Mummy,
this one is the best one ever. Uh. The myth
is that a prop at a carnival was Um, I
guess in the in the scary fun house was not
a prop mummy, but it was in fact a real
dead body. So if this story couldn't get any more fantastic,
(27:26):
you're wrong. Right, here's how the urban legend goes. Um.
The crew for the six Million Dollar Man was filming
an episode and they needed a fun house, so they
went down to Long Beach to the New Pike Amusement Park, right,
and there was a dummy hanging in the shot, and
the director filmed the shot. Apparently it was like, I
(27:46):
don't like that dummy. There's somebody get rid of it.
Some guy goes to grab it, the arm comes off,
and they noticed a human bone inside. Right, You thought, wow,
that's pretty realistic. Yeah, And so they did a little
more investigating and figured out that it was a real corpse,
a mummified, embalmed human corpse that was actually hanging in
a fun house being that people took as a dummy. Right,
(28:08):
six million dollar Man, Chuck, is this true? It is true?
Isn't that crazy? And it doesn't in there because apparently
the body, the undertaker had done such a swell job
with the embalming process that he put this body on
display for a matter of years, could pay a nickel
to come see this body. And then two guys that
(28:28):
worked for the amusement park or no traveling carnival disguise
themselves as what his brothers his brothers to come claim
the body, and they actually stole the body and it
traveled around the country, eventually ending up in Long Beach. Yes.
What's even more amazing is that we know whose body
this is. Yes, we do. It was a bank robbing
(28:50):
bandit named Elmer McCurdy who lived out his violent career
at the about the turn of the last century, early
twentieth century. Uh. He was killed in the shootout for
forty six bucks and two jugs of whiskey. Uh. And
like you said, the undertaker did such a good job
in balming him. He charged people in nickel to come
look at this bandit. Uh. And that was that. So
(29:12):
when they finally laid him to rest, I think in
like two thousand six. Really, no, it couldn't have been. No, No,
it would have been a couple of years after the
six million dollar man thing in seventy six. Okay. Um.
They they supposedly put cement over his casket so that
nobody could dig him up and do the same thing
all over again. Yeah, true story. Yeah. So Cracked actually
(29:35):
has a about eleven of them over the span of
a couple of articles. And then I saw other sites
that said they had real ones. But um, again, you
can't always believe everything. I don't know if I believe Cracked. No,
that's why I went and checked it out. It's snops
and they they had the same story, uh different, slightly different,
but all the facts were the same, same name, same everything.
Friend of a friend. Yeah, is that it? That's it man?
(29:59):
I mean we can go on urban life. Yeah, we
could just could be in eleven our podcast. Um, but
let's not make it that way. Now, if you want
to learn more about urban legends, you can look it
up in the handy search bart how stuffworks dot com. Chuck,
it's time for listener mint. Now. It's not Josh what
We are not going to do listener mail today because
we are going to plug this thing like a finger
(30:20):
and a dike. So Chuck, go ahead, then, if you're
going to do that, let's do it well. First of all,
we want to plug the new science podcast that we
talked about for a while. And it is called Stuff
from the Science Lab with our comrades. Robert Lamb, who
you might remember from doing me Rendition the reading of
the Jack the Ripper letter. Yeah gotta, he doesn't do
(30:41):
that voice in the podcast, so unfortunately. And Alison, they
do a great job with science e stuff. Hell of
in ea there. And we're going to plug Strickland's podcast
tech Stuff. Even though he talks smack about us, he
really does. Then this we are going to plug stuff
he missed in history class with our colleagues. Now Katie
used to be Jane and Candice now it's eighty and
Sarah Dowdy full time. They do a great job. And
(31:04):
what else do we have? High speed stuff? Yeah, Scott
and Ben Scott and Been do a great auto podcast,
very funny. Ben and Matt also do stuff they don't
want you to know it video podcast on conspiracies, which
is awesome. Yeah, Coolest Stuff on the Planet is another
great travel video podcast. And what are what are we forgetting? Yeah, Sminty,
our sminty gals. Yeah, how can we forget? Sminty? Did
(31:27):
you see that email we accidentally got that was intended
for them? Today? Uh, stuff mom never told you of course?
Is uh the some people liking it to the female
version of what we do. Yeah, they have a huge
cult following to do. They're great, they're really funny quality stuff. Oh,
of course there's stuff Genius and brain Stuff, both of
which a feature. Are a Steam founder Marshall Brain Yeah,
(31:49):
and Stuff of Genius is really short. And if you're
into like cool monty python esque graphics, don't like it. Yeah,
And of course there's the blogs always. You can just
type in the blogs at how stuff works die com. Right,
plug fest is over. Plug Fest is over. You haven't
done in a while. If you want to send us
an email, we probably will do reader mail again right
(32:12):
starting next week. Okay, if you want to send us
an email on absolutely anything, you can wrap it up
and send it to stuff podcast at how stuff works
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Is it how stuff works dot com. Want more how
stuff works, check out our blogs on the how stuff
(32:35):
works dot com home page. Brought to you by the
reinvented two thousand twelve camera. It's ready, are you
Brought to you by the reinvented two thousand twelve Camray.
It's ready. Are you welcome to Stuff you should Know?
From house Stuff Works dot com. Hey, and welcome to
the podcast. I'm Josh Clark. There's all right, this is
stuff you should know. Let's get to the intro. Yeah,
(00:22):
Jerry said, we're wasting too much time at the beginning. Yeah.
She said that she wished she had a third mix
so she could ask a question every once in a
while so we could get to the intro. Right, So
what you have for lunch? Josh? I have not eaten
lunch yet, actually, CenTra. I had a Gara Deli square
chocolate caramel in sibs for I had a baby baby ruth. Um.
I a granola bar courtesy of Discovery Channel. Thank you, yeah,
(00:46):
raising d bar. Um. I had a cherry coke and um,
that's healthy. My think that's it I've had forever. Had
a green apple and some almonds, yeah, and green tea.
You're all about the almonds right now, aren't you. It's
a super food that reminds me. I've got to give
you a recipe for roasted almonds. One of my friends
(01:07):
told me last night it sounds really good, don't you
just roast him? Well, there's some other stuff mixed together,
so Alton Brown recipe. He's on the Alton Brown diet.
I watched me the Seaweed Salad last night, and I
was just like, he's gonna weep at any moment. Jerry
is so frustrated, right she is. Her calf muscles are
about to burst out of her legs. Well, maybe we
(01:29):
should send her to Vegas. No, no, no, I got
something else, Chuck. Yes, did you know that National Gang
Week has come and gone? Is there such a thing
that just ruined the whole thing? Well, Josh, tell me
about National Gang Week? Okay? Um. National Gang Week is
when all of the gangs around the United States get
(01:50):
together and come up with a clever, pant plan to
murder unwitting and innocent people. Some of the crips and
the bloods get together. One imagines what the Mongols and
the Hell's ain't jewels and M fourteen, M thirteen, I'm
gonna get shot in the head for this again? What
is it? I can't remember? Like MS thirteen? Sure, man um. Anyway,
(02:14):
all the gangs get together and they come up with
the plan that they're all going to perpetrate this year.
This December. It was a baby, a fake baby or
possibly a real live baby if they had any female
gang members who are willing to give up their infant
child for a little while in a baby seat on
the side of the road, covered in blood, although uninjured,
(02:35):
just just kind of doctored to look like they're bleeding
in an effort to trap female motorists. Who would you know,
inevitably stop female what female motorists? Yeah, that curse my
thick tongue. Um. The drivers by, not to be confused
with the drive by, which is a gang activity. Um,
(02:58):
the too to trap female to risks um who would
stop and try to, you know, see if the baby's okay,
help it? And then out of the bushes comes from
gang members who beat and rape and murder her. That
sounds to me like an urban legend, Josh too. Two
police departments issued warnings about this. Really, this past December
(03:21):
is so ridiculous. When pressed about their sources, they both said,
you know, actually we can't verify any of this, so
don't pass it along. It was just an idea somebody had, Yeah,
you know, the other big gang. When I remember hearing
this one myself was if someone flashes their headlights at
you and you flash them back, then it's a gang
and they'll turn around and follow you and kill you.
The one I heard was, um, if they if you
(03:41):
see somebody driving without headlights on and you flash them,
they'll turn around and kill you. It's part of a
gang initiation. It's so not true. No, it's not. And
what we're talking about obviously are urban legends, but more specifically,
the article is called how Urban Legends Work. We decided
to call this podcast, why do we Believe Urban Legends? Yeah,
you know, yeah, we'll get to that for sure. I
(04:04):
mentioned Vegas early on though, because of the very popular
old story that the man goes to Vegas and he
chats it up with a nice lady at the bar
and goes back to the room with her, and then
he wakes up dazed and confused in a tub of
ice the next day with a side hurting and uh
with a note saying call nine one one and clearly
his kidneys have been removed. Yeah, upon examination, as kidneys
(04:26):
are removed. This actually gave me a moment of terror, chuck,
because if you remember in the organ donation podcast. We
talked about a guy named Mohammed Seline Khan who had
his kidney removed, and I thought, Um, did we get
taken and pass along bad information that tom she right?
Turns out Tommy was right. I went and double checked
(04:47):
his sources, and I saw a picture of the guy
with like the huge sewn up um incision where his
kidney was removed. It was an ABC News story. Yeah, yeah,
that was real. That is pretty much fair fiable, right,
But that that story was around long before that happened
to him. Yeah, And I think we even um postulated
that that urban legend gave rise to actual fact, right, Yes, yeah,
(05:10):
and that does happen. Sometimes life imitates art and the
other way around. Sometimes it's uh, something from a plot
of a horror movie, or sometimes an urban legend is
inserted into the plot of a horror movie, like the
hook Killer. You want to tell that one? Well, yeah,
that one's been around since the nineteen fifties when um
teenagers first started going parking, which is when they would
(05:31):
drive out to inspiration Point and and make out neck
and m The story goes that the they hear the story,
it's always some someone who's escaped from an insane asylum
back when you hooked hand hooked hand. And then the
they hear someone scratching on the car and they don't
do anything and they just leave and they get home
(05:52):
later and find that a hook is sticking into like
the door handle. Not no, and it's a that and
the biggest one, the Vegas kidney one are considered cautionary tales. Right.
You have very common hallmark of many urban legends that
they are called cautionary tales, right. And and most cautionary
tales also involve some sort of morality twist to him, right,
(06:13):
Like in in the most extreme cases, the guy who
was in Vegas who was chatting with the girl was
actually married and he went back to her hotel room.
So the moral of the story is don't cheat on
your wife, right, or else something really horrible is going
to happen to you. Uh. In the case of the
teenagers in the fifties, um, it was teenagers necking as
(06:34):
you put it, old man, um and uh, the the
the more, the moral of the story is don't have
premarital sex. Right, we'll go park your car and do
things like this. You shouldn't know, um nothing right, So
the the the What's interesting about this is that urban
legends um reflect our own morality, our own values. Think
(06:58):
about that, from the fifties to the when the first
folk folklorist um I Guess chronicled that Vegas kidney story.
Right in forty years, it went from necking to cheating
on your wife, right, And one could argue that our
values had expanded like that or devolved to that same
degree in that same period of time. It's a good point. Yeah,
(07:20):
did you hear a bunch of them when you were
first going to college? When I look back on some
of the stories I've passed along as fact, I couldn't
be more ashamed I heard these. I never passed them along.
You didn't. Even if I didn't pass them along, I
believe some of them. Yeah, that there's a couple of
common ones. One is the be careful if you're in
a dorm room man with someone you don't know, because
(07:43):
you wake up every day and feel all groggy and
like you've been taking advantage of for a very good reason,
because your roommate was knocking you out and performing indecent
acts on you. What you slept not true very much
an urban legend, as is the the if your roommate
(08:03):
kills themselves, you get straight. A's that quarter, which I
have to say, forms the premise of one of the
greatest um Zach Morris movies of all time, what's that
Dead Man on Campus? Dude? Did you ever see that? No?
That was a great movie. That was the plot though, Yeah,
that was the whole plot. He smokes a bong in
(08:24):
that movie. It's kind of startling for having grown up
on Saved by the Bell? Oh he is that his
character name? Is that his real name? Yeah? I don't
remember his real name? Oh? Zach was his character? And
Saved by the Bell? Is Zach? A blond guy? Zack?
If you're listening, um, send us an email telling us
your real name. Now we we'll look it up in
a second, So don't bother email. I prefer an email
from him. Okay, So um, Chuck, Like, we said that
(08:47):
these things kind of tend to reflect our own morality,
our own values, and you said they reflect our fears,
and that's absolutely true. There's a lot of urban legends.
I would even say the vast majority of them have
to do with some sort of fear, right right, And
that's one reason we pass them along is because they
resonate with us. We have loved ones in our lives.
(09:08):
There's people we care about, or at the very least,
we're having a good day and we don't want some
stranger to fall into some horrible misfortune. So we pass
these along. And if they're passed along to a person
who maintains the same kind of fears and maybe the
same level of fears and the same um dope believability um,
they'll absorb them, fear them, and pass them along themselves.
(09:30):
Many times, it's also regionalized, so what maybe if you're
in Seattle, it could be a neighborhood in Seattle where
this happened. If you're in Atlanta, it could be East Lake.
So they get regionalized, and all of a sudden you think, well,
I it may not be true, but I should tell
my friends this um on the internet, such as in
an email out just in case, because it's happening right here,
right and because it's in a place that you can visualize,
(09:53):
it has that much greater of an impact on you. Fear.
Once again, sure, I mean, if you can visualize your fear,
you can fear even more. Yeah, good point. Thanks, that's
gonna be on my tombstone. Should we talk about some
some dead giveaways that you're in fact hearing an urban
legend and not the real thing. Tots, Uh, it happened
(10:13):
to a friend of a friend. That's the classic definite
is what they call it. And actually, um, if it
happens to a friend of a friend, usually when you
pass it along, you're not gonna say a friend of
a friend because you just immediately lost credibility right there. Um,
so you're going to say it happened to my my friend,
Chuck's friend, or it happened to Chuck's friend. You know, Chuck,
(10:34):
it happened to one of his friends who neither one
of us have ever met. Right. That that personalizes it
a little more, brings it home a little further. Or
if I were a real liar, right or really desperate
for attention, I would say it happened to Chuck, even
though Chuck told me it happened to a friend of his.
But I'm just gonna gloss over that part because I
really want you to believe what I'm saying, because if
(10:56):
you believe what I'm saying, then I can more easily
believe what i'm saying, Right, and people innately want to
believe their friends when they hear things, and people innately
want to tell a good yarn. So a couple of
those together spin a good yarn, and then, uh, is
that what the it's called spinning yarn? Put those two
together and you get urban legends. Yeah. I actually remember
(11:18):
the first urban legend I heard. And my buddy rad
in Montana, my best friend in high school, actually Radford.
He uh he told me, I remember this so distinctly
about the Eddie Murphy and the elevator. It used to
be Reggie Jackson before that. The story is the lady
gets on the elevator and it's it's some African American
(11:39):
with his large entourage or a dog. It's a dog.
It's a dog. Dog. Yeah, it's the crux of it. Okay, well,
and see it changes. That's the hallmark of an urban
legend to it changes per story, but the lady will
clutch her person fear, and then later on she finds
out it's at a hotel that her hotel stay was
paid for. It's like, courtesy of Eddie Murphy. We got
(12:00):
the best laugh I've had in weeks because we scared you.
Oh yeah, that's not how a mom told it. She
said that, um, and I think, if I remember correctly,
she told me that it had happened to a friend
of hers or someone she works with. Friends. Well, that's
what Rat said. I remember it was his mom, someone
his mom worked with. Well, in this case, it was
Lionel Ritchie or Reggie Jackson. I think the other variation
(12:22):
I heard was Reggie Jackson, Lionel Richie. I never heard
Eddie Murphy. But he's in there there in like a
very nice hotel that allows huge dogs, and the guy
has a dog with him, so he's he's even more intimidating,
and uh, the the woman is trying to avoid eye contact,
is scared clutching her first, that kind of thing. Um.
And then all of a sudden, the guy goes sit lady,
(12:44):
and the woman sits down in the elevator and the
guys like I was talking to my dog. And then
her hotel stay is paid for by Reggie Jackson or
Lionel Ritchie or Eddie Murphy or one imagines P Diddy, yeah,
or jay Z. But I just rad, if you're listening,
you lied to me, buddy, way back when when we
were eating turkey sandwiches after school. You lied to me,
(13:06):
I remember distinctly, and I'll never forget it. So, Josh,
that was a lot of time to uh, to give
up the one dead giveaway friend of a friend. So
we'll go through some of these other ones quickly. Actually
we already did. There are many variations. That's a dead giveaway.
The topic is one that is often on the news
or one that people gossip about. Yeah, that's a big one.
(13:28):
Like we Got Stuff podcast, got a forwarded email about
UM census workers. Yeah, yeah, the census is about to happen,
so now don't open your door unless they have a
confidentiality agreement and certain other things. They'll murder you. Yeah,
we got it this morning. Okay, was that when that ironic? Yeah,
but that actually happened when the census worker we thought
was killed, but it turns out it's a suicide. So
(13:50):
oftentimes it will spin off of a real news story
and get morphed. Yeah, which is kind of scary because
a lot of urban legends have been portrayed as fact
in the news the newspapers. Well, that's another reason people
believe them is because they trust the news when they
ought not, which is sad because really, frankly, you shouldn't.
You shouldn't. You should take all news stories with a
(14:12):
green as salt. You know, it's just some dude or
chick reporting something kind of file a story, just like
we do. We get things wrong all the time. Clearly,
why shaking your head? Just people know, we call ourselves out.
But it's true. I think it's funny that we do that,
and we need to do that because in the in
this day and age, pretty much our entire job, or
(14:33):
at least a significant portion of it, chuck is avoiding
giving out false information. Yeah, we have to go through
and verify it, which is getting increasingly harder. Yeah, we try,
We definitely do. We were talking about pop culture, and
sometimes movies will work it in or the other way around.
In the movie Goodwill Hunting, remember they tell the story
(14:54):
about the guy who gets pulled over by the cop
because he's drunk, and then an accident happens in the
cop as to run to the accident, and the guy
jumps in his car goes home. The cop comes the
next morning and the guy denies that he was ever
out drinking until he looks and notices that in his
driveway he had jumped in the squad car by accident.
Not true, but it's an urban legend. It was in
(15:15):
good will hunting the Simpsons, which one. You know how
you always hear the story about like a mouse in
a in a coke bottle? Remember the Simpsons when they
Barney and Homer visit the Duff Brewery and the guys
on the line fills on the line checking the bottles
as they go by. He's like, good, good nose, good needle.
And then he turns his head and like Hitler's head,
(15:36):
it goes by the bottle. That's a good one. Did
you see the YouTube clip of Hitler finding out that
Scott Brown won the Massachusetts Senate seat? I did? You
sent it to me? Good? Is that an urban legend?
Or did Scott Brown really win the Senate seat? He
really did? I thought was made up? Um? Oh, there's
a pretty It's pretty much impossible to trace the origin
(15:57):
of a um any urban legend, really, no one ever
knows where they come from. One of the reasons why
is because it follows oral tradition or it used to
generally right right folk It is folklore, and it's actually
studied by cultural anthropologists and folkloreist, which I think is
probably a sub set of cultural anthropology. UM. And the
(16:18):
the Hey, Dave, have you seen the Encyclopedia of Urban Legends? No.
I used to have a cartoon book though, of urban legends.
It was pretty cool, nice. Well, the Encyclopedia of Urban
Legends is fairly anthropological in nature. It's pretty thick tone.
It's on Google Books. We can check it out. But
the author of it, Jan Harold brun Van, Harold, why
(16:39):
are you doing this to me today? Are you talking
to your mouth or to me both? Um? The the
author Jan Harold brun Van Um kind of laments that
the the internet has removed that aspect the oral tradition
by digitizing it. And now I'll just click forward and
(16:59):
and uh broom Van suggests that the golden age of
uh of um urban legends was the sixties of the eighties,
although they've been around a lot longer than that, right, yeah,
since the thirties and forties. I said, I found even
further back than that. Um. Apparently at Scott Fitzgerald and
the twenties referred to contemporary legends the the the critic
(17:22):
took to mean the same thing as an urban legend. Sure.
And then even before that, I think in uh the
eighteen nineties there was a French columnists who asked to
cities maintain folklore just as rural areas to interesting the
answer that is a big fat yes obviously. Yeah. So
that's when they were actually called out as urban legends.
Like we said, it goes back centuries tradition of folklore.
(17:44):
Historians are big on verifying and writing things down, and
folklore's tell stories with their mouths. Yeah, like we do, right,
that sounds like a T shirt. Folklore's do it with
their mouths. Um. And like you said, check, these things
go back centuries, if not further. Um. And again, all
legends reflect um, the feelings, the fears, that kind of
(18:07):
thing of the culture at the time. So we're before uh,
in the you know, pre industrial age. Most fairy tales
that had something bad happening to them, we're set in
the woods, like Handling Gretel or snow White or whatever.
These fairy tales were set in the woods because the
woods were still very scary places, filled with bandits and
bears and scary monsters, super freaks. Yeah. Yeah. One thing
(18:31):
I thought was interesting is the famous website snopes dot
Com clearly can put an end to a lot of
these Internet if you're smart enough to good look at
Snopes these Internet rumors that get started. But one thing
I thought was interesting was reading this article is that
Snopes evidentally gets a lot of angry emails because people
want to believe their friends so much that their friends
(18:52):
not made this up, that they will email Snopes angrily
and say, you're calling my friend a liar. This really happened.
He said, it happened to his best friend, and snubs
just like doubt. They even respond to those, and they like,
send us your address so we can send a guy
to come hit you with a tack hammer. Right, and
I have some swamp land in Florida, I can tell
you exactly. Um. We were talking about the origins of
(19:13):
these things, chuck right. Um. Right, So folklore's anthropologists and uh,
pretty much any smart person can point to actual advance
that are maybe misinterpreted or expanded upon become the source
of urban legends. E g. Uh, temporary tattoos laced with LSD. Right,
(19:33):
that could have been birthed out of the real practice
of a chemist who make LSD would oftentimes put it
on I guests still do put it on like a
stamp with a cartoon character, and so that might have
gotten confused with um temporary tattoos. So the word spreads
and all of a sudden, And what I love is
that the story goes is they give them these LSD
(19:54):
tattoos to get the kids hooked on LSD, which is
just silly. Yeah, it's not physically addicted ing at all,
north psychologically addicting. I imagine it's much more psychologically aversive
than anything I'm getting nostalgic Halloween. Lots of urban legends
around Halloween. Yeah, with the tainted candy and the razor
blades in the apple. You know it's crazy is we
(20:16):
were talking about how the Oregon thief actually probably got
the idea from the urban legend. There have been instances
of people tainting Halloween candy after the the urban legend
was around. Interesting, most of the ones that have like
razor blades, and I have to say this is from Snopes.
(20:36):
There's a pretty long article on Halloween candy with razor
blades and needles. But um, most of the ones that
have actually been perpetrated were hoaxes or they wanted to
get attention or something like that. Um, but poison candy
actually does. It's come up many many times around Halloween,
(20:56):
and you know, in non Halloween days, the other three
sixty four days where kids have died. Apparently, yes, and
this is not an urban legend. Apparently uh in. I
don't remember what state it was in, but a friend
of a friend told me, um that a little kid
died after getting into his uncle's stash of heroin, and
(21:17):
so the family actually sprinkled his candy Halloween candy with
hero with heroin from the uncle's stash to protect the uncle.
Uh to make it look like somebody had poisoned the
kid with with heroin and that really happened. It happened.
What if Snopes is wrong about all this stuff? I
don't know. I've had that horrible feeling before, horrible thoughts,
sat upright in bed, been like tis roll pops, Like
(21:40):
Snopes is just this one dude, He's just like this inclusion,
he's like the wizard behind the curtain. That'd be pretty cool.
I guess we should point out a few of these
email urban legends, just so you don't forward them around
to your your friends and family. Be wary of anything
free obviously that's a that's a dead giveaway. Usually. Well,
(22:02):
that's just like the pigeon drop. Yeah, sure, yeah, you
just you if anybody starts talking to you about money
and you've never met them, you don't want to respond, right.
Another dead giveaway, Josh, is if you ever get an
email that starts with a line if you for this email, colon,
or if it says this is not an urban legend, colon,
then it's probably an urban legend. Yeah. And then of
(22:25):
course there is a the famous Nemon Marcus cookies email,
which I've actually received. I have received this one as well.
I've never made him of you. No, well, they're just
regular cookies. Tom Harris is they're delicious. I think he
made them before this article. That is research pal. Yeah, well,
detail this one. This is a very famous one. So
(22:45):
back in I think the nineties, uh late nineties, there
was an email that was sent around where it talked
about the Neiman Marcus chocolate chip cookie recipe which made
some delicious chocolate chips they say, or chocolate chip cookies. Um.
And a woman apparently asked for name and Marcus, uh
somebody at the store to give her the recipe for
(23:06):
the cookies and they gave it to her, but they
charged her for it, they said to fifty And when she,
you know, gets her bill later that month, she sees
that they charged two hundred and fifty dollars instead of
two dollars and fifty cents for this recipe. The woman
finds it outrageous. Contact Name and Marcus and they're like, well,
our cookies are really good. We're not going to refund
your money. Uh. So she decided that to get them back,
(23:28):
she would forward the email with the recipe and an
email to everybody and spread it around to get back
at Niman Marcus, you were my crutch, Chuck. Not true, Josh.
They didn't even make the chocolate chip cookie at the time.
In the eighties it was Mrs Fields, not Name and Marcus,
and before that it was the Waldorf Astoria Hotels red
(23:50):
velvet cake. Take that. Stupid people who believe forward an
emails who I'm sad to say, not only did my
mom pass along bunk information with the line old Richie
slash Reggie Jackson story. Um, but my dad, I found out,
is a birther. Really are you kidding me? Yeah, he's
not in any kind of structured to organized capacity in
(24:13):
As a matter of fact, he wasn't even aware of
the term birther, but he believed af forwarded email that
was birth in nature, which again that was a real occurrence.
There were people out there who wanted to see Barack
Obama's birth certificate claiming he was not born in this country.
Is originally said that his birth certificate was doctor that
he was really a born in Kenya. Um YadA, YadA, YadA,
(24:37):
and therefore he shouldn't be president. Right, But the the
that has taken on a life of its own, so
out of this original idea, it's become an urban legend
and a forwarded email urban legend, which are really the
dregs of urban legend society because you're not even taking
the time to spend a good yarn at that point. No,
and that's why um brun Van was saying, like it
(24:57):
was best from the sixties of the eighties. You know,
there's there's spider eggs and bubble yam and co can's
hanging from car doors and the calls coming from upstairs
and the great part about it was that everybody was
personalizing it because it happened in East Lake or it
happened in Peoria, Illinois, depending on where you are, And
so there was it took effort, and there was there
(25:18):
was personalization done to it, and so people were engaging
in oral folklore tradition without even realizing it, and it
kept it alive and vital. Now it's just forwarding. That's it. Well,
you and I remember clearly. I remember Rad lying to
me in the night that I'm sorry ten or eleventh grade.
You remember your mom telling me stories like I remember
this specifically in his kitchen. I remember that day specifically,
(25:40):
but I don't remember whatever Jack asked for? Did me?
The the gang headlight thing? Should we talk about a
couple of real ones real quick before you wrap it up? Yeah?
These are great, Chuck. Chuck found some on cracked dot
com and uh, the more fantastic ones we actually did
go and double check with Snopes, the big fat guy
who doesn't check any thing. Right. Yes, okay, so Chuck
(26:02):
take it away. Well one of them, um has happened recently?
Is that the famous Halloween when there's all manner of
Halloween ones like we said, where someone hung themselves in
their yard? Yeah? We when what podcast? Did we talk
about that? I can't remember. I can't either, but we
definitely did. And the story goes that someone hung themselves
and people thought it was a Halloween Halloween decoration, so
they the body stayed there for several days until they
(26:24):
realized it was real and this actually really did happen. Yeah.
And then there's the uh, the one about the couple
who spend the night in a hotel room and they
can't figure out where the stench is coming from, and
when they finally go downstairs to ask for their money
back the next morning, the hotel management investigates and finds
a dead body under the bed. Apparently it's happened a
(26:45):
bunch of times. Kansas City, Atlantic City, Florida, California. It's
very distressing. Yeah, and and the Cracked blogger makes a
good point that in these cases, in just about all
of them, what's insane is that the people spent the
night in the room the whole time, the variably and
they're so great. Tell him the best one, Cracked is awesome.
They're so funny. Yeah, I love that website and that
(27:05):
it's one of your faiths. Uh, the fun House Mummy,
this one is the best one ever. Uh. The myth
is that a prop at a carnival was Um, I
guess in the in the scary fun house was not
a prop mummy, but it was in fact a real
dead body. So if this story couldn't get any more fantastic,
(27:26):
you're wrong. Right, here's how the urban legend goes. Um.
The crew for the six Million Dollar Man was filming
an episode and they needed a fun house, so they
went down to Long Beach to the New Pike Amusement Park, right,
and there was a dummy hanging in the shot, and
the director filmed the shot. Apparently it was like, I
(27:46):
don't like that dummy. There's somebody get rid of it.
Some guy goes to grab it, the arm comes off,
and they noticed a human bone inside. Right, You thought, wow,
that's pretty realistic. Yeah, And so they did a little
more investigating and figured out that it was a real corpse,
a mummified, embalmed human corpse that was actually hanging in
a fun house being that people took as a dummy. Right,
(28:08):
six million dollar Man, Chuck, is this true? It is true?
Isn't that crazy? And it doesn't in there because apparently
the body, the undertaker had done such a swell job
with the embalming process that he put this body on
display for a matter of years, could pay a nickel
to come see this body. And then two guys that
(28:28):
worked for the amusement park or no traveling carnival disguise
themselves as what his brothers his brothers to come claim
the body, and they actually stole the body and it
traveled around the country, eventually ending up in Long Beach. Yes.
What's even more amazing is that we know whose body
this is. Yes, we do. It was a bank robbing
(28:50):
bandit named Elmer McCurdy who lived out his violent career
at the about the turn of the last century, early
twentieth century. Uh. He was killed in the shootout for
forty six bucks and two jugs of whiskey. Uh. And
like you said, the undertaker did such a good job
in balming him. He charged people in nickel to come
look at this bandit. Uh. And that was that. So
(29:12):
when they finally laid him to rest, I think in
like two thousand six. Really, no, it couldn't have been. No, No,
it would have been a couple of years after the
six million dollar man thing in seventy six. Okay. Um.
They they supposedly put cement over his casket so that
nobody could dig him up and do the same thing
all over again. Yeah, true story. Yeah. So Cracked actually
(29:35):
has a about eleven of them over the span of
a couple of articles. And then I saw other sites
that said they had real ones. But um, again, you
can't always believe everything. I don't know if I believe Cracked. No,
that's why I went and checked it out. It's snops
and they they had the same story, uh different, slightly different,
but all the facts were the same, same name, same everything.
Friend of a friend. Yeah, is that it? That's it man?
(29:59):
I mean we can go on urban life. Yeah, we
could just could be in eleven our podcast. Um, but
let's not make it that way. Now, if you want
to learn more about urban legends, you can look it
up in the handy search bart how stuffworks dot com. Chuck,
it's time for listener mint. Now. It's not Josh what
We are not going to do listener mail today because
we are going to plug this thing like a finger
(30:20):
and a dike. So Chuck, go ahead, then, if you're
going to do that, let's do it well. First of all,
we want to plug the new science podcast that we
talked about for a while. And it is called Stuff
from the Science Lab with our comrades. Robert Lamb, who
you might remember from doing me Rendition the reading of
the Jack the Ripper letter. Yeah gotta, he doesn't do
(30:41):
that voice in the podcast, so unfortunately. And Alison, they
do a great job with science e stuff. Hell of
in ea there. And we're going to plug Strickland's podcast
tech Stuff. Even though he talks smack about us, he
really does. Then this we are going to plug stuff
he missed in history class with our colleagues. Now Katie
used to be Jane and Candice now it's eighty and
Sarah Dowdy full time. They do a great job. And
(31:04):
what else do we have? High speed stuff? Yeah, Scott
and Ben Scott and Been do a great auto podcast,
very funny. Ben and Matt also do stuff they don't
want you to know it video podcast on conspiracies, which
is awesome. Yeah, Coolest Stuff on the Planet is another
great travel video podcast. And what are what are we forgetting? Yeah, Sminty,
our sminty gals. Yeah, how can we forget? Sminty? Did
(31:27):
you see that email we accidentally got that was intended
for them? Today? Uh, stuff mom never told you of course?
Is uh the some people liking it to the female
version of what we do. Yeah, they have a huge
cult following to do. They're great, they're really funny quality stuff. Oh,
of course there's stuff Genius and brain Stuff, both of
which a feature. Are a Steam founder Marshall Brain Yeah,
(31:49):
and Stuff of Genius is really short. And if you're
into like cool monty python esque graphics, don't like it. Yeah,
And of course there's the blogs always. You can just
type in the blogs at how stuff works die com. Right,
plug fest is over. Plug Fest is over. You haven't
done in a while. If you want to send us
an email, we probably will do reader mail again right
(32:12):
starting next week. Okay, if you want to send us
an email on absolutely anything, you can wrap it up
and send it to stuff podcast at how stuff works
dot com. For more on this and thousands of other topics.
Is it how stuff works dot com. Want more how
stuff works, check out our blogs on the how stuff
(32:35):
works dot com home page. Brought to you by the
reinvented two thousand twelve camera. It's ready, are you
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Josh Clark
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