by Pa Rock
Collector of Tales
I love a good urban legend, and in my time I've heard several beauts. Twenty years ago when I was living in southwest Missouri one blew through our area about a young couple who had been on vacation somewhere down in Mexico. After returning home, they sent the film of their trip off to be developed, and when the prints came back they discovered a few that they had not taken.
The couple was shocked to find pictures of some of the hotel staff going though their things. Of particular interest were a few shots of the staff placing the couples' toothbrushes inside of various body orifices.
It was a shocking story, one that drew people into conversations and caused many travelers to begin taking extra care in cleaning their personal items. No one seemed to actually know the couple in question, but almost everyone did claim to know someone who knew them. And strangely the story of the unfortunate travelers began springing up all over the country. It was shocking, and purient, and just too good to be restricted to one particular part of the country.
And it was also totally fictitious, a big, fat urban legend!
Several years ago a film crew came to the town where I currently live and produced a very good low budget movie. Quite a few local people were involved in the project and many knew what was going on, but some others only knew that there was something occurring in town that involved the making of a movie - and that was fertile ground for an urban legend to germinate.
A story soon began circulating that Brad Pitt was in town to make a movie. (Pitt grew up in Springfield, Missouri, a hundred miles from our little town.) Lots of people were telling tales of Brad sightings, though none of the talkers had actually seen him - but each and every one knew someone who had seen him. One night he was spotted having dinner at the local Ryan's Steak House, and one hot afternoon he had been seen drinking beer by the pool of a seedy local motel.
Brad was everywhere - but according to the internet, he was in England attending a wedding at the exact same time that people were insisting that their friends had seen him in our little town!
Now there is another great urban legend spreading across the land.
A couple of days ago a friend told he about a horrible incident that had occurred in the rural town of Marshfield, Missouri. A man had fallen asleep at a crematorium and a worker at that facility mistakenly thought that he was a body waiting to be burned - and slid him into the furnace. A moment or two later the screaming from the furnace alerted the worker to his mistake, but by the time he got everything shut down all that was left of his unfortunate victim was a pile of warm ashes.
The fellow who told that story did not know the people involved, but he absolutely knew someone who did know them.
I realized as soon as I heard that tale that it was a big ol' urban legend, and I determined to go to Snopes.com and prove to myself and my friend that the story was phony. But before I could get to Snopes, the site came to me with its daily newsletter - and in that newsletter was the crematorium story. Snopes reported that it had made the rounds before, and was again flaming up in various parts of the country. And yes, it was as fake as a degree from Trump University.
Usually sniffing out an urban legend is just a matter of commonsense. If Brad Pitt comes to your small town, chances are the local press will pick up on it before he is spotted at local restaurants or drinking at neighborhood parties. And the disposal of a body, by whatever means, requires preparation and paperwork. Bodies aren't just left lying around waiting on workers to pick them up and toss them into the furnace.
But commonsense is one thing, and a really good story is quite another!
Collector of Tales
I love a good urban legend, and in my time I've heard several beauts. Twenty years ago when I was living in southwest Missouri one blew through our area about a young couple who had been on vacation somewhere down in Mexico. After returning home, they sent the film of their trip off to be developed, and when the prints came back they discovered a few that they had not taken.
The couple was shocked to find pictures of some of the hotel staff going though their things. Of particular interest were a few shots of the staff placing the couples' toothbrushes inside of various body orifices.
It was a shocking story, one that drew people into conversations and caused many travelers to begin taking extra care in cleaning their personal items. No one seemed to actually know the couple in question, but almost everyone did claim to know someone who knew them. And strangely the story of the unfortunate travelers began springing up all over the country. It was shocking, and purient, and just too good to be restricted to one particular part of the country.
And it was also totally fictitious, a big, fat urban legend!
Several years ago a film crew came to the town where I currently live and produced a very good low budget movie. Quite a few local people were involved in the project and many knew what was going on, but some others only knew that there was something occurring in town that involved the making of a movie - and that was fertile ground for an urban legend to germinate.
A story soon began circulating that Brad Pitt was in town to make a movie. (Pitt grew up in Springfield, Missouri, a hundred miles from our little town.) Lots of people were telling tales of Brad sightings, though none of the talkers had actually seen him - but each and every one knew someone who had seen him. One night he was spotted having dinner at the local Ryan's Steak House, and one hot afternoon he had been seen drinking beer by the pool of a seedy local motel.
Brad was everywhere - but according to the internet, he was in England attending a wedding at the exact same time that people were insisting that their friends had seen him in our little town!
Now there is another great urban legend spreading across the land.
A couple of days ago a friend told he about a horrible incident that had occurred in the rural town of Marshfield, Missouri. A man had fallen asleep at a crematorium and a worker at that facility mistakenly thought that he was a body waiting to be burned - and slid him into the furnace. A moment or two later the screaming from the furnace alerted the worker to his mistake, but by the time he got everything shut down all that was left of his unfortunate victim was a pile of warm ashes.
The fellow who told that story did not know the people involved, but he absolutely knew someone who did know them.
I realized as soon as I heard that tale that it was a big ol' urban legend, and I determined to go to Snopes.com and prove to myself and my friend that the story was phony. But before I could get to Snopes, the site came to me with its daily newsletter - and in that newsletter was the crematorium story. Snopes reported that it had made the rounds before, and was again flaming up in various parts of the country. And yes, it was as fake as a degree from Trump University.
Usually sniffing out an urban legend is just a matter of commonsense. If Brad Pitt comes to your small town, chances are the local press will pick up on it before he is spotted at local restaurants or drinking at neighborhood parties. And the disposal of a body, by whatever means, requires preparation and paperwork. Bodies aren't just left lying around waiting on workers to pick them up and toss them into the furnace.
But commonsense is one thing, and a really good story is quite another!
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