Before social media, the internet was a place to peruse websites about your favorite topics. One of my favorite sites was Snopes, a fact-checking website that featured the truth behind news stories, rumors, and urban legends.
I recently returned to Snopes to check out its most recent look and found that it has grown into a giant catalog of topical and classic information. It analyzes the information and confirms the facts, debunks the falsities, and puts everything else into an unknown or wait and see category.
Despite our modern day ease of access to information, rumors still spread, mostly because it’s fun to dramatize fragments of truth and gives people something interesting, shocking, or funny to talk about at a safe distance from those involved. Urban legends are the epitome of gossip and the “telephone” chain of passing down stories until they become a universal truth, even long after they’ve been debunked.
I used to love scrolling through Snopes’ urban legend section. Some were legends I’d heard and others were new to me. I’d get so disappointed when they’d debunk a good one, but it was fascinating to read their origin stories and the nuggets of truth buried within them.
Urban legends can be local, nationwide, or even worldwide stories that circulate over time. Below are seven of my favorite categories of urban legends.
Babysitting legends
As a teen girl who did a lot of babysitting, my babysitting nightmare stories were regulated to the kids’ behavior or trying to answer to the parents for minor mistakes. It’s not until you start watching horror movies that you begin to see just how dangerous babysitting can get, especially at night and what a target the babysitter can become for bad luck or bad people.
From the killer with the hook who murders the children in their beds to the clown statue that’s actually a short guy with a dangerous mental illness, the idea is about evil infiltrating an area that the sitter is trying to make a safe space for their young charges. They usually end brutally and creep into your head when you’re up late waiting for parents to get home from dinner and a movie.
One legend that stuck with me that doesn’t exactly meet the criteria above is that of the couple who is waiting for their sitter to arrive before going on vacation. The sitter is late, and the couple is going to miss their flight. So, they leave the baby in its highchair and leave before the sitter arrives. For some reason, usually an injury or sudden death, the sitter doesn’t arrive, and the parents return home to find that their child has starved to death in their highchair.
This is a story that starts with a harmless poor decision, and enough unfortunate events fall into place to lead to the worst possible outcome. It’s a lesson for more than just babysitters or parents stuck in a bad situation. It’s about when taking a small risk can ruin your life.
Cryptids
I’m not a big animal person, but I am a fan of scary stories about creatures in the woods, in the ocean, or wherever else they may lurk. Cryptids straddle fantasy and reality. You will find people who will swear that The Chupacabra was lurking in their window or that they clipped a Jersey Devil with their car on a back road.
These animals are representative of our local terrain, culture, and a way to explain the unexplainable, from what has been eating your neighbor’s chickens to that instinct that told you not to cross that bridge that later collapsed. They’re very good at hiding. We can’t seem to get a legitimate picture of them or find them on their own turf, dead, or alive.
The fun of that, though, is getting to come up with fantastical explanations for this. Maybe Sasquatches are interdimensional beings. Maybe only certain people can see these creatures. When there are so many holes in the story, anything can be used to fill in those holes.
Sleepover tales
Sleepovers are notorious for being gatherings that turn into some of the scariest nights of your life, particularly for girls. All it takes is one kid with a wild imagination or an arsenal of scary stories learned from an older sibling to send the whole group into a frenzy.
I remember that during my very first sleepover party at a friend’s house, we woke up my friend’s older sister to sleep in the living room with us because we were afraid that the van that drove up and down the dead end street twice was coming to kidnap us in a house full of three adults, three teens, and seven children. Logic goes out the window when you’re scared, and there’s no longer any safety in numbers.
Sleeping away from home without close adult supervision is the perfect grounds for letting our imaginations get the better of us. Through them, we got Bloody Mary, who would come through the mirror to scratch our face or kill us if we called her name three times. We also tried to make our friends levitate through light as a feather. Then, there was simply sharing other urban legends and ghost stories late into the night with a flashlight under your face.
It can make for a rough night, but I feel like it also builds character and helps you to learn to separate the truth from the fiction by rationalizing and realizing that people overexaggerate, dramatize, and outright lie. And at least now you can fact check these stories with a few taps on your phone to make you feel better, but that doesn’t mean that scared feeling will subside all together.
Cautionary tales
I tend to learn from others’ experiences even more so than my own. If I’m told not to do something because something horrible happened to someone who did, that’s more than enough reason for me to not attempt it if I don’t have to. It goes beyond saying “don’t do this or this could happen.” When you hear details and can put a face to the situation, that’s enough to give anyone pause as to the consequences behind a stupid decision.
Urban legends involving cars are particularly educational for me. I used to read about kids getting decapitated by street signs while sticking their heads out a car window. Before getting into a car, I’ve learned to check under it for an ankle-slicing car thief or the backseat for a shady character.
I also love food legends. It’s important to know what’s safe to put into your body based on how it’s prepared, stored, and made. It felt brave to chase Pop Rocks with Diet Coke in front of your friends to see if your insides would explode. We swallowed gum to see if it stayed in our body for seven years. We also allowed our parents to check our Halloween candy for traces of needles and razor blades.
Pop culture lore
Famous people, popular trends, and the making of well-known art are great fodder for rumors and legends. This is helped by entire industries created to perpetuate these stories, whether it’s for the promotion of those affected or profit for those who aren’t.
I remember rumors going around school that Steve from Blue’s Clues was dead. Snopes had a great article about Mr. Rogers wearing sweaters to hide his tattooed arms. And if you looked closely at a scene in The Wizard of Oz, you could see a munchkin hanging from a tree in a real-life suicide.
It’s fun to explore these rumors, see them for yourself, and then learn the truth. But the original story still lingers out there, cemented in your brain before you remind yourself that it isn’t true.
Old wives’ tales
Our moms and other older women are often our first introduction to urban legends. We trust them. So, when they tell us that a certain action has a bad consequence, you’re likely to listen or at least hesitate.
It’s why we wait 30 minutes to an hour after eating before swimming. We use very strange products as first aid tools. And we practice superstitions to avoid bad luck.
Sometimes there’s a placebo effect to these rituals. Or it makes you feel close to the people who taught it to you, especially if they’re not around anymore. In that way, they bring comfort and effectiveness to the practice.
The supernatural
People like to lump in all ghost stories with urban legends. For me, I feel that a ghost story has to be well known and has happened to multiple people, particularly in a certain place or situation, in order to count as an urban legend.
The hitchhiking ghost, the men in black, and the bridges where you can hear babies cry are great examples. There’s a vagueness to them in terms of location, or maybe every area has their own version of them. They’re a story you’d see on Unsolved Mysteries. They affect those who have experienced them, turned non-believers into believers, and circulate among the zeitgeist to bring legitimacy to the tale.
What are your favorite urban legends? Leave your answers in the comments below!
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