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What Are Urban Legends? Great story often retold “urban folklore” Funny, sad or horrifying Usually instructive Sounds too good to be true! Often happened.

Published byRachel Gray Modified over 8 years ago

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Presentation on theme: "What Are Urban Legends? Great story often retold “urban folklore” Funny, sad or horrifying Usually instructive Sounds too good to be true! Often happened."— Presentation transcript:

1 What Are Urban Legends? Great story often retold “urban folklore” Funny, sad or horrifying Usually instructive Sounds too good to be true! Often happened to a friend of a friend You are told that “this really happened”

2 Are Urban Legends True? Some true – some false Distorted truth If you hear same story retold with new variations – these usually never happened Some legends traced historically Tell-tale warning signs can occur (hoax) Spread by word-of-mouth, e-mail, internet (tall-tale) (cyberlore) Often retold via newspapers, radio, TV

3 Why do Legends spread? Great stories you want to share Sounds believable Most people assume true Most people want to help We have lots of people we can send e-mail to very quickly

4 Favorite Legends Man found dead (5 days) in office Cults hid AIDS-infected needles in vending machines Cell phones cause explosions at gas stations Hospital cleaner polishes off patients Microwave radiation “cooks” worker Alligators in sewer system in NYC

5 George Turklebaum, R.I.P. http://urbanlegends.about.com/science/urbanlegends/

6 Cell Phones Phone manufacturers and gasoline companies have issued warnings BUT no verifiable incident can be traced (beyond 2 newspaper reports which turned out to be false) … it hasn’t happened yet but …

7 Hospital Orderly Newspaper Title: Cleaner Polishes Off Patient Series of dead patients in ICU – same bed every Friday morning Search for cause – but no clues Finally – find out that every Friday morning cleaner/orderly would remove plug used for life support system, use socket to polish floor “Cape Times, 6/13/96” http://www.urbanlegends.com/medical/hospital_cleaning_lady.html

8 Cape Times did report story – but not completely – 2 key points missed –Hospital official didn’t know story –Gov’t Representative said story was unconfirmed and were “investigating” Phrase “investigating” was sufficient to give story credibility-story was printed – though embellished from one death to several via e-mail re-tellings I’m Alive!!!

9 Websites on Urban Legends Alt.folklore.urban & Urban Legends Archives www.urbanlegends.com www.urbanlegends.com Urban Legends and Folklore urbanlegends.about.com urbanlegends.about.com Hoaxbusters hoaxbusters.ciac.org/HBUrbanMyths.shtml hoaxbusters.ciac.org/HBUrbanMyths.shtml Urban Legends Reference Pages www.snopes2.com/ www.snopes2.com/  Darwin Awards – Fictional or worse www.darwinawards.comwww.darwinawards.com

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