Traditions of storytelling continue with urban legends

Marisa Headley

 

Jean and Sue are college roommates and good friends.  Sue goes to a party one night, but Jean stays at the dorm to study for a test.  Sue later returns but does not turn on the lights because she assumes Jean has already fallen asleep.  Returning in the morning, Sue finds Jean murdered and then turns to see a bloody message on the mirror, ‘Aren’t you glad you didn’t turn on the light?’

 

It’s something we all do- rush to get something and don’t realize what is going on right under our nose; in this case, murder.  This makes for a good scary story, however, it is not always true.

 

The story is an urban legend, a culturally well-known ironic or horrifying story with a warning or moral, usually, something humans commonly do which may reveal universal human fears.

 

Not all urban legends are false, but most are.   Commonly, these incidents happen to a “friend’s uncle’s third cousin, twice removed”- sources impossible to trace.  Besides, the story is usually twisted a bit more each time it is told. 

 

These myths originate from an exaggerated true occurrence, modernized folklore, or a hoax.  However, the real beginning of urban legends has deeper roots.  Urban Legends Research Center, ULRC, is an online center started in 1999, which studies legends and their validity.  ULRC believes after the world stopped believing in dragons, witches and demons, a “new kind of tale developed to fill the gap in our need to communicate stories.”

 

Not every urban legend is gruesome.  Some are simple and innocent like the story of the Neiman Marcus cookie recipe.  The story begins with a mother and daughter having lunch at Neiman Marcus, they decide to have cookies for dessert.  The cookies are delicious so the mother asks the waitress for the recipe.  The waitress says it will cost “two fifty” and the mother puts it on her credit card, figuring it was only $2.50.  Later, she receives the $250 bill for the cookie recipe, so she sends the recipe to everyone she knows and asks them to give it to other friends so that she gets her money’s worth.

 

This is a classic urban legend that has been around since the 1940s.  It started with a woman paying a railroad chef $25 for a cake recipe, then updated to a New York City hotel’s expensive cake recipes.  It was altered again in the 1970s to Mrs. Fields cookie recipe.  Finally, in the 1990s, it changed to Neiman Marcus cookie recipe. According to www.snopes.com, the story is fake because only recently did a Neiman Marcus cookie exist and Neiman Marcus does not sell its recipes.

 

Legends can also develop after nationwide traumatic experiences like the 9-11 attacks.  One myth is of a “flight number” of one plane used in the attacks, Q33NY, when typed in word in wingding font becomes symbols of a plane flying into two towers, a skull and bones, and the Jewish star. The image does really appear, but Q33NY was not a flight number.

 

The story is a hoax since no plane number ever begins with ‘Q’ and none of the planes used in the attacks were originally headed for New York, so the number would not include ‘NY’.  Yet, it is still ironic that Q33 is a passage of the Qu’ran, which reveals Allah’s plan for non-Islamic followers.

 

Whether horrorific, like the story of Jean and Sue, or ironic, such as the 9-11 myth, urban legends are evidence of the human need to tell stories and gossip.