“Studies have found people turn to conspiracy theories when they’re anxious or feel disempowered. Psychologists say urban legends that prompt feelings of disgust...are more likely to spread.” Tove Danovich on the darker history behind cattle mutilation reports. orionmagazine.org/article/ghos...

We need more family-friendly urban legends.

I'm assuming it's an urban legend but there was that story of the Bride who cut her tongue on an envelope and end up getting bugs in her tongue. Y'all ever hear that one?

Happy Valentine’s Day, folks. (Zachary Kanin for @newyorker.com)

WWI example of the 'friendly warning' urban myth: "A German nursed by an English nurse —and extremely grateful; he said, “I can do nothing for you—I have no money, and I shall never see you again, but during July and August if you live in London, do not travel in what you call the Tube Railway."

I am looking at a photo of Ayr Baths in the early 1980’s before the flume and the urban myth about someone sticking a razor blade in it.

More Black American folk horror for Black history month. Candyman (1992) made Tony Todd an icon, and with Candyman (2021), Nia DaCosta made history as the first Black woman director to debut a film at number one at the US box office.

February 9th is Alligator in the Sewers Day 🐊 An unofficial annual holiday marking the birth of one of New York City’s greatest true urban legends. On this date in 1935, a live alligator was found in an East Harlem storm sewer. An article about the discovery was printed in the New York Times

Origin of the urban legend about the tourist who asked a cabby for "Tutenkhamun" and ended up at Tooting Common.

New study finds 'no evidence' of Rainey Street Ripper | KUT Radio, Austin's NPR Station Study results never get in the way of a good story. It will be hard to squash the contemporary legend. www.kut.org/crime-justic...

We're so happy to announce that Adam Allsuch-Boardman's An Illustrated History of Urban Legends is shortlisted for the British Book Design and Production awards, in the children's trade 9-16 years! Huge congratulations to Adam and our fabulous book design team!

One thing that always tickles me is how urban legends formed and proliferated in the pre-functional internet era. Like, in 1999/2000, there were 11 year-old kids all across the country who insisted they had the rare blue pikachu card, but how were they even aware of it?

(Shades of “The Sinking Library” — “they forgot the weight of the books”)

January 20, 1976: The Ohio Players' "Love Rollercoaster" hits #1 in America. The scream in the instrumental section is rumored to be the sound of a woman being killed in the studio, an urban legend that persists for decades. #AT40

"YOU HAVE IT!!" (iykyk) One of the lines from the 3-book collection of folklore and urban legend inspired stories, perfect to tell in a dark room with a flashlight shoved under your chin. 📚 Scary Stories to Tell in the Dark collected by Alvin Schwartz & illustrated by Stephen Gammell #BookWormSat

Jfc it's the razor blades in the joints of the hydroslide urban myth come true.

Important and interesting thread on “The Stolen Biscuits,” a migratory legend popularized by the late Douglas Adams …

(A legend generally known as “AIDS Mary,” which usually includes the line “Welcome to the World of AIDS” written in lipstick on the mirror.)

Remember that urban legend about a woman sitting in her car holding her “brains” in, because she thought she’d been shot in the head - only it was a tin of pastry dough in her shopping which had exploded? Just had that only it was mashed potato in my hair, presumably from over enthusiastic whipping.

This was reported happening in 2022 (also in France) and 2021 (in England), so is it an urban legend or a specific fetish?

I miss when Snopes was all about urban legends and spooky stuff instead of fact checking political shit. It sucks that version never got archived. The internet has had so much of its soul ripped out of it.

Was anyone else told urban myths about telephone boxes and weird phone numbers? Another 100-word horror story written for @mulgraveaudio.bsky.social

At last we have recreated the “dead granny on the roof rack” from the classic urban myth “we put our dead granny on the roof rack and the car got stolen”

One of my favorite short stories that feels UL-ish is Horacio Quiroga’s “The Feather Pillow” (1907), shortstoryproject.com/stories/the-...

All the takes about fake LLM citations reminded me of this very good paper, "Academic urban legends" about how "a decimal point error appears to have misled millions into believing that spinach is a good nutritional source of iron." journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/...

I wonder if my town has a crybaby bridge.

I credit the Urban Legends class at Western Kentucky University back in 1987 or 1988 for setting me on the path of skepticism & critical thinking. In the last few years, WKU got rid of a sizable chunk of its folklore studies & its theater minor. These are among many reasons I won't donate to WKU.

The Devil You Know is an 8-part podcast series from the CBC and Sarah Marshall (host of You’re Wrong About…) about the Satanic Panic. “These thousands of alleged Satanists were nowhere to be found…” [cbc.ca]

Do other (non-US) countries have the "Bloody Mary" urban legend? When I was a kid, you went into a dark bathroom and looked into a mirror and said "Bloody Mary come forth" and if you did that enough times she would appear.

Listening to a podcast about local urban legends. Makes me think about that satanic church that someone's brother convinced me was real. Or the piranhas in the public pool. Or that some kid did Bloody Mary in the bathroom by the music room and it made the toilets glow...

Sunday morning discussion thread - why does everyone think that every shop on high street is a front for money laundering? Is this an urban legend? Has anything ever been proved?

It only took 25 years but we finally made the urban legend AI Furby the NSA was so worried about

I was today years old when I learned that the official coca-cola website actually has a "you can't actually die from this" page for people who are concerned about coke + mentos at the same time.

This is an interesting look at the (racist) 🇺🇸 legend about those twins, Orangello and Lemonjello. But little recognized is that rumors of Black twins named Orange and Lemon circulated in the pre-war 🇺🇸 South. No clue whether this influenced the creation of the “Jello” boys legend, but there you go.

Man i miss old snopes it was the most interesting shit ever when i was a kid even though it did scare me a little

I am reminded of an urban legend of a woman who gets back at her ex and his new girlfriend by putting prawns in a tubular curtain rail. They never find the source of the stench so move house. The punch line is that they are observed loading the curtain rail into the removal van.

Cannock Chase is notorious for its modern folklore, a lot of which has been hyped up by grifters, but wild man and British big cat stories are common. I've always see big cat stories as a modern version of black dog phenomena, and if you look you will find accounts stretching back over 100 years

Currently feeding my longest held interests by reading Adam Allsuch Boardman's An Illustrated History of Urban Legends. It seems to be the best distraction from the world right now.

In 1987 ontstond er een urban legend over pedo clown in Nieuwe Pekela. Ik heb de indruk dat de overal verschijnende drones bij vliegvelden een hoog Pekela-gehalte hebben.

my dad told me that there were blind albino alligators in the nyc sewer system when I was inappropriately young and I believed him until I was well into my 20s because i was a child who didn’t expect her father to amuse himself by telling vaguely plausible lies to children

Wearing pajamas inside-out, putting silverware under pillows, throwing ice cubes at trees: the folk rituals of American children (and adults) to insure a coming snowfall (The Bridgewater [NJ] Courier-News, 3 January 2006) …

I keep seeing Brooklyn Reddit posts with people talking about grapes and chocolate being left outside to hurt dogs. It seemed like sort of an urban legend. Just pulled this off the street. What is wrong with people?

😍😍 hab noch einen billo adventskalender ergattert mit den coolen nicht-ai bildern wo es in der kindheit die urban legend gab dass in der schokolade rinderblut ist

is @ulskeets.bsky.social still around? <3

(For a version from 2018, see www.vice.com/en/article/c...)

Ok Bluesky nature peeps, help me out with a discussion on FB. The claim is that several places (PA, VA, MI, Chicago) have “released” coyotes to deal with cats, raccoons, deer, etc. Yet no documentation is ever cited. I say “urban myth” but does any have a source that says different?