Pepsi
A little after 9/11 there was a rumor spreading around that went something like this:

My friends, friends, grandmother walked into the local 7/11 and was buying a gallon of milk. The Arabian man in front of her was buying something but he was a few cents short for the purchase. The grandmother notices and lends the man the money needed to complete the transaction. The guy thanks her and then walks out of the store. Grandmother then buys her milk and walks out of the store. As she steps out the door she recognizes the man she had just lent money to. He approaches her and thanks her for being so generous and as a thank-you he warns her to not drink Pepsi and then leaves. Apparently he supposed to be a terrorist thats going to poisen Pepsi somehow. I heard this from enough people to start to wonder how many times this guy had come up short changed and then realized it probably wasn't true. Didn't matter to me anyway, I don't drink soda.
(If your not a manc your a wank, Sat 7 Jan 2006, 5:42, Reply)

When I moved to Southern California,
I was a bit naive. I mean, c'mon, when you're raised in Hull there's not a lot people know.

We live near John Wayne Airport (SNA is the airport code) and for 4 years I believed that the aeroplanes cut their engines when taking off after 6pm so as not to annoy the posh fuckers that live around here.

Now that a good friend of mine works at the airport for an aviation company, I know better. I still feel like an utter mong, though!
( Batshitmentalist is sane for once, Sat 7 Jan 2006, 4:37, Reply)

The
... kid who played Pugsley in the original Addams Family grew up to be Meat Loaf.

I believed that for years. And I'm still not sure if it's true or not.
( Gilgamesh gazed in wonder as Frampton came alive, Sat 7 Jan 2006, 4:26, Reply)

Coke
Not really an urban legend, but I believed that Coke still contained Cocaine. Probably why I never touched the stuff.
(Outsyder, Sat 7 Jan 2006, 3:29, Reply)

I convinced all my friends that
due to a badly-worded law banning nunchakus in the 70s, it was briefly illegal to attach anything to anything else by using a chain, for instance a dog to a lamppost.
(_, Sat 7 Jan 2006, 2:22, Reply)

I told a friend
that Shakespeare's "King John" was about a man with a corkscrew penis. He goes through the whole play trying to find a woman with an appropriately shaped vagina, but when he finds one at the end, her spiral is going the other way around and he won't fit. That's why it's a tragedy.

When I told it I thought he understood it was a joke, but he brought it up months later as if it were true.
(_, Sat 7 Jan 2006, 2:21, Reply)

i'm confused...
I fell for a lot of untrue stories told by flatmates and friends. Most too boring and/or complicated to relate here.

But this i thought must be a hoax:
modblog.bmezine.com/entries/200512071624.html

Apparently it is not (as i deduce from other weird things people do to their bodies)
(bovine intervention, Sat 7 Jan 2006, 2:04, Reply)

So...
was my mums birthday n i had totally forgotten it was so i ran out n in a blind panic brought her a...

Oh sorry the question gone and changed, its just that some one told me the panic buying question was going to stay open forever...damn
(Fluent In Bentish Living in Scatman's World, tis being fun!, Sat 7 Jan 2006, 1:47, Reply)

I started a good one
I spread a rumor around college that one of McFly had bad AIDS. This meant the rest of the band had it.

I was often asked which one, to which I replied "I don't bloody know, the twatty one".

This did actually catch on rather well, and apparantly 2 years after I left it is still running rife.
(mrcheese989, Sat 7 Jan 2006, 1:23, Reply)

Ted & Huey
A pal of mine at SXSW 04, all beered up and on a bet, interrupted Ted Leo during his set and told him that it had just been announced that Huey Lewis had died. Ted is thrown, announces to the crowd that we've just lost one of the greats, and dedicates the set to him. It spreads through the festival and even makes a few papers. Pal and pals piss themselves laughing and he doesn't pay for a drink for the rest of the night.
(glebepointbridge, Sat 7 Jan 2006, 1:09, Reply)

My boyfriend is an arse.
Let me begin by saying that the Prince Consort of Cheesecake likes to tell lies. Most of which I believe, because they're always worryingly plausible. So perhaps it was no surprise that he managed to spread an urban legend.

Jeremy Beadle, of tiny-handed fame, lost much of his flid-hand as it was mangled in a shark attack.*

Having no reason to doubt this explanation- I was kicking myself for thinking it must have been a birth defect!- I gleefully repeated it to everybody else I knew. Soon enough, it spread like wildfire. Months later, people were repeating it to me as fact. Imagine my dismay when I found out it was a lie.

He also told me Richard Whitely was dead practically every week. Once it came true. Now he tells me Bruce Forsyth has died.



*This sounded more plausible when he said it. Honest.
( Queen of Cheesecake, Sat 7 Jan 2006, 0:28, Reply)

The Encyclopedia of Urban Legends by Jan Harold Brunvand
is possibly the best collection of these stories ever. When reading it I was surprised at how many Urban Legends I had heard of, but more by the number that I believed up until I read the book! I felt such an idiot....
The author has tried to track down the origins of the legends, so if you want to be showoff you can read the book and next time someone starts telling one you can butt in and say "actually that story first appeared in the New York Times on 1st April 1956..."

Oh, and niceandwarmandhot, I used to know the rubbish guy, or someone who did the same thing. A short chap called Fritz with scraggy red hair and beard, a nose ring and a penchant for getting his nob out at the slightest provocation. Used to be in the 'Naked Parade' on TFI Friday & appeared various TV dramas as a background character.

All off topic, but I don't care cos I started playing while reading this thread and I've lost 4 times already. 5. Shit.
(Plyck, Sat 7 Jan 2006, 0:03, Reply)

Now I see...
The 'orange' one.

Sadly, I wasn't paying attention. What my friend actually said was, 'I once tricked my younger sister with 'If you say orange slowly it sounds like gullible.'

And then I said it ... mwargh.

My boyfriend believes the Marilyn Manson 'rib removal one. And I just sent him a text telling him about the lactating man one. He thought that any man could by massaging around the nipple. Luckily, he hasn't tried this but I am well aware that several other friends have....

I never fell for the Bonsai Kitten one. Aha!
(ladyintheradiator, Fri 6 Jan 2006, 23:28, Reply)

Unfortunate
I know of quite a few urban legends. Stuff like you can't get pregnant if you do it standing up, if he isn't 16, if you douche with coke afterwards... luckily I didn't believe any of this crap...

But the pregnant teenagers I see at work believed it. Meh.
(Clarabelle is reverting to type on, Fri 6 Jan 2006, 22:56, Reply)

Bird Skid Marks
I convinced my little kid that when a car made a screeching tire sound it was a bird flying overhead that had changed direction. I would look up quickly, point at the offending bird, and knowingly show the trajectory.
I thought I was pretty clever until he started faking me out by pointing up and getting me to look whenever there was a skidding sound. Then he would get this evil sneaky grin...
(Blob, Fri 6 Jan 2006, 22:23, Reply)

not me but a friend.....
managed to convince a first year that the technical word for drink was faeces.oh how we laffd wen the poor kid came in to our english class askin for a faeces.
(torture bunny lives under the kitchen sink, Fri 6 Jan 2006, 21:49, Reply)

It's a myth
that saxophone is spelt with two As

Chthonic edit: Arsebiscuits. Thanks.
(WarneMarsh My priority for frivolity begets quality jollity, Fri 6 Jan 2006, 21:47, Reply)

My friend once got conviced...
that another friend was part elvish. and could teleport anywhere he wanted.
(davethefoolishone, Fri 6 Jan 2006, 21:31, Reply)

I once convinced my brother
that the earth has two moons, the one you can see early in the morning and the one that comes out at night, and he believed me for weeks, he was 14 at the time.
(Absynth&Cheese Have you tasted my Jesus, Fri 6 Jan 2006, 20:44, Reply)

I once convinced a friend
that the vapour trails you see in the sky are the actual flight paths, which the planes follow to reach their destinations.
( Mr Peet, Fri 6 Jan 2006, 20:26, Reply)

also with the (first) wife...
While walking through the park, the ground had been freshly aerated. That means there were lots of holes in the ground, and lots of small sections of dirt laying on the ground.

"oh look! The snakes are out of hibernation"

I never told her the truth...
( Art101 You all have an unhealthy and morbid fascination, Fri 6 Jan 2006, 20:23, Reply)

The big fans...
Outside of Palm Springs they have a ton of wind-power turbine energy things. While driving in to town, I said to my (first) wife, "Oh look, there are the fans. When it gets too hot, they turn the fans on to cool the city off".

She believed me and mentioned to my mum's friends during dinner. I couldn't stop laughing...
( Art101 You all have an unhealthy and morbid fascination, Fri 6 Jan 2006, 20:21, Reply)

Ha Ha Ha
Gif as in (Graphic Interchange Files) are really pronounced "jif"

Ha Ha Ha
( Roland E O'Dorant R Tape loading error, 0:1, Fri 6 Jan 2006, 20:14, Reply)

Does a computer virus spread from disk to disk?
One of my fellow students at uni one day in a lecture about computer viruses seriously asked whether a virus could spread from one floppy disk to an other when the 2 disks are stored close together. I am not kidding, he seriously believed they would spread like human diseases! Quite amazing for a student in electronics & software. We nearly died laughing.
( RedWine President of the S.C.U.M., Fri 6 Jan 2006, 20:02, Reply)

Cold Curry
A friend's, mother's, work mate was out for a curry. When her main course arrived it was cold and she complained to the waiter. The waiter apologised, took her curry away and returned 5 minutes later with the curry heated appropriately.
Later that evening the woman became violently ill and she was rushed to the local hospital. The doctors suspected food poisoning and proceeded to pump the woman's stomach. Tests were carried out on her stomach contents to ascertain what was causing her illness. The doctors discovered that she had ingested semen from 5 different individuals and had been infected with 2 different venereal diseases.

I was told this story by 3 different people. In each case it was a different restaurant, it happened to a friend of a friend and the people insisted it was true. There are either lots of curry houses in Aberdeen with VD infected, cold curry making, horny staff or the people were speaking shit.
(mercurykev, Fri 6 Jan 2006, 20:01, Reply)

i was 6 or 7..
and i told this girl in my class that i was actually asian and that my mum got up early to paint me white. i explained that the moles on my arms were the parts she had missed.

the girl is now my best friend and still tells people i'm 1/2 indian.
(lucyloo, Fri 6 Jan 2006, 19:58, Reply)

Down with HIV
Apparently, one time in college, I told a friend that Jean Claude van Damme had died of AIDS. I don't recall this, although I do remember when he found out years later that I had fibbed. Good fun, that moment.

I also went buck-wild at a party once, claiming that the beer they were serving was brewed by Holocaust deniers.
(Buck Wild, Fri 6 Jan 2006, 19:32, Reply)

Bonsai kitten
A while ago I got a this chain email:

"To anyone with love and respect for life: In New York there is a Japanese who sells bonsai-kittens". Sounds like fun huh? NOT! These animals are squeezed into a bottle. Their urine and feces are removed through probes.
They feed them with a kind of tube. They feed them chemicals to keep their bones soft and flexible so the kittens grow into the shape of the bottle. The animals will stay their as long as they live. They can't walk or move or wash themselves. Bonsai-kittens are becoming a fashion in New York and Asia.

See this horror at: www.bonsaikitten.com

Please sign this email in protest against these tortures. If you receive an email with over 500 names, please send a copy to: [email protected] From there this protest will be sent to USA and Mexican animal protection organizations.

It was obviously a hoax but I had a heck of a laugh when I saw the dozens of signatures and heartfelt comments underneath. It was even better when I saw the names of people I know and heard them talk about it. Bloody funny.

Please b3tans, tell me you have more sense than to believe this - supergluing up their anus? Come on...
(Fwapper Has just got a new PC =), Fri 6 Jan 2006, 19:31, Reply)

It's all here
I shall name no names, buy my friend believes everything on b3ta to be gospel truth - even the 'I fell out of a tree and sliced my scrotom off on a pair of scissors I left lying about' story someone posted. Went on about it for days he did.



























whirleygig
(Fwapper Has just got a new PC =), Fri 6 Jan 2006, 19:18, Reply)

Hoverboards
Yes, the ones out of Back To The Future 2. I was adamant that they were real, especially after watching the "Making of..." documentary that showed people buying them from shops. In fact this is something that I felt I had to bring up at a discussion about the trilogy whilst at work.

It's still brought up on occasion whenever people around the office need a good laugh.

The only saving grace is that one guy admitted that I went on about for so long that he almost believed it to be true!
(Mavryk, Fri 6 Jan 2006, 19:06, Reply)