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Direct experience of ULs

A

Anonymous

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Seeing as quite a few ULs have a basis in fact somewhere, I've been wondering who out there has had experience of a UL or the basis of a UL ?

I'll kick off with a couple of experiences which - even if they don't in any way prove a UL - have made me stop and think.

Alligators/crocodiles in the sewers

Not a UL as such but an intriguing idea which always seems to happen a long, long way away to someone else. Never really gave much thought to these tales until I was 15.

I was walking along the bank of a local river with a friend when we quite literally stumbled across a dead crocodile. It was no tiddler, being at least 5ft in length, with a fair set of teeth. Neither of us could quite believe what we were seeing - Cardiff isn't exactly renowned for crocodiles - but there it was. Poor thing probably froze to death. Even though it was obviously an ex-croc (empty eye sockets etc) my friend (the roughest, toughest kid in school) was convinced it might still bite him and wouldn't go near it :)

The old man/woman who's generous with their peanuts
The original UL/joke tells of a nurse/visitor to a retirement home who is given some peanuts by a friendly old man who says he doesn't care for them. The person goes home and enjoys the peanuts. On their next visit they remark to someone that the old man was very generous giving away his peanuts and is told, "Oh, yes. He doesn't want them after he's sucked the chocolate coatings off"

I always imagined (hoped) this was just a nauseating piece of fiction. I was even more suspicious when it always seemed to have happened to a different FOAF.

Then, earlier this year, I was working with an elderly gent in sheltered accommodation who was always offering nuts and sweets to people. This all seemed very friendly and well-mannered, until one day I passed the bathroom and said gentleman had left the door wide open. He was sitting on the loo eating his sweets. In fact, he always took his food with him into the toilet. Oh God, I wish I could say that I and the other staff had never accepted any sweets from him...:cross eye
 
I experienced a UL, though a pretty pathetic one- I was present when a hit-and-run driver totalled some street furniture and was able to give the police his number, which I'd extracted from the hedge where it was stuck along with the bumper.
 
In the late seventies I was reliablely told by my mother that her best mate (my 'auntie' Carol) had picked up a bloke hitch-hiking. He had a hold-all with him...
(You've guessed it already!;) )
She went to the garage to fill up with petrol...
The man got out to go to the toilet...
She couldn't resist looking in his bag...
BIG mistake!
Inside was a large knife covered in blood...

This was at the height of the Yorkshire Ripper's reign of terror...
Everyone was paranoid...It was only a few years later that I saw a kids programme about urban legends...the hitch-hiker with the severed hand/head/hook/knife/axe/cleaver in the bag was revealed in it's mocking entirety! My mother still believed her mate though!:rolleyes:
 
My cousin insists that the neighbour's-dead-rabbit UL actually happened to her;

(Ie, she came home and found her dog playing with the limp corpse of next door's rabbit. As they were out at the time, quick thinking cuz rescued the corpse, cleaned it up, laid it back in its run and prepared to feign ignorance. Later that day, Neighbour came knocking on the door, saying "What the hell happened to our rabbit!" Cuz prepared to um and ah, but the neighbour continued; "We found it dead in the run a few days ago, and buried it at the bottom of the garden - but look, here it is back in it's cage, all clean and weird!")

That's the first time I ever heard the story, and I was a bit surprised to find it was considered a UL a few years later. But even if it did actually happen to her, it becomes a FOAF story when I retell it with the words; "My cousin came home one day and found..."
 
Slightly OT from The Onion. Made me smile anyway

Fact Repeated As Urban Legend
BREWSTER, WA—An actual occurrence passed into the realm of modern folklore Tuesday, when actor Robert Reed's 1992 AIDS-related death was repeated as urban legend. "Dude, this guy I know told me that the guy who played the dad on The Brady Bunch died of AIDS," said Jeff Gund, 16. "Can you believe he believed that?" Gund went on to tell the equally implausible tale of a woman who cut off her husband's penis and threw it in a field, only to see the man surgically reattach it and become a porn star.
 
Related to the peanuts story:

One person I cared for used to roll up little balls of her own shit and put them in a maltesers box only to offer them to unsuspecting agency carers!

I don't think anyone was ever caught out, they all had their heads screwed on.
 
good thread. A pretty banal UL (but one that occurs in J.H.Brunvard's "too good to be true") is the one where someone thinks they have a cricket in their room but it turns out to be a fire alarm with low power. This happened to me when we had a guy from Spain staying with us and he called me to help him find a cricket...
Other one is about a friend of mine who used to work for warner village cinemas. In her training she was told that in the event of a fire she was to say "we' need Mr.Sand" to whoever was in charge to avoid panicking the punters. She told this to me as fact and about herself. No FOAF involved
 
Prior to becoming a veggie, my wife almost experienced the 'mayonnaise' filled chicken breast. Luckily, this was as she was prepping the chicken for cooking.
 
barndad said:
In her training she was told that in the event of a fire she was to say "we' need Mr.Sand" to whoever was in charge to avoid panicking the punters. She told this to me as fact and about herself. No FOAF involved
Click to expand...
It is fact. An innocuous-sounding announcement like "Mr. Sands is required in the office" is broadcast over the loudspeaker system in shops, cinemas and such places to tell security staff to start clearing the area fast, without causing the general panic that something like "There is a possible bomb in the building" would cause.
 
Visiting my cousin at the weekend, she told me a tale that had happened to her niece's best friend. It allegedly happened in Marks and Spencer in Harrogate. The friend had her 3 year old child with her, who went missing. She alerted security, who had all the doors sealed so that no one could get in or out. The child was found, in the custody of a woman who had taken her into the toilets and disguised her as a little boy so that she could smuggle her out unnoticed.

I first heard a similar version of this about 10 years ago, but the setting was Disney World, Florida . . .

Carole
 
carole said:
Visiting my cousin at the weekend, she told me a tale that had happened to her niece's best friend. It allegedly happened in Marks and Spencer in Harrogate. The friend had her 3 year old child with her, who went missing. She alerted security, who had all the doors sealed so that no one could get in or out. The child was found, in the custody of a woman who had taken her into the toilets and disguised her as a little boy so that she could smuggle her out unnoticed.

I first heard a similar version of this about 10 years ago, but the setting was Disney World, Florida . . .

Carole
Click to expand...

Similar stories here:
http://www.snopes.com/horrors/parental/kidnap.htm

sureshot
 
The old man/woman who's generous with their peanuts

Someone on yesterday's BBC1's Bargain Hunt (28.1.2003), a hospital worker actually admitted to eating the peanuts.
Wasn't sure whether he was spinning a tale or not.
 
Bouncers Ear

Here in Derby we have a well known bouncer who runs a bouncer business. Perhaps its true, but the story about him is that he had his ear bitten off in a fight, and in order to keep the ear alive a surgeon sewed it into his stomach (?) in order to reattach it at a later date.

Never have understood this. Why cut a hole in the man to "keep his ear alive", couldn't they just have sewn it straight back on.
 
No, they really do the ear thing. FT ran an article on it once. Can't recall the exact reasoning, I think it was something to do with needing surgery on the injury site, then letting it heal.
 
I posted on a similar thread about my sister-in-law's pal almost inadvertantly giving a lift to a bloke who was dressed as a woman ... there were no severed heads, bloody axes, or knives involved thou'
 
Annasdottir said:
It is fact. An innocuous-sounding announcement like "Mr. Sands is required in the office" is broadcast over the loudspeaker system in shops, cinemas and such places to tell security staff to start clearing the area fast, without causing the general panic that something like "There is a possible bomb in the building" would cause.
Click to expand...

When I worked in the garden dept. of my local Homebase store, there was a similar thing there. This was a set phrase to be put out over the loudspeaker system that instructed all the male members of staff to report to the information desk.
I only experienced it once; two young lads had been chased by a dodgy guy, they ran into the store to the info desk (first thing you get to)...the man stayed hanging around outside.
The call went out over the loudspeaker system for a 'Mr. ****** to report in' and 30 blokes appeared around the reception desk.
The dodgy geezer legged it!
 
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