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Longest Lived UL

A

Anonymous

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I was told the story, in all sincerity, on Thursday (8th Aug 2002) of the guy who was Scuba Diving, was scooped up by a firefighting plane and dropped on to the forest fires in Colorado. I first heard this story in 1989, 13 years ago. Does anyone have an example of a longer lived UL?

Incedentally, the person who told me was mortified to learn it was an UL, although http://www.snopes.com has provided her with enough enjoyment to last a lifetime!

Anton
 
The one about the high school girl going to 3 tanning booths the day of prom and then being rushed to the emergency room because she had cooked her insides with too much tanning has been around a long time. Though I'm not sure if it was prior to 1989.
 
Hmmm... what about all the Caligula/Nero stories? Or Alfred the Great burning cakes? Don't these count as ULs?
 
I think the Vanishing Hitchhiker beats all those by decades. Not the Caligula/Nero ones, of course.
 
Jack > I think they're so old as to count as just legends, not urban legends. I'm not sure though.
 
Ogopogo said:
I think the Vanishing Hitchhiker beats all those by decades. Not the Caligula/Nero ones, of course.
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By the time I heard the Vanishing Hitchhiker story as a kid, it wasn't told as a truth like most ULs, but was just a ghost story.
 
Rattlesnake fang in boot kills generations of owners

Variations: The apocryphal boots of lore are often said to have killed three generations of the same family, or to have done away with three brothers.

Origins: This legend is even older than the 1937 print sighting (quoted above) would lead one to believe. Another sighting surfaces in a 1782 book, making it easily the oldest intact urban legend in existence.
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Creatures/ Sinister figures as UL's

Hookerman, Phantom Hitchhikers, Bunnyman, Goatman, Killer In The Backseat...etc, etc, does anyone know of any other weird creatures/ sinister apparitions etc as part of Urban Legends. Info needed for self-published work.
 
Oldest UL's I know are the woman bitten by bug, resulting bump bursting, little bugs running forth, woman goes mad (circa. 1976).

Woman trapped in car, boyfriend kidnapped by killer, police find her, she hears bump,bump,bump on roof of car, police tell her to leave car but not look back, she looks back and sees lunatic banging said boyfriends severed head on roof (circa 1973).

The Aids needle scare in packed nightclub has been going around here since the late 80's..
 
There was one doing the rounds in the '50s - mid '60s about the girl who beehived her hair and never bothered to wash the lacquer out. Apparently, a spider's nest was formed in it and she didn't know until all the baby spiders hatched and ran down her face! Bit of a warning against looking tarty, methinks.:cross eye
 
Ogopogo said:
This was one of the first books published on urban legends way back in 1981:

http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/A...9107873/sr=8-1/ref=sr_8_1/104-9213377-5723936

It traces the modern (with an automobile) version back to the 1940s.
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The book I read was about 1/4 inch think (at the most) and was red and black. It also had a story about ouija board that when 3 young girls use it causes one of them to become possessed by the devil (sort of a shortened mirror of Arthur Miller's The Crucible.) It was probably published between 1975 and 1980, as I read it in the very early 80s.

As stated by FrancesFelixe
There was one doing the rounds in the '50s - mid '60s about the girl who beehived her hair and never bothered to wash the lacquer out. Apparently, a spider's nest was formed in it and she didn't know until all the baby spiders hatched and ran down her face! Bit of a warning against looking tarty, methinks.
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I rendition I first heard stated that she got bitten by them and was taken to the ER and that's where they discovered them in her hair.
 
The first UL I remember hearing is the one about the couple having sex with her tied to the bed and him dressed up as spiderman, jumping off the wardrobe and concussing himself. This was told to me as "Absolutely true, honest. It happened to a couple who lived on that housing estate" in about 1981-82 in Faversham in Kent.

Interestingly, this predates any record of the same UL quoted by Brunvand in Too Good to be True.
 
What about the bullet-through-the-testicle-of-a-soldier-getting-a-woman-pregnant one?
Does it date from the first or second World War?
 
OOH MY!

So would you class it as an UL?
Do we have a contender in the arena?

How about the other one, you know, the one where this guy turned water into wine? :D
 
Originally posted by Quicksilver
What about the bullet-through-the-testicle-of-a-soldier-getting-a-woman-pregnant one?
Does it date from the first or second World War?
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naitaka said:
Earlier than that. It's from the US Civil War.

http://www.snopes.com/pregnant/bulletbl.htm
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I had always thought this to be a true story after it was posted as fact in the usually astute trivia volume THE BOOK OF LISTS. (Though, it could have been one of the THE PEOPLE'S ALMANAC books. Authors were the same, anyway.)
 
Re: OOH MY!

Quicksilver said:
How about the other one, you know, the one where this guy turned water into wine? :D
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Come to think of it, the bullet story wasn't the first time that someone claimed a virgin got pregnant.;)
 
I was also told the scuba diver in a tree story this year after the fires we had in Australia last December.
It took me a good half hour to convince the guy it never happened.
 
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