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Modern Urban Legends?

Yeah that's the story I heard! If you grew up round my way it was the Mad Man of Hatton to blame.

He supposedly escaped from Hatton (later Central) Hospital.....the old asylum conveniently situated next to a Scout campsite in the wildest reaches of Leafy Warwickshire.
 
I think a lot of versions did get tailored to include some local detail.

This U/L is one that surprisingly I haven't heard before:

Is imitation calamari made from pig rectum? A charming urban legend gets its start.

A friend told me the other day that she'd heard a horrifying report on public radio: You know those deep-fried, chewy rings of calamari? Sure. Well, they're sometimes served in imitation form, made from slices of a pig's rectum. Wait … what?! And so it happened second-hand, as these things almost always do: An urban legend hatched and spread its wings.

My friend had heard the story from radio producer Ben Calhoun, who put it in his segment for the Jan. 11 episode of This American Life. You should go listen: It's not an expose but a charming, funny paean to the hog bung. (More on that in a bit.) Calhoun doesn't really think that buttholes have surfed into our seafood—"If I had to bet money on whether it’s happening [in the U.S.], I would absolutely bet money that it’s not," he told me earlier this week—but his reporting in the piece did leave some tiny room for doubt, and that margin of uncertainty, the implied what if that was central to his piece, provides a blueprint for how a rumor gains the gloss of truth.

Where did the legend of the backdoor calamari come from, and why has it only just emerged? The story started in the classic way, with an email from a stranger. Calhoun heard it from a fan of This American Life who wrote in to say that she had heard it from a guy who worked in pork production. When Calhoun followed up, the farmer told him that he'd learned about faux mollusk from a guy he knows who manages a meat-processing plant. That manager, for his part, told Calhoun that he was 95 percent sure the claim was true, though he admitted that he'd never seen the fakes himself—he only knew of them from the people that he worked for at the plant. And while no one at the plant had ever seen a rectum packaged as a squid, employees there confirmed that they had heard the story, too.

More on the link at Slate
 
While investigating further I happened upon this wonderful piece of nightmare fuel spoofing the story:

 
I remember a UL from the late 90's/early 00's that I think was quite local (to Sweden) and limited to music festivals!

This man, Bajsmannen (i.e. 'shit man') would frequent all popular music festivals in Sweden. He had dreadlocks (this was an important detail!) and he had an unhealthy infatuation wwith human waste.

The story went that he would hide in those porta-potties that festival goers have to use and 'surprise' his victims from below. He would also chase victims, he and his dreadlocks covered in fecal matter...

I honestly don't know if you really were supposed to believe the existence of 'Bajsmannen' (I didn't, but enjoyed the tale because toilet humour :D and happily retold it) but those who told the story always knew someone who knew someone and so on.

I must ask my step daughter if the legend is still alive!
 
MadameB said:
This man, Bajsmannen (i.e. 'shit man') would frequent all popular music festivals in Sweden. He had dreadlocks (this was an important detail!) and he had an unhealthy infatuation wwith human waste.
My own private nickname for dreadlocks wearers is Sheep Shaggers.
This is because to me the hairstyle looks like the rear end of a shitty sheep.
And someone who admires this view is probably a SS...
:twisted:
 
pork.jpg
 
Black River Falls said:
The "sweetcorn under the foreskin" tale seems quite new.

is that a varient/the same as the one where the guy cops off with the woman who's been masturbating with corn on the cob? i think the version i heard had the sweetcorn in her pubic hair :shock: but i can't find it on Snopes.

sweetcorn isn't called something else in the US is it?

:lol:

A variable on this tale I was told as true at school in the 80's was a mate's mate who was in the 69 position with his girlfriend ..

He was at his point of climax but also needed to break wind and realised holding his fart in would stop his 'happy ending' ... he decided to risk farting and luckily it was a quite and none smelly one ..

Afterwards, he went round to kiss his girlfriend and that's when he noticed the bit of sweetcorn on her cheek, craftily brushing it away with his hand with an "I love you" ..
 
OneWingedBird said:
3. The hookman

Another campfire must, this tale features an amorous young couple out for a drive when the radio informs them a hook-handed lunatic has escaped from a local institution. Either the couple go home to find a hook embedded in the back of the car or one of them ends up suspended above the car with his fingers scraping against the roof.

Perhaps the most popular U/L I heard in middle school, cira late 70s, was a version of that only the killer didn't have a hook.

The boyfriend gets out of the car to go and investigate, then the woman hears something land on the roof followed by this repetitive banging, then this police car pulls up nearby and a cop with a loudhailer tells her to get out of the car, walk towards them and DON'T LOOK BACK.

She almost makes it to the cop when her curiosity gets the better of her, and she looks around to see this mongy* on the roof with her boyfriend's head on a stick that he's banging on the car roof.

* don't ask.

I heard the exact same tale back then and was told it happened in Cannock Chase in Staffordshire :)
 
There's a page for discussing memories of my home town on Facebook ('I can remember when that was a cake shop.' 'No, it was never a cake shop. Before it was a chip shop it was a bike shop!' 'Actually it was only built last year.' etc.)

Last week the 'razor blades in the sandpit' UL was trotted out without a single person disagreeing. I thought I'd see how long it took for someone to point out that it wasn't true, but nobody did. They still believe it, 30-odd years on. :lol:
 
Where I grew up, the razor blades were supposedly in the big slide. (The local playground had two, a normal one and a larger one with a kind of hut at the top where the bullies hung out)

Instant sliced long pig :shock:
 
Yup, I heard that one too. There was also broken glass in the sandpit, it's true, my auntie's milkman's cousin's next door neighbour's poor little girl had both her hands sliced to RIBBONS.

Here's another strange one: when I worked at the courts, a prosecutor told me that someone she knew back home in Scotland had twin sons who went off to university together.

They had a flat in a city building and were offered a swap by the blokes in the flat above, which was bigger. They accepted enthusiastically and moved in, and were soon shot dead by enemies of the former tenants, who were actually gang members.

I believed that at the time, but now I'm not sure because I've never heard of it in the media and it'd be a great story which surely no hack could resist. :?
 
... My mate's brother knew this girl who's babysitter's uncle swears this is true ... and stuff ..

To be accepted into the gang, recruits had to drive at night with headlights switched off ..... the first well meaning member of public to flash their headlights at the recruit as a friendly warning were tailed and then executed for the recruit to be accepted into the gang ..
 
I heard the 'head on the car roof' at primary school in the mid to late seventies, when it was supposed to have happened on Dartmoor (which is near to us, as we're almost on the Devon/Cornwall border).

The gang killing/flashing headlights was the subject of one of the very first emails I ever had in 2001!

The same person also sent me one about sniffing cards with samples of 'perfume' (that turn out to be chloroform) offered in supermarket car parks as a prelude to theft. Always seemed ridiculously over complicated to me. A detail I distinctly remember was that the cards were supposedly laminated; how on earth would you get enough chloroform to knock someone out to stay on a laminated card?!
 
Does chloroform actually knock people out the way it does in the movies and TV?
 
We used to be told you shouldn't use mobile phones inside hospitals because they could interfere with the equipment .. I've since been told by medical proffesionals that that's a load of rubbish. Maybe the difference is between analogue and digital phones or it was untrue to start with?
 
Mobile phones do give out a strong burst of energy when they ring, and it can affect any electronic equipment that has amplifier circuitry in it.
I've heard this interference on hi fi and radio equipment, for example.
So...hospitals and airlines take the line that they want to take no chances at all, in spite of the fact that nothing bad has actually happened (AFAIK).
 
Centerparcs: that's an interesting eye-opener.
I've never been to one myself, and for years I thought it was like a village under a huge dome.
The ad is misleading!
 
Centerparcs not under a dome.

garrick92 said:
I would bet that there are people reading this thread to whom this revelation comes as a complete surprise!

*cough* :oops:
 
On the mobile phones in hospital - I've been able to keep mine with me and on (but not while actually being treated :roll: ) as long as it's totally silent.

And you get one chance to not have a quiet conversation. The moment your voice goes up the nearest member of staff (porter, nurse, cleaner, Dr) comes over and has a word, telling you to "shut up or shut off".

Brilliant!
 
Heard the one about Ian Huntley's invention - the Dustatic 101?

Or Roy Castle and his agoraphobia?

'While Huntley was working as the caretaker and manager of a team of cleaners in Soham Village College he sent a memo to the headmaster criticising the rotary floor polishers which sprayed a lot of dust around. He constructed a makeshift electro-static device and installed it on one of these polishers, and he found that it magnetically collected a lot of this dust. He applied for a patent in 2001 and approached the manufacturer of the polishers to make a deal whereby he would get royalties per unit. He was due to attend a meeting with the company in September 2002 when he was arrested for the Soham murders in August. In 2005 the UK Intellectual Property Office granted the patent. The company, Numatic International, has commented favourably about his invention, but in his new personality as the Soham murderer and reported homosexual and Islam convert in prison he refuses to allow any commercial company to develop his invention.

So there is a detectable hypocrisy in the prosecution case here, in the contradiction between the conscientious and resourceful caretaker behind the Dustatic invention, and the forensic evidence in which Huntley has fitted himself up with the black bin liner farce in his caretaker's bin'

http://www.justjustice.org/

'Throughout his adult life Roy Castle suffered from agoraphobia. For the greater part of his career as an entertainer he was unhindered by the condition - but his role as the main presenter of Record Breakers proved challenging at times. Unfortunately for Roy, many of the multi-person record-breaking attempts were recorded in the vast BBC TC1 studio at Television Centre. At 995 square metres (10,250 ft²), TC1 is one of the largest television studios in Europe. The prospect of several hundred hula-hooping schoolgirls or bagpiping soldiers inside a large studio would cause Roy great anxiety. However, he prided himself on being a professional entertainer and he improvised many novel ways of managing his condition'

http://www.mdjunction.com/forums/agorap ... itstart/10

The Ian Huntley one has made it onto the David Icke pages and seems to be accepted as fact by a number of people. It's all total bollocks however, as is the Roy castle one. Some variations of the story have Castle jumping into a large Whicker basket which is placed off sat, followed by Cheryl Baker jumping on top of it to provide a 'reassuring presence'.

How do I know that it's all bollocks? A colleague at work knows this super intelligent guy who is also a renegade Wikipedia vandal and he regularly updates the Wikipedia pages of people who have been in the public eye with preposterous but slightly believable stories about them. By the time Wikipedia is amended, the story is out there - seized upon by people with an agenda or othere reasons.

Also, on the subject of the mobile phone in petrol stations issue. The thinking was that the signal from the phone may induce sparks in metal, however despite the fact that this has now been disproven, it still seems to be accepted as fact!
 
That justjustice.org website on the last post has to be the worst website I have ever seen.

I have doubts about the police in some cases, mainly barry george was stitched up. But whiting and huntley are as guilty as sin. Maybe michael stone was stitched up over the 1996 russell murders though.
 
Yes, it's ridiculous. The point of my post was to illustrate how these rumours turn into accepted 'fact' and has nothing to do with the actual case.
 
Who did they say it was? :confused:

I mean, was it a plausible but wrong statement or did they say Biggles did it?
 
garrick92 said:
Oh, I can't remember the details but it was a plausible-looking Roman name. There must be a record of it somewhere out there.
Yeah, but if we can't trust Wiki, which web resource can we trust?

From long ago memories of doing Julius Caesar at school, there was a bunch of assassins, including "Et tu, Brute?", but we can't trust Shakespeare, as he pinched his history from wherever, and altered it to suit his stories! 8)

Wiki today says: "But the underlying political conflicts had not been resolved, and on the Ides of March (15 March) 44 BC, Caesar was assassinated by a group of senators led by Marcus Junius Brutus."

As for the play: "The Tragedy of Julius Caesar is a tragedy by William Shakespeare...

It is one of several plays written by Shakespeare based on true events from Roman history, which also include Coriolanus and Antony and Cleopatra.

...

Critics of Shakespeare’s play Julius Caesar differ greatly on their views of Caesar and Brutus. Many have debated whether Caesar or Brutus is the protagonist of the play, because of the title character's death in Act Three, Scene One. But Caesar compares himself to the Northern Star, and perhaps it would be foolish not to consider him as the axial character of the play, around whom the entire story turns."

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Julius_Caesar_(play)

So it seems old Will might have been on the money after all. 8)
 
garrick92 said:
The instance of which I am particularly thinking here is the entry on SHC, which holds up that tired old 'pig in a blanket' experiment on BBC's "Horizon" as conclusive scientific proof that SHC doesn't happen (in more or less those words, last time I checked).

Wasn't that on QED? Maybe Horizon did it too. It was exactly conclusive in practice, I recall.
 
Heard a new UL yesterday.

A local bloke, a regular if small-time drug dealer, is in hospital with a broken leg after being attacked by a dog.

He has an operation to set the break. While he is under the anaesthetic his bowels spontaneously open, spilling several cling-filmed packs of cocaine onto the operating table.

A nurse grabs them and bins them as they're hazardous/body waste. Another retrieves them and calls the police as they're evidence of crime.

When the patient wakes from the surgery he is arrested for drug offences.

However,
a. The man is a local weed seller, not a cocaine dealer. (They tend not to deal in both as they have different customers and patches.)
b. He has never been abroad in his life so has no need to smuggle drugs in body cavities.
c. Drug dealers don't generally carry their wares that way for street selling. Too messy.
d. There's an assumption that a general anaesthetic will routinely cause a patient's bowels to open. This is not the case.

Well, I didn't believe a word of it anyway.
 
Yeah, I think you've sussed this one, but all the same nice to hear something new in the field that doesn't involve a certain US President.
 
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