Urban Legends

Urban legends may be deceptive but they are not lies. This odd claim results from the fact that those who transmit urban legends do so in the belief that they are telling the truth—usually to a friend. So if a lie is “an intentionally false statement,” then urban legends are not lies. On the other hand, urban legends may be deceptive because they assert that some event happened when, in the case of most legends, it did not. Some small percentage of urban legends recounts events that actually did happen at one time and place. What really happened once in one place becomes an urban legend when presented as happening at many times and locations. In that way urban legends do deceive; they promote a false picture of reality.

Not all deceptions presented in urban legends are harmful; some stories offer good advice, even if from false premises. For example, “The Kidney Thieves Legend” tells of a young man who goes clubbing and ends up going home with a woman he met. In the morning, he wakes up in a bathtub packed in ice with a fresh incision in his side and a note advising, “CALL 911 OR YOU WILL DIE.” In this tale, one of his kidneys was removed for sale on the black market. While the story is not true, it does offer useful advice discouraging random sexual encounters.

Modern society uses the phrase “urban legend” often and quite loosely. The term originates from the field of anthropology with the work of folklorist Jan Harold Brunvand of the University of Utah. Brunvand's popular books on urban legends, beginning with The Vanishing Hitchhiker (1981), brought the topic into public consciousness. More books, movies, and songs followed and further popularized these ideas. The rise of the Internet and Web sites such as http://Snopes.com and http://About.Com has made the subject of urban legends nearly ubiquitous.

It is important to recognize that the process of circulating and believing urban legends is entirely divorced from the public's fascination with the topic. When people refer to a story as an “urban legend,” they have made it an object of study but not of belief. When people hear of a legend, they often say, “How could anyone believe that?” because in hindsight they think they would not fall for it. People often feel superior, but the fact is that there are other urban legends they do believe in; they just do not label them “urban legends” but rather see them as safety tips, words to the wise, and other guidelines.