Urban Legends

What Distinguishes an Urban Legend?

Urban legends come in many forms but can be broadly classified as morality or cautionary tales. These tales may include common literary elements and themes in their construction such as humor, fear, intrigue, politics, love, and horror to name a few. These narratives serve to allay fears or anxieties or confirm some particular worldview. They caution humans to act or not act in specific ways to avoid harm or other calamity. Also, urban legends often focus on loss of social control or the imposing threat of some other overarching entity. These may include corporations or companies, drugs/intoxicants, technology, disease, governments, or otherwise “wicked people” or those with pernicious intentions.

It is important to emphasize that urban legends do not necessarily reference false or made-up events. Although urban legends are often informally referred to as false events, this is not always the case. From a sociological perspective, the veracity of the story has no bearing on its status as an urban legend. For example, an event may have occurred, but it is not likely that it occurred to countless “friends of friends.” It is the legend's broad appeal that is rooted in supposed personal or near-personal experience that aides an urban legend's self-propagation and mutation over time.

Some legends are apocryphal, meaning they are of dubious origin or simply made up. Other legends fall into the category of ostension, which is a particular mechanism in folklore whereby parts or a whole of an urban legend do play out, but this occurs after the legend is established. If an actual event happens that mimics the legend, intentionally or not, it can be considered ostention. In cases of pseudo-ostension, events are reproduced or acted out and then presented as evidence of an urban legend's legitimacy. For example, the infamous tale in which seemingly pleasant people give away Halloween treats with needles or razor blades hidden within them qualifies as pseudo-ostension. The story began circulating in the late 1960s, but several reports can be found of actual sharp foreign objects being found in candy from 1972 to 1982. Virtually all of these incidents have proven to be hoaxes perpetrated by parents or children. Almost every year, there are reports of this legend being “true” as new evidence shows that people are still contaminating candy. This legend also has tangible effects on people's behaviors. Each year, hospitals and police departments around the country offer free screening services to locate potentially deadly treats. In late September 1982, Chicago was plagued by a scare involving proprietary drug tampering, where seven people died after ingesting the pain killer Tylenol. It turned out that the capsules had been tainted with potassium cyanide. In the shadow of this event, in October of that year, the tampered candy scare reached a fever pitch and has somewhat subsided over the decades. Nonetheless, the legend remains a popular cautionary tale and a powerful driving force behind people's behavior, with countless individuals screening their children's candy for contraband.

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