URBAN LEGENDS

Just a few of my many books on folklore and myths.

In the early 1980s I took one of my favorite classes while earning a degree in elementary education. It was a class in Folklore taught by one of my favorite professors, Vivian Pemberton, who became a friend of mine. I found all aspects of the class interesting, but the one I’m writing about here is urban legends. They often derive from earlier legends that have been changed through the year with each telling. A few years after I’d graduated, a column appeared in my local tribune called “Urban Legends,” written by Professor Jan Harold Brunvand. I have no idea which college she taught at, or what her specialty was, but I clipped out those articles and still have them almost thirty years later.

The first I’m going to tell is about a Doberman’s meal, in which a young woman who lived alone returned home to find her Doberman choking violently. She immediately drove the dog to her local veterinarian. The vet informed her that the dog would have to be sedated, and it could be several hours to correct the problem and release the dog. He told her to return home, and he would telephone her later. Her telephone was ringing when she unlocked her door, and it was the veterinarian. In a barely controlled voice, he told her to leave the house immediately. No questions – just leave. The police arrived a few moments later, for the vet had also called them. They searched the house and found a burly, mean burglar hiding in the hall closet, passed out from loss of blood. The Doberman had been choking on three of the burglars’ fingers, which it had bitten off.

The professor wrote that this could be true, but was more than likely passed down from the ancestor of this story. In the original story, the hero, Prince Llewellyn, returns home where he has left his hunting dog guarding the baby. He discovers the dog, covered with blood, cringing at the open front door. Then he sees the baby’s crib inside, overturned and empty. Assuming that the dog has attacked the child, the prince kills the animal, only to find when he enters the home, that the baby is safe and a huge wolf that the dog had fought off is lying dead on the floor. I’ve heard the same story about a husky in Alaska, that killed a wolf, but unfortunately the owner thought his dog had killed the baby so he shot his dog.

 

My friend Laura goes along with any crazy idea I  suggest.

Once upon a time I heard another story that turned out to be an urban legend. A woman was driving along and saw a dead cat beside the road. Being an animal lover, she put the cat in a plastic bag planning to bury it when she returned home. She put it in her trunk, and drove to the local mall where she was heading. She went inside and did her shopping and when she returned with her bags, she put the bags in the trunk, and the bagged dead cat on the trunk as she headed to another store in the mall to buy one last thing. As she came out, she saw a woman furtively looking around and then snatched the bag with the dead cat in it, and headed for her own car.

The woman who had picked up the dead cat was curious and followed the woman to a nearby restaurant. The thieving woman took the package she’d stolen into the restaurant where she met a friend. The animal lover took a booth nearby where she could watch the woman when she opened the package. When she did, she let out a scream and passed out. The story said she died of a heart attack.

And then there’s the story I told my brother Jerry, and our cousins Norman and Dolores when we camped out one night in a tent on our grandparents’ farm close to our houses. The story goes:

A young boy was given money by his mother to go to the store to buy liver for supper. However, the boy bought candy instead (Or depending on who tells this, maybe a bigger kids stole the money.) and realized his mother would be very angry with him. He didn’t know what to do, but as he passed a graveyard on his way home with a fresh grave, he dug up the body, and removed the man’s liver and headed home and gave it to his mother. That night when he’s upstairs in bed, he hears a heavy footstep on the stairs, and a voice says “One step, give me back my liver.” And then he hears, “Two steps, give me back my liver.” The boy is terrified and huddles down under his blankets, then he hears another step and the deep voice say “Three steps give me back my liver.” And that’s when I grab the person’s arm next to me and shout “I got cha!” And, of course, the screams rang out. I did the same thing with my Cub Scouts and my Girl Scouts.  

The whole story is ridiculous. I mean a young kid digs up a grave that to my knowledge has always been six feet deep? But it’s all in the telling and the setting at the time. Usually around a campfire at night.

 

In my second book, I have my main character locked in a trunk, and the old legend of a young girl who sinks into a coma for some reason goes through her mind. The doctor pronounced the girl dead, and she was buried on top of a hill in the family cemetery on the family farm. Her parents grieved for her as does the dog. For several nights they heard their dog howling mournfully. The wife insisted they dig up the coffin, although the husband thought she’d gone crazy with grief, went along with it. When they dug up the coffin and opened it they saw the inside satin of the lid torn into pieces with some still in their dead daughter’s hands. She had been buried alive and had been trying to get out. Did this actually happen once upon a long time ago? Maybe.

Before television, movies, radio, and even the written word, people told tales. It was partly to entertain and partly to pass true stories on to future generations. It’s more than likely that even if there was some truth in the original story, a good story teller embellished the facts with fiction.

What urban or other legends do you remember?