ABSTRACT
An urban legend is an apocryphal contemporary story told as true but incorporating traditional motifs and usually attributed to a friend of a friend (FOAF). Urban legends are somewhat bizarre unverifiable stories, plausible nonetheless because they are grounded in certain verifiable facts, such as the existence of shopping malls, the dangers of crime, and the hazards of everyday life. The characters in urban legends are generic types—a housewife, a student, or a businessman, for example. The plots are neatly organized, often with ironic or well-deserved outcomes for the persons said to be involved. There is no significant character development, background, or aftermath in most urban legends; they are just economically phrased accounts of something that supposedly happened that build to a climax and then abruptly conclude. In a nutshell, urban legends are contemporary “true stories” that are really too good to be true.
