ABSTRACT
Most, if not all of the scholars at the Social Consequences of Rumor Conference in Bellagio, have been consulted by members of the press corps, probably more frequently than their academic colleagues. Starting about mid-October every year, Joel Best starts to hear from reporters wanting to hear about common Halloween rumors and legends. If Hobbs and Best encourage scholars to expand their framework for the study of rumor, Gary Alan Fine and Irfan Khawaja challenge them to expand their understanding of the role identity plays in the development of post-crisis humor and legend cycles. Both the grateful terrorist and the celebrating Arabs cycles analyzed by Fine and Khawaja may belong in the category of negative rumors. In the past and in the present there are people and communities who are so inclined to criticize authoritarian precepts that they suspect everything.
