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Feb
8th
2016

Urban Legends: Part One · 4:14pm Feb 8th, 2016

Urban Legends: Part One

I've always been fascinated by urban legends because many have origins in true stories that got distorted over time. Like one big game of telephone throughout the ages. Here are a few urban legends that have always fascinated me. Hopefully, you will find them interesting too.


1. The Smith Sisters Murder: People began encountering a strange tale in their inbox in late June 2005. It went something like this.

One evening, a girl meets a boy on her yahoo messenger.

crazy1 86: Hey baby!!!
h0tNsPiCy91: Who is this???
crazy1 86: Your secret admirer!!!!!
h0tNsPiCy91: Oh really? Quit lying! Who is this???
crazy1 86: I've loved you since the first time I stared into your eyes...
crazy1 86: I think about you everyday...you are my dream come true.
crazy1 86: We met once! I don't think you remember though.
crazy1 86: I cut myself because the pain takes away my feelings of you.
crazy1 86: Tonight. You will see me some time tonight....
h0tNsPiCy91: ...WHO IS THIS!?!?!?
crazy1 86: Don't worry....I'll take very good care of you...

crazy1 86 had signed off.

The girl was so scared that she locked all of her doors and windows. She made sure that her room was secured. She was so scared that she wasn't sure if it was a joke or for real. She didn't know when he was going to come. The girl was frightened so she decided to sleep with her little sister. The girl dozed off quickly. Then she heard a knock on the window. The girl slowly walked to the window. It started knocking louder. The girl looked through the windows and saw nothing. She just saw some of the tree branches. The girl went back to bed with her sister. The bed was wet and smelled pretty horrid. Maybe her sister wet the bed. The girl checked and found blood everywhere. The girl panicked. She didn't know what to do. She ran and hid in the closet in case the guy was waiting there for her. While looking through the cracks of the closet, the girl saw a shadow. It was dark so she couldn't figure out who it was. She started to get more frightened. The man crept closer to the closet. The girl closed her eyes as if it was a dream. Then suddenly he opened the closet door and pulled her out. Her parents found her dead. She was skinned all the way and was hung in her sisters closet.

PART 2...

Two years after the the sisters deaths, their parents got pregnant with a baby boy. The girls room became a guest bedroom and the little sister's room where the murder took place became the baby's room. The baby grew up to be a successful kid. One night he was on the computer and got a instant message.

h0tNsPiCy91: Hey lil bro!!!
2seXay4u: Who the f is this?
h0tNsPiCy91: It is your big sis.
2seXay4u: I never had a sister. I'm an only child.
2seXay4u: This is some kinda joke huh?
h0tNsPiCy91: Mom and dad never told you?
h0tNsPiCy91: I died 15 years ago with your other older sister.
h0tNsPiCy91: We were murdered in your room which was once my little sisters room. She was killed in bed when I was sleeping and I was killed in the closet and skinned to death.
2seXay4u: Quit lying. I never had a sister. If I did, my parents would tell me. Whatever. You are stupid.
h0tNsPiCy91: You don't believe me? Well if you want, look on your closet floor.
h0tNsPiCy91: I carved my name, time and date I was being murdered. Then I carved my little sister's name.
h0tNsPiCy91: If you don't believe me little brother check the internet. Type in ''smith sisters murdered anonymously''.
h0tNsPiCy91: I gtg little brother. I love you. and mom and dad soo much. I cant believe they kept us a secret from you. They should burn in hell.

The boy checked the closet. He saw the carvings. Was it true? He surfed the internet and everything was there about the anonymous murder in the house. The next morning the boy went downstairs. It was so quiet. Maybe mom and dad were sleeping. Hours later the boy found his parents in their closets skinned and hung. Then he found more carvings on the ground. They read, ''I TOLD YOU I WASN'T LYING. LITTLE BROTHER, I LOVED MOM AND DAD.... BUT THEY KEPT ME A SECRET. I CANT BELIEVE IT. WELL I'M FREE FROM THIS COLD WORLD. I WON'T HURT YOU LIKE HOW THEY DIED. I LOVE YOU!

- LISA SMITH

This is a death chain. If you don't send this in the next hour the parents will kill you at night. They will kill you in your sleep and skin you alive!

DON'T BELIEVE ME? LOOK IT UP ON GOOGLE!

Almost two months later, near the end of August 2005, versions mailed to unsuspecting recipients began including this coda:

P.S. Guys...I looked it up on Google and it really happened. Creepy eh? I don't normally do these...but this one kind of bothered me a little bit.

Here's the article.

"Smith Sisters Murdered Anonymously

In 1993, two sisters were brutally murdered in the small-town community of Plainfield, Wisconsin. Lisa Smith, 19; and her sister, Sarah Smith, 15; were attacked in their parent's home on the night of November 17th, around 1:30 AM. Sarah was found stabbed and strangled in the bed where she had been sleeping. Her sister Lisa was found hanging in her sister's closet, skinned alive. Police conducted an extensive investigation, but to no avail. The motives for the attack were never discovered, nor was the attacker ever found. The only lead authorities had was a log found in Lisa's computer, showing a series of threatening messages sent through an Internet Relay Chat service. The case was closed in October of 2000."

Unwrapping The Legend: Plainfield, Wisconsin, is a community of less than a thousand people located in central Wisconsin. As its one claim to fame, it was the hometown of Ed Gein, a farmer who was convicted of murdering one woman in 1957 and confessed to having killed another in 1954. His notoriety came, however, from his use of dead bodies: he mutilated the corpses of women, cutting off a variety of their body parts and fashioning these into macabre items.

As one might suspect, murder in Plainfield is relatively rare. As one might further suspect, no two teen girls named Lisa and Sarah Smith were murdered in that town in 1993, nor their parents a number of years later. The story is fiction, plain and simple, just another example of the 'Bad things will happen to you if you don't forward this chain letter' genre. (The concept is stated explicitly in its text: "This is a death chain. If you don't send this in the next hour the parents will kill you at night.")


2. The Solid Sports Car: Martin, a cement truck driver, was driving through his neighborhood one day when he saw a bright red Chevrolet Corvette convertible sitting in his driveway. Curious as to why there was such a flashy car in his driveway, he pulled over and saw his wife, Lorraine, in the living room talking to a strange man.

Martin's blood boiled as he became convinced that Lorraine was having an affair. Deciding to get even, he dumped a huge load of cement into the beautiful Corvette. As he was preparing to drive off, Lorraine caught him and ran outside, screaming, "What the hell are you doing?!"

Martin then attempted to confront her about her having an affair, but the furious Lorraine explained to him that she was not having an affair and that the Corvette was actually his; an anniversary gift to him from her. She had been scrimping and saving for nine long years to buy him his dream car and that the man she was talking to was the salesman, who was dropping off the car.

The horrified Martin immediately felt guilt, shame, and remorse. He attempted to apologize, but Lorraine slapped him, stormed back inside, packed her things, and went to her sister's. She later filed for divorce, sued him for the cost of the Corvette, and won.

Unwrapping The Legend: This familiar tale melds two elements common to adultery legends: the spouse who receives poetic justice after unjustly suspecting a partner of unfaithfulness and the revenge-seeking mate who ends up harming the wrong person by mistake.

In his article "It Was a DeSoto," Louie W. Attebery writes about locating three articles that ran in the Denver Post on consecutive days in 1960 and reported a story similar to the legend. In this case, a driver hired to deliver a load of concrete for a house addition grew irate after he waited for an hour and no one showed up at the home to take delivery. Suspecting that the owner was getting even with him for winning a $20 bet, the driver dumped his load of wet mix into the left rear window of the owner's DeSoto. The owner, in turn, claimed he had called the concrete company 90 minutes earlier and canceled the order. Attebery notes, however, that the two men were friends, and that the whole incident might have been planned as a publicity stunt for the concrete company.

The legend has been repeatedly told about Don Tyson of Tyson Foods Inc. In that version of the tale, Tyson's wife spots the chicken king's expensive new Cadillac convertible parked in front of some other woman's house, calls a cement company, and has a truck come over to fill his car with concrete. In 1992, public relations folks at Tyson headquarters said the story was apocryphal and that they'd been hearing it for 20 years.


3. The Microwaved Pet: An elderly widow, Esther, lived all by herself, far from any of her other family, and the only company she had was an adorable little Beagle, who she simply adored. She had adopted the dog after her husband died and he very quickly cured her loneliness and she felt that she was never alone.

One day, Esther took her dog for a walk when it suddenly began to rain. She and her dog made it back to the house, but they were both just soaking wet once they stepped inside. She tried to dry off the dog with a towel, but he was still shivering and cold, plus she needed to dry herself off, so she decided to put him in the microwave for about five minutes while she dried herself off.

After drying her hair and putting on some clean dry clothes, Esther, hearing the microwave ding, went downstairs, opened the microwave, and was horrified to see that her beloved dog had literally exploded only seconds after the microwave was turned on.

Unwrapping The Legend: If seen as a "fear of new technology" legend, the little old lady of lore becomes a symbol of technological incompetence. Both female and old, she is the stereotypical embodiment of someone who could have little possible interest in how new things work and thus highly at risk of fatally misusing newfangled contraptions. Her misadventure serves as a warning to not place our faith in the new over the time-honored. Convenience be damned; the old ways are safer, says the legend. Stick with what is known.

But there's another possible interpretation, one that fits the older tales about pets dying in conventional ovens and clothes dryers. In the stereotypical world of urban legends, little old ladies are seen as lonely figures unduly attached to their animal companions. By casting an elderly woman in this tale, the loss of a beloved pet is seen as that much more catastrophic. We picture the old woman as having done in the one thing she had left in her life to lavish love on. Under this interpretation, the legend becomes one of that gives voice to our fears of growing old alone.


4. Buried Alive: Some poor schmuck is committed to his or her eternal resting place, even though they aren’t quite ready to take that final dirt nap. Scratch marks are later found on the coffin lid along with other desperate signs of escape.

Unwrapping The Legend: This not only happened, but back in the day it happened with alarming regularity. In the late 19th century, William Tebb tried to compile all the instances of premature burial from medical sources of the day. He managed to collect 219 cases of near-premature burial, 149 cases of actual premature burial and a dozen cases where dissection or embalming had begun on a not-yet-deceased body.

Now, this may seem ridiculous, but keep in mind this was an era before doctors such as the esteemed Dr. Gregory House gained the ability to solve any ailment within 42 minutes. If you went to the doctor with the flu in those days, he’d likely cover you in leeches and prescribe you heroin to suppress your cough. Their only method for determining if a person had died was to lean over their face and scream "WAKE UP" over and over again. If you didn't react, they buried you.


5. The Living Billboard: The Living Billboard is a mysterious billboard with the capability to move, mysteriously disappearing and reappearing where ever it pleases. It often disguises itself among urban populations, often featuring obscene content on it's screen. It is clear that it is sentient as it has the ability to disguise itself as any billboard and has shown that it is capable of creating images on it's screen that interact with the 3D world.

Despite it's humorous episodes on the side of busy streets and freeways, the Living Billboard is monstrously powerful. It is the sum and total of all technological and quantum singularity. This means that it has complete and total control over any and all technology that ever has, ever will be or could possibly ever be created in any and all realities. It has all their abilities. It constantly downloads data from the quantum field and all networks of information in the omniverse to constantly improve everything within itself. Because of this, it is more powerful than all things artificially made by any being the omniverse put together. It has been utilizing omni weapon generation, or the ability to create any weapon it wants instantly. It is also thought to be capable of having complete control over gravity. It has the ability to erase and control quantum particles, control time and much, much more. Because of it's tremendous power, it has been the target of many power hungry beings who sought complete omnipotence, normally by trying to find a means to hack into it.

However, because all things artificial make up it's being, it made it its goal to eliminate all the flaws and weaknesses of all things artificial within it, making it the perfect machine and thus unhackable. It has been seen creating images that interact with the outside world to enhance the effects of it's humor. It can change into any billboard no matter the size or shape as well as become any number of billboards and signs at once. It can hover and fly, although it is never caught leaving a spot where it is advertising an image. The Billboard mostly appears to be neutral, using comedy to help as well as prank others. A billboard once made it rain bloody exploding spiders in an attempt to scare everyone on earth. It later reversed the final entropy and Armageddon of all of reality, all universes and multiverses that had ever existed would ever exist and could possibly ever exist, stating that, "If I let myself destroy reality, then I wouldn't have anything left to mess with". It was eventually revealed that billboards aren't it's true form. It is said that its true form is beyond mortal comprehension. It is a perfect synthesis of higher dimensions fractals, vibrations, quantum particles, technology and cosmology, with 9th dimensional information space serving as it's conscious which is infinitely beyond physical reality. The Living Billboard itself is an 11th dimensional being. In its true form, static runs in-between it's fingers which were later revealed to be 7th dimensional multiversal branes with trillions upon trillions of new born and dying universes existing in the space between them. Among these was a universe called the 'Swag Verse'.

Nothing is concrete about the history of the mysterious sentient billboard or the source of it's omnipotence. It is presumed by some who have witnessed it as well as some of it's voluntary followers and worshipers (which it never interacts with except to play pranks on and humiliate them) that it is the primordial force that represents all things artificial. Just as human Gods or higher beings represent various aspects of nature, The Living Billboard is thought to be the God and embodiment of technology and without it no sentient being could create anything. It once warped the time and space of the universe at rapid and repeating rates in order to be a dJ using the universe as a turn table or record. It also once unleashed a zombie apocalypse on earth by creating a 3D advertisement for the Walking Dead.

Unwrapping The Legend: The advent of new technologies has prompted significant changes in the advertising industry, including that venerable stand-by, the roadside billboard. No longer solely static displays of painted or pasted-on text and graphics, billboard technology now includes multi-message billboards that display multiple advertisements composed of rotating trillions, scrolling billboards that cycle through dozens of different images, and LED-based digital billboards that offer sponsors' ads in animated, high-resolution graphics.

These new technologies can make billboards appear to be sentient and even capable of pranking unsuspecting people on their own. Hence, the legend of the Living Billboard has arisen from a general lack of understanding of how the technology behind modern billboards works. This lack of understanding has been embellished by story-tellers over time to become a its own living legend.


6. M&Ms Are Cockroach Coated: One of the simpler food myths, it is said that the "candy coating" on M&Ms is made up of dyed cockroach shell, possibly due to the fact that Mars, Inc., which manufactures the candies, does not release the secret recipe for them.

Unwrapping the legend: This cannot be 100% disproven without extensive forensics research, but needless to say it probably wouldn't have gotten past the FDA if it actually contained cockroach.


7. Three Men and a Baby Ghost: Three Men and a Baby is a 1987 comedy film starring Tom Selleck, Steve Guttenberg and Ted Danson. The film revolves around three bachelors and friends, Peter Mitchell (Selleck), Michael Kellam (Guttenberg) and Jack Holden (Danson), as they attempt to take care of Jack's infant daughter Mary (the result of an affair with a co-star) who was dropped off on Jack's doorstep.

In a scene just an hour into the film, Jack and his mother (Celeste Holm) walk through the house with the baby. As they do, they pass a background window on the left-hand side that seems to conceal a black outline that resembles a rifle pointed barrel down behind the curtains. As they pass this same window 40 seconds later, the figure of what appears to be a young boy can be seen behind the curtains.

Rumor has it that a nine-year old boy committed suicide with the rifle in the same house where Three Men and a Baby was being filmed. His ghost and the rifle were captured on the final cut of the film.

Unwrapping The Legend: As you might have expected, this urban legend is false. The figure of the young boy is actually a cutout "standee" of Jack, wearing a tuxedo and a top hat, which was to be used in a dog food commercial Jack had filmed, but was cut from the final film. The standee does show up later in the film, however, when Jack stands next to it as the baby's mother comes to reclaim her child. The distance and angle that the cutout is shown and the curtains concealing its outstretched arms gives it a much smaller appearance to that of a child's. Plus, all indoor scenes were filmed on a Toronto sound stages, so no houses and dwellings were used.


8. The Clown Upstairs: Two parents have gone away for the weekend and have left a babysitter to watch the children. Earlier that day, the babysitter was given the guest bedroom to stay in, when she entered the guest bedroom, there were clown statues, on every shelf. The thing that caught her eye the most was a life sized clown puppet , propped up in a rocking chair. The puppet gave her the chills whenever she looked at it, and she couldn't get it out of her mind, even when she was downstairs

At least an hour after she sent the two children to bed, she decided to call the parents. She asked them about the clown puppet they had in the guest bedroom. The parents responded that they didn't have a life sized clown puppet in the guest bedroom, and told her to get the children and call the police. The father then further explains that the children have been complaining about a clown watching them as they sleep. He and his wife had just blown it off, assuming that they were having nightmares..

When she reached the top of the stairs, the clown was standing, just outside the bedroom. The babysitter ran, screaming in horror, and went into the children's bedroom and locked the door. The police soon arrive and apprehend the "clown," who turns out to be a midget who somehow got into the house and had been living there for several weeks. He would come into the kids' rooms at nights and watch them while they slept. As the house was so large, he was able to avoid detection, surviving off their food, etc. He had been in the TV room right before the babysitter came in there. When she entered he didn't have enough time to hide, so he just froze in place and pretended to be a statue.

Unwrapping The Legend: Homicidal maniacs and pedophiles have not commonly taken to donning clown costumes and passing themselves off as items of home decor. (Although one famous serial killer, John Wayne Gacy, did sometimes dress as a clown, it was for the purpose of entertaining children at parties and charity events; it was not how he attired himself when torturing and murdering his victims.)

Yet lack of real killer clowns to the contrary, a substantial number of folks admit to a sense of disquiet about clowns, and some actually fear them. There is something about the grotesquely exaggerated makeup that inspires a sense of unease, even menace, with this perception remarkably widespread across all age groups. (In St. Louis, a strip mall named the General Grant Center has come to be known as "Scary Clown Plaza" thanks to a 15-foot clown statue erected there. As the local paper said, "We can't put our finger on what accounts for the sinister aura that seems to surround this supposedly jovial fellow, but too many folks from diverse backgrounds have commented on it to just be coincidence.")

Before we entirely dismiss the "killer clown statue" as naught but folklore, it should be noted that there has been at least one verifiable case of such a figure attacking someone. In 1992, in Noblesville, Indiana, a Ronald McDonald clown statue toppled onto a six-year-old girl, severing the fleshy part of her fingertip. The excised piece was reattached, but the child still had a malformed fingernail. She was awarded damages of $41,400.

If the sight of clowns causes the hairs on the back of your neck to rise, not only aren't you alone, but there are online communities populated by folks who share your sense of unease: ihateclowns.net and Clownz.com are two such places. On the flip side of the coin, if you've an interest in hiring a clown, or in perhaps becoming one yourself, Clowns of America and Clowns International are worth a visit.


9. The Slit-Mouthed Woman: The Slit-Mouthed Woman (or Kuchisake-onna) is a prominent Japenese urban legend. Rumors of alleged sightings of the Slit-Mouthed Woman began spreading around in 1979 around the Nagasaki Prefecture, causing panic in many Japanese towns. Reports also indicate that children were dismissed from school in groups escorted by a teacher for safety, and of police officers increasing their patrols.

The legend has it that a beautiful woman lived in Japan years ago. Her husband was a very jealous and brutal man who became convinced that his wife was cheating on him. To prevent anyone from finding her attractive, in a fit of rage, he slit her mouth ear to ear with a sword, screaming "Who will think you're beautiful now?"

The Slit-Mouthed woman later returned as a vengeful spirit wearing a surgical mask (which isn't uncommon in Japan as many Japanese people wear surgical masks to prevent other people from being infected by their colds and sickness). She will approach a child and ask them "Am I pretty?" If the child answers "Yes", she will take off her surgical mask, revealing her Glasgow smile and ask "How about now?" if the child changes their answer to "No", she cuts them in half. If the child sticks to their answer of "Yes", she will slit their mouth just like hers. Running away from her will not work, as she will simply reappear in front of the victim. The only sure way of escaping The Slit-Mouthed Woman alive and unharmed is to give her an ambiguous answer such as "You are average" or "So-so" which will confuse her and give the person enough time to escape. If the victim throws sweets and candies at her, she would be distracted and try to eat them. This gives the victim enough time to run. The slit-mouthed woman would also have a privilege to appear in front of the victim. Another way is to say if the child is pretty. She will get confused and walk away.

Unwrapping the legend: The Slit Mouth Woman’s reign of terror began in the spring and summer of 1979, when rumors began to spread throughout Japan about sightings of the Kuchisake-onna hunting down children. The story spread like wildfire and actually created scares in many towns. Police increased their patrols and schools sent teachers to walk students home in groups.

In 2004, South Korea was plagued by reports of a red-masked woman who was chasing children.

In 2007, a coroner found some old records from the late 1970s about a woman who was chasing little children, but was hit by a car, and died shortly after. Her mouth was ripped from ear to ear.

The USA has its own version of Kuchisake Onna. There were rumors about a clown who appeared in public bathrooms and accosted children, asking “Do you want death or a happy smile?” if they chose “happy smile”, he took out a knife and slit their mouths from ear to ear.


10. The Unlucky Lottery Winner: Every day for 30 years, Carl, an office worker, would play the lottery and would play with the exact same numbers: 16, 21, 97, 38, 66, and 75; he played it so much that he and his wife, Darlene, both knew the numbers by heart. And for 30 years, they had almost no luck whatsoever. Darlene attempted to persuade Carl to give up on playing the lottery, but he steadfastly refused, believing that their luck would change one day.

One day, while Darlene was visiting her old college friend in a neighboring town, Carl was relaxing on his day off, waiting for the news to come on so the winning numbers would come up. Finally, at 6, the news came on and Carl, lottery ticket in hand, waited patiently for the numbers.

Soon, the numbers came up and Carl was stunned at what he saw. The winning numbers were 16, 21, 97, 38, 66, and 75! Carl's 30-year losing streak was over and he and Darlene had just won $87,000,000. Carl was so jubilated, so triumphant, so excited, and so happy that he pinched himself to make sure he was not dreaming.

Before he could start thinking of ways to spend the money and other things, he felt a sharp pain in his chest and lost consciousness before he realize what was happening to him. The amount of shock and excitement in his body was too much for his heart to handle and the result was a massive heart attack that killed him right there on the spot.

When Darlene returned home a week later and discovered her husband's decomposing body, the dateline to cash the ticket had passed, rendering it null and void.

Unwrapping The Legend: While the story depicted in the urban legend is not true, it is based on many true events.

On 22 January 2004, a man who won $73,450 in an Indiana lottery game taped for television died a few hours later when 73-year-old Carl Atwood of Elwood, Indiana, was knocked down by a truck and expired shortly thereafter in an Indianapolis hospital.

That evening he had been walking to the grocery store that had sold him a winning ticket when a pickup truck rounded a corner and struck him. (The store was located one block from his home.) "It was at an unlighted intersection, and Mr. Atwood had dark clothing on, so the driver did not see him before he hit him," Elwood Police Chief Toby R. Barker said.

The unlucky septuagenarian had just come out on top in a Hoosier Millionaire competition contested between six lucky purchasers of "automatic seat" scratch-off instant tickets. During the taping he won $19,000 in preliminary rounds and tripled his winnings in the final round.

Upon being awarded the money, Mr. Atwood had said: "I am very thankful. I must admit that I never expected to be leaving the show with this amount of money. Now I can purchase a very nice car."

Atwood would have been among winning players invited back to the program to compete for a $1 million grand prize a few weeks later. The deceased man's family will choose someone to take his place on the championship show.

Carl Atwood was not the first lottery winner to expire shortly after coming into his fortune.

In September 1990, 37-year-old William Curry of Boston died of a heart attack two weeks after hitting a $3.6 million jackpot in the Massachusetts Megabucks drawing. This is the news story that the urban legend is often believed to stem from.


11. Breast Infection: After anthropologist Susan McKinley came back home from an expedition in South America, she noticed a very strange rash on her left breast. Nobody knew what it was and she quickly dismissed it believing that the sores would leave in time.

Upon her return she decided to see a doctor after she started developing intense pains. The doctor, not knowing the exact severity of the case, gave her antibiotics and special creams. As time elapsed the pain did not subside and her left breast became more inflamed and started to bleed. She decided to bandage her sores however as Susan's pain grew more intense she decided to seek help from a more certified doctor. Dr. Lynch could not diagnose the infection and told Susan to seek the aid of one of his colleagues who specialized in dermatology whom was sadly on vacation. She waited for two weeks and finally was able to reach the dermatologist. Sadly, a life changing event was about to unfold during her appointment.

To Miss McKinley's surprise, after she removed the bandages, they found larva growing and squirming within the pores and sores of her breast. Sometimes these wicked creatures would all together simultaneously move around into different crevices. What she didn't know was that the holes were in fact, deeper than she had originally thought for these larvae were feeding off the fat, tissue, and even milk canals of her bosom. The holes were 5 cm deep. She was operated on and the larva was removed from her breast. Therefore always take a slight rash serious and have the eggs removed before it is to late. Cheers and may the creatures leave you in peace.

Unwrapping The Legend: This item is another example of a common Internet phenomenon: Someone makes an image available on-line, the picture begins to circulate through e-mail forwards, the original attribution or explanation for the image gets lost along the way (or was never provided), people begin to make up stories to explain the origin of the now-sourceless picture, and those fabricated explanations become attached to the image as it continues to circulate. We've seen this phenomenon before in the maggot photographs, only in this case it isn't just the explanation that's fabricated; the image is a phony one created through digital manipulation as well.

This image appeared on the Internet back in June 2003 (on a web site with a collection of other manipulated photographs); at that time it carried no explanation at all and was soon attributed by others to some new type of "body modification." Not until a couple of months later did it pick up the story about an anthropologist named "Susan McKinley" who returned from a South American expedition to notice a "very strange rash" on her breast caused by "larvae" which were "feeding off the fat, tissue, and even milk canals of her bosom." No known medical condition causes a result like the one depicted here, and the breast tissue around the supposed "larvae infestation" (larvae of what?) is too healthy (no redness, inflammation, or necrosis) to be believable. This image appears to be the product of the melding of a photograph of a woman's breast and a picture of something similar to a lotus seed pod.

In 2005 someone combined the picture and text quoted in the "Example" box above with an existing video clip that seemingly shows maggot-like creatures being removed by forceps from a woman's infected breast, and in November 2005 we began seeing versions that claimed the patient had developed her condition due to the flooding of New Orleans caused by Hurricane Katrina. The text in the e-mil usually warns people to wash their clothes and undergarments in hot water before wearing them to make sure they do not get the same infection.

The attached video is that of a female patient who, due to the flooding of her home wore the same clothes for days. The contamination in the water was so bad she first broke out with a rash on her breast and then she had a lump on her breast and she popped it and puss excreted from the lump. After treating it herself for days she finally went to seek medical attention and when she did they found serious infection. They later sedated the patient and found that these insects were within the fatty tissues of her breast and within the milk producing glands.

This is a genuine video, but it has no connection to Hurricane Katrina. It shows the treatment of a Nigerian patient with breast lesions and multiple sinuses containing Tumbu fly larvae. (Fourteen separate larvae were eventually extracted from the breast.) The authors of a 2004 medical journal article on the case noted at the time that only "one case has been reported in the English literature."

In 2006, someone combined the text instructing people to thoroughly wash their clothes and keep up good hygiene, with a series of photographs of patients experiencing what look like severe rashes, infections, and necrosis of the upper chest and breasts. The specific origins of these photos are unknown to us, but they likely depict the advanced stages of breast cancer.


Sources:

Urban Legends Wiki: http://urbanlegends.wikia.com/wiki/Main_Page

Snopes.Com: http://www.snopes.com/

Comments ( 30 )

eh I don't belive urban myths if I did I would be dead from a were wolf and smile dog

3745176 Me neither. But they are still fun to learn about because a lot of them end up getting circulated as true stories at one point or another.

3745180 I am supersticious on Friday the 13th which when we had it in 2015 in October or so that's when terrorists attacked paris and I said it was bad luck

3745187 It's interesting how certain days can be unlucky. Or even certain times of the day. Like a lot of people say the 'witching hour' is bad luck or just bad things happen during it in general.

3745538 which is funny cause my gma always says Friday the 13th is good luck

3745548 I think it depends on the person too. What is lucky for one person might not be lucky for another.

3747039 the scary thing is it takes place in wisconsin guess were i live

3747043 Wisconsin I'm assuming....?

3747050 Is there really lots of cheese in Wisconsin? Or is that just an urban legend? :derpytongue2:

3747056 we used to be known as the dairy country idk if we are any more but we got a lot of cheese and milk

3747061 There are lots of citrus trees where I live. I guess we are the citrus capital. But Florida stole that. So we're known for...eh...snakes?

3747076 idk what state ur in

3747098 Arizona. Land of spiders, snakes, scorpions, and other ungodly creatures of the underworld. :p

3747118 got any Hell Hounds?

3747598 We have Thunderbirds if that counts. :p

3749415 Maybe the hell hounds are hiding in the woods. :p

Ok, this is just a story, right? I...I don't want to die....

3749903 Urban legends are usually just stories. :P But a few of these legends are indeed true.

3749914 I won't die, though...right? (The Smith Sisters Killer)

3749918 No. You should be fine. :P

3749931 Like I said, most urban legends are fake. They get spread around from person to person, like a bad game of telephone. They usually start off as a real fact that gets distorted over time and changed into a really weird story. So they all do have a root in a true story that happened at some point, but usually urban legends themselves are not true. Although there are a few exceptions, like on this list, getting buried alive did happen to people. And also there are stories of people dying right after winning the lottery.

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