Urban Legends: A Collection of International Tall Tales and Terrors (review)

Gillian Bennett and Paul Smith have produced a number of aids to research in contemporary legends, including editing collections of papers from meetings of the International Society for Contemporary Legend Research (ISCLR) and compiling Contemporary Legend: A Folklore Bibliography (Garland, 1993) and Contemporary Legend: A Reader (Garland, 1996). To these they add the present anthology, shifting in terminology to "urban" rather than "contemporary" and employing the misnomer "tall tales." Perhaps the titles were chosen by the publisher more for their sales appeal than for consistency or accuracy. Modestly described as "a collection," the book offers text examples of each story, along with excellent discussions of variation and distribution, plus notes and bibliography. Examples of urban legends are given not only from academic sources but also from the popular press (including tabloids), cartoons, and collections of jokes and anecdotes. The citations of urban legends in film and literature are useful, bringing together widely scattered information.

The editors limit themselves to legends proper—that is, to stories rather than mere rumors or misinformation. Their interest is not in interpreting or debunking legends but rather in tracing "how they [the legends] have been told, by whom, and in what form, when and where" (p. xix). Stories are arranged in nine thematic chapters ("City Life," "Horror," "Animals," etc.) and include 155 individual legend types. Four major legend groups are broken down into sub-types: "Aids Aggressors" (five types), "Stolen Body Parts" (five), "The Surpriser Surprised" (four), and "The Vanishing Hitchhiker" (seven). Many of the sample texts come from European sources, including some fairly obscure periodicals—for example, Dear Mr. Thoms and Letters to Ambrose Merton—as well as the editors' personal collections. However, the selection of legends is not complete; missing, for example, are such standard stories as "The Rattle in the Cadillac," "Red Velvet Cake," "The Turkey Neck," "The Bullet Baby," "The Nut and the Tire Nuts" (a variation of their story "Genius" [pp. 216–7]), and "The Scuba Diver in the Tree," which has both film and literary versions. Although blooper stories are included, there is no entry for "The Clown that Cussed the Kids." No mention is made of the popular punch-line version of "The Nude Housewife" ("I hope your team wins, lady!") in the section on that theme (pp. 187–9); likewise, no notice is made of a well-known Mormon missionary version of "Dear John's Revenge" (pp. 169–71). Compensation for such omissions can be found in the inclusion of recent stories not found in earlier collections, such as "The Grateful Terrorist" and "The Penguin Story," and some distinctively British stories such as "Smiley Gangs" and "The Mole Hill and the Jaguar."

Titles of legends sometimes follow the established usage ("The Hook," "The Poisoned Dress," and so forth), but often the titles are original. Thus, "The Brain Drain" becomes "The Dough Bullet," "The Relative's Cadaver" becomes "The Cadaver Relative," "The Runaway Grandmother" becomes "The Stolen Corpse," "The Elevator Incident" becomes "Sit!," "The Ski Accident" becomes "Ski Run," and "The Hare Dryer" becomes "Bunny Bounces Back." Legends are arranged alphabetically within chapters, leading to difficulty finding particular stories, although alternate titles are listed in the index. There are also some odd separations of related stories; for example, "Cobras at K-Mart" (pp. 205–7) is a dozen titles away from "The Snake in the Garment" (pp. 230–2). Likewise, "Aren't You Glad You Didn't Switch on the Light?" (pp. 45–7) is separated from its close relatives "The Doggie-Lick" (pp. 59–62) and "The Roommate's Death" (pp. 70–1). A few of these divided themes are bizarre, as when the short entry "Backward Buildings and Other Architectural Errors" (pp. 4–5) is in a different chapter from "The Architect's Blunder" (pp. 239–43). Similar scattered references occur...