RFelts - Red velvet cake. A woman, a distant cousin of someone's aunt's friend once was dining at the Waldorf Astoria hotel in NY. For desert she ordered the red velvet cake. She loved it so much she asked for the recipe. The waiter gave it to her. Then the chef came out and gave her a bill for $ 500. She was forced to pay it, because she had looked at the ingredients. To avenge herself she sent the recipe to her local newspaper, and they published it, and it spread around the country that way. No I do not believe it, and I do not like red velvet cake.

Jubilation - One of my favorites DOES involve Twinkies. I've seen results of tests on those things, and I believe it when it's said that Twinkies will be the only food remaining after a nuclear holocaust. Of course, I was always told the one about Mikey, too... :)

mags - Well, my brother in law Josh and I have been having a friendly arguement over some period of time about whether Twinkies are baked or "spun"...I had heard the latter, that they were spun like cotton candy and that the bottom was just colored to look like it was baked. I believed it wholeheartedly, and still do somewhat, but my faith was shaken when Josh contacted the webmaster of The T.W.I.N.K.I.E.S. Project who called the 1-800 number on the package of Twinkies and apparently confirmed that they are indeed baked. Another childhood dream shattered.

Kimmy - Two older ladies decide to take a trip to Las Vegas. They have never been to Vegas before nor have they gambled before. They check into their hotel and start making their way through the casino. One of the ladies sat at a slot machine for awhile and suddenly found she had won a couple hundred bucks! Not knowing what to do, she gathered up the coins into her long skirt and headed for her room. She managed to get into the elevator without spilling any coins and on her way up the elevator stopped and three men stepped in. One of them looked at his friends and said to the lady, "Hit the floor". She panicked and fell to the floor, coins flying everywhere, pleading "Please don't hurt me, I'm a grandmother!" Then she realized the men were laughing and trying to get her up. "We were just kidding, lady!" and they helped her gather up her coins and went on their way. Later that evening the woman went to her room and found a dozen roses, each with a thousand dollar bill taped to it's stem and a note attatched, reading "I haven't laughed that hard in a long time. Thanks, Eddie Murphy".

tacobor - No, Mikey's still alive. As for Twinkies, I heard it was 100 years because of the preservatives. Ain't Urban Legends fuuuunnnnnnn!!!!!!!!

sputnic - I don't belive in urban myths. So that is no on Mikey and the twinkies. My favorite urban myth is that every Mcdonalds does something bad to your food.

Sapphire - McDonald's bleaches their lettuce with a special kind of bleach that is not poisonous. They do this so that the brown spots on the lettuce don't show. That way, the consumer doesn't know that the lettuce is old. Yes, I believe it, and I know for a fact that it's true, because I used to work there. As for the Twinkies, I was helping my mother clean her pantry, and we found a box of twinkies that she had forgotten she had had. They were over a year out-of-date, but we ate one anyway. Neither of us got sick, and the Twinkies tasted as fresh as if we had just bought them.

SarahD - I don't believe that Twinkies have a 27-year shelf life because if stuff that is shrink wrapped only lasts a coupal of years, how is Twinkie supposed to manage 27 years? Besides, don't you think it would get lonely?

Katya - One of my favorites is the story of the parents who left their child with an unfamiliar (but only available) babysitter. They came home after their evening out to find the sitter high as a kite, chortling over what a good job she had done with the small chicken they had asked her to bake. So, can you guess what was in the oven? For more urban myths, pick up "The Choking Doberman" in your local library.

WintersHeart - There was this woman who had come back from a cruise or something, she had been over seas anyway. She had brought back a tropical fern or something, it was just a little plant, and mosts of its leaves were still closed. Anyway, about a month later, she notices that the plant looks as if it is breathing. She really doesn't know what's wrong, so she calls her friend who is like a botanist or something. Anyway, he comes over, and he doesn't know what's wrong, but thinks her plant is diseased. She is really upset, because she is a widow, and her kids have all moved away from home, this little plant is like her baby. Anyway, they go into the living room (the plant was in the kitchen window), they are sitting down and talking, blah blah blah. When they hear this noise, kind of like a pop than a splat. They go tearing into the kitchen and there are baby spiders everywhere, apparently a mother spider had put her egg sack into one of the unopened leaves. And, Yah, I believe it. I mean everyone has heard some variation of it, and it's so widespread, how could it not be true?

Whitty - A couple goes for a weekend to a large city to take in the sites. They go out to dinner and upon their return find their hotel room ransacked -everything stolen but their toilet bag and, oddly enough their camera. Time goes by and a month later after a party they use up the roll of film that was still in the camera. When the get the film back they are looking through the photo's and reminising.. when they come to a photo of two people posed in the hotel room they had stayed in...THE THIEVES!!! then the next shot but what is it ... it si sort of out of focus ...um OH GOD ITS THE THEIVES MOONING THE CAMERA.. the next shot the theives mooning the camera again ,but wait, there is something in their butts... "oh my GOD"the young couple screams..."OUR TOOTHBRUSHES!"

WintersHeart - Hey, RFelts. That is true, only it wasn't a cake, it was a cookie, and the woman was actually a man. I have the recipe to prove it. He published it in three newspapers, and sent it global over the web. *smile*

elektra - The scariest urban myth I was ever told was the story of a girl babysitting for young children one Friday night. The girl put the children to bed, and all was quiet in the house, when she started hearing noises that sounded like someone breathing very loudly. The girl became scared and called the police. The police responded, but could not find anyone in the house. They finally managed to pinpoint the noise, it was coming from a potted plant in the corner of the room.The police took the plant to an expert at a local nursery. The nursery found nothing wrong with the plant, however there had been a tarantula spider in the pot giving birth (laying eggs??) making the awful breathing sounds. This is very implausible, but a fun urban myth nonetheless.

Wynonna - The Red Velvet cake recipe was a variation on the cookie recipe from Neiman-Marcus or one of those Dept. stores. It was a cookie same sort of story. I too have the recipe. My favorite urban legend is the story about the guy who escaped from prison and he had a hook instead of a hand. He like to attack young lovers at lookout point. Anyway, the story goes that there was a couple at lookout point and they heard the story about this guy's escape on the radio. They heard some noises and got so frightened that they quickly drove off. When they got home there was a hook hanging from the car door. That story used to always scare me as a kid. But try telling it to someone when you're parked somewhere, see what kind of reaction you get.

gbknox - That you get pregnant from having intercourse. I have my doubts. I think pregnancy is an energy thing. Intercourse merely sets up a productive environment. What's going on in the woman's head causes the sperm to reach its goal.

andreamer - There's this 7 year old kid named Craig Shergold in England who is dying of brain cancer and he wants everyone to send him cards so he can get into the Guinness Book of World Records for most greeting cards recieved. (Craig Shergold exists but he's cured, he's in his late teens now, and he REALLY doesn't want any more cards.) There's an email going around with a subject line: GOOD TIMES. If you get it, delete it unread. It's a VIRUS. It will send your computer into an n-th complexity binary loop! (BZZZZT! Wrong! There is no way to get a computer virus by reading an email, so if you get the warning don't pass it on. The warning itself is more of a virus than anything -- it makes people afraid to use their email, takes up valuable system resources, and causes newbies to become objects of ridicule in the eyes of their more experienced colleagues.)

marigold - well, there was a rumor going around that the world was going to end at 12:26 CST March 23, 1996. it's about 4:45 CST on 3/23/96 and I'm still here...

Lakean - That Micheal Jackson is trying to look like Diana Ross I never believe anything till Tom Brokaw or Peter Jennings tells me it's true.

Pookah - I'm currently reading an interesting book on Urban Myths called "The Choking Doberman." I find it amazing how these stories spread, even to Europe in some cases, with minor variations. I'd say my favorite myth is: A college girl returns late at night to her dorm. Not wanting to wake her roommate, she leaves the lights off and goes straight to bed. In the morning, to her horror, she finds her roomate dead and a message written in blood on the wall that reads: "aren't you glad you didn't turn on the lights." (Whitty: I thought I was the only one who ever heard that toothbrush story! A friend told it to me at college)

ethan - Anyone heard the one about the Japanese exchange student who came to the US for a year and decided to save money by eating only ramen noodles. According to urban myth, he died shortly before graduation... from malnutrition. Perhaps he should have tried some of the twinkies.

clutter - I read these and think about when I was really young and all my friends dared me to say Red Rum in the mirror three times.....or was it Bloody Mary...kinda like the Candyman story?? I'll tell you what....I never did do it. A girl in my class in the 6th grade said red rum three times in the bathroom mirror with her face right up to the mirror and she jumped back with a scratch on her face, and it was bleeding. I never did figure out how that happened! Because I always thought you were supposed to do it at midnight....oh, well. As for Twinkies, I work in a gas station, and we have some PRETTY old ones sitting around. I'll have to check em' out!!

lirani - Gum stays in your system for seven years.

bdubc - One of my favorites comes around every 5-8 years. It's about those Cracker Jack tattoos that kids lick and stick on their arms. Supposedly someone laces them with LSD. I've seen warnings posted in food mart windows, notes sent home from school - the whole nine yards.

eaburns - The best one I've found is where the motorcycle accident victim is fine, laying on the ground after a terrible fall, talking to all the well-wishers on the scene, removes his helmet, and all his brains fall out!!!

flutterby - There was a woman whose baby was violently murdered. The myth follows that if you hold hands with a group of people (I've heard versions without a mirror and with a mirror) and say, "Bloody Mary, I killed your baby" five times, she will appear before you holding her mangled child ... and possibly come after you. I was struck by the resemblance of this one -- told to me as a child -- and the legend in the "Candyman" movies. I love the original Clive Barker novel. And, "silly customer, don't you know that you can't destroy a Twinkie!?" When they take Twinkies off the shelf -- they actually go to one of those radioactive waste storage plants -- they have to be contained so they don't multiply and take over the world. (Remember that scare we had with the tomatoes?)

bpeabody - One time I was ice skating with a friend of mine. We were about ten. She had just come from her house where she had recently taken a shower. So as not to worry about her hair she braided it and put it in a pony tail. She was teaching me how to skate and I was behind her holding onto her shoulders. Suddenly, I hit a bump in the ice and fell forward, grabbing onto her frozen braided pony tail in a desparate attempt to save myself from falling. Much to me surprise, her pony tail snapped off in my hand. Two feet of frozen braided hair. Needless to say she looked awful and never talked to me again.

RitaMary - This is a Disturbing Rumor going around my town. Just wondering if it is true. Did Richard Simmons really get hit by a car????

mikey_ptui - NT Bus Windows 69 - Flag poles, adorned with American Flags or not, could not penetrate Trailways bus windows ... This, is why Greyhound had to take the competition out.