fact or fiction? you decide.

HS · September 2003

How many of you wonder if the stories that are on snopes are really truth, even though they claim it's a lie? Aren't all great stories based on some shred of truth? Maybe there is a conspiracy theory to cover it all up. A friend recently sent me a couple of e-mails, one of which sounded like it could be true, but snopes claims it as a falsehood (the black panther story). Here are the links to those recent (or resurfaced) stories:

[url]http://www.snopes.com/inboxer/outrage/panthers.htm[/url]

[url]http://www.snopes.com/politics/war/quran.asp[/url]

It's sad, but everytime an e-mail gets sent to me, I check it's valididty at snopes first.

And Don, please put the story back up. It was truly touching and who cares if it's fact or fiction!

rad · September 2003

The dumbest e-mail I got was how to stop a heart attack by coughing. I thought oh lord, how many bozos will try this instead of calling 911? I pretty much assume all those story e-mails I get are false. But some, like Don's, are most certainly worth the read because of the underlying message they contain.

HS · September 2003

So you can't stop a heart attack by coughing? x:P

And yes, it's just like reading a book, or poetry that inspires you. It does not matter if it's based on fact or pure fiction, if it inspires you to do better things, then that is all that matters.

ray a · September 2003

Which is a bigger seller, fiction or non-fiction. I bet it is fiction.

rad · September 2003

There's a show on the Learning channel called Mostly True Stories - Urban Legends. I like it because it gives a plausible explanation as to why the story may have started, reasons why some can't possibly be true, and, surprise! some actually are true. They also have a quick true or false question before commercials. I am not sure what nights its on, I always seem to catch it by accident.

cebudragonlady · September 2003

Actually did watch that show Mostly True Stories last night! Was intrigued about the spiders in the cactus story. May be true, as I have a lot of cactus in the yard, and spiders seem to abound....

Chari

Yahoo · September 2003

I missed it - what about the spiders in the cactus?

rad · September 2003

I didn't see the show either but I think this might be it:

[url]http://www.snopes.com/horrors/insects/cactus.htm[/url]

Zanne · September 2003

Here is another website that has all the email urban legends. Usually I check them out - but that story was so good that I didn't want it to be an urban legend.

[url]http://urbanlegends.about.com[/url]

Zanne

scottorr · September 2003

My grandmother once told me a story about one of her friends. She said that one day she started going def in one of her ears. She just thought it was old age. She said about three months later she felt something moving in her ear and her hearing came back. She ran to the mirror to see what it was and a bunch of baby spiders were crawling out of her ear. She was always big on fables so I'm not sure how true it is.

Leslie · September 2003

Now that sounds like a Star Trek movie to me...or maybe she gave them the plot line!

JanH · September 2003

Funny how tales go around. I heard the one about the spiders; however, they were not in her ear. They were in her bee-hive hairdo that had been left up for weeks

Cloud Nine · September 2003

THIS ACTUALLY HAPPENED TO ME!
When I was a little girl - about 7 years old, I was playing in the back yard. At one point, I heard a buzzing in my ear and told my mom. My mother just patted me on the head and told me to go back out and play. After a few days, I was still complaining to my mom that I heard a buzzing in my ear. I guess she decided to appease me, so she heated up some oil, had me lay my head on the kitchen table, then proceeded to drop warm oil in my ear. All I heard was a VERY LOUD SCREAM - which disappeared down the hall. Ends up that a spider - about the size of a penny - sprawled itself outside the ear canal. The buzzing that I heard was it spinning a web. To this day - I have nightmares about spiders!
St. Cloud Proud

HS · September 2003

That reminds me of a story that I was told a number of years back: A person who licked an envelope got a paper cut on their tongue. A few days later they developed a bump. When it didn't get any better, they went to their doctor who immediately took care of the problem by lancing the sore open and cleaning it out. When the person asked the doctor what caused it, he asked if they really wanted to know. The story goes that they had roaches growing inside the sore. Apparently roaches like the glue on envelopes and lay their eggs there. Roaches also supposedly thrive in warm moist areas, hence the reason they grew inside the sore.

Even though I had a feeling the story couldn't be true, I haven't licked an envelope since!

rad · September 2003

Roaches are very resourceful little critters. Many babies have been brought into health centers screaming in pain, pulling at their ears. Mom thinks its an ear infection when its really a roach that crawled in baby's ear. Happens alot in housing projects, etc, where its hard to control the pest problems. When I was teaching for an anti-poverty program, I had one parent who put earplugs in the kids' ears before they went to bed at night to prevent this from happening.

Zanne · September 2003

If you click on the Urban Legends website - you'll see some explanation that these urban legends were originally "teaching" stories told to young people. They usually contained a "wrong doing" and there was a moral at the end. With each passage, the story probably got better and/or the moral was left out. With our technology today, these "teaching" stories have become urban legends and clog up our email.

But there is some validity:

Don't wash your beehive hairdo? You'll get spiders crawling in it.
Not careful about licking envelopes? Roaches - of course!
Teens necking on a deserted road? The one armed hook bandit will try to get you.

And oh yeah - the underage guy in Las Vegas? Lose a kidney!

Aren't those things enough to scare you to be good?

Zanne

JKK · September 2003

When I was living in London a friend's parents told me about a funeral they had gone to where the hearse bearing the coffin was really late getting to the cemetery for the burial. The widow was standing there laughing. When she was asked if she was okay she said yes, that her husband was always unpunctual, and her most frequent comment to him during their marriage was he'd be late for his own funeral, and he was proving her right.
Again, not sure if this is a true story but... apparently the hearse had gotten a flat tire on the way and the spare was kept in the back under the coffin, so they had to take the coffin out and put it on the sidewalk to change the tire!

fact or fiction? you decide.

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