Urban legend

Walt Disney's human remains are kept in a niche along with his family's. He was never chryogenized or, as it is said, “freeze”. This statement is one of the most persistent urban legends.

There are very few urban legends that have ever happened. One of them is a marriage that has forgotten your son at a gas station.

The urban legend (from English: urban legend) is a story belonging to contemporary folklore; It is a type of legend or popular belief, sometimes related to a type of superstition, which, despite containing supernatural or improbable elements, is presented as real events that have occurred today. Some are based on real facts, but these are exaggerated, distorted or mixed with fictitious data. They circulate through word of mouth, email or the media such as the press, radio, television or the Internet. They usually have a "moral" as their background.

The same urban legend can have an infinite number of versions, generally located in the environment of those who narrate and receive them. Due to their adaptation to industrial society and the modern world, they are classified as "urban", which opposes them to those legends that, having been believed in the past, have lost their validity and are identified with past eras. Often, the narrator claims that the protagonists of the urban legend were acquaintances or relatives of someone close. For this reason, in English they are also known as FOAFT (friend of a friend tales: "stories of a friend's friend").

When an urban legend reaches a certain relevant political, social or economic impact, then it is considered a conspiracy theory.

Origin

The term was coined in 1968 by American folklorist Richard Dorson, who defined an urban legend as a modern story "that has never happened, told as if it were true". Also noteworthy is Jan Harold Brunvand, who has contributed decisively to popularize this term among the general public through his books.

Perhaps the most convincing theory on the etiology of this type of legend is that of the German philosopher Karl Hepfer in Conspiracy Theories: A Philosophical Critique of Unreason, who, wondering about the rise of conspiracy theories in Europe, he noticed that most of them responded to "simplified models of interpretation of reality", or attempts to return to a previous state of our culture in which reality was supposedly easy to understand, and its actors, good or bad. Consequently, these stories usually have two sides, one incomprehensible or terrifying and the other explanatory and simplifying that reassures.

The stories in question are given various names by those who use and disseminate them. Among journalists there is talk of hoaxes, or factoids. On the Internet, from hoax. At first, it is possible to clearly distinguish them from the so-called tall tales or understated hyperboles, such as rhombuses or hyperbolic exaggerations such as the Chuck Norris Facts, a popular genre of so-called cork and Internet literature. similar to the old courtly amusements of the 16th and 17th centuries, conscious braggadocios that sought to amuse as parlor games equivalent to trolas or bolas or even the classic Bernardines. They are distinguished from these humorous genres in that they are not courteously intended to amuse or distract.

In Cuba they are known as «cuentos de camino» or «bolas», in Peru and Colombia they are simply called «cuentos» or «mitos». Among the scholars themselves, there is no shortage of those who prefer to classify them as plain "legends", considering that their function continues to be that of this genre. Also this kind of legends expand in all territories and countries making it go viral and people can start believing it.

Features

From Catherine II of Russia it is said that she died as she was penetrated by a horse. According to several authors, Catherine's promiscuous image was disclosed by those who envied a woman at that time to concentrate so much power, accompanied by brilliant management.

Among the main characteristics of urban legends are:

• It is born of a popular belief.
• Related to some superstition and a real base, in general space.
• They have several versions because they are transmitted either or through the media, such as social media or television.
• They usually have a teaching or morale, adapted to the culture of the place.
• They emerge in urban environments and are relatively new.
• They do not relate to religious beliefs or ancient cultures.
• They are narrated as true stories.
• It has a basis of mystery and intrigue, and there is no rational answer.
• They are fantastic stories, their main component is the inexplicable.
• Generally, these types of accounts go from generation to generation and there are usually several versions of each of them. Some are built on the basis of real but distorted facts, exaggerated and mixed with some fiction or fantasy and are being extended thanks to their initial dissemination of mouth in mouth and today through media, internet and social networks. Urban legends usually leave us a morale or teaching and almost always those who narrate them modify them slightly or version them to adapt them to the culture or idiosyncrasy of the place where they are counted or disseminated, hence there are countless versions of the same story, depending on the region or country in question. The fact that these accounts have been adapted or appropriate, so to speak, to the industrial societies is what the difference of the legends that have been the subject of belief in the past but that today have lost validity and are considered outside the context. Almost always those who narrate the urban legends ensure that the protagonists of their story are familiar or acquaintances of some close person and hence that in English they are also known under the acronym FOAFT that translated into Spanish means stories of a friend's friend. Perhaps one of the most important features of this type of story is that in order to become an urban legend, a fictional story must be spread spontaneously as true and that its information reaches a certain popular recognition. Read also: Legend of King Arthur likewise must possess international character. Due to the adequacy of this new industrial society, they receive this qualification of Leyenda Urbana, which oppose those legends of the past who have somehow lost their validity, being catalogued as events of past times. For a fictional history to become an urban legend, it must be spread spontaneously, as a true and characteristic of an international character. Urban legend can be inspired by almost any source, but it must have an element that causes mystery and is incomprehensible. Its structure is much more complex than rumors or gossip. Usually these stories somehow alert us to those potential dangers that can be laid in our lives. Urban legends are often counted as true or at least credible facts. Since the end of the centuryXX., the Internet has helped to promote the dissemination of many urban legends, via e-mail or through web-page publications, who in the same way add many phrases with alerts about events that could happen to you in your daily life.

Examples of Urban Legends

Paranormal phenomena

Slender Man, unlike the spectre of the mirror and the ghost autostopist, is a newly emerged legend.

Two of the most widespread urban legends are those of the ghost in the mirror (commonly known as "Verónica" in Spanish and "Bloody Mary" in English) and the hitchhiker ghost, both of which are spread around the world and have long since disappeared. modernized over time. Thus, the legend of the ghost hitchhiker has its precedent in stories in which the girl did not get into a carriage, but stopped the riders and got on the back of their horses (as happens, for example, in the Romance of the Infantina).

Other legends that relate sinister events, most of the time related to Technology, are also popular on the Internet. Some examples are the creepypastas (or internet legends), among which are:

• Slender Man (“Slender Man” in Spanish), an entity with long and faceless arms that makes people disappear.
• Jeff The Killer, sinister serial killer, with a horrible face burned and deformed, the product of a bloody fight, of which mysteriously survived.
• A supposedly nicknamed "The Rake" (similar to the cocksucker) of which some alleged sightings have been reported.

Health

Julius Caesar's popularity led the crowd to believe that he was born by caesarean, giving his name to this surgical technique.

Urban legends, especially those relating to health issues, are not necessarily recent, and are propagated largely due to the general population's lack of medical knowledge.

• One of the oldest urban legends says that the caesarean (abdominal surgery to extract the baby from the womb) owes its name to the fact that the Roman dictator Julio César was born by this method. Something improbable considering that his mother survived a birth that took place in the year 100 before Christ, long before the first successful caesarean section of which there is a record, which took place in the year 1500 after Christ. The Caesarean receives its name from the Lex Caesareaa law enacted in 715 a. C. by the Roman king Numa Pompilio, who forced to save the lives of the fetuses of women who died during pregnancy or childbirth, through a cut in the womb, precursor of the present Caesarean section. The name of the law and the popularity of the character of Julius Caesar have deformed reality by creating a legend that lasts until today.

• Urban legends related to organ trafficking have been widely disseminated. Most of them deal with people who have been kidnapped with the only purpose of removing a kidney after attending a party or consuming some drugs, usually in an uncompromising place. The possible morale of this urban legend is that one should not trust the unknown.

• Another urban legend of clearly moralizing tone speaks of a man who travels to Rio de Janeiro on vacation and gives free rein to all his desires, arriving to have sex with a mulata that he would have known. After waking up in the hotel room he realizes that his companion is no longer there, and fearing an eventual theft checks his personal belongings finding everything in order. But when he went to the bathroom he found a message in the mirror written with lipstick that says "Welcome to the AIDS Club." This myth has several versions in which the one affected by a woman is changed to whom a very attractive man with whom he had sex gives him a box with a gift; when he leaves she opens the gift box, finding a black rose and a paper with the same message.

• It is also said that there are those who have left needles supposedly infected in cinema armchairs and between the sand of the beaches, always accompanied with a paper with the same message. All these legends emerged at a time of greater ignorance regarding the prevention and contagion of this disease, clearly pretends to leave a moralizing message to persuade the listener not to have sex with strangers. This—assumed that there is no record of a real fact— leads to the conclusion that it would be another of the many urban legends.

• About chickenpox, measles and other infectious diseases, and their desirability to suffer in childhood, when complications are less than in adulthood, urban legends of infected children's parents have arisen that contagulate or recommend to connect the entire class of the school or its group of known children, so that all of them experience chickenpox as soon as possible.

• At the end of the centuryXX. There appeared an urban legend about the Progesterex, a supposed sedative of extreme power that causes a permanent sterilization to those who take it, and that would have been administered by rapists to numb their victims. Today there is no drug that causes irreversible chemical castration.

• Nowadays, thoroughly washing the cans of beverages before consumption is a common practice, although there are many people who think it should be done because they could have been contaminated by rats and their excreta in the warehouses. An urban legend states that in Texas, the U.S., a woman died of leptospirosis in this way. In fact, cans are stored in plastic wrappers, which prevents this bacteria, or any other microorganism, from coming in direct contact with them.

• The brown note is the name given to a frequency of infrasounds that would supposedly produce laxative effects on the human being. The origin of this legend could be in the knowledge that the infrasounds are used to provoke reactions in people, as was done, for example, in the Irreversible film, which included infrasounds in their footage to disconcert the viewer.

Other legends spread about health are:

• the rule of five seconds, by which if food falls or covered to the ground, these are not contaminated by bacteria if collected before 5 seconds.
• Explosive breasts, very widespread and affecting celebrities operated with silicone, for which one of those artificial breasts exploded on a plane trip high by air pressure.
• the myth of 10% of the brain, that humans use only ten percent of our brain.

Food

There are dozens of urban legends about Coca-Cola.

There are numerous legends about Coca-Cola and its properties. It has been said of this product that its "secret formula" is capable of decomposing pieces of meat, that it unclogs pipes, that it is used to loosen screws, cleans grease stains on clothes and is a powerful spermicide. This has all been shown to be part of urban legend.

Many people also believe that in the United States a test was carried out in a cinema to market the drink, based on subliminal messages. The alleged experiment would have been carried out by James Vicary in 1957 and consisted of including one or two frames per minute with the mark. In 1962 Vicary was interviewed by Advertising Age magazine and stated that the experiment was actually a lie that was carried out because his company was having difficulties. economic. Therefore, neither the performance of the test nor its results can be stated with certainty.

Celebrities

Dead or alive

Some urban legends, bordering on rumor, refer to famous people.

• This is the case of the alleged death of Paul McCartney (the Beatles ex-bajist) in a traffic accident in 1966, after which a double was replaced. The fans thought they found evidence of the fact in the songs and covers of the albums after that year.
• It has also been said that Josh Saviano, an actor who appeared in the series Those wonderful years (1988-1993), was actually the singer Marilyn Manson.

A very common legend about dead celebrities is that they really are still alive.

• It has been claimed that Princess Diana of Wales or musicians like Elvis Presley, Jim Morrison, Jimi Hendrix, Michael Jackson and Pedro Infante remain alive.
• Also, it is said in Argentina that Alfredo Yabrán (1944-1998), a businessman of that country, would not really have committed suicide as they demonstrated the autopsies carried out to the body but would have mounted a body to make it look like it, arguing that with the power and money he owned he should have escaped from the country (he had a serious judicial case against him).
• Something similar happened in Spain following the death of Jesús Gil, businessman, politician and owner of the Madrid Atlético football club, in 2004. It was speculated that his death had not been real and had fled to Venezuela to escape his criminal responsibilities for corruption and misappropriation, among others.

Sometimes the opposite happens and the urban legend affirms that a person who is really still alive has died, this is the case of the Panamanian singer Lorna. Since 2003, in which she achieved success with her reggaeton "Papichulo", the belief spread that Lorna died of an overdose, totally unfounded and denied, since the last album of this singer was published in 2009 and in 2017 collaborated with Kiko Rivera on the song "Sane judgment".

One of the most famous urban legends about famous people is that of Walt Disney's supposed cryogenics. Very shortly after his death in 1966 (already in 1969 it was reflected in a magazine) a rumor arose that Disney's body had been cryogenized until such time as scientific advances could bring him back to life. It is a completely false legend, since there is evidence of both the death of Disney and his subsequent cremation. The origin of the rumor is not clear. At least two Disney biographers, Leonard Mosley (Disney's World: A Biography, 1985) and Marc Eliot (Walt Disney: Hollywood's Dark Prince: A Biography, 1993) mention Disney's interest in cryonics in the last years of his life, although they do not provide specific sources. It is impossible to know for sure if this interest existed, in which case it may have been the origin of the legend. On the other hand, the fact that the cremation was carried out in a strictly private sphere could fuel speculation. It should also be taken into account that Disney was known, especially in his later years, for his interest in technological innovations.

Another urban legend states that the Spanish dictator Francisco Franco is buried upside down, facing the ground, so that if he revived and tried to dig out, he would do so into the earth and not return to the surface.

An urban legend erroneously claims that French physician and politician Joseph-Ignace Guillotin invented the guillotine, and that he was later executed with it. Guillotin is famous for suggesting this instrument, already existing in Central Europe since the Middle Ages, for all performances in France, which led to the popular naming of this device after him. Josep-Ignace Guillotin died a natural death. The belief that he died on the guillotine stems from the fact that another man, also named Guillotin and a doctor by profession, was executed with her.

It is said that the Spanish scientist and religious Miguel Servetus was sentenced to the stake for discovering the circulation of blood, which was considered heresy by the Inquisition. It is true that Servetus made advances in this field and was executed at the stake, but both events are not related and that was not the cause of his prosecution.

TV appearances or interviews

Rumor on the apparition of Ricky Martin in the program Surprise, surprise is one of the best known urban legends in Spain.

Another widespread urban legend in Spain is the supposed incident of the television program, presented by Concha Velasco, Sorpresa, sorpresa in the nineties. It was said that the singer Ricky Martin, the idol of a girl he intended to surprise by coming out of the closet in her room, found the girl smeared with jam, ice cream or other food playing an erotic game with her dog. Said situation did not actually happen and of course there are no images, although many people claimed to have seen said scene. States, where, a woman is surprised with a surprise party at her house while she was covered in peanut butter and was eagerly licked by her dog. The folklorist Jan Harold Brunvand (who cites the concept of this story in the chapter «Sexual Adventures» of his work The Fabulous Book of Urban Legends) affirms that generally Urban legends, as they are told from one person to another, tend to dilute or even exaggerate the details that characterize the story, with this example going from being an embarrassing anecdote apart from the career of a famous singer.

In the same style is an urban legend about the Basque musical group La Oreja de Van Gogh. Supposedly this band, in an interview on a Pedro Ruiz program, had acknowledged that it sympathized with and supported the terrorist group ETA, something that has been denied by the singers themselves.

Others

It is said of Steve Jobs, founder of Apple, that he could not stand going in the elevator in the company's offices accompanied by people outside his conversations. According to testimonies, getting on the elevator with him without his authorization was punishable by dismissal.

Places

Some places, real or supposed, that are owned by national governments, have given rise to urban legends, due to the little information or secrecy that exists around them. Area 51, a Nevada military air base in the United States, is one of them. The purpose of this base is secret and access to visitors or the press is not allowed, which has led to the appearance of various assumptions for it, such as the development of weapons of mass destruction and the storage of spaceships and alien corpses. they would have crashed on Earth.

For its part, the Russian government has never confirmed or denied the existence of the alleged Moscow Metro-2, a secret underground railway that would link key points in the Russian capital and serve as emergency communication for high-ranking political and military officials.

Another legend states that there are no roundabouts in the entire United States. This type of road crossing was never popular in that country and it is true that they did not begin to be installed until the 1990s.

It is said that Madrid's Cerro del Tío Pío park was planted on top of a huge landfill, which explains why its prominent hills, the only ones in the area, are actually mountains of rubbish. This is only partly true, as only a small portion of the park was previously used as a landfill.

Time Travel

"The Hipster of Time", is an example of urban legends about time travel.

Stories of people supposedly traveling through time have always surfaced, reported by the press and circulated on the internet. Many of these reports have turned out to be hoaxes or were based on incorrect assumptions, incomplete information, or the interpretation of works of fiction as fact.

There are also cases of Ooparts, which are objects that appear out of time, belonging to a time that is not yours and therefore indirectly indicating that someone placed those artifacts there. An example is an alleged smartphone in a 1995 Tyson match. However, it is noted that the object is a type of Japanese camera that had begun to be commercialized at that time.

International competitions

There is a myth that, in 1907, the Chilean flag would have won an international contest for "the most beautiful national flag in the world." Supposedly, two Chilean families (Baehcker and Casas) would have arrived at the Blankenberghe [sic] resort (in Belgium), while they were visiting some towns on the Baltic Sea coasts as part of their vacations. Upon arriving in said city, they found this contest and decided to participate, with the surprise of winning among a multitude of emblems. Another version says that it was in the XIX century, and another gives it second place, after the flag of France; still other variations of the myth indicate the National Anthem of Chile as the winner of a similar contest, or give it second place, after La Marseillaise and third place to the National Anthem of The Savior. The number of different versions of this myth, the lack of independent sources, the mistake of the mentioned locality (which is located next to the North Sea and not the Baltic Sea) and the similarity of this legend with some similar ones in other countries arouse serious doubts that it actually happened, establishing itself only as a myth.

Technology

Television

There is a legend that in the last chapter of Doraemon the protagonist Nobita wakes up and discovers that it was all a dream. The truth is that the series does not have a final chapter because its creator died before thinking how to end the series.

Something similar happens to the anime series Super Champions, in which Oliver would actually be in a hospital dreaming of impossible matches since he has amputated legs because he was supposedly run over.

Internet

With the use of the Internet, more legends have been created, usually on topics related to technology. Among the most popular urban legends about the Internet are those related to new technologies. This is the case of the legend about the Bloods gang, that of the website Blindmaiden.com that supposedly those who visit it risk death by having their eyes gouged out by the sinister specter of a blind woman, or the from a time traveler, John Titor, who supposedly communicated with someone on mIRC and revealed events from the future.

Other notable ones are

• The Suicide of Calamardo (an alleged lost chapter of SpongeBob) in which Calamardo is supposed to commit suicide after one of his many failed concerts.
• the famous “Herobrine” Minecraftwhich is said to be Notch's dead brother who is the creator of the video game.
• "SuicideMouse.AVI", a video by Mickey Mouse where the image is deformed, the sound is poor, with perpetual shouts and hidden messages.

Video Games

Polybius It is an alleged video game of the 1980s that drives the suicide of anyone who plays it.

One of the best-known urban legends about video games is the one that affirms the existence of Polybius. According to the story, the game was released to the public in 1981, causing devastating effects to the players such as insanity, stress, and horrible nightmares. Shortly after its release, the game disappeared without a trace. There is still no proof that this game actually existed. Some believe that the game was made on behalf of the United States government to stop minors from playing video games.

There are several urban legends spread on the Internet, known as creepypastas or creepypaste (from English creepy, horrifying) created in order to terrify the reader. A very prominent legend is «Tails Doll», a secret character from the video game Sonic R, which after being unlocked, supposedly causes a series of diseases or psychological disorders, such as the phrase being heard during sleep "Can you feel the Sunshine?" (from the game's soundtrack), ending with death (it is the best-known and most famous urban legend in the United States besides Slender Man).

Some of these legends are about altered game cartridges. One example is "BEN Drowned", an alleged haunted cartridge from The Legend of Zelda: Majora's Mask, once owned by a boy who was accidentally drowned. This cartridge would supposedly malfunction, displaying erroneous and corrupted elements on the screen to drive the player crazy. Another case is "Pokémon Black". Unrelated to the official game, it would be a supposed hack of Pokémon Red and Blue, in which the player trains a ghost that, instead of simply knocking out opposing Pokémon, as it happens in the games real ones, he literally kills them, and he also murders the rival trainers. This story tries to moralize about the trivialization of violence in video games.

Another current example is the theory that copies of Super Mario 64 have an A.I. of customization that makes the game terrifying. This legend is also associated with one in which it is said that Wario appears in the game as a giant head that tries to catch Mario. Despite the fact that Wario is not terrifying and the idea could be taken as a Meme, it is said that those who witnessed his appearance died of a stroke and, if they survived, they would have taken a great fear of the character and the game in general.. The theory also explains that the apparition only appears in certain copies, in a different way, and that it has no effect if the player quickly turns off the console, otherwise the consequences would be fatal and it would be possible for Wario to go through the Fourth. wall and enter real life. Obviously this theory is false and Wario's head originated at E3 1996, played by his voice actor, Charles Martinet.

Literature

Urban legends are common in literature. One holds that the unpublished works of William Shakespeare lie with him in his grave, or that his works are actually by other authors. Another legend is that Cervantes and Shakespeare were actually the same person.

The erroneous attribution of a text entitled Instantes to the Argentine writer Jorge Luis Borges has also acquired the characteristics of an urban legend.

Similarly, the Spanish author Arturo Pérez-Reverte has repeatedly had to deny the authorship of the text «¡Indecentes!» and other similar ones that have been attributed to him on occasions.

Another well-known example of misattributed text is the poem First They Came... by Martin Niemöller, which many people mistakenly believe to have been written by Bertolt Brecht

Economy

There are also urban legends in economics. In Spain and other Western countries, the erroneous belief is widespread that in Japan, during its real estate bubble between 1980 and 1990, banks granted 90 and 100-year mortgage loans, whose responsibilities would pass from father to son. The widespread belief is that the King of Spain always bets on the number 00,000 of the Christmas Lottery, or that the monarch charges a commission for each barrel of oil imported into the country; something that has never been confirmed or denied by the Casa Real. For more than twenty years there have been rumors that in Spain, in times of crisis and moments in which the State lacked liquidity, companies such as El Corte Inglés, Mercadona or ONCE had paid the salaries of civil servants in exchange for futures. government favors. Another belief is that bars in Barcelona charge one euro for a glass of tap water; possibly the origin of it is in the stereotypes about the supposed stinginess of the Catalans.

The Japanese strike would be a type of union protest in which workers overproduce, with the aim of bankrupting the company when it is impossible to sell all production. Stock prices would fall due to excess supply and the company would have to face extraordinary expenses to store unsold products.

The railways in Spain were built on a gauge of 1668 mm, slightly higher than the European standard of 1435 mm. This measure was taken in principle so that in Spain, a mountainous country compared to the plains of Central Europe, wider and more powerful locomotives could circulate. Although the problem of the power of the locomotives could have been solved with longer machines, the urban legend resides in the belief that the different gauge was implemented as a military defense measure, to prevent a possible invasion of Spain by rail from France. So, in the middle of the XIX century, the Napoleonic invasion was still recent. This belief was popularized in Spanish society by becoming a self-fulfilling prophecy, since it would have been impossible for Nazi Germany, whose domain reached as far as the Pyrenees, to enter Spain by train in the event that the Nazi regime decided to invade the Iberian country. something that never happened.

Sports

In sport, the retransmission of controversial scenes or vandalism in stadiums has much more public repercussion than the resolution and sentencing thereof, which produces misinformation or leads to errors in the media and, ultimately, instance, to the spectators and fans. F. C. Barcelona has had to deny that it still had to comply with some sanctions that were imposed on it years ago, including the ban on playing the Copa del Rey for a year for refusing to play a match against Atlético de Madrid (the club did not have eleven players that day, since most of the squad was called up with their national teams), or the closure of the Camp Nou for two games due to the throwing of objects onto the field in a duel against Real Madrid, in which it was called the suckling pig party. In the first case, the club was pardoned, with the RFEF admitting its mistake for setting the match on a day when there were national team competitions; in the second, the closure of the stadium was replaced by a fine of 4,000 euros.

Despite these clarifications, there are journalists who for years have been warning of a conspiracy by the RFEF and its then president, Ángel María Villar, to favor FC Barcelona in sports (see El villarato). Another theory is that in certain soccer draws (such as the Champions League) there are hot (or cold) balls, with different weights or roughness, so that the person who has to put their hand in knows which one to choose (to benefit a team in a tie because their rival is weaker), with Real Madrid being one of the main defendants.

The passing of the years also causes legends or invented stories to emerge about incredible feats of athletes. For example, the one that affirms that Muggsy Bogues, basketball player for the Charlotte Hornets, the shortest player in NBA history (1.60 m), made the only dunk of his career on December 4, 1990, in a game against the Washington Bullets. Something that actually did not happen, since these two teams did not play any games that day. Bogues never reached the hoop, located 3.05 m tall. The shortest player who managed to dunk was Spud Webb, who is 1.67 meters tall. Another popular legend in Spain is that Miguel Induráin indirectly confessed that he was doping to the journalist José María García in one of his radio programs.

Insecurity

Many urban legends have to do with crime or events that can generate and spread a sense of fear in a community.

• For example, for decades the alarm arises in different places at the appearance of a white van that kidnaps children at the door of a school.
• It also reappears every certain time the story of a family that loses sight of their child in a shopping center, warns the guards, who close the doors, and eventually find the child in the bathrooms, with their heads shaved and different clothes.
• During the 1990s, the legend was very popular that among the chairs of the cinema there were syringe contaminated with HIV, that people were nailed to sit without seeing them for being dark.
• In the summer of 2022 there was widespread fear that there would be people in nightclubs and other nightclubs injecting some kind of narcotic substance to women to annul their will in order to rob or abuse them.

Others

Other noted urban legends are:

• That Taiwanese eat baby fetuses.
• that in the sewers of New York live blind crocodiles.
• you can see the Great Wall of China from space.
• that mobiles can cause the explosion of a gas tank.
• that scientists eat babies.
• That there was the so-called Momo Fall that supposedly induced children to suicide.
• That they could bottle felines to create what was known as bonsai cats.