The worst thing about DragonCon—other than the way too many people thing—is that it’s on the exact same weekend as the WNBA conference finals. I missed seeing Phoenix sweep San Antonio (woo hoo! Amy—sorry, Rebecca) and will miss all the Indiana-Detroit games (please Indiana win tonight!)
Seeing all those insanely brilliant costumes is some compensation I suppose. Riding on the train with Holly, Theo, Cassandra, Maureen and Scott ditto. Sitting around in a hotel room with them telling ghost stories also not too foul.
Which reminds me what are your favourite urban legends? Feel free to leave a link in the comments if you don’t feel like telling the whole thing. So far we’ve done the finger nails one, the hook, the headless roommate, the evil clown statue, and the finger licker.
So cute!!!! 🙂
i mad a mistake. i meant that the little girl aws cute.
the urban leggend i like best is the tonsil one.
*sniff*
The vanishing hitchhiker is one of my favourites, partly because it’s infinitely adaptable–and because I think it’s cool that the earliest recorded version goes back to ancient Rome.
The Vanishing Hitchhiker, because it scared me when I was a teenager/in my early 20s… there’s a particular point on a road near Frome in Somerset said to have had a vh and when I had to drive that bit of road very late at night I was properly spooked. Any real hitchhiker or walker or local messing about might have got run over in panic if there’d been one about… lucky I didn’t see anybody.
On another, bigger stretch of road nearby I had an odd moment at about 2am one night, when it was slightly foggy. Backlit by a distant car’s headlights coming my way, I could make out lots of skinny legs and big gleaming eyes in the middle of the road. Looked like the end of Close Encounters, and I couldn’t make it out – till I got closer and saw it was a herd of cows that had escaped from their field and were milling about in the road looking confused.
I’ve always been a fan of the travelling garden gnome story.
A family gets up one morning to find that a favourite garden gnome is missing from their front yard. Over the following weeks they receive a series of postcards and photos showing the gnome on the beach, by the pool, at the casino and so on, having a damn good time on holiday. Some time later the gnome reappears in the front yard, none the worse for wear, surrounded by little presents for the family. First heard this one in Adelaide when I was at university, which would make it the mid-70s. And, given the presence of the gnomes in the story, may make it a particularly Australian urban myth.
I like the babysitter one, because I am always sitting for my family. I hate it when the phones ring, so I unplug then all and make the little ones sleep in the living room with me. They love it when I start getting really paranoid.
My favorite: there are alligators in the sewers of New York City.
Then again, I love all legends dealing with NYC.
[Paul Dickson and Joseph C. Goulden. 1983. There are alligators in
our sewers and other American credos: a collection of bunk, nonsense,
and fables we believe. (New York: Delacorte Press)]