Obviously nothing says you’ve had a great time on a business trip more than coming home missing an organ. You and all the other guys in the office can compare scars where your kidneys used to be and reminisce about “Good old Ralph”, who was stupid enough to let it happen to him twice.

And yet, as much fun as that situation sounds like, grim stories of commercial organ harvesting are turning out to be very real, although perhaps a little less sensationally dramatic than the popular urban legend version above.

News site Bloomberg recently ran a piece about organ gangs preying on people living in poverty, offering them cash in return for harvesting a healthy kidney.

Aliaksei Yafimau shudders at the memory of the burly thug who threatened to kill his relatives. Yafimau, who installs satellite television systems in Babrujsk, Belarus, answered an advertisement in 2010 offering easy money to anyone willing to sell a kidney.

This particular piece focused on a black market ring that was selling the harvested organs to Israeli patients desperately in need of kidney transplants, but other news items have also surfaced telling similar stories from other parts of the world.

The interesting folklore question [1] about this is: doesn’t the existence of a global black market in illegally harvested and transplanted organs make this Urban Legend true? I mean, doesn’t it?

The answer, as far as I’m concerned, is ‘Not really.’

…Okay, I can tell you’re a little disappointed, but let me explain.

To understand why this doesn’t exactly verify the Urban Legend, we need to consider that despite their similarities, these two stories are still quite different.

The Urban Legend version — a traveling businessman meets a pretty woman in a bar who seems instantly, probably even unexpectedly, attracted to him — is as much a morality story as anything else. In some versions of the story the businessman is married, and the consequences of his infidelity, and for being foolish enough to allow his personal safety to be compromised by the promise of a night with a pretty stranger, are predictably awful. It’s kind of like someone taking the “What happens in Vegas, stays in Vegas” thing to a whole new and disturbing level of literal interpretation.

The real-life stories are more conventional and mundane and, let’s face it, all the more sad and terrible because of it. The simple reality is that there are people in the world who are willing to sell a kidney due to poverty. And wait, there’s also the complexity of the organ transplant process to consider. The idea that people are randomly harvesting some stranger’s kidney in a hotel room on the premise that it might be used in a transplant within a very small timeframe is almost as unrealistic as when Kim Kardashian promises to stay married for longer than a week. For a transplant to be successful, matching between donor and recipient must be done before the operation can have any chance of success.

So, ya, I personally don’t consider the classic Urban Legend story to have been substantiated by these stories of black market organ harvesting rings. The randomness of the way in which people are targetted for harvesting is so much a part of the morality warning [2] of the Urban Legend version that the fact that it’s missing from the news stories means the Urban Legend stays ‘False’ for now.

Further Reading

• Organ Gangs Force Poor to Sell Kidneys for Desperate Israelis
• The Kidney Thieves
• Kidney Theft
• Requirements of a Kidney Donor

Footnotes:

1.	I promise, this really is interesting stuff to people who study contemporary folklore.
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2.	In other words, the “Dude, it could happen to you!” part of the story.
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Don’t stop for any reason. Whatever you do… DON’T STOP FOR ANY REASON!!

That’s the frantic advice being given by a chain email that made its way into my inbox today [1].

Your life depends on it.

You are not safe.

If you pull your car over, if you stop, you are going to become a victim of a gang robbery, rape or perhaps even murder.

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Email warnings about gang tactics and initiation rituals are nothing new. Not only have they been floating around the internet for a number of years, there is every likelihood they were shared via photocopiers and fax machines before email became the de facto way of forwarding alarming advice.

Over the years, we have been warned that gang members have begun to hide in the back seats of cars when motorists stop to fill up with gas, only to attack and murder the driver once he or she has arrived home.

We have been told to never flash our car lights back at someone who puts theirs onto high beam because a gang initiation ritual requires gang members to drive around at night flashing their headlights, and to pursue and murder the first motorist who flashes their lights back.

And we’ve been told about various gang initiation crimes centred on car parks and shopping malls, in which women and children are to be abducted and murdered by new members to a gang.

Now we have an email that claims that gangs have developed two new techniques:

• Leaving a baby / infant car seat by the side of the road to force concerned motorists to pull over to investigate
• Throwing eggs at windshields with the knowledge that if the motorist attempts to clean the egg off with their wipers he or she will make the situation worse and will be forced to pull over anyway

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Collected via email on 13 January 2011:

Subject: FW: Police warning when driving.!!

While driving on a rural end of the roadway on Thursday morning, I saw an infant car seat on the side of the road with a blanket draped over it.

For whatever reason, I did not stop, even though I had all kinds of thoughts running through my head. But when I got to my destination, I called the Police and they were going to check it out. But, this is what the Police advised even before they went out there to check….

"There are several things to be aware of … gangs and thieves are now
plotting different ways to get a person (mostly women) to stop their
vehicle and get out of the car.

"There is a gang initiation reported by the local Police where gangs are
placing a car seat by the road…with a fake baby in it…waiting for a woman, of course, to stop and check on the abandoned baby.

"Note that the location of this car seat is usually beside a wooded or grassy (field) area and the person — woman — will be dragged into the woods, beaten and raped, and usually left for dead. If it’s a man,
they’re usually beaten and robbed and maybe left for dead, too.

DO NOT STOP FOR ANY REASON!!!

DIAL 0-0-0 AND REPORT WHAT YOU SAW, BUT DON’T EVEN SLOW DOWN.

"IF YOU ARE DRIVING AT NIGHT AND EGGS ARE THROWN AT YOUR WINDSCREEN, DO NOT STOP TO CHECK THE CAR, DO NOT OPERATE THE WIPER AND DO NOT SPRAY ANY WATER BECAUSE EGGS MIXED
WITH WATER BECOME MILKY AND BLOCK YOUR VISION UP TO 92.5%, AND YOU ARE THEN FORCED TO STOP BESIDE THE ROAD AND BECOME A VICTIM OF THESE CRIMINALS.

THIS IS A NEW TECHNIQUE USED BY GANGS, SO PLEASE INFORM YOUR FRIENDS AND RELATIVES.

THESE ARE DESPERATE TIMES AND THESE ARE UNSAVOURY INDIVIDUALS WHO WILL TAKE DESPERATE MEASURES TO GET WHAT THEY WANT."

Please talk to your loved ones about this. This is a new tactic used. Please be safe.

Get started NOW — SEND THIS MESSAGE TO ALL YOUR FRIENDS AND LOVED ONES TO BE CAREFUL AND AWARE OF EVERYTHING AROUND THEM SO AS NOT TO BECOME A VICTIM.

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Thankfully, you only need to spend a couple of minutes on Google to turn up results that clearly indicate that this email is a hoax.

The DesMoines Register, for example, spoke to the DesMoines Police Department who confirmed that the email is a hoax.

The Tennessee Department Of Corrections issued a statement indicating that an employee had privately forwarded the email, but there was no evidence to consider it as true.

And of course the excellent reference sites of snopes.com and urbanlegends.about.com have both tagged the email as false.

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So, please be assured that there really is no widespread global [2] gang initiation ritual taking place in which infant car seats and eggs are being used to waylay motorists.

Footnotes:

1.	Thanks to Darren K
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2.	In case you’re interested, the example of the email that I have used above has been modified for an Australian audience – according to this list on Wikipedia, Australia is the only country that uses “000” as its emergency number.
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This is probably old news for some, but I thought I’d mention it as a friend on Facebook shared this video as being true.

It isn’t.

This video was produced by French marketing company, LastFools, for mobile accessory manufacturer, Cardo Systems, who make headset systems.

The video, of course, went viral, and while there are a lot of demonstrations on sites like YouTube that you can’t pop popcorn with mobile / cell phones (my favourite one demonstrates that you can ‘do’ the same thing with bananas), there are obviously people who are still encountering the original viral marketing campaign for the first time.

Further reading: Videos of ‘popcorn’ mobile phones faked

There’s an email that has been going around for some time that claims that if you enter your PIN number into an ATM in reverse, the transaction will be successful but the police will be notified that a crime is in progress.

The alleged idea behind the claim is that you can comply with a mugger’s demand to withdraw money from your account, yet still notify authorities that you are in trouble.

I received another version of this in my email today:

If you should ever be forced by a robber to withdraw money from an ATM machine, you can notify the police by entering your PIN # in reverse. For example, if your pin number is 1234, then you would put in 4321. The ATM system recognizes that your PIN number is backwards from the ATM card you placed in the machine. The machine will still give you the money you requested, but unknown to the robber, the police will be immediately dispatched to the location. All ATM’s carry this emergency sequencer by law.

This information was recently broadcast on by Crime Stoppers however it is seldom used because people just don’t know about it.

This is the kind of information people don’t mind receiving, so pass it on to your family and friends

Unfortunately, it’s simply not true. Typing your PIN in reverse into an ATM will simply have the same effect as deliberately typing the wrong PIN.

As explained by the Bankers’ Association Of Australia:

The PIN has only one function – to allow the customer to access their account – and it must be entered correctly each time and kept confidential.

If a customer enters a PIN in reverse they will receive an error message and be prompted to provide the correct PIN.

For more information: False information circulating on e-mail about PINs

Dies Infaustus

I was already aware of an old superstition regarding the ‘unluckiness’ of Fridays, particularly in the maritime industry.

It was once common for sailors to believe that voyages should never begin on a Friday, and should this superstition be ignored, the belief was that the voyage would be cursed with bad luck throughout its duration.

This superstition was so common that in one maritime book from the 19th Century, Friday was given the unofficial Latin name, “Dies Infaustus”, or “unlucky day”.

Ignore At Your Own Peril

What I wasn’t aware of – until I chanced upon it while reading about maritime superstitions – was an early Urban Legend that exploited this dire fear of Fridays.

According to the Legend, the Royal Navy, incensed that sailors considered Friday to be such an unlucky day, decided to categorically prove that a ‘Friday’ vessel would be no more unlucky than any other ship.

To do this they commissioned a ship to be built – it’s keel was laid on a Friday, it was named HMS Friday, it’s launch took place on a Friday, and it departed on its maiden voyage on a Friday. In one version, the Royal Navy even went so far as to put a Captain James Friday in charge of the ship for its maiden voyage.

As you might expect of such a Legend, HMS Friday set sail on its maiden voyage… and was never seen again…

Mysteries of the Deep?

Of course, tales of mysterious events at sea were common for the time in which this superstition would have been at its height, and it should come as no surprise that a tale would be spun to ‘prove’ the truth of the unlucky Friday superstition.

Thankfully, this Urban Legend can be laid to rest at the bottom of the ocean, since the Royal Navy has no record of a ship ever being commissioned with the name of HMS Friday.

Having said which, a true believer would probably argue that all the records of the vessel’s existence would have been destroyed by the Royal Navy to hide the scandal…

Further reading:

• HMS Friday, Wikipedia
• Naval Friday 13th myth unfounded, BBC News

Urban Legends are fascinating things – they can spread across the globe like wildfire, or they can occupy a small but important place in the culture of a local community.

At Drury University in Springfield, Missouri, there’s a story that is told to explain why the University cancelled its football program many years ago.

According to Dr Bill Garvin, a popular version goes something like this:

A persistent “campus legend” here at Drury is that Drury’s football program was canceled after a student was killed playing in a game.  One common variation of the story is that a rich alumnus was so horrified by the death of the student that she gave a million dollars to the college on the condition that Drury’s football program would be shut down.

There is something oddly charming to me in this tale. Yes, at it’s core, there’s the sad death of a young man, but there’s also the sense of an unofficial tradition of passing the story from one year to the next, until it has very probably outlived anyone who was alive at the time the tale is thought to have taken place.

Dr Bill Garvin again:

Like many urban legends, this campus legend does have a grain of truth to it. A Drury student was killed playing football in 1899. It would be decades, however, before Drury’s football team would be disbanded, and by that time the death of John C. Allen would be a faint memory.

Urban Legends often grow to fill a void, as though the collective conscious demands, even hungers for an explanation; any explanation. Of course, the truth is often much less stranger than fiction.

Dr Bill Garvin:

Campus legend to the contrary, the death of John Allen had no effect on the football program at Drury. The sport wasn’t dropped until 33 years later, after the 1932 season, when the hardships brought on by the Great Depression made it increasingly difficult for Drury College to field and fund a winning team.

I’m sure almost every institute of education has its own ecosystem of extraordinary explanations — if you happen on this post and you’d like to share a similar tale from your own days at university or college, please feel free to do so in the comments below!

Link to Dr Bill Garvin’s article: Reflections from the Past

You might not, however, immediately think of dentists.

And yet, according to a popular piece of ‘common knowledge’, dentists apparently suffer a suicide rate several times higher than any other profession, making dentistry one of the most dangerous professions out there, and not just because you spend all day with your hands in the mouths of people with questionable oral hygiene.

But is there any truth to it?

To get to the root of this particular urban legend, I turned to the wonderful pages of Cecil Adam’s Straight Dope column.

Cecil looked at this legend back in 2001, and his research indicated that dentists actually are likely to commit suicide at a rate slightly higher than the general population, however medical doctors reportedly had a higher suicide rate than dentists. Neither profession, however, was several times higher than the general suicide rate.

In all fairness, it’s difficult to be 100% accurate about comparative suicide rates. There is no central reporting and statistical analysis body responsible for maintaining these statistics, and not every person who sadly takes his or her own life will have his or her profession reported. But at least we can say that of the stats available, there isn’t some bizarre upward jump in suicide rates among dentists.

Interestingly enough, I’ve personally heard this same claim made about Air Traffic Controllers and Teachers, and the simple fact that there are multiple versions of this story floating around should give us enough reason to be at least cautious about its credibility.

Linkage: The Straight Dope – Do dentists have the highest suicide rate?

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Have you heard this story? Share your thoughts in the comments below.

Footnotes:

1.	Obviously I’m not being completely serious here. After all, what’s dangerous about being an astronaut?
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“ALL DOGS GO TO HEAVEN,” the first picture reads, but the second is quick to disagree: “ONLY HUMANS GO TO HEAVEN READ THE BIBLE”.

So begins what appears to be a rather quirky theological debate about the souls of dogs (and eventually of rocks!), carried out entirely on church signs.

But, we ask ourselves, is it real? Did the religious communities represented by Our Lady of Martyrs Catholic Church and Beulah Cumberland Presbyterian Church really go to war with each other over whether or not pets can go to paradise?

As it happens, the answer is no, they didn’t…

It was a funny email, one that made me laugh out loud when it bounced into my email inbox a couple of weeks ago. The text went something like this:

At first glance it seemed like a charming and harmless little disagreement, the type of which you might have encountered on an episode of The Vicar Of Dibley.

The photos themselves seem realistic enough — there’s little doubt that we’re looking at pictures of real church signs. But if the signs themselves look real, it turns out that the words on them aren’t.

The detail that made me suspicious at first was the fact that the pictures of each sign appear to have been taken from exactly the same position in all of the frames.

In an of itself, this detail alone would be hard to pull off without some very careful setting up. Even a slight difference between a picture of one sign and the next picture of that sign would potentially stand out.

Not only that, but the pictures also appear to have been taken at the exact same time of day with, in the case of Our Lady of Martyrs Catholic Church, the exact same cars in the background, on the left, in every picture!

So, we can be reasonably certain, just on these details alone, that the images have been faked. It’s much more likely that the same images are being used for each message. However, to make absolutely certain, we head to the intertubes!

One quick Google search later and the top result returned is a site called “Church Sign Generator“. [1]

As it happens, this is a novelty web site that allows visitors to create their own messages on a variety of ‘stock image’ church signs — including images of the signs outside Our Lady of Martyrs and Beulah Cumberland Presbyterian Church.

Normally the Church Sign Generator web site stamps the images it creates with its web address, but whoever was responsible for the “All Dogs Go To Heaven” strip also covered his or her tracks by removing this clue.

Conclusion

Pretty much an open-and-shut case. Someone discovered the Church Sign Generator web site, created an amusing disagreement between two churches on the matter of dogs and rocks and whether or not they can get into heaven, and an Internet Meme was born!

It’s worth mentioning that we could have attacked this particular project from at least one other direction. If we had been able to establish that Our Lady of Martyrs and Beulah Cumberland Presbyterian Church don’t belong to the same community, then the likelihood of a public disagreement of this nature — where claims are being made back and forth — would probably be very slim.

And there you have it! Personally, I don’t know if dogs do go to heaven or not, but I do believe one thing I’ve seen printed on a (fake) church sign:

Footnotes:

1.	You can view a PDF screengrab here, in case the site itself is ever taken offline.
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Barry Williams, Supreme Universal Skeptic Of The 12th Magisterial Order [1], has sent in another interesting variant of the infamous Nigerian Scam.

As Barry mentions in his email:

Murray

I despair for the continuing deterioration of literacy among barristers admitted to the bar in the UK.

Barry

I can understand Barry’s emotional distress, since the email asks you to believe that it has been sent by a barrister located in the UK, while simultaneously being pockmarked with a truly impressive variety of misspellings and grammatical errors.

Aside from the UK barrister detail, this variant is pretty standard for a Nigerian Scam:

• Someone has passed away who had access to buckets of money
• The person who now has access to the money needs a co-conspirator to get the money out of the country
• The reward for being of help is generous beyond all expectation (35% of $9.5 million is $3.3 million and some small change — not a bad return if the money ever existed)
• You need to supply your contact details so further details can be sent

Of course, what really happens if you send your details is a complex confidence game in which you are constantly promised that you are about to receive a very large sum of money but not before some ‘unexpected fees’ are paid, to which you will be asked to contribute. Once these ‘fees’ are paid, more ‘fees’ will arise, and still more, until you are unwilling or, in many cases, unable to provide any more money into the scam.

Footnotes:

1.	And owner-operator of the Barry Williams Blog.
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If you’re a fan of scary stories about the Bloody Mary ritual, you might enjoy resonanttantei’s fun retelling of a group of friends calling on Bloody Mary, and the terrifying results.

You can read the full story at: “Bloody Mary Bloody Mary Bloody Mary….oh crap” (note: language may be a little unsuitable to some in some places).

After a while, we summoned up our courage and went back to school, went into the bathrooms and of course, since I’m the “Legend Tripper” I had to say what we do.

I liked resonanttantei’s idea of being a “Legend Tripper”, and while I don’t know exactly what he intended to convey with the term, I thought it was perhaps meant to be a way of describing someone who’s something of an expert in various legends, but who also may be just a little bit unpredictable with it as well.

Jake being the bravest, looked up and his eyes went BIG. I looked up as well, I gasped and I almost screamed. Cori took her hand and covered mine. “Don’t scream, don’t..” She said to me.

Photograph courtesy of peskymac