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

It may not look like it on the surface, but at its core [2] this is a very big topic. If you think about it, apples have featured in one way or another in a vast body of religion, mythology, superstition, fables and folk wisdom.

I won’t try to tackle all of this in one post, that would be madness. However, over the next little while I hope to put a few articles up on ulblog exploring the interesting world of the apple.

But for now, let’s start with one of the stories that takes place at the beginning of everything.

In the beginning…

Most people reading this blog will be familiar with the Old Testament story of Adam and Eve, and their expulsion from The Garden Of Eden for eating the fruit of The Tree Of Knowledge.

In popular tradition, the fruit that was at the centre of humanity’s fall from grace is usually represented as our friend the apple, but did you know that the early writers of the Old Testament probably had another fruit in mind?

The Book Of Genesis never mentions the name of the fruit from which Adam and Eve ate, and while apples feature later in the Old Testament [3], Biblical scholars think that the fruit originally used to symbolise forbidden knowledge might more readily have been the fig, or grapes or one of several other more likely suspects [4].

It’s a bum wrap, see…

So why did the apple go on to become the fruit we all associate with the story of Adam and Eve?

Unfortunately, we don’t really know.

Some scholars suggest that it was simply the product of a rather obvious pun in Latin — the Latin word for apple is malum, while the Latin word for evil is malus [5]. So, it’s possible that the coincidental similarity between these two words made it easy for early Latin theologians to associate the fruit with the original sin [6] [7].

Other scholars have suggested that since the apple was a prized and often expensive fruit in the Mediterranean during the time in which Christianity was gaining ground and in which the Bible was being translated into European languages, it became natural to associate the irresistible temptation that led to humanity’s downfall with the rather delicious fruit.

The biggest eviction since last year’s Big Brother Finale!

We’ll probably never know exactly why the apple became intrinsically associated with the story of Adam and Eve and The Garden Of Eden.

Still, it’s kind of fun, when you’re biting into a juicy apple, to think about how this fruit went from being a law-abiding, upstanding member of the orchard, to being implicated in the greatest scandal the Old Testament ever knew, and all on hearsay evidence and faulty testimony!

The next post in this series will explore the ugly side of apples, in “The Bad Apple.”

Footnotes:

1.	It was a Pink Lady, in case you’re interested. Pink Ladies have a very tart flavour and are one of my favourite apple varieties.
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2.	Aha ahahahah, bad apple pun intended! …Sorry.
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3.	See Proverbs 25:12.
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4.	See The Straight Dope: Was the forbidden fruit in the Garden of Eden an apple?
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5.	See Wikipedia.org: Apple.
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6.	See Wikipedia.org: Original sin.
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7.	You know, I can just see some Monk giggling away at dinner about this pun while all the other Monks sit around and think, “It’s even worse than all his, ‘Knock knock, who goeth there?’ jokes”.
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So, oh yes, imagine my excitement when I discovered two new variants in my inbox this morning! [1]

Both are courtesy of Barry Williams, Lord Imperial Ruler Of The Australian Skeptics [2] and writer of the excellently skeptical Barry Williams Blog.

As Barry points out in his original email about the “bussness magnet” specimen:

While the full email is typically riddled with translation errors, there really is something charming about the idea of a “business magnet”, as opposed to a “business magnate”, which is the idea I suspect the writer was attempting to convey.

I love the image of a business person trying to walk down the street, struggling along because bank managers and real estate developers and investment brokers are stuck all over him or her due to the horrible effects of business magnetism! Arrggh! NoooOOoo!

The rest of the email is pretty much what you’d expect from a Nigerian Scam — sudden death, buckets of money, a need for someone ‘abroad’ [3] to help with various transactions, please send your details and so on.

And now for the complete email itself:

What a brilliant variant! Many thanks to Barry for sending it through. I’ll post his other specimen a little later in the week.

Until then, much warmth!

Murray By Moonlight

Footnotes:

1.	I didn’t actually jump up and down and clap my hands, if that’s what you’re imagining, but I definitely did smile and also possibly did rub my hands together and say, “Aha! The game’s afoot!”, or something equally silly.
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2.	I think his official title is “Executive Officer”, but I like my version better.
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3.	That’s you, in case you’re not paying attention.
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Among other things, it demonstrates how language and folk beliefs develop and intermingle, and also introduces us to a reasonably common culprit in language-related folk beliefs: the backronym.

Coffee and other disasters

I was having a coffee with some coworkers a few weeks ago and for some reason we were talking about shipping disasters [1]. The wreck of the HMAS Sydney had only just been discovered, after resting hidden off the coast of West Australia for more than 60 years. This was big news here in Australia — the sinking of the Sydney has been one of the most lasting and contentious mysteries to have survived World War II, unlike the 600 unfortunate sailors who lost their lives when she went down with all hands in November of 1941.

Then, out of the wide blue yonder, someone mentioned the fact that “SOS” stands for “Save Our Souls”. There was general agreement around the table that this is the case [2].

But I don’t buy it.

This is, like, seriously aggravating…

There’s a thing that happens in my head when certain things seem ‘too neat and tidy’. It’s like a little mental alarm that I can’t ignore that goes off when people say things like this.

In one way it’s annoying, in another way it can be interesting, since it’s led to a lot of interesting conversations and even more interesting research and learning opportunities.

Still, I have this feeling that conversations would be a whole lot simpler if I didn’t have this bizarre mental alarm constantly going off in the back of my head!

Sending out an SOS

At the time of the conversation above I honestly had no background in whether or not SOS stood for anything in particular.

Like most people, I know it’s the international distress signal, and also like most people I know that in Morse Code it’s represented by the sequence, “…—…”

Beyond these two basic pieces of information, however, I was as uninformed as the next uninformed person of the history and meaning of SOS.

And yet I did have one vital piece of knowledge on my side — there’s a very human tendency to want things to have meanings, even if no meaning originally existed.

I also had a hunch that even if SOS did stand for something, we were being very English-centric for assuming it originally stood for phrase in our own language.

A gazillion dollars on the line!

“I’ll bet you a gazillion dollars that SOS didn’t originally stand for ‘Save Our Souls’,” I said.

“A gazillion dollars?” My coworker replied. “How many zeroes are there in a gazillion?”

“Never mind about the zeroes,” I replied, “what about the bet? A gazillion dollars.”

“All right,” he said, “that’s a bet!” And then he threw back his head and laughed evilly [3].

SOS?! Wikipedia to the rescue!

And away we scamper to Wikipedia.org; which, on the subject of “SOS”, has this to say:

In popular usage, SOS became associated with phrases such as “Save Our Souls,” “Save our Ship” “Save Our Shelby,” “Shoot Our Ship”, “Shoot on Site”, “Sinking Our Ship”, “Son of Satan”, “Survivors On Shore”, and “Save Our Seamen”. It is mostly known by “Save Our Souls”. However, these phrases were a later development, most likely used to help remember the correct letters—something known as a backronym.

The article also explains that SOS was originally a German maritime signal, adopted in 1905, and became the standard used by other nations in 1908 due to its simplicity.

That’ll be a gazillion dollars, thanks

And that’s the story of how I won a gazillion dollars from an evil coworker [4]!

Of course, I shouldn’t gloat too much, since it was just as possible when we made our bet that my evil coworker was right and I was wrong. And yet, I’ve encountered these kinds of folk beliefs before, and they tend to fit a pattern that you can learn to look for when talking to others.

So yes, it was a bit of a gamble; but it was gambling with loaded dice — which, I have to admit, is a nice thing to know if you’re putting your gazillion dollars down on the coffee table!

Much warmth,

Murray By Moonlight

Photo courtesy of Nico Kaiser.

Footnotes:

1.	Not the usual sort of thing we talk about. Usually we’re more interested in discussing airline and railway disasters. [5]
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2.	Although, one person did mention thinking that it meant “Save Our Ship” instead.
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3.	I could be making that bit up, since this is my blog and not his.
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4.	He’s not really all that evil. In fact, he’s actually quite a nice guy, despite owing me a gazillion dollars and refusing to pay up on the grounds that it’s not a real number.
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5.	Just kidding. As with every other workplace in the universe, we usually talk about whatever was on television the night before, and about just how bad the coffee is that day. Seriously.
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In this rendition, Bloody Mary is a witch who lives in a forest and who lures children from a nearby village to use them in black magic that will give her back her youth.

Predictably, things don’t go well at all for the wicked witch once the villagers discover that she has been lying, and she is burned alive for murdering their children.

Before she dies, however, Bloody Mary curses the village, and to this very day anyone who chants her name three times in front of a darkened mirror will summon her vengeful spirit from the grave.

You can read the tale in full over at: Bloody Mary: A Scary Urban Legend from Pennsylvania Folklore

What a fascinating variant! By now, I assume most people are aware of the 419 / Nigerian Scam [1], and yet years after alerts about this scam began appearing on the Internet, it’s still being run in many different forms around the world, and new victims fall prey to it every year.

This particular variant is interesting because of the way in which it begins:

This is to thank you for your effort.I understand that your hands were tied.Not to worry. I have succeeded,the money has been transfered into the account provided by a newly found friend of mine in Paraguay To compensate for your past assistance and commitments,i have dropped an International Certifie Bank Draft of $1.8million for you.

Yes, yes, yes! Aside from all of the misery this little bastard scam might have caused, I love the way this variant starts out by implying that a relationship already exists between the sender and recipient. Even the second sentence attempts to cement this idea — you couldn’t help [2] because your hands were tied. You obviously wanted to help, you just couldn’t!

It’s hard to imagine that anyone would fall for such an obvious ploy, but I guess it’s possible that someone might think they had received the email in error and might also believe they have a chance to cash in on a healthy dose of misplaced generosity.

Of course, this email is as much a scam as the many other variants floating around on the Internet.

Don’t forget to take a peek at the main article for this scam: The Nigerian / 419 Scam.

Oh, and don’t forget that I’m always interested in seeing new variants of this scam that you might encounter — you can send them in via the Submit an Urban Legend link.

Footnotes:

1.	Also sometimes known as the “Advanced Fees Fraud Scam”.
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2.	Entirely glossing over the fact that you never attempted to help!
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When I first wrote about the Perfumed Bandits email hoax we were living in a different century. It was November 1999, and the same email that has gone on to cause so much concern and alarm around the world was making its way into unsuspecting email inboxes for the very first time.

And this email didn’t mess about. It went straight for the psychologic jugular and didn’t let go, delivering its payload of anxiety and alarm to a host audience that was still trying to adapt to the idea that not everything you receive in your inbox is true or real. Even if it claims otherwise in very big letters…

So, seriously, how alarming is the idea of sinister people lurking in carparks, drugging and robbing victims in broad daylight? Certainly alarming enough that the email above flashed all over the world like wildfire, and in the dying months of 1999 you were a lucky person indeed if you were connected to the internet and hadn’t received a copy of this warning multiple times.

But of course, it simply wasn’t true. To the best of anyone’s knowledge, there is no widespread conspiracy to systematically assault and rob unsuspecting victims using ether disguised as perfume.

And yet, just when you thought it was safe to start sniffing perfume samples from random strangers lurking in your local mall’s carpark, there is one story that just might have been the inspiration for the original email.

The Truth Behind The Lie?

Meet Bertha Johnson. In 1999 she was aged 54, and she was a resident of Mobile, Alabama. Bertha made the news in November of 1999 by claiming that she was robbed of $800 after sniffing a perfume or cologne sample offered to her by a stranger while she was on the way to a bank.

While it seems very likely that this is the story on which the popular hoax was based, it bears mentioning that the Mobile Police Department never followed up on Ms Johnson’s allegations by issuing further press releases, nor is there any material in the public domain to suggest that the events that day truly unfolded the way Ms Johnson described them.

Either way, even if the core story is true, it doesn’t stop the email from being an Urban Legend or a hoax.

The thing to understand here is that Urban Legends can definitely be based on true stories. What makes a story an Urban Legend isn’t whether or not it ever happened, it’s whether or not it happens the way the person or email claims it happens [1]. That having been said, the great adventure of Urban Legend research has always been the question, “Where did this story come from?”

So, we can definitely be forgiven for getting a little excited about this press release:

WOMAN DAZED AFTER BEING ASKED TO SMELL UNKNOWN SUBSTANCE

November 8, 1999

File Number: 99-11-1543

On Monday, November 8, 1999, at approximately 2:30 p.m. Officers from the Third Precinct responded to the World of Wicker, at 3055 Dauphin Street. When the Officers arrived the victim, 54-year-old Bertha Johnson of the 2400 block of St. Stephens Road, advised she was rendered unconscious after smelling an unknown substance. Johnson was approached by an unknown black female, who was described as follows: slim build, 120-130 pounds, 5 feet 7 inches tall and was last seen wearing a Leopard print wrap on her head and large gold loop earrings. The victim told Investigators the incident occurred at the Amsouth Bank at 2326 Saint Stephens Road. After the victim-regained consciousness she discovered her property missing from her purse and her vehicle. The MOBILE POLICE DEPARTMENT is advising the public to be on alert for this type of activity.

Corporal Paul Soulier is currently investigating this case anyone with additional information regarding this case is asked to contact the Mobile Police Department at (334) 208-7211 or (334) 208-1770.

Officer DaVon Grey
Public Information Officer

Source: Mobile Police Department Press Release (archive.org)

Wait a minute! That sounds like this story is true!

Okay, let’s take a break from our impromptu celebration and talk a little bit about why we would still think this Urban Legend is false, even though we found an example in which it looks very much like it was true.

To do that, we should compare the two pieces of information we have, the email and the press release, against each other to see what falls out.

Straight away you can see that the email doesn’t mention where the event took place, while the press release is very specific with these details. Let’s say you lived in Mobile, Alabama, and you sent that email to a friend a couple of towns away. That sounds reasonable, right? After all, maybe they should be concerned too? But your friend, wanting to help, sends the email onto a relative who lives in a neighbouring state. Still probably not too far away for the information to have lost its usefulness. But that person forwards the email to a dozen other people, some of whom live in Denver, or Seattle, or San Francisco, or El Paso and so on. Pretty soon, people in Australia, England, New Zealand, South Africa – all over the globe! — are opening an email that is warning them about the danger of accepting an invitation from a stranger to test some cheap perfumes.

That’s a good reason to think of the email as an Urban Legend – because instead of communicating to a specific group of people, it shares alarming information in a very generalised way and relies upon the very human tendency to share information ‘just in case’.

Back to the present…

Almost 10 years have passed since this email was first seen in the wild, and incredibly it’s still floating around in email inboxes to this very day.

In fact, I was prompted to write this post because my partner received an updated version of it in her inbox at work just a few days ago!

I’ll post this newer version of the email over the next couple of days, but for now I’m going to wrap up this post by inviting you to leave comments below, and also if you encounter other versions of this email please send them in via the Submit an Urban Legend link and I’ll post them up as well.

Further reading…

Okay, well maybe I’ll add one more bit. There is some excellent reading to be found on the internet that examines this hoax from every possible direction including sideways.

To point out just a few:

• Parking Lot Perfume Robbers from the always amazing Snopes.com
• The Knockout Perfume from the incredible David Emery at About.com

That should keep you busy until the next time I have something to post to ULBlog! See you then!

Murray By Moonlight

Photograph by Melody

Footnotes:

1.	There are some other factors that need to be present before you can definitively say you’re dealing with an Urban Legend, but I’ll talk about them about at greater length in other posts.
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Just wanted to quietly let everyone know about a new blog I’ve launched - or, more accurately, co-launched.

It’s called Voodoologic.org and it’s a collaborative effort between me and a man who’s been one of my closest friends for almost 30 years [1].

If you get a chance, pop on over. It’s still a work-in-progress, but probably always will be, so that’s okay.

Season’s greetings to one and all,

Murray

Footnotes:

1.	And it will be interesting to see if things stay that way now we’re writing a blog together.
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