Posted November 19th, 2011 by Murray By Moonlight
Filed under: False, Scarelore, The Truth Is Less Strange Than Fiction, Urban Legends
Tags: chain email, email, kidney theft, real news stories, Scarelore, urban dangers
It was once entirely the stuff of Urban Legend fiction — a man meets a woman at a bar, they go back to his hotel room, he wakes up the next morning in a bathtub filled with ice. There is a telephone on a nearby stool and the words “Call an ambulance!” are written in lipstick on the bathroom mirror. When he reaches hospital, in a critical condition, the Doctors discover that he has been drugged and one of his kidneys has been harvested in his hotel room bathroom.
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.
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Posted January 22nd, 2011 by Murray By Moonlight
Filed under: Email Hoaxes, False, Scarelore, Urban Legends
Tags: email, gang initiation, gangs, hoax, urban dangers
Is there any truth to an alarming email that warns that gangs are using infant car seats and / or eggs thrown at windscreens to waylay unsuspecting motorists?
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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Footnotes:
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Posted March 30th, 2008 by Murray @ ulblog
Filed under: False, Urban Legends
Tags: chain email, email, hoax, Scarelore, urban dangers
The email claims that a new danger has arrived in your neighbourhood – gangs of thieves are tricking the unwary into smelling ether disguised as a sample of an expensive perfume, and are then robbing their happless victims once they have been rendered unconscious.
How worried should you be that you or your loved ones might fall prey to these fiendish purveyors of fake fine perfumes? Step into the ULBlog car park to learn a little more about The Sweet Smell Of Danger…
It really is amazing how long a good Urban Legend can survive out there in the wild!
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…
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