Generations of first-year psych students know ‘Winston Moseley’ as the man whose savage murder and rape of Kitty Genovese in 1964 was witnessed by dozens of neighbors rendered powerless by a phenomenon called “bystander effect.” That tale, as neat and compact as it is, is incomplete.
Urban legends are, frankly, terrifying and unnecessary to share with me. But this weekend, dear reader, the most terrifying urban legend of them all became something much, much worse: a real thing that happened to someone.
Like an urban legend sprung to life, a quiet, mysterious woman shrouded entirely in flowing black clothing has been spotted walking on roadsides all along the Appalachian U.S. in recent weeks.
Barack Obama will appear on TV's Mythbusters to debunk the legend that "Archimedes set fire to an invading Roman fleet using... mirrors to focus the sun's rays." Mythbusters had already tackled this, but hey, Obama wanted to do it again.
You know that urban legend about alligators living in New York City sewers? Well: A baby alligator crawled out of a storm drain and took refuge under a Datsun in Queens on Sunday. So, now all urban legends are true.
Comic, actor, and ghostbuster Bill Murray is interviewed in this month's issue of GQ, where he claims that he thought Garfield was a Coen brothers movie. He also responds to a famous, often-repeated urban legend in which he features prominently.
Last Week, Lady Gaga accidently/on-purpose showed off her penis to the world. We don't think she's really a hermaphrodite, but the fiction has already joined the great pantheon of celebrity urban myths.
So, yes, Andy Christie's story of being surprised, on his birthday, by the notion that a younger woman might be attracted to his flabby self — only to be even more surprised, later, to find that she was just a decoy to lead him to his surprise birthday party — grossed us out. But then commenter TedSez pointed out…
