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ver wonder why the Blair Witch Project¹ failed to scare the local punters² like it did in the United States? You could, of course, argue that part of it is due to the stupidity of American audiences³ but I like to think it is because we are missing the vital ingredient that spoke to that market in the States. Some cultures do not have the urban legend of the witch that lives in the woods...
         Part of the reason why the Blair Witch Project worked so well in the States was because it was, to that market, believable. Go wherever you want in America and you will find that the locals⁴ know of witches, whether it be the simple historical anecdotes of Salem or tales closer to home. These are stories strange happenings in distant rural places where people no longer go; tales worthy of pulp horror magazines of the 1950s⁵. These are dark tales of warning, of people who go into the woods and lose their sense of time and direction and sometimes their lives. America contains a wealth of these tales; New Zealand however, in respect to witch folklore, does not⁶.
         The unnatural goings on in the woods is a classic example of the Urban Legend, the modern day fairy tale. Unprepared campers go into the wood and never come back. Sometimes the reason for the journey is not important: they were simply unprepared. In other instances of the tale the travellers have a specific motive, like checking out rumours of unusual sounds or verifying strange anecdotes. The important aspect of this story is not that they fail to return from the woods but that they were not ready to face the dangers. In the most direct way possible, this is a morality tale about human stupidity; people who are not ready or prepared for what they face will not survive. The witch, the strange happenings, the dark and lonely setting, these are simply narrative trappings designed to make the story more memorable and therefore more powerful. If you go out in the woods today, prepare for a big surprise...⁷
         The history of our race is littered with urban legends, or urban myths as they can be called; many we simply call folklore because they have a long history. Some have been discarded over time, or have been changed by various actions of the media; elves are no longer vicious killers who want to eat your children but friendly, sweet creatures that appear to have no place in the modern classroom. The term 'Urban Legend' really applies to the species of hearsay knowledge that has root in very modern notions or invention; you do not generate tales of old ladies 'drying' their little dog in a microwave without said appliance⁸. It must be admitted, however, that many Urban Legends are simply retellings of older stories; witches and warlocks have become the modern day abducting alien, and so forth⁹.
         An Urban Legend is a story, usually horrific or humorous, that teaches a moral. Most urban legends are mostly fiction with only a slight basis in a real occurrence; some urban legends, however, have very real origins that have mostly been forgotten. A sure sign of an urban legend is a lack of firsthand knowledge on the part of the teller. Anything that starts with 'So my brother's best friend knows of this guy who...' is a good candidate¹⁰. The teller has no real connection to the events being told, and even their source was far distant. Nearly all urban legends are presented as being the truth; many actually get reported by the press, which helps their spread.
         The role of the urban legend is more important than its trappings; whether it be a killer in an upstairs bedroom when you are baby-sitting or finding out that if one of your dorm mates commits suicide you will get an A on all your papers, the moral of the story is the key and the events within it can be chopped and changed to your heart's content. Like a fairy-tale, the moral never changes even if the names do¹¹.
         Urban legends can be funny, horrific, or, of course, horrifically funny. They serve as a kind of entertainment; you get to laugh at what some other idiot has managed to do or get themselves into; you can be envious of the chutzpah of another. The horrific tales are the ones designed to make you rethink the way in which you live. They can also serve highlight a neglect in society. The mother who allows her child to play in a sandpit at the park and later finds her child dead of a drug overdoes is one such example. In this tale the child, while digging in the sand, is pricked by a used syringe; this is an admonition to the mother to properly look after her child. She did not take enough care of the baby because she failed to make sure its environment was healthy and safe¹². The same is true of the tale of the man who eats at a popular fried chicken fast-food restaurant and bites into a chicken wing only to have a cyst in the meat burst and splatter his face, infecting his skin¹³. This is a warning to all those who would eat fast-food; be careful, it is more dangerous than you think. These stories are a kind of common horror; the type of thing that could quite easily happen to you or someone close to you. The more distant horrors are usually the more inexplicable; the cyst in the meat or the syringe in the sand are possible, although largely apocryphal stories. Tales of witches who live in the depths of the woods or killers lurking upstairs while the babysitter watches TV can be slightly harder to credit; they require a set-up and they usually become deliberately vague in content. Instances of the 'syringe in the sandpit' crop up in newspapers all over America: no instance ever seems to be reported in the town it is supposed to have occurred in but often newspapers will report that in a nearby state in the town of such and such, a child was pricked, and so forth¹⁴. The upstairs killer, however, is more a word of mouth story, its origin vague, although nearly everyone claims to have known someone close to the victim, its timeframe even more blurry. It becomes an horror unlikely to happen to you, but has weight now you shall want to avoid it. You are meant to now go out of your way to avoid instances of it¹⁵. When you have the rumour of something dark living in the woods, most people, despite the fact they have no first hand experience of the 'thing' will not go near the place. At least that is what we learn from the movies...
         Urban legends are not always bad news, though. Often times you hear an urban legend that is positive in scope, telling you to do something you might not normally do. A recent Instant Kiwi ad¹⁶ had a young man handing in a late exam script because the supervisor did not know the student's name, so could not penalise him. This is a classic urban legend of the academic scene; it tells you to take a risk and reap the benefits. There is no bad outcome for this student and it emphasises the possible stupidity of those above you; the invigilator¹⁷ has not bothered to take down the student's name or ID number.
         An urban legend apparently alive and well at New Zealand's Auckland University is the tale of a mathematics student who manages to solve a number of seemingly insoluble equations. The story usually runs that the student arrives late to class and sees a number of examples upon the board which are thought to be homework. The student dutifully copies them, thinking they are homework¹⁸. The student goes home that night and solves them, having a little trouble with two of them. He hands in the assignment. Some time later¹⁹ the student is called in to the lecturer's office to be told he or she has done the previously thought impossible; they have solved that which was put up on the board as examples of equations mathematics has not been able to cope with²⁰.
         This urban legend, where a student proves that he or she is able to do something with relative ease if not told it cannot be done, has a completely factual basis. George Dantzig, a mathematician at Stanford University did exactly this. His proofs were later published by the lecturer concerned as Dantzig's and his work.
         All the previous examples of urban legends have been instances of good moral story telling. Not all urban legends, though, are beneficial, or if they were once they have developed dangerous edges to them. A particularly nasty one is the urban legend that is organ theft or organ harvesting/trafficking.
         The story is common; a young man or woman picks up a prostitute and goes back to a motel or hotel room. They are given a drink, and the next morning the man or woman wakes up to find themselves in a bath of ice, a tube running out of their back, and a note beside the phone telling them to ring the emergency services number as they have had their kidneys taken.
         Essentially this tale is one of warning to the young who want to buy sex; beware. However it has another side to it, one far more sinister, and seemingly more believable. The story now becomes one of simple kidnap. Someone walks through the city at night and are tapped on the shoulder; they wake up the next morning minus an organ. In some locales the story is more brutal; visitors come to the local town and make a list of possible donors, usually children, and then these victims are kidnapped and taken elsewhere for organ harvesting, often never to return²¹. Reports of this in India and Central America are apparently common, despite a lack of corroborative evidence. Often it is thought of as organ farming; taking the organs of the poor to be given to the rich in another country²². This story has become so common that many visitors to countries where these tales are rampant are hurt or even killed by scared inhabitants who fear that these foreigners are here to size up possible donors²³. This is the more nasty side of the urban legend, where a warning to beware becomes the motivation for violence. This can be due to mass hysteria; a threat against your children is going to be seriously considered and acted upon despite the improbability of it²⁴. It can also be due to misconceptions, whether in basic education or in the ways of 'foreigners'. No matter how the violence comes to form, the fact that it does can be disturbing; Urban Legends can be a little too effective.
         The urban legend is the modern fairy tale and, I would argue, a necessary facet of our society. They serve an important function in our world; they educate and they moralise. They do it without recourse to any external good such as God or Religion; they put forward a common-sense morality that is easy for all to grasp and make use of. Not only this, but they are a product of culture and often enrich it due to not only the role they play, but the very creative way that they emerge and evolve. They need to be understood, however, and taken in context, otherwise we are at their mercy. They can take a life on of their own.

There is a wealth of information on 'The AFU & Urban Legends Archive and on 'Urban Legends References Pages'. I can also highly recommend (as I am a subscriber) the magazine 'The Fortean Times' which has articles for the discerning skeptic. Of course the best study is to simply question any story you come across, especially this one.