Archive of legends & netlore:
Creepy Crawlers
Here's a collection of charming insect infestation stories, or what Jan Harold
Brunvand likes to refer to as "dreadful contaminations." As he explained
in The Vanishing Hitchhiker (W.W. Norton, 1981):
The point of urban legends concerning contamination, somewhat like that of the
other scare stories, is revelation of a world of shocking ugliness lying just
beneath a surface of tranquility and apparent wholesomeness. Things are not
at all what they seem.
Maybe that's why, as I read stories like the following, I often have the sense
that I'm thumbing through the script of a David Lynch film...
Maggots
As told by May5monk...
My roommate told me that one of her professors told her this story and she assumed
it was true. It's certainly sick, but I'm wondering whether or not it really
did happen.
Apparently a man had a cut (or some kind of open wound) on the back of his head.
The wound started to heal, but the man started to feel short of breath. He went
to the doctor, who after examining him, told the man that some kind of insect
had landed on the open wound on his head and must have laid eggs there. The
doctor informed the man that his nasal passages were getting clogged up with
maggots.
The doctor tried to remove them, and thought he had gotten them all out. A few
days later, though, the man started feeling short of breath again accompanied
by loss of hearing and bad headaches. When he went back to the doctor, he informed
that man that the maggots were back and growing and were now through his nasal
passages and ear canals and were basically eating his head from the inside out.
Upon hearing this, the man went home and blew his head off.
Baby Spiders
As told by Ayesha Cizmazija...
My aunt told us this one when I was about 11. It terrified me and my friends.
Years later, I was telling the story to a group of people, and one girl had
also heard a similar version of the story.
It goes like this:
A young woman was sunbathing on the beach and was just about to drop off to
sleep, when she felt an insect running along her jawbone and then down her neck.
She brushed it away, and thought nothing more of it.
After about a week, she noticed what she thought was a pimple growing and growing.
The skin was inflamed and it looked like a blister. Then, one day, she was blow-drying
her hair and hit the inflamed spot with her hair dryer. The blistered skin broke
open and hundreds of tiny white baby spiders and pus came pouring out of the
wound!
It seems that while she was sunbathing, her pores had enlarged enough that a
mama spider could deposit her egg sac in one. They incubated under her skin
until she smacked herself in the jaw with the hair dryer!
Hazards of Traveling Abroad
As told by Paula Bergeron...
This is an old one that I haven't heard in quite some time. In its prime, I
probably heard it from at least 20 different people.....
A woman decides to take a trip to a tropical location (I've heard that it was
Jamaica, Cuba,
Venezuela, and more!). Her plan is to relax and get a suntan for the week that
she's there.
She spends the week lazing on numerous beaches, but on the last day decides
to take a tour through a forested area. While in the area, she happens upon
a secluded waterfall and a quiet resting place, where she decides to take a
swim and then dry off in the sun.
As the story goes, the woman falls asleep in the sun and when she wakes up,
she's horribly frightened by a spider crawling on her cheek. She hurriedly brushes
the spider away and carries on her way.
A few weeks after returning home, the woman develops a cyst of sorts on her
cheek. She goes to
the emergency room, where the doctor tells her they will need to pop the cyst
to let the fluid escape. The woman agrees to this simple and painless procedure.
The doctor proceeds. As it's a painless procedure, the woman is not anesthetized.
Soon after the doctor makes the first attempt to pop the cyst, the woman hears
a gasp and then feels something trickling down her cheek. She assumes it's the
fluid. The doctor tells her not to panic. Instinctively, she brings her hand
to her cheek to wipe off the fluid. At that point she realizes that it's not
fluid, but rather something crawling on her cheek.
Spiders.... hundreds of tiny spiders are crawling all over her face and on her
hand. She lets out a blood-curdling scream and totally loses it. She is so distraught
and out of control that she needs to be restrained by several staff.
To this date, she remains in the psychiatric ward of the same hospital where
the procedure took place.
The Exploding Cactus
As told by Ileen Verble...
Here's one my mother told me as breathless fact, claiming she'd "heard
it on the news". I knew immediately that it had to be a urban legend, but
have never heard it again, nor can I find it on any urban legend sites.
A woman goes to buys a large cactus from a nursery, and brings it home. Later
that day she notices something very odd. The cactus appears to be breathing!
She calls the nursery she purchased the cactus from, and says, "I know
this sounds crazy, but I think my cactus is breathing."
The woman she is speaking to tells her to immediately get out of the house,
and that she (the nursery woman) is going to call the bomb squad. The bomb squad
comes to the house and loads the cactus into a van. Just as they get it into
the van, the cactus explodes, and out come thousands of scorpions!
It seems that several scorpions had laid their eggs in the cactus, and they
all hatched at once.
Spiders in the Hairdo
As told by Jennifer Morrison...
A very stylish teen-aged girl tired of spending hours carefully "ratting"
(teasing) and spraying her hair to attain an extreme bee-hive do. She washed
her hair in sugar-water, allowing it to harden in the style she wanted. At night,
she carefully wrapped a towel around it and slept on a special half-pillow designed
to not disturb the hair.
One morning, she failed to come down for breakfast. Her mother went to her room
only to find her dead in bed. When the towel was removed from her head, it was
discovered that she had been gnawed to death by rats (or bugs... I heard both
versions).
Guide's note: Rats in the hairdo -- that's a new one on me! So is the sugar-water
shampoo. (Did people really do that?) To my mind, these unusual details make
this an especially interesting version of a classic legend that dates back to
the Fifties.
Legend: A woman with a bouffant hairdo falls victim to a mysterious illness
and dies. Doctors determine the cause of death to have been the bites of spiders
that had taken up residence in her hair.
Examples: [Collected by Carey, 1971]
When I was fifteen or sixteen years old, bouffant hair styles were very much
the rage. It was almost as if it were a contest to see which girl could rat
her hair the highest and pour the most spray on it. One day I went to the beauty
shop to have my hair done. My hairdresser told me this story, and she swore
that it really happened to a friend of her niece's.
There was this girl who had ratted her hair so high, and put so much hair spray
on it, that she never took it down and combed it out or washed it. One day a
spider fell into her hair. When the baby black widow spiders hatched, they bit
her scalp and she died.
[Collected on the Internet, 1997]
I heard there was a fellow who approached a barber for a haircut.
He (not the barber) had dreadlocks, and complained that the barber was clumsy,
as he was nicking his head (he claimed) with the scissors.
The barber carried on and eventually the dreadlocked individual tired of the
clumsy service, left the premises with the haircut unfinished.
He was found at home some time later, dead, from multiple spider-bites to the
skull, from a nest of spiders living in his hair.
Variations: early versions of this legend often involved a high school
girl who passed out in class or was sent to the hospital when a teacher noticed
blood running down her neck. (The girl was usually said to have arrived at the
hospital in a coma.)
Once bouffant hairstyles became passe, the victim changed to a middle-aged woman
with an out of date hairstyle, then to a man with long, unkempt hair or dreadlocks.
The deadly insects are sometimes generic bugs, and sometimes specified as spiders
(especially black widows), bees, or centipedes/earwigs/beetles. The spiders
nest in the hairdo and bite the victim, the bees are attracted by the hairspray
and sting the victim, and the centipedes/earwigs/beetles eat through the victim's
skull and into the brain.
In a few variations the victim is said to have actually survived the ordeal.
Origins: Not surprisingly, this legend originated in the 1950's when
bouffant or "beehive" hairstyles were fashionable. The original version
is primarily a "fatal vanity" type of legend about a young woman who
dies because she foolishly allows her pride in having the highest "do"
take precedence over basic hygiene. Later versions ascribe the same fault to
men.
Last updated: 25 August 1997
The URL for this page is http://www.snopes.com/horrors/vanities/hairdo.htm Please
use this URL in all links or references to this page
Legend: A woman leaves her choking dog at the vet and later receives
a call telling her to get out of the house -- human fingers have been found
in the dog's throat!
Status: False.
Examples: [Phoenix New Times, 1981]
Gagging Dog Story Baffles Police
It happened in Las Vegas. A woman returned from work and found her large dog,
a Doberman, lying on the floor gasping for air. Concerned over the animal's
welfare, she immediately loaded the pet into her car and drove him to a veterinarian.
The vet examined the dog but finding no reason for his breathing difficulties,
announced that he'd have to perform a tracheotomy and insert tubes down the
animal's throat so he could breathe. He explained that it wasn't anything she'd
want to watch and urged the woman to go home and leave the Doberman there overnight.
When the woman returned home, the phone was ringing off the hook. She answered
it, and was surprised to discover it was the vet. Even more surprising was his
message -- "Get out of the house immediately! Go to the neighbor's and
call the police!"
It seems that when the vet performed the operation, he found a very grisly reason
for the dog's breathing difficulty -- three human fingers were lodged in its
throat. Concerned that the person belonging to the dismembered fingers might
still be in the house, he phoned to warn the woman.
According to the story, police arrived at her house and found an unconscious
intruder, sans fingers, lying in a closet.
New Times learned of the story from an employee of a large industrial plant
in the Valley. He said he had gotten the story third hand from another employee
who in turn had heard it from a woman whose relatives in Las Vegas knew the
dog's owner. As of Friday, New Times was not able to nail down the identity
of the Doberman's mistress.
According to a spokesman at the Las Vegas Sun, that paper, too, was very interested
in breaking the story. Unfortunately, even though the story was all over Vegas
last Thursday, the paper -- and police -- weren't able to dig up one shred of
evidence to prove the incident ever occurred. "The police are baffled,"
the Sun spokesman said.
[Collected on the Internet, 1997]
Somewhere in western NY or the chimney of PA a woman went grocery shopping.
When she came home the back door was open. She didn't think much about it .
. . it was a small town where the doors rarely got locked and neighbors often
stopped in. But when she got into the kitchen, she found their dog (a rottweiler.
shepard, or doberman) on the floor in obvious distress. She loads the dog into
her truck and speeds to the vet. The vet tells her to leave the dog, he'll call
when he knows something. About an hour later, he calls and asks if she's looked
around her house. She hadn't, but, puzzled, agrees to. Upstairs, in front of
her jewelery chest is a puddle of blood, and the room is a mess. Frightened,
she askes the vet what's going on. He tells her to hang up and call the police
immediately. He thinks her house has been broken into, because the dog was choking
on 2 (or 3 or 4) human fingers.
Variations: The number of fingers dredged from the dog's throat varies,
as does their colour. Though in many tellings the race of the intruder goes
unspecified, at times the discovered digits are described as "black"
or "Mexican," adding a racist spin to the tale.
In the 1980s, a Doberman was the usual star in this story; in the 1990s, the
dog became a pit bull when that breed gained media prominence as the decade's
fierce dog of choice. Other breeds of pooch have been known to report for duty
in this tale as well -- always large, scary-looking dogs.
The thief is usually discovered hiding in a closet, the bedroom, or in the basement,
but in some tellings he gets away from the house and is only brought to justice
when his injuries force him to visit an emergency room. His missing fingers
identify him as the culprit police are looking for.
With very few exceptions, the troubled dog owner is female. Moreover, the setting
of the tale makes it very clear she lives alone.
Most of the time, the dog's presence in the woman's life passes uncommented
upon; nothing of the dog's history or her reasons for keeping him are mentioned.
Occasionally though, we're told the dog was given by her father when she went
off to college in a distant city, or that in the wake of her divorce her lawyer
recommended her getting a big dog for protection.
Origins: Tales about guard dogs found choking on burglars' fingers date
to the summer of 1981, when they were seemingly popping up all over the place.
All efforts to track this widespread tale back to an actual incident failed.
It was a sudden onset legend, and if a real life incident kicked it off, no
one has yet uncovered it.
One of the elements key to the story proves this tale belongs in the realm of
myth rather than in the world of reality: If a choking dog were taken to an
animal hospital, the vet would work on it immediately -- there'd be none of
this "Leave him here, and I'll operate on him this evening." An untreated
choking dog is soon a dead dog, and a professional would know that. The distressed
critter would be whisked back to the establishment's surgery and whatever was
blocking its airways extracted, all while the owner was still sitting in the
waiting room or in an examination cubicle.
Were surgery required, the dog might have to stay in the animal hospital overnight.
However, that point would be arrived at long after the vet had found whatever
was caught in its throat. If burglar fingers were discovered, the owner would
know of them before she left the clinic.
Analysis: The consistent themes in this legend point to fearful current
concerns about the threat of burglary and violent crime, especially those that
take place in private homes and are directed against women by men.
The principal shock is the conclusion of the story where the intruder is found
to be still lurking in the intended victim's home. It is the woman's narrow
escape from harm that is the real bone-chiller in this story, not the discovered
fingers.
In versions where the burglar is discovered in the bedroom, some folklorists
have pointed to the threat of rape as an additional element of the tale. However,
I would equally point out that an injured man trying to escape from a fierce
dog which has already rendered him serious harm is going to head for the nearest
enclosed space where he can put a door between him and the beast. The injured
burglar is just as likely to dive headlong into the bedroom as he is into a
closet, basement, or bathroom.
Moreover, one would expect to find the thief in the bedroom. Any burglar worth
his salt knows to search the boudoir -- people routinely hide valuables in what
they perceive as their inner sanctum. The underwear drawer is one of the first
places to paw through when searching for cash or jewelry. In other words, the
bad guy might not be nearly as interested in what the lady is keeping in her
drawers as he is in what she's keeping in her drawers.
Barbara "drawer to drawer service" Mikkelson
Sightings: This legend shows up in the 1991 Judith Gorog novel, On Meeting Witches
At Wells.
Last updated: 4 December 1998