Urban Legends Essay

Urban Legends

Have you ever received an email from someone, telling you about a crazy rumor going around? This crazy rumor could be an urban legend. An urban legend is a story that is passed down from one person to another. Most of the time, urban legends are told as being true but in usually, they’re false but may contain a small factor of truth. They usually originate from the mouth and mind of an everyday person. While there are many different urban legends, this essay will talk about a deadly wedding dress, the Blair Witch Hunt, and a woman with a baby octopus in her stomach.

A young girl had a dance to attend at her school and she decided to go to a local department store and buy a simple but nice dress. During the dance, she and her date smelled a strong odor and she frequently felt faint. She went to the bathroom to check herself but there were no visible problems so she returned to the dance. Walking out of the bathroom, she fainted and later that night died. A doctor performed an autopsy and the doctor found that formaldehyde had seeped through her pores. As told, the dress had been worn by a corpse at a funeral and sold back to the department store. While dancing, the formaldehyde from the corpse soaked through her pores and stopped her blood flow. As determined by snopes.com, this legend is false.

The Blair Witch Hunt is a movie based on three students who disappear in the forest while shooting footage for a documentary about the legend of the Blair Witch. Three young students went to the town of Burkittsville to film locals about the Blair Witch legend and they discover the video of gruesome deaths of several other students who disappeared a year ago. As the legend goes, the Blair Witch killed the three students just as she did to the several people she’s killed in the past. According to snopes.com, the legend was created by three young actors with wide imaginations and a liking for history, making this legend false.

A young girl living in California began to have morning sickness, stomach swelling and other signs of being pregnant. She told her parents that there was no way she could be pregnant because she had not had sex with any boy in her whole life. Her mother finally took her to the doctor and he discovered a large tumor in her stomach. While surgery was being performed, a small live octopus was removed from her stomach. As told, octopus eggs are very small and sometimes float throughout ocean water. This young lady happened to swallow one of the eggs and it attached itself to the lining in her stomach. Even though this legend seems possible, snopes.com has determined it to be false.

Stories about deadly wedding dresses, the Blair Witch Hunt, and a woman with a baby octopus in her stomach frequently surface onto the internet throughout the entire world. We don’t know why people make up these false legends. Maybe it’s the thrill of tricking someone or they just enjoy the fame of knowing that something they created is worldwide. All we do know is that you shouldn’t always believe what you hear or read, it may be nothing but an urban legend.