Everyone has been fascinated by a brother-in-law's strange story, which he swears is true because it came from his co-worker's cousin. Many of us not only swallow the story, but we quickly pass it on. We might even see it on the Internet, or have a friend in another city e-mail a chain letter describing it in abundant detail.
It is what Jan Harold Brunvand calls an urban legend, and the easiest way to test it is to simply ask yourself, "Is it too good to be true?" If it IS too good, it probably isn't true.Hence, the title of Brunvand's newest book, "Too Good To Be True: The Colossal Book of Urban Legends."
There are about 500 of these stories currently in circulation, says Brunvand, a sign that "the storytelling urge is alive and well. People are still exchanging bits of gossip by narrative and face to face, and now on the Internet, and there is a sense that this a grapevine telling you how things REALLY are.
"Authorities won't tell you about that crime down at the mall or that contaminated product or that terrible thing a certain company did. People hear the stories from people they know and trust, so they don't tend to apply critical thinking to them."
But it's OK with Brunvand, because he has built a national reputation on teaching and writing about these fascinating urban legends, and
revealing them for what they are -- baloney. All his scholarly efforts for the past 30 years, however, are not likely to stop the grapevine . . . or even slow it down. That is, after all, why there is as much myth interwoven into history as there is fact.
People just like it, and when they tell a story and it circulates, the result is folklore.
Brunvand, whose Norwegian name is pronounced "Yawn Broon-vawnd," is a 66-year-old professor emeritus of folklore at the University of Utah. Retired for three years, he has written twice as much during that time as he did when he was a full-time teacher.
His name became a household word when his first popular book, "The Vanishing Hitchhiker," hit the streets in 1981. It was followed by "The Choking Doberman," "The Mexican Pet," "Curses! Broiled Again" and "The Baby Train," all big hits with the reading public.
For five years, he wrote a syndicated legend column, which appeared in the Deseret News.
Brunvand, who is thoroughly ingratiating, talks almost as fast as he thinks. At the very top of his field, he nevertheless continues to research and to write, doing most of his work in the mornings in the upstairs office of his vintage Avenues home. If you missed him fencing with David Letterman after the publication of his earlier books, you missed some good shows. Prior to his first appearance, he suggested to Letterman's writers that he and the host "put on hard hats and go down into the sewers and look for alligators. They said, 'No, you let US write the jokes!' "
Letterman, he says, is like most other people he meets. He brings up the same urban legend every time they talk, namely 'the killer in the back seat.' This is the epitome of every urban dweller's greatest fear, that they will slip into their car at night only to be surprised by a stabber or a slasher. Brunvand admits to always carefully checking his own back seat before getting into his car.
Brunvand hails originally from East Lansing, Mich. At Michigan State, he majored in journalism ("a whimsical choice"), then he transferred to Indiana, got an M.A. in English, then a Ph.D in folklore, studying under the eminent folklorist, Richard Dorson.
"When I showed up at Indiana, I was an English major," Brunvand said. "I went to see Dorson and he said, 'English majors are a dime a dozen, but folklore is the coming field. Change your major.' Since I was taking a really boring graduate seminar in 'the non-dramatic literature of the restoration,' it was an easy decision to make."
With doctorate in hand, Brunvand spent four years at the University of Idaho, then a year at Southern Illinois University before coming to the U., where he developed an enduring love for the West. Kenneth Eble, English department chair, enthusiastically welcomed Brunvand and gave him free rein to form a strong folklore program and put his own stamp on it.
Even so, Brunvand never visualized making urban legends his specialty. In his teaching, he used some "urban belief tales" from the last chapter of Dorson's folklore textbook to give his students a taste of folklore in the making. Gradually, he became more and more interested in the modern tales. After publishing an article about them for "Psychology Today Magazine," he approached Norton Publishers about doing a book. The result was "The Vanishing Hitchhiker," which developed an underground following that lead to his other popular books.
Although consisting of all of the major stories, categorized and summarized, his new "big book of urban legends" is geared to be attractive to the general reading public, and it includes many of the legends of his previous books.
Last fall, the film, "Urban Legends," called by Brunvand "a very bad campus slasher movie," publicized the subject, even including one of his books -- "The Mexican Pet" -- in a cameo. In the movie, a student goes to the library because she suspects a series of murders and disappearances are related to urban legends. "So she pulls off the shelf, 'The Encyclopedia of Urban Legends,' which does not exist." Yet.
Brunvand was working on just such a book before the film opened; "The Encyclopedia of Urban Legends" will be published next June. He says he has just finished the N's. "Now I'm on O. The first story is 'The Obligatory Wait,' the college student's notion that there's a set number of minutes you have to wait for an instructor, depending on his rank." That is, 10 minutes for an assistant professor, 15 minutes for an associate professor and 20 minutes for a full professor.
The University of Illinois Press will soon publish another of Brunvand's books, "The Truth Never Stands in the Way of a Good Story." It is a more academic approach and includes a chapter by Brunvand's son, Eric, a specialist in computer design, who wrote "The Heroic Hacker." Brunvand wanted to call this book "The Brain Drain and other Timely Tales," after the first story about a woman sitting in her car in a grocery store parking lot, thinking she has been shot in the head. After a loud bang, she reaches for the back of her head, feels something squishy and thinks her brains are spilling out. It turns out to be Pillsbury Poppin' fresh biscuit dough.
When asked to name a couple of his favorite stories, Brunvand says, "Do you ask a chemist to name his favorite element?" But he does, recounting the ski accident story: "This woman tourist comes from Boston or Chicago to the West to ski. She's not very good, but she rides up on the lift, and at the top she needs to go to the bathroom. So, she skis behind some trees, takes her pants down but keeps her skis on. She slides backwards down the hill with her pants around her knees, eventually runs into a tree and is rescued by a ski patrolman. As she is being treated in the first aid room, another injured party, a male ski instructor, comes in. She is amazed that a ski instructor would get hurt and asks how. He says, 'Well, I was on the lift on the way to meet my class this morning, and suddenly, this woman came shooting out of the trees, pants down, backwards. I leaned over for a better look and fell out of the chair. How about YOU?' "
Another one Brunvand has always liked is "the Dead Cat in the Package." "Someone's cat dies, she meets a friend in a department store and gives her a package with the dead cat, so the friend can take it home and bury it in the garden. The owner lives in an apartment. Someone shoplifts the package and is surprised to find there is a dead cat in it. She puts it on a car bumper and faints. Paramedics put her on a stretcher, and thinking the package is important to her, they put the package on her chest. She wakes up and sees the cat, and faints again."
These urban legends just keep coming, but Brunvand doesn't intend to write about them for the rest of his life. "When I finish the encyclopedia, I think I'll retire for a second time and finish the boat I'm building in the garage, catch some more fish on the Green River, ski a few more places and play with the grandkids."
One thing he has no strong urge to do is establish his own Web site. "Anybody can put anything on the Internet they want to. A lot of kids at school are searching the Internet instead of going to the library, and who knows if they're getting good material or not? A lot of strange warnings go out through e-mail, like needles with sedatives or HIV being passed around through coin returns in pay phones or in theater seats."
Another problem he sees with the Internet is that people send stories so quickly with e-mail that they often don't even read them. "That lacks something," says Brunvand. "There is more interaction and performance going on when they are spread by word of mouth."