Folklore: Is this an urban myth?

Subject: RE: Folklore: Is this an urban myth?
From: GUEST,Stim
Date: 18 Sep 14 - 12:34 AM

Richard Dorson says so, for one, though he didn't call it a punchline. Perhaps that was an ill considered choice on my part. Twist, payoff, point, are probably better words.

Grandma's remains were not properly and respectfully handled, so the payoff is that thieves didn't recognize them for what they were and stole them.

Subject: RE: Folklore: Is this an urban myth?
From: JennieG
Date: 17 Sep 14 - 06:06 PM

Guest topsie, no, there was no other woman or jealous husband.........but it turned out there were gambling, and debts arising.

Subject: RE: Folklore: Is this an urban myth?
From: MGM·Lion
Date: 17 Sep 14 - 09:56 AM

Apology accepted, indeed. I am not generally a particularly contentious person. Must have had a touch of dyspepsia and expressed self more aggressively than normal.

You sail careful, now, ya hear!

≈M≈

Subject: RE: Folklore: Is this an urban myth?
From: GUEST
Date: 17 Sep 14 - 09:53 AM

MGM.Lion, please accept my apology.

I was genuinely trying to contribute with an opinion that I hold, which differs from your own in the matter of what consitutes an urban myth. An attempt at gentle humour, tinged with a little sarcasm, I admit, but no longer acceptable, I fear. However, I didn't expect such belligerence from you, and I'm truly sorry that I was the cause of that.

I somehow mistook Mudcat for a friendly discussion group as it was in the days when I posted regularly as a member. I now remember why I no longer do so, though I can't recall personally being on the receiving end of such aggression.

So I shall now "shove off", which I assume you meant in the nicest Naval sense (and not in the "go forth and multiply" sense).

Subject: RE: Folklore: Is this an urban myth?
From: GUEST, topsie
Date: 17 Sep 14 - 08:16 AM

Maybe that GUEST went upstairs and then forgot what he came in here for.

Subject: RE: Folklore: Is this an urban myth?
From: MGM·Lion
Date: 17 Sep 14 - 08:07 AM

This is not a thread on 'humour', GUEST 2 posts back. So what are you on about? It is about whether a particular story fits a certain category, and whether anyone else knows any recognisable variant of it. Whether you remember it, and what that is supposed to 'prove', is a matter of considerable indifference, thank you. So shove off, please; and take your 'sez-ing' with you.

≈M≈

Subject: RE: Folklore: Is this an urban myth?
From: GUEST, topsie
Date: 17 Sep 14 - 07:58 AM

Regarding Jennie's account - maybe he realised that the 'bloke' was the 'other woman's husband' and that there was serious trouble about to break out.

Subject: RE: Folklore: Is this an urban myth?
From: GUEST
Date: 17 Sep 14 - 07:47 AM

Sez who? Well, me for one.

Humour tends to be more memorable, and therefore more likely to spread than just some deadpan, open ended story. I've forgotten the one in the original post already, so that proves it!

Subject: RE: Folklore: Is this an urban myth?
From: JHW
Date: 17 Sep 14 - 05:46 AM

Went upstairs and forgot what she'd gone for. Happens all the time

Subject: RE: Folklore: Is this an urban myth?
From: The Sandman
Date: 17 Sep 14 - 04:07 AM

i was under the impression it was woody guthrie who said im just going out for cigarettes and left his wife, presumably his first wife is this incorrect.

Subject: RE: Folklore: Is this an urban myth?
From: GUEST,Don Wise
Date: 17 Sep 14 - 03:49 AM

My grandfather (mother's side) was never talked about at home. Years later, I think my aunt from NZ was over for a visit, it came out that she'd met him in Australia. It's a long way from Belfast/Crewe to Oz. I'd left home by the time my aunt came over so I have to go on what my sister told me years later. What led up to him leaving is not recorded.

As far as 'The stolen car with the body on the roof' story goes, I turned a variant of that into a song, "The 'New' Body Snatcher".

Subject: RE: Folklore: Is this an urban myth?
From: JennieG
Date: 17 Sep 14 - 03:12 AM

Anne Lister is right - some abandonment 'stories' are, in fact, true.    One instance happened in my family, a man who walked out on his wife and family and never contacted them again. Arriving home one evening he was met by his wife, who told him that, while he was out, a bloke had called to see him. "What did he want?" asked the man. "I don't know, he didn't say" replied the wife. "Right-oh" said the man, who then got back in his car and drove off - she assumed to see the bloke who had called. He never ever returned.

The man who walked out and never spoke to his family again was my father.

Subject: RE: Folklore: Is this an urban myth?
From: MGM·Lion
Date: 17 Sep 14 - 03:11 AM

"it's got to have a punchline, or at least a twist, to become a true and memorable UM."

Sez who?

What's the punchline or twist to "Car stolen with granny's corpse on the roofrack"? They left the car while they had coffee. Came back. Car + corpse gone. That's the tale. Some embellish it with difficulties about reporting death to authorities &c; but these are outward limbs & flourishes. No punchline or twist to main tale SFAICS. And these additions don't lead anyhow to an actual identifiable punchline in any version I can find.

But it's still probably the best known UM.

≈M≈

Subject: RE: Folklore: Is this an urban myth?
From: GUEST
Date: 17 Sep 14 - 01:38 AM

C'mon. it's got to have a punchline, or at least a twist, to become a true and memorable UM.

I rather like Bernard Wrigley's tale of Bill and the Concrete Mixer. Strangely, the almost identical tale turned up in a local paper only a few weeks ago: "Victoria Police are investigating an incident...etc. etc." Obviously a slow news day....

Subject: RE: Folklore: Is this an urban myth?
From: GUEST,Stim
Date: 16 Sep 14 - 11:55 PM

That's a good one, Jim!

Jim's story has a sort of punch line, with a bit of a moral in it(embarrassed for videoing sex), as well as a slightly inexplicable causality (after the story is over, you realize that playing a video on your TV won't broadcast over a communal aerial, but it sounds good for just long enough to get the desired response). These elements make it a classic urban legend.

Aunt Peggy's story doesn't have a punch line or payoff, like the man returning to his favorite chair in the Roald Dahl story (sorry Mr. Red, you've been foafed) so it is kind of incomplete, as far as being an urban legend.

Subject: RE: Folklore: Is this an urban myth?
From: Jim Carroll
Date: 16 Sep 14 - 07:52 PM

Wonder if I might throw in another urban myth for consideration.
Years ago I worked in an apartment block outside London and was told by my customer of a couple who had lived there a few years earlier.
It was their regular practice to film themselves making love and play it back on their video player at a later date to 'relive' the moment.
After a time, they began getting strange looks from their neighbours, until, in desperation, they demanded to know what was going on.
They were eventually told that the owners of the apartment block had installed a new communal aerial system which inadvertently allowed the neighbours to tune into the replays.
Jim Carroll

Subject: RE: Folklore: Is this an urban myth?
From: The Sandman
Date: 16 Sep 14 - 07:00 PM

mornington crescent

Subject: RE: Folklore: Is this an urban myth?
From: The Sandman
Date: 16 Sep 14 - 06:58 PM

is this a version of the game mornington crescent?

Subject: RE: Folklore: Is this an urban myth?
From: GUEST,highlandman at work
Date: 16 Sep 14 - 05:00 PM

I just lost a post chock full of elaborately researched blickies, which I have no inclination to duplicate now.
The gist of it was, this is a network of closely connected weird stories.
The David Lang story was included in two compilations of strange tales in the 1950s. Both authors were suspected of cribbing from Bierce.
There is a real life David Lang, a composer, who evidently has created an opera based on "The Difficulty of Crossing a Field." (Coincidence, or just the composer's understandable fascination with a story obliquely connected to his own name? He doesn't say.)
And Bierce himself became the subject of a disappearance legend, having apparently vanished after announcing his intention to travel to Mexico to relive his fondly-remembered soldier days.
You can easily find the links yourself by a little clever Googling.
-Glenn

Subject: RE: Folklore: Is this an urban myth?
From: GUEST,.gargoyle
Date: 16 Sep 14 - 03:19 PM

Exit Stage LEFT

Sincerely,
Gargoyle

That's ALL she wrote

Subject: RE: Folklore: Is this an urban myth?
From: Lighter
Date: 16 Sep 14 - 01:51 PM

You know, fifty years later I still kind of like that David Lang story.

So I'm going to start believing it again right now.

Quite harmless, really.

Subject: RE: Folklore: Is this an urban myth?
From: Mr Red
Date: 16 Sep 14 - 01:46 PM

well I believe my story because the woman was a colleague of my girlfriend and they worked together for at least 10 years. I can't remember if the woman ever confirmed the story herself, but it was acknowledged that there had been a long separation.

Subject: RE: Folklore: Is this an urban myth?
From: GUEST,Justin
Date: 16 Sep 14 - 12:05 PM

It sounds like a more descriptive version of the old 'he popped out for a box of cigarettes one night and never came back' story.

Subject: RE: Folklore: Is this an urban myth?
From: Doug Chadwick
Date: 16 Sep 14 - 12:00 PM

Good Heavens leeneia, I though that it was only the Bible that people took literally. I'm sure that Michael isn't implying that the woman is camped out at the bottom of the escalator.

Perhaps the reason why this story is not doing the rounds as an urban legend is that it's all too believable. In fact, I would go as far as to say, commonplace. People walk out on their partners all the time and in circumstances just as quirky as this. What is lacking may be originality rather than believability.

DC

Subject: RE: Folklore: Is this an urban myth?
From: Ebbie
Date: 16 Sep 14 - 11:43 AM

The part of it that sounds FOAFish to me is the 'longest escalator' specificity. Being so very long, of course, the woman would not have expected him back momentarily thus giving him ample time to make his getaway.

We frequently say something like: And she waits for him still.

We don't mean that she is standing at the foot of the escalator, leenie.

Subject: RE: Folklore: Is this an urban myth?
From: GUEST,leeneia
Date: 16 Sep 14 - 11:12 AM

You haven't heard other version, Lion, because the story about the husband is totally unbelievable, too unbelievable to make it as an urban legend.

Take the part "
...and never came down again. She is still 'waiting a minute or two'. ---   "

Not even a credulous teenager would swallow that part.

Subject: RE: Folklore: Is this an urban myth?
From: Lighter
Date: 15 Sep 14 - 07:25 PM

Ambrose Bierce told a comparable tale, "The Difficulty of Crossing a Field" (1893).

As a teenager, I read the "strange-but-true" story of David Lang, an American farmer who vanished in full view of his family while crossing a stubble field [n.b.].

A year later his children visited the spot: they faintly heard the voice of their father crying "Help me! Help me!"

Creepy!

Turns out it was a hoax, and possibly based on Bierce's story.

Subject: RE: Folklore: Is this an urban myth?
From: GUEST,.gargoyle
Date: 15 Sep 14 - 07:16 PM

Mr. Red,

Your story is told by Roald Dahl in one of his shorts titled, Open Window

Sincerely,
Gargoyle

Hundreds of Thousands

Subject: RE: Folklore: Is this an urban myth?
From: MGM·Lion
Date: 15 Sep 14 - 05:19 PM

Stim == well before 1979. Auntie Peggy would tell this story in the 40s. But not really a related story. Such disappearances as that you relate quite often get told of. But in Auntie Peggy's story, the point is that he had planned it to leave his wife & perhaps go off as arranged with a mistress, or some such.

The story of the MP, Stonehouse, who (unsuccessfully) faked his drowning to vanish & escape arrest is nearer; but not that near.

Actually, Lighter, Holmes did eventually solve that mystery, in one of the follow-up stories from the 1950s by Adrian Conan Doyle [son of Arthur] & John Dickson Carr, published as The Exploits of Sherlock Holmes (1954), which took up & expanded some of Watson's throwaway refs from the originals.

≈M≈

Subject: RE: Folklore: Is this an urban myth?
From: Mr Red
Date: 15 Sep 14 - 05:06 PM

I heard one from a friend of a friend where the man left home without warning. Unbelievably he walked through the door many years later and sat down in his favourite chair. The woman took him back!


The only lie I told was it was a girlfriend of mine who told me.
I did meet the woman involved.

Subject: RE: Folklore: Is this an urban myth?
From: Lighter
Date: 15 Sep 14 - 05:01 PM

Not even the great Holmes was able to resolve the curious case of "Mr James Phillimore, who, stepping back into his own house to get his umbrella, was never more seen in this world."

As Dr. Watson tells us in "The Adventure of Thor Bridge."

Subject: RE: Folklore: Is this an urban myth?
From: Anne Lister
Date: 15 Sep 14 - 04:37 PM

Not convinced that the other abandonment stories are necessarily folklore either. I stayed at a hotel once on my own and sat for some time with a lady in the bar who told me how her husband had got up one evening and said he was going to close the front door properly and then not returned. She later discovered he had a mistress across town he had been in the habit of visiting and in due course moved in with "but," she said, "of course he always came around for his Sunday roast." Which was the only odd note in the tale and I thought that in her position I might slip something into the gravy ...

And an old school friend of mine who had got married at the age of 17 to an older man was brought back to her parents' home a few months later and went inside while her husband brought in the luggage. She then found he'd unloaded all of her luggage and left his wedding ring on top of the cases and then driven off ... Well, it's one way to make a clean break, I suppose.

Subject: RE: Folklore: Is this an urban myth?
From: GUEST,Stim
Date: 15 Sep 14 - 04:17 PM

MGM-"Urban Legends" tend to revolve around a core which the tellers have embellished with details that will be familiar to the listener. The essence of your aunt's story is that someone excused themselves for a moment at an underground station, and never came back.

Change the pair from husband and wife to school friends, take away the newspaper, and move from Leicester Square to King's Cross, and you are essentially telling the story of 15 year old Martin Allen, who disappeared In 1979. Don't know when your aunt told her story, but there is a possible commonality.

From WIKIPEDIA:

On 5 November 1979, Allen travelled home on the London Underground. His intention was to go and see his older brother, but he needed to go home first in order to collect some money. At around 3.50 pm he said goodbye to some school friends on King's Cross Station and set off in the direction of the Piccadilly line platform to travel home. This was the last positive sighting of Allen and he failed to reach either his parents' or his brother's home.

Subject: RE: Folklore: Is this an urban myth?
From: Doug Chadwick
Date: 15 Sep 14 - 04:14 PM

They say that truth is stranger than fiction. I think that some urban myths may well have their basis in fact but, with the retelling, specifics get lost or changed. Birmingham becomes Newcastle becomes Glasgow; an uncle becomes a friend becomes a colleague; a bus ride becomes a train journey becomes a car trip; and so on, but the kernel of the story could remain intact. After all, we accept that songs relating to real events go through the folk process to give us widely varying versions.


DC

Subject: RE: Folklore: Is this an urban myth?
From: GUEST,Rahere
Date: 15 Sep 14 - 03:51 PM

More like an urbane Mithith, methinks

Subject: RE: Folklore: Is this an urban myth?
From: GUEST,Derrick
Date: 15 Sep 14 - 03:38 PM

Unnamed guest above is me

Subject: RE: Folklore: Is this an urban myth?
From: GUEST
Date: 15 Sep 14 - 03:36 PM

Griska,
         Myth and legend are intertwined,both are ancient stories told to explain things that people had no other explanation for.
Legends often include mythical or supernatural figures as part of the stories.
Urban legends and myths are similar stories set in modern or recent history.
The stories that MGM is talking about above are just that stories,
the inclusion of FOAF's is just a attempt to give them credence

Subject: RE: Folklore: Is this an urban myth?
From: MGM·Lion
Date: 15 Sep 14 - 02:00 PM

Well, that's what I always thought, John. But, although people not named, very specific venue is. & if it is a myth, where are the other versions? No-one come up yet with an even fairly close analogue. That has always been what made me doubt. I have always thought that if it was a foaftale, Brunvand or Dale would have a variant. But no..

≈M≈

Subject: RE: Folklore: Is this an urban myth?
From: Bounty Hound
Date: 15 Sep 14 - 01:55 PM

Don't tell Mrs Hound, but I'm just popping out for a packet of fags ;)

(Actually, I can get away with that as it's my only vice, I've given up the drink and the loose women!)

Seriously though Michael, I suspect urban myth, if it was a factual story there would probably be names for the folks concerned.


John

Subject: RE: Folklore: Is this an urban myth?
From: GUEST,Grishka
Date: 15 Sep 14 - 01:31 PM

Derrick, you are quite mistaken about the specific character of urban legends (thus properly named). Nessie and UFOs are ordinary myths, a different species, even if sometimes told in the FOAF narratives.

To qualify as an urban legend, a story must have the taste of an ordinary news story from commercial mass media, usually spiced with fragments of science (- psychology, in this case). Often the two genres become indistinguishable: my aunt's friend of a friend is my newspaper's "reliable but undisclosed source". April fool hoaxes grow wings so easily.

Our cigarette buyer is comparatively harmless; I guess he flew out of some pretty realistic novel or film, just slightly pointed.

Subject: RE: Folklore: Is this an urban myth?
From: GUEST,Derrick
Date: 15 Sep 14 - 11:51 AM

Urban myths like, ufo's are extraterestrial aircraft,the chupacabra and Nessie exist in the shadow lands of possibility,it's not impossible that they might exist in some form,just highly unlikely.
The fact that the tales usually refer to unamed FOAFS means nobody can identify the subject of the story so they can never be be proved true or false even if it is plausable.
Myths are widely believed but usually based on misunderstandings of the facts, thus they are to all intents and purposes untrue.

Subject: RE: Folklore: Is this an urban myth?
From: GUEST,Grishka
Date: 15 Sep 14 - 11:00 AM

Lighter's version with the pack of cigarettes is well-established folklore. Non-smokers will prefer the newspaper, illiterate a bar of chocolate. Like all good urban legends, it sound both spectacular and plausible; this one is more on the plausible side.

The following happened to a lady I knew: on the very morning of her planned wedding, church and everything, her fiancé told her that there was another woman he loved more, and that he had known that for months but had been too much of a coward to confess it.

Normally there is still time to pack a suitcase or two. Those who leave with just a coat - assuming they exist - are either extremely "mad" or want the others to believe they had drowned, been murdered, etc. Some actually have drowned, been murdered, etc.

Subject: RE: Folklore: Is this an urban myth?
From: mayomick
Date: 15 Sep 14 - 10:56 AM

A bit of a mystery alright. Was Aunt Peggy's FOAF carrying a Yukka plant at the time by any chance?

Subject: RE: Folklore: Is this an urban myth?
From: GUEST,In Spain
Date: 15 Sep 14 - 10:55 AM

And thus do Urban Myths propagate.

We can all now say we heard it from a friend, and it actually happened to a friend of their aunt's. Although the aunt gave no names. (neither did the friend)

If you do now find another source for it, it may well lead back here!

Subject: RE: Folklore: Is this an urban myth?
From: MGM·Lion
Date: 15 Sep 14 - 10:48 AM

Be difficult to do any of that, leeneia: she's been dead for about 30 years. My memories of her go back to childhood & teenage visits with my mother, who died in 1967. Obviously it was not implied that the wife literally remained waiting in Leics Sq station. As to his underwear &c; I should take it that he had left a case at a left luggage somewhere. It was presumably all planned, to meet his mistress & vanish with her or whevs.

If it happened at all, that is.

Peggy was always a bit cagey about the names -- seemed to feel she owed some sort of confidentiality or something.

It still feels urban mythical to me -- except that this dies seem the only version of the tale; which, in myth or folklore terms, would be unusual to say the least.

≈M≈

Subject: RE: Folklore: Is this an urban myth?
From: Musket
Date: 15 Sep 14 - 10:40 AM

Or lucky white heather..

Subject: RE: Folklore: Is this an urban myth?
From: GUEST,leeneia
Date: 15 Sep 14 - 10:38 AM

I've never heard it either, but it sounds like an urban tale to me, MGM Lion.

Didn't Peggy Rose even know the name of her friend and of her friend's friend?

Did the man leave home without so much as a change of underwear?

And of course, it's impossible to believe she's still waiting. If she were mentally handicapped or something, eventually the police will have dealt with her.

No, don't believe Peggy Rose, and don't buy any shares from her.

Subject: RE: Folklore: Is this an urban myth?
From: GUEST,Henry Piper of Ottery
Date: 15 Sep 14 - 10:28 AM

This probably has some basis in Fact. There are numerous recorded cases of people just walking out on friends and family with no warning, I think in the U.K there are several hundred such cases a year reported to the Police, Some return eventually, but others are never heard from again.

Subject: RE: Folklore: Is this an urban myth?
From: GUEST, topsie
Date: 15 Sep 14 - 08:50 AM

The parallel case might be the joke doing the rounds some years ago about a woman asking for advice after her husband went out to buy a cauliflower (or maybe Brussels sprouts) and never came back.
The advice:
"If I were you I'd open a tin of peas."

Subject: RE: Folklore: Is this an urban myth?
From: Lighter
Date: 15 Sep 14 - 08:37 AM

I have heard of a parallel case - don;t know where or when, maybe in a novel - of a disgruntled husband who told his wife he was "just going out for a newspaper" (or perhaps a pack of cigarettes)... and never returned.

Am sure this was not to told to me as a true FOAF tale.

However, I was told in the '90s that you must never fasten your auto seatbelt, because in a certain kind of crash, it can slice your liver out.

It "actually happened" to an unfortunate FOAF.