Q. What is an urban legend and where do urban legends come from?
A. Possibly you've heard the latest urban legend doing the rounds - the one about the Muslim couple and the woman in the supermarket. Or last year's one about the "puppy" picked up at sea that turned out
to be a rat.
No one knows where the term "urban legend" first came from but they have been studied as a serious form of folklore for at least 40 years.
They most likely developed out of the age-old human tradition of story-telling - one theory is that they developed as a new type of tale to replace the old beliefs in witches and goblins.
An urban legend does not have to be untrue - the best ones are either based on fact or have a believable ring of truth.
They have some things in common: they have a storyline, relate an incredible but often believable set of events and are usually told in the first, second or third person despite the fact the "true" event happened to someone unknown to the listener or receiver. The event has almost always happened to someone's mother, father, friend, sister, etc. Far from losing ground in the age of genetic science and space travel, the urban legend has found new life on the internet as emails with the tall tale can be transmitted faster and easier than ever before.
Australian urban legend researcher, Redman Lucas Wells, puts urban legend tellers into seven main categories: believers, fence sitters, substantiaters, self-promoters, entertainers, sceptics and alarmists.
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Urban Legends Research Centre
