The Vanishing Hitchhiker: American Urban Legends and Their Meanings


Book Description

The groundbreaking book that launched America's urban legend obsession! Folklore scholar Jan Harold Brunvand assembles the best-known urban legends—including "The Hook," "The Spider in the Hairdo," and "The Baby-Sitter and the Man Upstairs"—and provides an enlightening and entertaining analysis of their variants and evolution. The Vanishing Hitchhiker was Professor Brunvand's first popular book on urban legends, and it remains a classic. The culmination of twenty years of collection and research, this book is a must-have for urban legend lovers.







The Vanishing Hitchhiker


Book Description

The book that launched America's urban legend obsession! THE VANISHING HITCHHIKER was Professor Brunvand's first popular book on urban legends, and it remains a classic. The culmination of twenty years of collection and research, this book is a must-have for urban legend lovers.




Be Afraid Be Very Afraid


Book Description

A collection of over ninety frightening urban legends, arranged by theme.




Curses! Broiled Again!


Book Description

From the master folklorist and sly wit, Jan Brunvand, comes a collection of all-new urban legends. Did your cousin's wife's dentist's daughter go to the tanning parlor once too often and had her insides cooked? Has your husband's brother's nephew teacher try to make a dead rabbit look alive? If so, you've heard—or you yourself may have told—two of the seventy-plus legends in this collection. Urban legends are "those bizarre but believable stories about batter-fried rats, spiders in hairdos, Cabbage Patch dolls that get funerals, and the like that pass by word of mouth as being the gospel truth." But of course, though often told as having happened to a FOAF (friend of a friend), they aren't true. Included in this collection are legends about sex, horror, cars, business, and academia. Among them are "The Bible Student's Exam," "The Pregnant Shoplifter," "The Ice Cream Cone Caper," "Don't Mess with Texas," and "Mrs. Fields' Cookie Recipe."




Encyclopedia of Urban Legends


Book Description

Presents descriptions of hundreds of urban legends and their variations, themes, and scholarly approaches to the genre, including such tales as disappearing hitchhikers and hypodermic needles left in the coin slots of pay telephones.




The Choking Doberman: And Other Urban Legends


Book Description

Discusses over forty stories of improbable events told as true and embelished with local details which the author calls urban legends.




Too Good to Be True: The Colossal Book of Urban Legends


Book Description

A collection of oft-repeated urban legends brings together the best of modern myths, from the stoned baby sitter who mistook a baby for a turkey to the fabulously expensive recipe for chocolate chip cookies.




The Baby Train and Other Lusty Urban Legends


Book Description

America's premier folk detective is back on the case, sniffing out those zany but dubious stories that "really happened" to a friend of your sister's boyfriend's accountant's mechanic. Jan Harold Brunvand—''Mr. Urban Legend" [Smithsonian]—tracks the most fabulous tales making today's cocktail-party circuit and shows why those stories that sound too good to be true probably are too good to be true. The eponymous episode—"The Baby Train"—sheds light on certain predawn activities that have linked unusually high birth rates to the whim of train schedule makers. Other stories offer a revealing peek behind the story of "The Exploding Bra," expose the embarrassing source of "The Hairdresser's Error," resurrect a "Failed Suicide" Buster Keaton would have died for, and show why adults are better off not bringing their comic book fantasies out of the closet. From "Superhero Hijinx" to "The Shocking Videotape" to "The Accidental Cannibal," The Baby Train uncovers the mysteries behind some of the bawdiest, goriest, funniest, most pyrotechnic urban legends yet.




The Truth Never Stands in the Way of a Good Story


Book Description

"Here he [the author] looks in detail at a dozen rampant and long-lived examples of this vigorous category of contemporary folklore, tracing their historyies, variations, sources, and meanings."--Jacket.