Bonus Ep. 20.5 - Urban Legends

Like myths, urban legends are stories passed around to explain something in our world and give warnings but unlike myths, urban legends usually deal with actual people or everyday events, some are comical bordering on rumours. Others still are terrifying, bordering on a horror story usually reflecting the fears of a select few in society at the time of its spread. Today we’ll look at a few urban legends and separate the truth from fiction.

Welcome to Myths, Mysteries, & Monsters. We’re doing things a little bit differently today for a bonus episode. Today we’re going to look at 3 different urban legends, their origins, and what, if anything, people did to prevent them from spreading. 

Our first urban legend takes place in 1976, a new brand of bubble gum has taken the gum chewing and candy eating nation by storm. Prior to 1976 gum was tough, you had to chew it quite a few times before you could even think of beginning to blow a bubble with it. It was just a fact of life at the time, if you wanted to blow a bubble you had to put the work in. 

But then Bubble Yum, owned by the Life Saver’s Company appeared. It was soft, pliable, you could squeeze it between your fingers without having to chew it and once you did chew it, you were blowing bubbles only moments later.

Just a year after the gum was released, its sales began to surpass even the sales of the actual life savers candy. The soft texture and the little granules of sugar packed with taste that you could actually feel, easily made it the best selling gum on the market.

But with all the publicity, there began a rumbling of curiosity. Questions began to be asked how could this gum be so chewy and delicious? There must be some sort of extra ingredient they’re not telling us about right?

Soon those rumblings turn to whispers, whispers that are heard by everyone. What was the secret ingredient they don’t tell us about? Children began to put two and two together, it had to be something sticky, stretchable, and soft. And what about those granules of sugar, that must be it. They could only be spider eggs.

No one is really quite sure who was first to suggest spider eggs but it seemed to make sense to children. Sales in New York began to dip, no one wanted to chew on bubble gum made of spider eggs.

And then the rumors blew up with even more elaborate tall tales, if the gum is made of spider eggs, that would explain how an unnamed school girl woke up with webs all over her face after falling asleep with the gum in her mouth. Taking it further someone began to spread a story of up to nine children dying after accidentally swallowing the spider ridden gum.

The Life Savers Company saw the dip in sales, wondering how far the rumors reached, they took a survey in New York. After ten days they found that over half of children in New York heard of the rumor and it wouldn’t be long before the entire country was no longer buying their revolutionary gum.

Executives at the Life Savers Company were told to ignore the rumors by public relations people, they were told it would pass and they shouldn’t worry but Life Savers couldn’t just let a few bad spider eggs ruin the bunch. They spent a hundred thousand dollars or the equivalent to almost half a million dollars in today’s money to fight the rumor, putting out full page ads in over fifty different newspapers.

Including in the New York Times, with headlines reading, “Somebody is telling bad lies about a good product.” With that the Life Savers company became their own lifesaver and the sales began to climb back up. They had effectively stomped out an urban legend.

While there were still rumblings throughout the years of the spider eggs along with spider legs and the gum causing cancer, they never truly affected sales again. Within a few years competitors released their own versions of soft easily chewable gum and the rumors died down, becoming just an urban legend of the time.

Eventually the Bubble Yum brand was sold to Nabisco in 1981 and is today owned by Hershey’s. It’s safe to say the web of lies told by school children back in 1977 won’t affect Bubble Yum anymore.

Our next story takes place sometime in the late 1800’s, at this point in his life, Doctor Silas Weir Mitchell had already made a name for himself in the field of neurology. In fact, he is often considered the father of medical neurology.

But he wasn’t without controversy, Mitchell introduced the rest cure. He believed the advancements in technology, socialization, and the aftermath of war made many women live life too fast. His solution was to prescribe them with at least a month of bed rest.

Women suffering from anxiety, fatigue, hysteria, and even blindness were considered, quote nervous women, to Doctor Mitchell. To all of them he prescribed the same, six to eight weeks of strict bed rest forbidden to do anything that required them to use their mind.

One of his patients, Charlotte Perkins Gilman, eventually went on to write the short psychological horror story “The Yellow Wallpaper” showing the effects Mitchell’s rest cure had on the mind.

But this wouldn’t be the only horror that would involve Doctor Mitchell. Late one night during a raging blizzard, Doctor Mitchell had finally arrived home, as he settled in from the long day of work, a knock came from his door.

Probably the wind he possibly thought, no one would be out at this time of night during a blizzard. But the knock continued.

It became persistent, desperate, a plea for help. Mitchell opens the door, a young girl wearing a red cloak and a tattered shawl stands before him with teary eyes. She begins to beg him to accompany her to help her sick mother.

She tells him her mother is suffering from something unknown but she fears she won’t make it through the night without some help.

Mitchell, despite being exhausted from the long day, grabs his coat and medical bag instructing the girl to lead the way. She brings him to a shabby apartment and points to the door, electing to stay in the hallway as he enters.

Luckily Mitchell is able to help the girl’s mother, giving her medication and ensuring he makes it through the night. As the mother gets better, a look of confusion grows on her face, she asks the doctor, “how did you know I needed help?”

“Your daughter came to find me, she brought me here to help you.” Mitchell says smiling.

The mother’s confusion turns to fear and she points to an open closet, “My daughter died a year ago, there, in the closet are the last things she ever wore.”

Mitchell turns to the closet and sees the same red cloak the young girl was wearing, still wet from the blizzard outside.

That ghost story spread while Mitchell was still alive and despite his various attempts to discredit the story, he could never completely stop it. The reason for this may be Mitchell himself may have been the originator of the story. 

While working in medicine, Mitchell took up writing and became a respected author in his time. It’s been theorized he may have made the story up himself, in his fictional book “Characteristics” from 1910 one of the characters explains the dangers of telling a ghost story. The character had told a story about a dead child asking a doctor to help her mother and afterwards believers and disbelievers assailed him with letters.

It seems the character Mitchell wrote was reflecting on Mictchell’s own experience. Researchers who tried to find the origin of the actual ghost story found evidence of Mitchell telling it during a medical conference and afterwards it spread on it’s own.

Several versions of the story exist, some versions the nameless doctor is led by the young girl to a former house servant of the doctors. Other versions the doctor arrives too late or the day after treating the mother and she has passed away only to see a picture of the dead child somewhere in the home.

In the end Mitchell wasn’t able to prescribe his infamous treatment of rest to the story no matter how much he tried.

Our next urban legend takes place sometime in the mid-1980’s on a transatlantic flight from Amsterdam to New York. This was during the height of the crack epidemic in the United States but the fear and disgust had spread to other drugs and any locations associated with them.

With Amsterdam’s red light district and their decriminalization of cannabis just ten years prior, flight attendants were always on the lookout for anything off during the flights but on this flight it appeared there wouldn’t be any trouble.

Hours into the flight many passengers had fallen asleep and a flight attendant made her rounds just in case anyone left awake needed anything. She came upon a sleeping couple but what caught her eye was the baby nestled between them who looked ill and pale.

She thought to pick up the baby and bring it to her station to care for it, maybe the baby needed some water or milk to help get through the flight. But when she felt its forehead, she began to panic. The baby was cold to the touch.

Quickly she brought the baby to a doctor on the plane who confirmed the baby had passed away but that wasn’t the only revelation. The doctor realized the baby had been embalmed, upon further examination the doctor and flight attendant were shocked to find out the baby had been hollowed out and filled with drugs to smuggle into the United States.

This horrifying tale thrived in a war on drugs america. In the previous two urban legends we saw how tough it could be to correct an urban legend or prevent its spread when it's being told through whispers or in conferences but what about when the media gets involved?

An article printed in The Washington Post in 1985 entitled “Drugs Making Miami Synonymous with Crime” begins with this first paragraph, quote

“A federal undercover agent talks about the case of the baby who did not move. An attendant on a flight from Colombia to Miami became suspicious and called U.S. Customs agents to have a look. They discovered that the baby had been dead for some time. Its body had been cut open, stuffed with cocaine and sewn shut.”

The Washington Post printed a retraction a week later when it was revealed the story had been made up by the writer. But the story was already an urban legend at the time. The follow up retraction reported,  “Clifton Stallings, a spokesman for the U.S. Customs Service in Miami, said "the story has been in circulation for some time. No one at Customs in Miami can verify it."

A custom official, Vann Capps, told the paper he had heard the story when in training in 1973 and no one could confirm the story ever happened.

But this urban legend didn’t end there, it had the perfect mix of terror inducing ingredients. The fear of drugs, outsiders, and harm to innocent children. It went on to appear in various other news articles and magazines like LIFE magazine, National Inquierer, and even Playboy.

A version of the urban legend even appeared in the UK’s Guardian except the setting took place in the middle east and once the internet got a hold of it, the urban legend gained a new twist and audience. 

In 1999 a new version appeared being sent through email with requests to forward to everyone as a warning. The email reads, quote

“My sister’s co-worker has a sister in Texas who with her husband was planning a weekend trip across the Mexican border for a shopping spree. At the last minute their baby-sitter canceled, so they had to bring along their two year old son with them.

They had been across the border for about an hour when the baby got free and ran around the corner. The mother went chasing but the boy had disappeared. The mother found a police officer who told her to go to the gate and wait. Not really understanding the instructions, she did as she was instructed.

About 45 minutes later, a man approached the border carrying the boy. The mother ran to him, grateful that he had been found. When the man realized it was the boy’s mother, he dropped the boy and ran himself. The police were waiting for him and got him. The boy was dead, in less than 45 minutes he was missing, cut open, all of his insides removed and his body cavity stuffed with cocaine. The man was going to carry him across the border as if he were asleep.

Please send this email to as many people as you can, if you have a home PC send it out there too. God bless you and this united effort to spread the word. You might just save a life!”

End quote.

The email shows just how malleable urban legends can be to represent the fears of some and how easily it can spread. No records show the story in the email ever happened meanwhile other versions have the story taking place in the canadian border. 

Interestingly a possible origin for the urban legend would involve none of the countries in the stories. During the Vietnam War between the years of 1968 and 1975, US Army Master Sergeant Leslie Ike Atkinson became a major figure in smuggling heroin into the United States.

After he was caught one of the methods Atkinson was accused of, was smuggling the heroin in the coffins of dead soldiers. This was called the “Cadaver Connection”, Atkinson would go on to deny this was the case and state the drugs were smuggled in furniture.

Whether this was the origin of the urban legend or not, no drugs were actually smuggled in dead bodies. If anyone is wondering if there ever was an instance of a dead body being used to smuggle drugs, there doesn’t appear to be any evidence of that occurring but in 1990 a man was arrested in Miami while waiting for a connecting flight to Madrid. It turned out he had surgically implanted bags of cocaines into his thighs. He was only caught because the incisions had become infected causing his walk to become suspicious.

Thank you for joining me on today’s episode of Myths, Mysteries, & Monsters!

My name is Hector, script, and research done by E.L Soto. Sources are in the show notes for further reading. 

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