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Urban Legends (view source)

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An Urban Legend is a story told by a person as a true event. It is told as having happened locally, to a "friend of a friend", and is usually altered in the telling. The people at [http://www.snopes.com/ Snopes] collect these critters.
 
They most often show up on television as the Case of the Week on [[Police Procedural|Police Procedurals]]s. Occasionally one can happen to one of the main characters on a drama or sitcom. There are a small but increasing number of shows dedicated to proving/disproving their basis in reality; the most popular of these is ''[[Myth Busters]]'', followed closely by the cable series ''[[Penn and Teller Bullshit]]''. They can sometimes even show up in newspapers as filler articles, you can recognize them as stories that sound too weird to be true that do not specify the names of the people involved or in what city they took place.
 
Often used to [[Scare'Em Straight]], or just to tell a little bit of humour. (The [[Cabbage Patch Kids]] one, for example, was a joke.)
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== Real Life ==
* [[Truth in Television]]? [[wikipedia:Ronald Clark Ochr(27)Bryan|Ronald Clark O'Bryan]] [[Tampering with Food and Drink|killed his son with poisoned Pixy Stix]] on Halloween 1974-- and slipped some of the poisoned candy into the bags of the boy's fellow trick-or-treaters to give the impression it was a [http://www.snopes.com/horrors/poison/halloween.asp Random Halloween Poisoner.]
* Snopes.com reports a numberminority of urban legends as true (though they're still in a noticeable minority), including some rather unbelievable ones such as [http://www.snopes.com/medical/asylum/fbipizza.asp this seemingly farcical account], on which they comment: "The above-quoted tale about FBI agents trying to order pizza delivery to a psychiatric hospital is one of those pieces that serves to remind us that no matter how bizarre, far-fetched, or incredible a story may seem at first glance, it should never be entirely discounted without at least some effort being made to verify it."
* ''[[Cracked.com]]'' has an ongoing series about [http://www.cracked.com/article_19503_7-creepy-urban-legends-that-happen-to-be-true-part-521.html urban legends that are true.]
 
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