Happy Urban Legend 5: The Call is Coming From Inside the House

We all pretend we were that teenager. Down on her luck, no cash from the parents, desperate to make ends meet, and then she gets the call. A wealthy family with a big house who just need her to watch the kids overnight. They'll sleep through all of it.

This lucky girl tucks the kids in at 7, and because it's a fiction, they don't make a peep. She's wandering the mansion and pocketing their candy bars when her cell rings. In older versions of the story it's the house phone, but who has one of those anymore?

"Hello?" she asks.

The response is heavy breathing, like the caller has been sprinting. It goes on for a few seconds before he hangs up.

She thinks that's weird, and Caller ID says it's an unknown number. Maybe a friend from school butt-dialed her. She's walking into the next room when her cell rings again.

"Hello?"

Heavier breathing this time, labored like it's coming through a cloth. She's about to threaten the call-troll when he hangs up again.

She goes to the foyer, looking out the windows, because if you've even heard of Horror movies, you look out the God-damned windows when this happens to you. There's no one there. She's convincing herself it was a dumb prank when her cell rings again. This time the shock is so great she almost throws it at the wall.

"Who the hell is this?"

There's more muffled breathing, and what sounds eerily close to a child's giggle. Then a muffled voice asks, "Have you checked the children?"

Like any smart young woman, she calls the police while fleeing the property. She isn't checking on crap until men with guns show up, and they do, with guns and radios and flashing lights. She gets several more calls while the police sweep the premises, begging her to send them away. By the second call, she sees movement in an upstairs window and realizes who's been trolling her. Every brat has a cell phone these days. She lets the sheriff be the one to catch the kids, and sticks around to see their parents have their own freak-out. The kids are grounded for life, and the parents pay her triple, so it's a happy ending. She doesn't spend the money on a new phone.

Happy Urban Legend 4: Alligators in the Sewer

There is a venerable urban legend of alligators living in the sewers of major metropolitan areas. It began as one baby gator stolen from the pet store by a capricious child, and once discovered by his parents, is flushed down the toilet. It grew up, spawned and proceeded to stalk the sewers for the rest of its days. Three things are patently untrue about this urban legend:

1)      Alligators aren't sold in most pet stores. It wasn't stolen from one.

2)      The child flushed it not because of parents, but because children as sadistic and evil monsters.

3)      It was actually a baby crocodile, but most people don't know the difference.

Some version of the gator/croc infestation is real in most cities where children have access to wildlife and toilets. However the average sewer croc is friendly to the point of being entrepreneurial, perpetually stalking the sewers in order to collect all the change people drop down grates, pipes and sinks. The reason there is not one, but many crocs in the average sewer is because the original croc made enough money to get his family across the border and into the neighborhood.

If you find yourself underground and cornered by something like an alligator or crocodile, offer it a dollar. If this does not dissuade it, offer to flush anything from the surface world it wants as soon as you get topside again. This usually does the trick. Be sure to follow through with the sewer croc's demands, though: the part about them coming up through the toilet for revenge is truer than is worth risking.

Happy Urban Legend 3: The Killer in the Backseat

This one tends to have befallen the sister of a friend of someone you met on MySpace. The true urban legend is that anyone ever met anyone real on MySpace, but will require its own entry. For now, let us concern with the Sister of Dubious Origin and the man in her backseat.

She was driving home – from work, from a party, from college, it really varies based on the Sister of Dubious Origin, and has befallen one or another of them at some time. What's constant in every story is the truck that began following her. At first it only flashed its high beams, but seconds later it was tailgating. When she slowed down, it refused to pass. When she sped up, so did it.

She tried pulling onto back roads, but the truck continued following her, even nudging her rear bumper as its horn blared. In some versions she called the police on her cell; in others, a parent or boyfriend. The truck always followed this sister in every version, to her apartment, to her parents' home, or even a police roadblock. As soon as she jumped out of her car, so did the trucker, screaming that there was a man in her backseat.

She whirled and saw that, yes, there was a fastidious and photogenic man leering from the backseats. Every Sister of Dubious Origin who ever lived heard him ask, "Did you know you can save 15% on your car insurance by switching to GEICO?"

The Sisters of Dubious Origin filed a class action lawsuit against GEICO in 2008 and settled out of court. It's widely considered the second most obnoxious GEICO ad, after the ones with the talking pig.

Happy Urban Legend 2: Chain Letters

One of the first superstitions of the digital era was the chain letter. An immigrant from the postal service, the superstition came in the form of a letter, and later an e-mail, threatening you to copy the message and send it to several friends. Why you'd do that to a friend has always been a course of mystery, stretching back to the first girl to ever compose a chain e-mail. To be fair, she was dead when she did it.

Anyone who follows the instructions of a chain e-mail is passed over and experiences none of Google's first paranormal agent. Anyone who disregards such an e-mail, though, will be haunted by the ghost of the girl who set the scheme up. She will haunt your inbox for the rest of your life, complimenting your good taste by acting as a secondary spam filter. You will very likely never see another penis enlargement ad that she thinks you don't need.

Skeptics should still be wary, for though disregarding her power has benefits, calling her work a superstition is hazardous. Doing so upsets her ghost and cause her to expose your search history to a loved one. That has never ended well, and ironically, its contents are always passed on by word of mouth.

Bathroom Monologue: Happy Urban Legends

The Hook Hand

It's said he lurks on romantic cliffs and in abandoned parking lots. Wherever teens go to neck, he may be spotted in the rear-view mirror. At first you'll only hear a faint scratching. If you're attentive, the radio will warn you that a madman has escaped from a nearby asylum. But you won't hear it, because he wouldn't come for you if you listened to important information.

So as hands slip under sweaters and toes curl, little scratches will climb up the door of the car. You may mistake the whine of his hook hand on the roof for the moans of your partner. Most folks are scared witless when his specter finally looms, pulling on their clothes as they peel off for civilization.

It's miles of burned rubber and ruined hard-ons later that the survivors discover a wrapped condom hanging from the driver-side mirror. The hook-handed maniac takes reproductive health very seriously.