Too Good to Be True: The Colossal Book of Urban Legends (50 page)

The following is a warning to business travelers provided by America West Airlines.

Dear friends

I wish to warn you about a new crime ring that is targeting business travelers. This ring is well organized, well funded, has very skilled personnel, and is currently in most major cities and recently very active in New Orleans and Las Vegas. The crime begins when a business traveler goes to a lounge for a drink at the end of the work day. A person in the bar walks up as they sit alone and offers to buy them a drink. The last thing the traveler remembers, until they wake up in a hotel room bathtub, their body submerged to their neck in ice, is sipping that drink. There is a note taped to the wall instructing them not to move and to call 911. A phone is on a small table next to the bathtub for them to call. The business traveler calls 911 who have become quite familiar with this crime. The business traveler is instructed by the 911 operator to very slowly and carefully reach behind them and feel if their is a tube protruding from their lower back. The business traveler finds the tube and answer, “yes.” The 911 operator tells them to remain still, having already sent paramedics to help. The operator knows that both of the business traveler’s kidneys have been harvested. This is not a scam or out of a science fiction novel, it is real. It is documented and confirmable. If you travel or someone close to you travels, please be careful.

Additionally, the Military and Firefighters has received alerts regarding this bazaar crime. It is to be taken very seriously.

“Hold your kidneys” takes on a whole new meaning.

Barry Karr, executive director and public relations director of CSICOP—the Committee for the Scientific Investigation of Claims of the Paranormal—electronically forwarded me this query about “The Kidney Heist.” I referred him to my discussion of the background of the story, going back to 1991, in
The Baby Train.
The second version of the warning was circulated by travel agents as a cautionary message for business travelers. Earlier forms of this bogus warning were ridiculous enough, ignoring the necessity for tissue matches and organ registration for transplants, as well as the near-impossibility of recruiting any well-paid surgeons to perform such clandestine operations. The recent versions of the warning, usually set in Las Vegas or New Orleans, follow an even less likely scenario: how would the kidney thieves get all that ice down the hall into the bathtub without being noticed, and how could the victim live with
both
kidneys removed? Will Christopher Baer’s 1998 novel
Kiss Me, Judas
opens with a scene drawn straight from the ice-in-the-bathtub version of “The Kidney Heist.” A review in
Library Journal
(September 15, 1998) described the book as “dark, graphic, and twisted,” cautioning that it is “not for the faint of heart.” One wonders how effective the scene would be for readers who have already heard the urban legend or have seen it featured in the 1998 slasher film
Urban Legend.
For an excellent survey of the international tradition of such stories see Véronique Campion-Vincent, “Organ Theft Narratives,”
Western Folklore,
vol. 56 (winter 1997), pp. 1–37.

“The Welded Contacts”

CONTACT LENSES

We would appreciate your calling the following hazard to the attention of all of your people immediately.

Two recent incidents have uncovered a previously unknown phenomenon of serious gravity.

At Dequeane Electric a worker threw an electrical switch into closed position which produced a shortlived sparking.

An employee at UPS flipped open the colored lense of his welding goggles to better position the welding rod. He inadvertantly struck the metal to be welded, producing an arc.

BOTH MEN WERE WEARING CONTACT LENSES. On returning home from work, they removed the contacts AND THE CORNEA OF THE EYE WAS REMOVED along with the lenses.

Result: PERMANENT BLINDESS!

The electric arc generates microwaves that instantly dry up the fluid between the eye and the lense, causing the cornea to be bonded to the lense. This trauma is painless and the operator never knows an injury has occurred until removing the contacts.

As this phenomenon was unknown, no Federal or State safety and health agency has regulations on this matter, but they are pursuing the investigation zealously and will respond according to findings.

In the meantime, until such regulations are established or until this matter can be brought before your safety committee, it is suggested that no contact lenses be worn by anyone who is potentially subject to an electrical sparking situation.

DANGER!!!!

-SHOULD BE POSTED EVERYWHERE-

The warning sheet, date-stamped April 8, 1983, was sent to me in 1985 by Mark Lutton of Malden, Massachusetts, who found it on a bulletin board of the company he was working for then. Nobody was able to identify where the notice came from, and the rest of the stamp is not legible, since the sheet has evidently been photocopied several times. Similar notices have been widely reported in the United States and Great Britain as recently as 1990. A 1983 Policy Statement from the American Academy of Ophthalmology, entitled “The Effects of Exposure to Electric Arc Welding on Contact Lens Wearers,” traced the rumors back to 1967 and discounted the possibility of such an accident. Officials of Pittsburgh’s Dusquesne Electric Company and of United Parcel Service, both named (although sometimes misspelled) in these warnings, cannot identify any such case. In the January 1987 issue of
Welding Journal,
editor Jeffrey D. Weber wrote that the welded-cornea story was “pseudo-science” and concluded, “The story is not true, it never happened and it never could.” A Maryland physician asked about “The Welded Contacts” had the best response I’ve seen to questions about the possibility of such a horrible accident; he told a writer for the
Baltimore Sun,
“It is a physical impossibility to dry up the fluid in your eyes. You’d have to stick your head in a blast furnace to do that. Removing your cornea would be like pulling off your ear.”

“The Procter & Gamble Trademark”

Company Involved: PROCTOR & GAMBLE COMPANY Source of Information: Phil Donahue TV SHOW

The President of Proctor & Gamble Company recently appeared on the Phil Donahue TV Show. The subject of which he spoke, was his company’s support of the Church of Satan.

He stated that a large portion of Proctor & Gamble’s profit goes to the Church of Satan, also known as the Devil’s Church.

When asked by Mr. Donahue if he felt that stating this on television would hurt his business, the president replied-“There are not enough Christians in the U.S. to make a difference.”

The President of Proctor & Gamble was contacted by the President of the Church of Satan, and notified that if he was going to support the Church of Satan then Proctor & Gamble would have to place the emblem/symbol of the church organization on the labels of each Proctor & Gamble product. It is noted that since that time, the symbol of the Church of Satan
has been
placed on all their labels.

Recently, on the Merv Griffith Show, a group of cultists were featured, among them, the owner of Proctor & Gamble Corp. He said that as long as the gays and other cults have come out of their closets. He was doing the same. He said that he had told Satan that if he (Satan) would help him prosper then he would give his heart and soul to him when he dies. He gave Satan all the credit for his riches.

PROCTOR & GAMBLE CORP. MANUFACTURES THE FOLLOWING PRODUCTS AMONG OTHERS:

CAKE MIX: Duncan Hines Products, DIAPERS:

Pampers-Luv’s, MOUTH WASH: Scope CLEANING AIDS & DETERGENTS: Biz, Bold, Bounce, Cascade, Cheer, Comet, Dash, Dawn, Downey, Era, Gain, Joy, Mr. Clean, Oxydol, SpickNSpan, Tide, Top Job. COFFEE: Foulgers & High Point. COOKING OILS & SHORTNINGS: Crisco, Fluffo, Puritan PEANUT BUTTER: Jiffy, DEODRANTS: Secret & Sure LOTIONS: Wondra SHAMPOO: Head & Shoulders, Pert & Prell SOAPS: Camay, Coast, Ivory, Safeguard & Zest TOOTHPASTE: Gleem & Crest

If in doubt, watch for the SATANIC SYMBOL To be found on the front or back of all their products. The actual size is shown below with enlarged drawing below it. It is a tiny Ram’s horn with three sets of stars placed in such a way that if the stars of each set are joined, they form the number 666, known as the devil’s number.

Christians should always remember that if they buy any products with this symbol, they will be taking part in the support of the Church of Satan, or devil worship. We suggest that you use what you have on hand, but make sure you don’t buy any more.

Please feel free to make copies of this letter and pass them out to anyone who you feel should be informed, so that as little business as possible will go to Proctor & Gamble. Then we can easily prove to their President that there are more than enough Christians and other believers in God to put a very large dent into his profits.

This example comes from literally hundreds that have landed in my files since 1982; it was not dated or otherwise identified. All such sheets urge readers to circulate copies of the warning, and it is evident from the photocopy “static” that this is already a multigenerational copy. No Procter & Gamble (P&G) official has appeared on any of the television talk shows named on such fliers to discuss the trademark or anything else. The offending detail of P&G packaging is the cryptic trademark showing a bearded man-in-the-moon facing thirteen stars. Some “proofs” of the trademark’s alleged Satanic implication require the viewer to hold the logo up to a mirror and observe the 666 formed by the lines in the man’s beard. It’s interesting that people who examine the trademark so closely have not observed how to spell the company name correctly. The company has received hundreds of thousands of calls about its trademark, and issued explanations several times of its benign origin and innocent meaning, all to no avail in suppressing the rumor. In 1985 P&G stopped using the trademark on some of its products, retaining it only on letterheads and at the company’s corporate headquarters in Cincinnati. Several times over the years P&G has brought lawsuits against individuals and companies for spreading the rumor. An article by Dana Canedy in the
New York Times
of July 29, 1997, traced the history of the company’s problems with the trademark rumors and described the latest suit being brought by P&G against the Amway Corporation and several of its distributors, accusing them of spreading the Satanism rumors as a business ploy. Earlier Satanism rumors bedeviled the McDonald’s restaurant chain a decade earlier, but these eventually faded. P&G should be so lucky!

“The Madalyn Murray O’Hair Petition”

The millions of copies of this bogus warning and response form that have circulated in the United States since 1975 are nearly identical, except for variant spellings of Ms. O’Hair’s name and different versions of the FCC address. This flier came from a church in Ohio. The FCC did indeed process a petition numbered RM-2493 submitted in 1974, which asked the commission to suspend the assignment of franchises for public television stations until the government could study the question of whether religious groups were getting too many of the channels. The FCC denied this petition the following year, and shortly afterwards letters and telephone calls began to come in from people who thought Madalyn Murray O’Hair had been involved. She was not, and she has never submitted any sort of petition to the FCC. The commission has no authority to prohibit religious broadcasting, and it certainly cannot regulate religious programs in the schools. Despite press releases and even a recorded explanation on the FCC voice-mail system, the petitions continue to flow in at the rate of thousands, even millions per year; the tide of letters ebbs and flows, but never stops. The FCC eventually received permission from the U.S. Postal Service to destroy all letters marked 2493 without opening them, and since most of the mail-in forms specify that the sender should write “Petition 2493” in the lower left-hand corner of the envelope, a great deal of time and effort has been saved. Considering the amount of postage sold to support this bogus campaign, it seems that the government has come out ahead on the deal. Rumors circulate among some Christian groups that atheists themselves are the ones printing and distributing the fliers about the fake petition just to make Christians look foolish. Atheist groups deny the charge. It’s like a holy war of rumors and legends, with the FCC futilely trying to bring an end to the conflict.