My grandmother told me, when I was pregnant with my only son...

"Don't raise your arms above your head, you will wrap the umbilical cord around the babies neck and choke him."

I think the best human body, urban legend I heard was back in college when they would tell you not to get drunk at parties because there was a Organ Mafia that would spike your drink, cut a kidney out, and leave you in a bathtub full of ice...where, of course, you'd wake up the next morning to find a phone on the edge of the tub and a note that said, "Call 911.  You just lost a kidney." 

;)

Of course, that never actually happened...but, it scared me enough not to drink during college.

My favorite urban legends from childhood were:

1.  Pop Rocks and Coke - don't mix them and swallow,... it will blow up your stomach and you'll die.

2.  The Char-Man.  This was a local urban legend in the Ojai area.  Supposedly, if you went out on Nye Road, at Midnight, and laid in the middle of the road... you'd start to smell a sulfuric, tarry smell.   Then, if you were brave enough to "keep lying there", you'd sit up and see the Char Man running across the road.  The legend was that he had died in a fiery car accident in the 40's.  *rolls eyes*

I always thought that if you were stupid enough to lie in the middle of a road for the twenty minutes (or so) that it took to see Char Man, you deserved to be eaten by Char-Man...not see him. 

OMG! I just googled Charman, thinking that I'm probably the only stupid sap who remembers being terrefied by that story...only to find that it has it's own webpage:

http://www.ghostvillage.com...

ETA: This is like finding out Santa didn't exist. 

http://www.bfro.net/legends...

Urban legends are my hobby.  Once a friend called me from a party and said, "hey, listen to this guy, I'm gonna put him on the phone."  After about 15 seconds I said "is this the one that ends with him in the bathtub minus a kidney?"  He couldn't believe it hadn't really happened to a "friend of a friend."

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My favorite body UL is the bride who wants to look good for the wedding, so she signs up with three different tanning studios to accelerate the process.  After a week or so, she starts noticing this odd, bad smell.  Her doctor tells her she's cooked her internal organs, there's nothing he can do, and she dies shortly thereafter.  Jan Brunevald told the tale in "Curses!  Broiled Again!"

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Guess I will not be eating Oscar Meyer hot dogs any more!

Recently Marines in Iraq wrote to Oscar Meyer because they wanted to let them know how much they liked their hot dogs and to request that they send some of it to the troops there.

Oscar Meyer replied, telling the Marines thank you for their support of their business, but that Oscar Meyer does not support the war, nor anyone in it, and that they would not send the troops their brand of hot dogs.

So as not to offend Oscar Meyer, maybe we should not support them by buying any of their products!

As a war vet writing to fellow patriots, I feel we should get this out in the open. I know this war might not be very popular with some folks, but that doesn't mean we don't support the boys on the ground fighting street-to-street and house-to-house for what they and I believe is right.

If you feel the same as I do then pass this along, or you can discard it and no one will never know.

Thanks very much for your support. I know you'll all be there again when I deploy once more.

"Semper Fidelis."
Sgt Howard C. Wright
1st Force Recon Co
1st Plt PLT

PLEASE DON'T DELETE THIS ... ALLOW IT TO BE PASSED TO ALL IN MEMORY OF ALL THE TROOPS WHO HAVE DIED SO THAT WE MAY HAVE THE RIGHT TO CHOOSE TO SUPPORT THEM OR NOT!!!

Lt.Jason P. Stanley
WSI Fire/Rescue
D5 Camp Stryker

The whole thing turned out to be a hoax.

Old wives tale... Don't wash your hair during your period...it causes cramps.  Told to me by the school nurse in high school.  She looked like she was about 80 and that was in the 50's.

Old wives tale....Don't go to bed with your hair wet..you'll catch cold.  Also..don't go outside in the winter with your hair wet..you'll catch cold.  If you go in and out of a walk in fridge you'll catch cold.  If you sleep with the window open in the winter you'll catch cold  (don't know what on earth campers do about that)

ynoma..My sister said the old ladies in TX in the 50's told her not to hang clothes on the clothes line when pregnant.  Same thing as yours.

Someone told me that someone they knew of had liver disease and started throwing up their liver.  They couldn't explain to me how their liver got in the stomach.

And the list goes on...  ;-)

If you swallow a watermelon seed, one will grow in your stomach. 

If you pull out a gray hair,  two will come back.

Break a mirror you'll have 7 years bad luck.  This one, wow, I remember my first apartment, I was putting up those 12 x 12 mirrors up with double sided tape.  I had gotten 10 ready to hang on the wall, I hung one up and stood back to take a look, and broke the other nine.  Yep, 63 years bad luck.

I saw a movie where a guy kept complaining about a toothache. One of his co-workers grabbed a ball peen hammer and whacked him in the knee with it. He forgot all about his toothache.

JBS, they're *ALL* hoaxes.  Good time to remind folks about http://www.snopes.com

Don't take a bath when pregnant or water will get inside you and you will drown your baby.

If you have too many babies, your uterus can fall out (I understand that this is a Southern UL)

Open windows slightly during a tornado to prevent pressure build-up and your house exploding. (Frankly, I wouldn't be messing with the windows, but running for the cellar!)

Dang it, woof woof, I thought my grandmother invented the watermelon seed story...

I guess I'll have to go with the ol' don't go swimming after a meal or you'll get a cramp.

Never heard that one Baketown.  Do please tell!

The way I heard it was somebody's parent’s friends were on vacation and they noticed an odor in their hotel room.  The hotel staff searched the room and found nothing.  The next day the odor was worse and again the room was searched.  Finally they decided to lift the mattress from the box frame attached to the floor and the found the body of a dead woman inside.  (Maybe it wasn't  hooker.)  Ewwww..... Those people slept in that bed all night with a dead body right underneath them.  *gag*cough*gag*

If I remember correctly it was an urban myth loosely based on an actual event where a dead woman was found in a hotel room.  Either way it was enough to make to make me have someone check the bed everytime I checked into a hotel.

I have been told by a lot of people that at the end of Wible Rd is a big old tree that back in "the day", they used to hang people from. Now that area is haunted by all kinds of ghosts! If you go out there after mid-night, you see strange lights, and floating apparitions. One of the floating things passed Through a 20 yr old man (seen by others, not him) and suddenly he fell to the ground crying in terrible sorrow. Anyone heard about that one?

Best myth, old wives' tale and urban legend:

God exists.

My favorite Urban Legend of All Time is the Jamaican Camera Theft story.  It goes like this:

A couple on their honeymoon in Jamaica come back to their hotel near the end of their stay to find it has been burglarized. Just about everything of value has been taken, including their passports, drivers licenses and 35mm camera.  They make arrangements with the US Embassy to get new passports and they head home a few days later.

A month later, they get a box in the mail, which contains their old passports, ID, their camera, with the film still in it, and an unsigned letter of apology for the theft and the hardship it caused.  Thrilled to have their honeymoon pictures returned, the wife runs to the one-hour photo store to have them developed.  When she looks at the first picture, she screams bloody murder and passes out on the floor of the photo store.  A clerk looks at the picture and sees 2 Jamaican men posing for a picture in the hotel room where the couple had stayed.  They aren't wearing any pants, but ARE using the couple's toothbrushes in much the same way one might use a rectal thermometer.

That story still cracks me up, 20 years after I first heard it.

Late as usual but remember all of the old sayings, "Step on a crack and break your mother's back" or if you got a chiver it was "Someone just walked across your grave"  Congratulations Nancy, I agree youse Good Girl

We used to take girls out into the oilfields at night and tell them that there were the ghosts of hundreds of dead chinamen that hung out there.

They were killed back when the first wells were all dug.....

When you sit there in the dark listening to the creaking of those old pumping units it didn't take long 'till you had 'em right where you wanted 'em!

Two young honeymooners at a popular vacation spot returned to their room one evening to find that it had been robbed. Everything in the room was stolen except for their toothbrushes and camera. Knowing that the honeymoon was more important than anything that had been taken, they just used credit cards to replace the stolen items, and went on about enjoying themselves. A couple weeks after their return they got their photos back and sat down to look through them together. They were enjoying their photos until they got to the one that was taken in the hotel room of a large hairy man with their toothbrushes stuck in his rear-end........