Don't let a good story stand in the way of truth!

BOOK REVIEW
Urban Legends – the Truth is Out There
David Harley CISSP
Independent Author/Editor/Consultant/Reviewer
Small Blue-Green World
Book Title: Urban Legends
Tagline: An Investigation into the Truth Behind the Myths
Author: Mark Barber
Publisher:Summersdale Publishers Ltd, Chichester UK
ISBN: 978-1-84024-554-7
Cover Price: £7.99 UK

Introduction

I’ve dealt for many years, both as a systems administrator and as writer, with the subset of urban legends that regularly afflict email users and administrators (virus hoaxes, chain letters and so on). As there is so little dependable information in that area, I was both surprised and pleased to stumble upon this book in my local library, of all places. While it does touch upon my “specialist subject”, it also considers such nuisances in the context of urban legends (and related mythologies) in general.

Author Mission Statement & Target Audience

Mark Barber isn’t, so I understand from his web site (http://www.project2067.com/about%20author.htm), an information security specialist, though he does, work in other security areas. But that’s not a problem: this isn’t an information security book. The cover notes tell us little more than the front cover tagline about the purpose of the book, stating basically that the book “investigates the truth behind the myths”. Bizarrely, they refer to the book as “Urban Legends Uncovered”, and that title is used on the individual pages within the main book.. The Introduction, though, is a little more informative, beginning with his introduction to the fascinating if slightly loopy world of urban legends through the “Kentucky Fried Rat” story, a brief description of the urban legend and the “Friend of a Friend (FOAF) phenomenon”, a description of the book’s structure, and an appeal to the reader to get involved with the ongoing investigation (see the author’s web site) on which it is based. Interestingly, he takes the view that an urban legend (UL) is not necessarily untrue (a view also held by a number of other specialists in this area). I have some sympathy with this: my own practical experience with chain letters and such is that hoaxes with a grain (or several grains) of truth can be more infinitely more tenacious and troublesome than out-and-out fabrications.

Book Structure

The structure of the book is straightforward.
Apart from the usual acknowledgements, publisher’s data and so on, the front matter consists of the Table of Contents and the author’s Introduction.
The body of the book consists of about a hundred examples of urban legends (usually including a number of variants). These are subdivided into a number of categories:
• Classic Horror
• Comic Relief
• Crime
• Animals and Pests
• Horror – More Tales from the Vault
• Trains, Planes and Automobiles
• Food and Drink
• Around the World
• Netlore
• 9/11
• Parodies.

Each category contains its own introductory section, and each entry in each section has a “tab” giving:
• The name given to the story, for example “The Vanishing Hitch-hiker.”
• A reference code (in this case, HR4704) which identifies the story in the author’s database and web site.
• The origin (approximate date and geographical location), if known.
• Status (True, False, Undecided)

For each entry, one or more variants of the core legend are recounted. The Investigation section consists of information relating to the likely origin and truth of the story, and any other information the author has uncovered. Each entry finishes with an “And Finally” section which tends to be more of a personal observation.

The material covered in this book is even more varied than may be apparent from the list of categories. It covers horror movie fodder (stories that inspired or may have been inspired by movies) like Bloody Mary (think “Candyman”), classic ghost stories, some equally classic jokes, movie advertising campaign material, and so on. In other words, the author has included quite a few stories that most people probably don’t mistake for the truth, and one might quibble about whether they really qualify as urban legends. On the other hand, I can recall personally having had related to me as “true stories” a story by Somerset Maugham, the plot of “The Amityville Horror”, and the plot of another film about the Bermuda Triangle of which the title escapes me. (Probably as well: I have yet to see a Bermuda Triangle film that doesn’t reduce me to tears of laughter.) I’m not sure this matters, though. The author’s intention seems to be as much to entertain as to inform, and in general he does both well. His research is generally sound, if not in-depth: for example a reference to the Petrol Consultation Act should actually refer to the Petrol (Consolidation) Act of 1928, and the Health and Safety Executive’s circular at http://www.hse.gov.uk/lau/lacs/65-59a.htm recommends controls on the use of mobile phones, rather than suggesting a ban with full legal force. (Yes, I know that’s absurdly picky: I wasn’t a bureaucrat for nothing. ☺)

While there is a specific section on “Netlore”, many of the other ULs described here have been circulated as email for years, and in some instances have generated as much panic and paranoia as the virus hoaxes he mentions. Earlier in this decade, for example, I spent quite a few man-hours dissuading employees of the UK’s National Health Service from forwarding unfounded warnings about telephone scams, cinema seats booby trapped with HIV infected needles, and so on. (That’s the bureaucratic bit.) The examples that included in the netlore section are old favourites like the Good Times and Budweiser Frogs virus hoaxes, one of the many (probably apocryphal) stories about naïve computer users ringing the helpdesk with silly problems – in this case, it’s the story about the user who thinks their CD drive tray is a cup holder, and the newbie-baiting “Internet Cleanup Day” hoax. None of these are very new, but are perhaps worth recording for exactly the reason that many more recent users of the Internet have never seen them. The 9/11 section records some of the dubious material that circulated after the attack on the Twin Towers, such as the story that the attack had been predicted by Nostradamus. Finally, there’s an amusing collection of parodies – I particularly enjoyed “The Liverpool Warning.”

The conclusion briefly considers the changing role and characteristics of the urban legend in the age of the Internet. Lots more scope for discussion there! The glossary is brief but to the point, and a number of books and web sites worth further exploration are listed in the resources section.
Does the Book Keep its Promises?

This is an unassuming but enjoyable book. It’s not academic or definitive, and I’d have liked it to have been more specific about its sources and citations, but the author has evidently spent a lot of time working on it and had fun in the process (witnessed by the fact that he is evidently committed to further developing the theme and his personal researches on his web site at http://www.project2067.com/: if you read and enjoy the book, be sure to visit the web site as well). It’s well and clearly written, and many people who are curious about this particular aspect of human psychology will, I think, enjoy it too. In fact, I’ve now ordered a copy myself. It probably doesn’t belong on the same shelf as “Hacking Exposed”, “Viruses Revealed”, “Phishing Exposed”, and all those other security techfests, but it’s certainly earned a place further along, nearer the more
academic work of Richard Dawkins and other dabblers in the meme pool, and some miscellaneous writings about the culture of the Internet. I look forward to seeing further work from the same source, and to looking at some of the books he mentions that I haven’t previously encountered.