What were the popular urban legends going around when you were a teen?

Billy Idol died

This thread has pre-internet urban legends.

Mikey and pop rocks and soda.

Richard Gere and the gerbil.

Rod Stewart and the stomach full of semen.

The guy whose kidney gets removed on a date and he wakes up in a bathtub full of ice.

Oh and the corker -“Welcome to the world of AIDS” scrawled on the mirror after a one night stand.

OP- I didn't know Marilyn Monroe had a brother.

For my generation it was Richard Gere and the gerbil. And it was either David Bowie or Barry Manilow that had to have the cum pumped out of his stomach, not Lil Kim.

It was always Rod Stewart —

-Worms in McDonald's hamburgers

-Kurt Cobain hooked up with Axl Rose

-Tri Delts preferred anal

Alfonso Ribeiro broke his neck breakdancing in a Michael Jackson Pepsi commercial

Razor blades in Halloween apples

Mama Cass choked on a ham sandwich.

Girls have cooties

Jamie Lee Curtis was a hermaphrodite

Paul McCartney was killed in a car crash. That consipracy theory made it to the cover of Life or Time, or some other popular magazine.

Everyone growing up in Pittsburgh in the ‘90s heard from a friend of a friend that Christina Aguilera smells like hot dogs.

Lots of people on LSD jumping out windows thinking they could fly, putting babies in ovens and pulling out their own eyeballs during the early 1970s.

[quote] Marilyn Manson had a rib removed so he could suck himself off

In my day it was Prince.

R15 Not only out of windows but off roofs!

If you played certain songs backward they included a subliminal message.

Spider eggs in Bubble Yum bubble gum.

Same for Fig Newtons

Swallowing seeds and having something grow in your stomach, generally this was reserved for watermelon seeds

Danny Bonaduce died when clacker balls hit him in the head.

And the fact that grown adults would tell these stories as well should have clued me in to the Fox News phenomenon.

Adults loved the Satanic conspiracy legends- records playing backwards, Ouija boards.

My teacher mom told the story about having girls named “Femolly” (Female) in class because the moither saw the birth certificate and thought the hospital had named the baby. The mother was always Puerto Rican when my mom told it. I asked her did she really have a Femolly in class. She said no but friends said they had. Uh huh.

"Turn me on dead man." and "Paul is dead." were supposed messages on the Sgt. Pepper album when spun backwards. I can't remember which song(s). They were the basis for the rumor.

In the late 70s/early 80s, this "backward masking" was a practice right wing Christians accused rock/heavy metal bands of practicing to subliminally entice youth to turn to Satan.

The case linked happened in Reno. Two doofuses decided to get drunk and high and attempted mutual suicide. The survivor sued Judas Priest for subliminal messaging. He lost. And died.

The semen and stomach pump story transferred in the UK to Marc Almond of Soft Cell.

Jerry Mathers died in Vietnam.

I think Rod Stewart himself has talked about that r6. Apparently (well, he says) it was all some vengeful publicist he fired who started the rumor that he was secretly a gay cumslut and took on so many sailors once he had to have his stomach pumped.

But yes, it was always Rod Stewart.

The Marilyn Manson rib removal fellatio story.

I remember the Manson rib one going round my school. There was also a rumour that the British children's TV presenter Neil Buchanan had died young. I remember being surprised to find out years later that he was still alive.

I also vaguely remember hoax chain emails (remember them?) claiming that Michael Jackson had attempted suicide, and that Osama bin Laden had been caught and hanged.

Paul from the Wonder Years grew up to be Marilyn Manson

The gang-related “lights out” hysteria about the gang initiation whereby if a driver flashed there lights at them as a courtesy to let them know their headlights weren’t on, it was actually a gang member who would then have to track down that driver and shoot them.

My mother (who is 85) says variations of the flashing headlight story have been going around since she was young.

"Who threw dat ham??!!!"

R24 since he graduated from Berkeley with a degree in Philosophy (and was in the same fraternity I joined later), I’d say that’s weak tea.

Print the legend!

Rock Hudson and Jim Nabors had gotten married (circa 1969).

R16, oh the filthy minds of teenage boys...

Jordan from the New Kids on the Block had to have semen pumped out of his stomach

Abraham Lincoln shacked up with a male lover in a room over the general store.

It was the talk of New Salem.

I still hear stories from adults who should know better swearing that they themselves once personally came across brothers named Le'Monjello (luh-MAHNJ-juh-lo) and O'Rangejello (oh-RAHNJ-juh-lo), or a girl named Abcde (AB-suh-dee).

Those are both old urban legends.

Albino alligators inhabiting the sewers of New York City (snigger)

Grace Kelly was pure and virginal.

Every Chinese restaurant in Manhattan is connected by underground tunnels.

The strange (almost always ethnic) names memes have been around forever. Today's version is La-a, pronounced "La Dasha."

That said, I'm a retired teacher and I did have a Urine (yur-EEN) and a Cocaine in my classes. No hearsay -I actually had them Cocaine went by Cookie, and Urine spelled her name Ureene on all her papers.

Among the reported-dead-in-their-teens were Jerry Mathers, Jay North, Danny Bonaduce, and Brandon Cruz.

The decline and fall of western civilization:

The Rod Stewart myth begat the Lil’Kim myth…

Among the reported-dead-in-their-teens were ….Jay North, Danny Bonaduce, and Brandon Cruz.

Nope….you misremember, badly.

After the Brady Bunch ended, Susan Olsen was getting off her school bus and her long scarf got caught in the bus door as the driver pulled away and ran over her. We heard the same thing about Suzanne Crough (who played Tracy on 'The Partridge Family').

Then there were the ones about food: Someone found a fried rat in their bucket of chicken from Kentucky Fried Chicken, and someone's burger in their Big Mac was loaded with dead flies.

No—maybe in yer head… the thread is about popular urban legends, not legends pulled from someone’s arse.

Grew up in Vallejo Ca. Zodiac was going to get in our house at night.

Sylvester Stallone took credit for starting the Richard Gere rumor.

We had that one about Susan Olson too r45, but somehow dumber. Apparently she was actually getting onto the bus and got her hand caught in the door. The oblivious bus driver just drove on, dragging her to her death.

Yes that’s why she didn’t appear on every Brady show or other media for decades…real urban legends plz

We were twelve, we didn't think it through r50. We did try to keep our hands to our side getting on the bus though.

Janet Jackson secretly gave birth to a daughter at 16;

Depending on the time of the rumor, either Debbie Harry or Madonna was the secret child of Marilyn Monroe;

Teenage Michael Jackson was in love with Clifton "That's My Mama" Davis and wanted to marry him (or did marry him, but it was annulled after Joe beat the shit out of Davis)

Bullshit^

The girl who took LSD and listened to ABBA's "Knowing Me Knowing You" on headphones, and now spends the the rest of her life in a padded cell repeating the "uh - huh" part of the lyrics.

[quote]Bullshit^

"Urban legends" generally are.

You left out the key word “popular”

The weed was sprayed with paraquat.

I had nightmares about that one r57.

That’s a true thing, not a legend

An important detail to the Rod Stewart story is that he was full of a black basketball team's jizz who were staying at the same hotel. I was 13 at the time and I remember the tingling feeling I got when I heard the news.

Imagine this on acid...

R36 I remember this story in the early 70s, but it was with Rod Stewart.

People swore up and down that Eileen Davidson (Ashley on The Young & The Restless) was born a man and had a sex change, and was on Donahue or something talking about it. I remember people at school and relatives repeating it, then heard it again in college.

Yes it was the talk of the kids at the tetherball pole during recess! 👽

[quote]Kurt Cobain hooked up with Axl Rose

I heard Michael Stipe

Jamie Lee Curtis being intersex

Paul from The Wonder Years grew up to be Marilyn Manson

Those racist Female/Femally/Orange Jello names have been going on for decades. Just last month a coworker tried to convince me that her teacher sister had the jello twins in her class.

Michael Stipe having AIDS

Burt Reynolds having AIDS

Huh— it was well known he became a successful lawyer…even my parents knew it.

The Mormon kid next door told me that Bill Clinton had someone thrown out a window and sold briefcases full of nuclear secrets.

That Susan Lucci and Robin Strasser were sisters and Phyllis Diller was their mother.

I did recall the Burt Reynolds rumor of having AIDS...he got scary skiiny and his face started collapsing inward.

Never heard the Lemon/Orange Jello/Femally thing, though.

I remember in the summer of 1976, when 'Sam' was a hit on the radio, the rumor took off that Olivia Newton-John was a lesbian, and the song was about her female lover 'Samantha'. Someone who knew someone who knew someone saw her confess this when she was a guest on 'The Tonight Show with Johnny Carson', when he asked her who 'Sam' was. He then responded, 'What a waste for a pretty face' and she walked off the stage instead of singing another song.

I was 13 and had just fallen in love with her and her music ("Don't Stop Belevin'" was one of the first albums I ever bought on my own). My cousin who was a couple of years older than I was also loved her, and we were devastated that summer. How could she be a lesbian (I don't think we fully understood that word, either) ? Yet no one ever saw it on television - not even their parents. It was always someone four or five times removed.

At the same time, Donna Summer was on the radio with "Love to Love You Baby", and once again, she was on 'The Tonight Show with Johnny Carson', and she told Johnny she was really a guy / drag queen. No one saw the interview, again it was someone who knew someone, who knew someone... In 2003, Summer addressed this urban legend in her book. She said she wasn't upset - she was actually in disbelief that she was already popular enough to be an 'urban legend'.

Dinah Shore and that colored baby she had with Little Richard!!!!

Blood is really blue 🔵 until it HITS OXYGEN AND TURNS RED red 🩸!!!

Stanley Kubrick filmed the moon landing. Surely I'm not the only one who remembers this?

Amenhotep died because his servant Minmose said Amenhotep’s name while treading on a scorpion. We all knew how ridiculous that was, but everybody spread it!

When Kubrick died suddenly it morphed into "See!" He was going to reveal it so they had to kill him."

Jim Nabors and Rock Hudson had married.

Florida alligators in NYC sewers

You'll never forget the gossip I heard about Rudolph Valentino and Rudy Vallee in high school!

When I was in elementary school, there were the rumors that the flying monkeys from The Wizard of OZ were real, and they had escaped the zoo they were kept in and were flying all over the world. Of course, kids never saw them, but their neighbors saw them flying around at night from tree to tree.

A girl got around the usual limit of one hour max by going to five different tanning salons the day of the prom. She died putting on her dress because her organs had cooked from too much tanning.

Mikey from the Wheaties commercial died when he ate Pop Rocks and then drank soda.

The Melon Heads legend was local to where I grew up. They were "beings generally described as small humanoids with bulbous heads who occasionally emerge from hiding places to attack people. "

R83 is a dolt!

It was Life cereal…as any kid back then knew well.

That Gomer's Pyle was found in Olivia Newton's John.

A swinging munchkin in the the Wizard Oz committed suicide.

When Y2K happened we were going to have no computers, credit cards wouldn't work, it would be chaos. Because the numbers in the computer date only went so far or something stupid.

'99 New Year's Eve was same old same old.

Richard Gere and a gerbil

r85 fuck you, it was 40 years ago.

And embedded in every memory…not your’s

[quote] Paul from The Wonder Years grew up to be Marilyn Manson

I often also heard that it was the oldest son from Mr. Belvedere who = Marilyn Manson

America was a democracy.

See that’s the kind of post that kills a decent thread

R93 oh hush now. The good ol days of Bush and Vietnam war and McCarthyism weren't really much better.

Michael Jackson was going to have a sex change so he could marry Clifton Davis (he was on the show "227"). This rumor was the buzz in my Catholic school days.

While Ronald Reagan was running for president, the rumor was that black people were going to be treated like Jews in Nazi Germany if he got elected. Many kids in my Brooklyn neighborhood were nervous for months.

Does the Jamie Lee Curtis/genitalia rumor qualify as an urban myth?

Apology to R52 - I searched this thread with the name "Michael" and it didn't pick up your comment.

R17 - "I can fly. I can really fly!"

It seems so weird that the Rod Stewart rumor spread so widely in pre-internet days. I remember being told that one on a basketball court behind my grandparents' house in a tiny farming community in the middle of nowhere.

"Young Turks" was apparently about all of the young Turkish men who came down 'ol Rod's throat.

Kim Green, the "hot dog Queen."

Razor blades on the water slides.

There was a slight variation to the Ronald Reagan rumor in my area - black folks were going to be shipped back to Africa. I remember wondering what life would be like in a jungle.

The background scream briefly heard in the original version of "Love Rollercoaster" was inadvertently recorded when a woman was murdered in the recording studio.

Sandy Duncan's glass eye

The Candlelight Killer.

All of the Mouseketeers were killed in a terrible bus accident including Annette, Bobby, Karen, Cubby, and Lonnie.

I remember in the 80s there were the rumors that Erin Murphy ('Tabatha Stephens' of BEWITCHED) was a porno actress.

[quote]My teacher mom told the story about having girls named “Femolly” (Female) in class because the moither saw the birth certificate and thought the hospital had named the baby. The mother was always Puerto Rican when my mom told it. I asked her did she really have a Femolly in class. She said no but friends said they had. Uh huh.

Friend of a friend (or 'foaf' as folklorist Jan Harold Brunvand called them) is the dead giveaway that it's an urban legend.

R44 I wonder if the sudden death of Bobby Buntrock at age 21 in the early '70s from a horrific car crash inspired those similar legends?

He played the son on the TV sitcom HAZEL (1961-1966) which was popular in the '60s and then on syndication.

I remember being taught in elementary school that if you brushed your teeth with someone else's toothbrush, they would turn green. And if you used someone else's comb or brush, your hair would turn green.

Here I am 50+ years later, and when I look at the younger generation sporting lime green hair, I wonder if they used someone else's hairbrush or comb.

Ours were neighborhood-based.

The woman who walked down Cherokee Street with a white face and Baby Jane makeup was said to have been jilted by her fiancee at the altar. We said she would grab boys and try to lure them into her house for wedding cake.

Crazy Otto, who would stand on his lawn as we walked by staring, would shout he would cut our hair and eat it like spinach. The story about him was that he roamed the streets at night and would cut kid's hair and eat it like spinach. (I wonder where we all got that idea.) Eventually he tried to run over some cops on a Sunday morning in Tower Grove Park and ended up being shot in front of his house when went home. He was quiet for a while.

Debra (Fifteen girls chased me for repeatedly calling her de-BRA.) Handing said that she saw Rebel, the German Shepherd, walking up and down the alley at night walking on his hind legs. He'd disappear into the crumbling two-story carriage house two doors down from me.

Mrs. Meehee was a Nazi and Mrs. Sledge was a witch.

The Kelly McGillis, Jodie Foster and Whitney Houston love triangle.

Janet Jackson and Michael Jackson are lovers.

Britney Spears is a virgin.

We always had the story about the girl at school who had to be taken to hospital to have the hotdog removed from her noonie. Also the twin sisters who were caught in the bathroom (at school, no less) finger each other, forever after referred to as the "finger twins"

R4, it was her son!!

Earrings and caftans made you a gay boy

The Li’l Kim rumors are recycled from the original version but it was Rod Stewart.

I went to a huge high school, after going to a very small Catholic school from grade 1-8. The first months in the new school were a culture shock... so many people and classes and hallways and floors. Then the other students started talking about "the Brodies". These were students that were mentally unstable and were segregated to the top floor of the school. If you ever heard that the Brodies got loose, you should run for your life! I never saw a Brodie.

We called them B-2 kids.

Building 2 was for special ed classes.

Definitely Richard Gere and the gerbil, and David Bowie and the stomach full of semen.

Also, the wedding of Rock Hudson and Jim Nabors. Everyone knew someone who knew someone whose cousin had been at the ceremony.

[quote] , and David Bowie and the stomach full of semen.

Oh, geez. We went from Bowie to Lil Kim. That truly is jizz-filled downgrade.

It was Stewart not Bowie. Jeez

LBJ talks to his penis!

Our school had a nurse come in for a health seminar and one of the topics was diabetes. Luckily no one in my family had this and I was fairly unfamiliar with it other than having heard the name. This nurse's way of explaining this disease to a bunch of children was "one day you would be eating a lot of candy and then you would start to feel bad... that was diabetes".

She made it sound like it could strike anyone at any time, so for years whenever I ate any candy, I would be waiting for this bad feeling and for diabetes to kick in. Even to this day, I wonder if that Hershey Kiss I ate will trigger me.

the legend that a very popular 1970s song captured the scream of a young girl being stabbed, just outside the recording studio while 'Love Rollercoaster" was recorded. You can skip to 2:32 to hear the 'horror' .

In my 20s (1980s), the urban legend was that Cher had 'ribs removed' so she could stay thin.

Never did I ever

People are getting the Janet urban legend wrong. The FULL story is that someone saw what they thought was a baby. But it was actually just a bunch of fat taken from Janet via liposuction.

R67 - my otherwise intelligent & reasonable sister-in-law INSISTS that one of her colleague's clients was named "Chevy van Pickup."

She works for the Massachusetts Dept of Children & Family Services.

Twins named. Orangejello and Lemonjello

Petula Clark's colostomy bag?