If there’s one thing the Internet has revolutionised, it’s the urban legend. Time was when you’d have to work for your insane rumours. These days a good story can be invented, spread round the world and debunked by Snopes by lunchtime. How did we ever manage without it?

I was recently reminded of a London urban legend that predates the Internet – or at least, widespread use of it. It seems to have originated in the 1980s. I heard it as a schoolchild in the mid-’90s. I am speaking of the Chelsea Smilers.

The Smilers, so the story goes, were a gang of football hooligans. Depending which version of the story you hear, they would either roam the streets of South London, travel around in a blue Transit Van or – if you looked particularly easy to scare – would go door-to-door.

Details varied, but the basic essence of the story was this. The Smilers would confront you and ask you if you supported Chelsea Football Club (soccer team, for the benefit of any United Stateseans who may be reading). Possibly they would ask you a series of trivia questions to prove it. In the version I was told, they would then slice the corners of your mouth – upwards if you said yes, downwards if you said no. Then they would punch you hard, so you’d scream, thus ripping your mouth into a permanent smile or frown. Some versions would add that they would then pour something on the wound, usually vinegar, so the scars wouldn’t heal properly. I’m surprised no one suggested ink.

The Joker supports Chelsea.

There are a million variants on the story. Some say that they only cut you if you don’t support Chelsea, and then only in the form of the smile. Some say this was only practised by criminal gangs in Chelsea (presumably they march around in tailored suits, terrifying onlookers with their white-collar fraud and cold-blooded acts of insider trading). To be honest, while I don’t deny that such crimes may have happened – such scarring is known as the “Glasgow smile” and, so says the Daily Express, a case is treated every day by Scotland’s hospitals. But I’ve yet to see any real evidence that the Chelsea Smilers exist.

Still, I went to school in South-West London and it was a damn fine scary story. And that’s what’s important.

This is the message that greeted me as I opened up an email this morning to look at one of those “forwards” someone sent me.   You, one of those emails that urges you to check something out, even though you know you’ve already received it a bazillion times already from others and it’s likely to be a hoax too?  Yeah, one of those.  But I don’t mind.  Sometimes I actually see something new, or read something I’m glad I read again.  The rest I ignore.  It has to be truly exceptional before I get drawn into the forwarding chain.   I don’t care if everyone’s doing it – I’ve never been much of a joiner.

My collectible "Grog" cup, from the B.C. Comic.

But this?  Hah!  Totally caught my quirky bone!  I found myself hearing people sneeze and variations of “Gog bless you child.”  Or “Gog is watching you!”  “Gog damn it!”  and “The Holy Son of Gog….”  And to think I might not have opened that email!  Then to push the quirky fever further, it also kinda sounded like one of my favorite B.C. characters – Grog – a mug of which is my latest addition to my collection of quirky and fun coffee mugs.  Grog bless this drink!  Hahaha!

Yeah, I know the notation from the unknown forwarder, down the list of forwards attached, meant to type God.  Though the forward was yet another one of those urban legends people keep forwarding so they never die, I found myself appreciating that Gog was with me, wherever I am!  It was a smile and a comforting feeling this morning no matter how irreverant it might be.  God?  Me and Him go way back.  Gog though, whoever he might be, or whatever – gnome maybe, was also with me.  On my side, rooting for me.  And thanks to God, we were now introduced.  How awesome!

Gog be with you!  Have a happy day!  And may all your typos bring joy to those who read them!  

It’s about a beautiful young girl who was left home alone one night, but protected by her dog, which was a very large collie.

The parents told the girl to lock all the windows and doors after they had left. But there was one window in the basement that would not close completely.

Trying as best as she could she finally got the window shut, but it would not lock. So she left the window, and went back upstairs. But just to make sure that no one could get in, she put the dead-bolt lock on the basment door.

Then she sat down had some dinner, fed her dog and decided to go to sleep for the night. Settling down, she snuggled up in bed. Her dog slept underneath her bed. She reached her hand down and let her dog lick it as she said goodnight.

But during the night, she woke up with a start. The girl lay there wondering what had woken her, when suddenly she heard a noise. It was a dripping sound and seemed to be coming from the bathroom. She must have left the water running, and now it was dripping into the drain of her sink. So thinking it was no big deal she decided to go back to sleep.

But she felt nervous so she reached her hand over the edge of her bed, and let the dog lick her hand for reasurance that he would protect her. Again at about 3:45 she woke up hearing drippping. Again she reached down and let the dog lick her hand. Then she fell back to sleep.

At 6:52 the girl decided that she had had enough…she got up just in time to see her parents were pulling up to the house. “Good”, she thought. “Now somebody can fix the sink…’cause I know I didn’t leave it running.”

She walked to the bathroom and there was the collie dog, skinned and hung up on the curtain rod. The noise she heard was its blood dripping into a puddle on the floor. The girl screamed and ran to her bedroom to get a weapon, in case someone was still in the house…..and there on the floor, next to her bed she saw a small note, written in blood, saying: “HUMANS CAN LICK TOO”.

The Elixir of Life is a scary story about the legend of Doc Benton and his scientific search for a way to live forever. And who wouldn’t want to live forever, right?

In New Hampshire, for nearly two hundred years, a strangely agile, black caped figure with long white hair has been spotted occasionally around Mount Moosilauke in the White Mountains. Most people agree it is all that remains of Doctor Thomas Benton.

Doc Benton was born in New Hampshire in the middle of the 18th century. He was a bright student, but his family was poor. In need of a doctor, the town raised money to send him to medical school in Germany on the condition that he would return when he was finished.

At Medical school, Doc Benton was taught by a Professor Stockmayer, an eccentric German doctor who was searching for the secret to eternal life. Dr. Stockmayer became a kind of mentor to Benton, leaving Benton an old trunk full of his discoveries and his instruments after his death. When Benton was done with school, he followed through on his promise to return to his hometown.

But when Doc Benton arrived in New Hampshire, he was horrified to discover that his parents had died while he was away studying. The shock of his parents’ death changed the young doctor. He began to behave in a bizarre manner and refused to speak to any of the townspeople. It transformed him into a hermit. He lost all interest in his medical practice and took to the woods, where he set up a laboratory in a deserted shack.

There he opened a trunk that had been given to him by Professor Stockmeyer, one of his teachers at the German medical school. In life Professor Stockmeyer had been shunned by his colleagues because of his research into the forbidden secrets of eternal youth. Now Doc Benton shunned his community to continue those same unholy experiments. Living like a hermit, he made only occasional forays into town for supplies.

Eventually, a series of animal deaths startled the residents of the area. A cow was discovered dead in a barn. Lifeless horses were found in their stalls. Bloated sheep dotted the green hillside like balls of snow. There seemed to be no reason for these mysterious deaths, but there was one strange detail that linked them all. Each animal had a fresh wound behind its left ear – a red swelling with a white pinprick in the center.

It wasn’t long before people began suffering a similar fate. First, a corpse vanished from the back of an undertaker’s wagon. When it was later discovered discarded in some bushes near Warren, there was a second corpse beside it. Each had a wound behind its left ear.

Gossip began to spread around the town and some people were pointing their fingers at Doc Benton. A small group of citizens ventured up to Doc Benton’s cabin to see if he knew anything about the discarded bodies, but they found his cabin abandoned. Had he gone missing too? A search party combed the hillside, but they could find no trace of him. He seemed to have vanished.

However, in the months that followed, hunters and hikers claimed they had seen him in some wooded part of the thirty-square-mile Moosilauke area. He was always said to be wearing a black cape, moving rapidly, with a long white hair flowing out behind him.

In November 1825, a Benton woman heard her daughter scream. She looked up from her laundry to see a black-caped figure carrying her little girl into the woods. The woman’s husband rushed off in pursuit and his neighbors joined the chase. They followed the footprints to Little Tunnel Ravine, a box canyon from which there could be no escape. Yet weirdly, the footprints ended abruptly.

Suddenly, the bewildered men heard laughter echoing around the rocks. It seemed to be coming from overhead. Looking up, they recognized the dark, decaying figure of Doc Benton. He was standing on an outcropping, holding the struggling girl. When her father begged the cloaked figure to return his daughter, Doc Benton happily obliged. He hurled the screaming child off the cliff and the men watched in horror as she fell to her death on the canyon floor.

Sightings of the demonic doctor continued for years afterwards. In 1860, two loggers vanished from the mountaintop. One was found dead, bearing the odd wound behind his ear. The other was never found.

In 1901, Mr. Tomaso, a brakeman on a logging railroad, was found dead beside the track. He hadn’t fallen from the train; the only mark on him was that peculiar wound behind his left ear.

In recent years, hikers on the Moosilauke slopes have continued to report seeing a mysterious caped figure in the woods. Is it Doc Benton? One person catches a glimpse of his skeletal face disappearing behind a tree. Others spot a wrinkled hand or pant leg moving quickly out of sight.

In the 1970s, a Dartmouth student took a solo hike in Jobidunk Ravine. When he didn’t return, searchers went out. They found him easily enough, but he was in a bad way, wandering aimlessly with a glazed look on his face. His friends realized he was in shock. Rescuers transported him to the hospital in Hanover.

Though he recovered from the cuts, bruises, and a fractured skull, he was curiously vague about what had happened to him. Eventually the story came out: He told one of his friends that while he was climbing on a ledge, a hand shot out through an opening in the rocks and shoved him!

In 2002, another student had a near run-in with the doctor. On a solo hike close to the summit of Moosilauke, he found the print of an old-style boot in the mud of an unused trail. It was in a place where there had been no tracks fifteen minutes earlier.

Many people believe that Doc Benton, or whatever he has become, still stalks the slopes of New Hampshire’s Mount Moosilauke. Pets, livestock, and people still disappear on the mountain’s rocky slopes. But they say Doc Benton isn’t looking for the secret of eternal life anymore. He’s already found that. Nowadays, they say, he’s just looking for a way to die.

The Bunnyman is a scary legend about an escaped mental patient who haunts a bridge in Clifton, Virginia.

After the civil war Fairfax County, Virginia became more populated and eventually an insane asylum was built there. No one wanted to live near the asylum and because of the public outrage the institution was shut down.

The administration transferred the patients and in 1904 the process was completed. During the transfer, some of the patients escaped and hid in the surrounding woods and forest. These individuals were lost, delusional and dangerous. Most of them were found except Marcus Lawster and Douglas Griffen. The local authorities found a trail they believed belonged to them, littered with half eaten mutilated bunnies.

The trail led deep into the woods to a tunnel bridge crossing a wide creek. There they found Marcus hanging from the tunnel entrance. There was a note attached to his foot that said, “You’ll never find me no matter how hard you try! Signed, The Bunny Man.” That tunnel has been called Bunny Man Bridge ever since.

The legend says that if you walk all the way down the tunnel at around midnight the Bunny Man will grab you and hang you from the entrance of the bridge.

Strange deaths and phenomena has been connected with the Bunny Man Bridge. There was a young man from Clifton, Virginia who came upon the Bridge while traveling. Later, he killed his parents and dragged their bodies into the woods to hang them from the bridge and then killed himself. In 1943, three teenagers, two men and a young woman, were at the bunny man bridge for Halloween night. The three youths were found dead, hung from the bridge with their bodies slashed open. All with notes attached to their feet saying the same thing,” You’ll never catch the Bunny Man!”

In 2001, after hearing the tale, six local students and a guide searched the area. They found mutilated bunny parts during their search and left the forest after they heard noises and saw figures moving around in the woods.

The North American Union conspiracy theory has been around for quite sometime. It was something started in 2003. There was a supposed NAFTA corridor that was basically a interstate going from Central America to the Yukon. Several members of congress have said that this report is not based in fact. I need to note that this was in a news report dated 2003. Now this had to be based on something, it was based on a man who stated that America needed to cooperate more with the governments of North America.

Humanevents.com reported this in 2006

President Bush is pursuing a globalist agenda to create a North American Union, effectively erasing our borders with both Mexico and Canada. This was the hidden agenda behind the Bush administration’s true open borders policy.

Secretly, the Bush administration is pursuing a policy to expand NAFTA politically, setting the stage for a North American Union designed to encompass the U.S., Canada, and Mexico. What the Bush administration truly wants is the free, unimpeded movement of people across open borders with Mexico and Canada.

President Bush intends to abrogate U.S. sovereignty to the North American Union, a new economic and political entity which the President is quietly forming, much as the European Union has formed.

The blueprint President Bush is following was laid out in a 2005 report entitled “Building a North American Community” published by the left-of-center Council on Foreign Relations (CFR). The CFR report connects the dots between the Bush administration’s actual policy on illegal immigration and the drive to create the North American Union:

At their meeting in Waco, Texas, at the end of March 2005, U.S. President George W. Bush, Mexican President Vicente Fox, and Canadian Prime Minister Paul Martin committed their governments to a path of cooperation and joint action. We welcome this important development and offer this report to add urgency and specific recommendations to strengthen their efforts.

Now if you goto humanevents.com be prepared to run a virus scan after you leave. From this site I got two false positives (they are the false positives I keep on my computer to make sure the program is working properly) and 15 trojans, tracking cookies, and malicious software. Any site that does that to your computer is not news worthy. This is just a disclaimer be prepared to do a virus scan. Of course these viruses may have come from the five or so conspircy theory websites that I visted after googling the subject. The funny thing is I cannot find any actual fact that support these claims.
Now I need to comment that humanevents.com is filled with “facts” that have been proved false by factcheck.org

Now Ron Paul made claims that Bush was trying to create a North American Union. This was debunked by factcheck.org here is what they had to say:

According to Paul, a secret organization run by unaccountable government figures is in league with foreign corporations who are all bent on usurping American sovereignty. That’s not from the script for a new X-Files movie. (Or not that we know of.) It’s the gist of Paul’s description of a supposed “NAFTA Superhighway.” Paul describes it on his Web site as “a ten-lane colossus the width of several football fields, with freight and rail lines, fiber-optic cable lines, and oil and natural gas pipelines running alongside.” And that’s not all. According to Paul, the ultimate plan is to form a North American Union with a single currency and unlimited travel within its borders, all headed up by “an unholy alliance of foreign consortiums and officials from several governments” that together form the shadowy “quasi-government organization called the ‘Security and Prosperity Partnership of North America,’ or SPP.”

The problem with Paul’s claim is that there are no plans to build a NAFTA Superhighway. Or a North American Union, for that matter. And while the Security and Prosperity Partnership of North America does exist, it’s just a boring bureaucracy.

Like many conspiracy theories, this one is a mixture of fact and fiction. improvements to existing roads, but is not lobbying for, or planning to build, any new thoroughfares. From the NASCO That scary-looking map, with lines that rumor suggested were drawn to scale, is the product of an actual group called North America’s SuperCorridor Organization (NASCO), which is a consortium of public and private entities. But contrary to conspiracy theorists, the map does not show a new highway. Those bright blue lines show only I-35 and I-29 – interstates that already exist. On its Web site, NASCO says it and some of the local governments along I-35 have been referring to that route as the “NAFTA Superhighway” for years. NASCO advocates Web site:

NASCO: “NAFTA Superhighway” – As of late, there has been much media attention given to the “new, proposed NAFTA Superhighway”. NASCO and the cities, counties, states and provinces along our existing Interstate Highways 35/29/94 (the NASCO Corridor) have been referring to I-35 as the ‘NAFTA Superhighway’ for many years, as I-35 already carries a substantial amount of international trade with Mexico, the United States and Canada. There are no plans to build a new NAFTA Superhighway – it exists today as I-35.

In terms of new roads, there are, in fact, plans for a Trans-Texas Corridor, a road that would be (in spots) several football fields wide. And the road would be financed by a private company (which is partially Spanish-owned) that would then charge tolls to recoup its investment. But the TTC was approved by the Texas Legislature and the governor of Texas. It is a state initiative, but it is not part of a NAFTA Superhighway, nor is it the product of a shadowy federal conspiracy.

Indeed, Ian Grossman, a spokesman with the Federal Highway Administration told the Los Angeles Times, “There is no such superhighway like the one [Paul is] talking about. It doesn’t exist, in plans or anywhere else.”

The other parts of the conspiracy are much the same. The SPP – that “quasi-government organization” – is really an actual government organization, organized through the White House. According to David Bohigian, an assistant secretary of commerce, the SPP is a bureaucratic dialog staffed by mid-level officials from the U.S., Canada and Mexico who work to synchronize customs, security and regulations. “Simple stuff,” Bohigian told The Nation last August, “like, for instance, in the U.S. we sell baby food in several different sizes; in Canada, it’s just two different sizes.” Not exactly cloak-and-dagger stuff.

The SPP has a factsheet on its Web site that attempts to put to rest all the tall tales surrounding it. And if that isn’t enough, the Washington Post’s Fact Checker, Newsweek and the urban legend site Snopes.com all have previously debunked this particular bit of conspiracy-theorizing.

snopes.com wrote this about the same subject:
In March 2005, the leaders of the United States, Canada, and Mexico (President George W. Bush, Prime Minister Paul Martin, and President Vicente Fox, respectively) met in Texas to

discuss plans for increased cooperation between their three countries in areas of common interest, such as border security, protection against terrorist threats, improved trade relations, competitiveness in the global marketplace, the combating of infectious diseases, and disaster response.

Contrary to the rumor expressed in the example quoted above, the three men did not sign any treaty or agreement to subsume the sovereignty of their countries to a greater entity called the North American Union (NAU), eliminate their common borders, or create a common currency (akin to the Euro) to replace their nations’ currencies. What the leaders agreed to was the creation of the Security and Prosperity Partnership of North America (SPP), a “dialogue to increase security and enhance prosperity among the three countries.” The SPP is not itself an agreement or a treaty, it is not a movement to merge the United States, Mexico, and Canada into a North American Union or to establish a common currency, nor does it seek to alter or subsume the sovereignty of those three countries.

The notion that the establishment of a North American Union (along with the dissolving of national borders and the creation of a common currency) is set to take place in 2010 stems from proposals such as Building a North American Community (a publication of the Council on Foreign Relations in association with the Canadian Council of Chief Executives and the Consejo Mexicano de Asuntos Internacionales) which advocate more aggressive plans for North American cooperation, such as the “establishment by 2010 of a North American economic and security community, the boundaries of which would be defined by a common external tariff and an outer security perimeter.” However, such proposals are merely analyses and recommendations developed by independent “think tanks”; they are not treaties, legislation, or official blueprints for future governmental actions.

None of this is to say that the three North American countries might not someday decide to form closer ties along the lines of the European Union, perhaps with a common currency and more fluid borders. But there is currently no official governmental plan underway to make all that happen by 2010.

Now in 2009, the same claims are being made by Obama. And the same evidence that “supported” that the last President was the anti-christ, that the last president supported a North American Union, that the last president was a puppet of the fictional “New World Order”. Just like the books the same Conspiracy Theorists wrote about Y2K, they now are writing that the “New World Order” will be established in 2012 and Obama will be behind it. These books are not cheap they can be bought anywhere from $45-100.

I think I should write a book that is filled with unconfirmed facts and sell it for $45, there are enough people who are afraid and want their fears to be confirmed it seems. Today’s new get rich quick scheme seems to be writing a bunch of things gotten from documents that just do not exist. Hell, I think I can write a book on how McCain was not elected, not because Obama got the majority vote, but because freemasonry did not want him to. And just fill this book with the tons of freemasonry conspiracy theories, present them as fact, Or pass myself off as a conservative and write a book saying that Bill Keller is the embodiment of the second coming of Christ. I could make millions off all the gullible and downright stupid people of the world.

So y’all are familiar with the New-Age movement where any old bullshit is accepted and respected as a religion, right?

Well, some of these loonies think the world’s going to end in 2012 based only on the misinterpretation of a Mayan Calandar.

Okay…so there’s a Facebook Group called ‘Shut Up, The World Won’t End in 2012‘ which was apparently formed to criticize this belief.

Woohoo, right? Another skeptic willing to stand up to vacuous bullshit?

Well, not entirely. Here’s their latest status message:

I’d like to say that this page wasn’t created to be a debate between religion. I don’t care whether you belive in god or not, or if you believe he has anything to do with the world ending, I just don’t want this turned into religious combat. This was created based on scientific facts, no matter if there is a god or not. Good Day. (Not offensively meant, people have their right to believe what they wish to believe.)

If you look at the discussion page, it’s chock-full of religious apocalypse predictions.

I mean, I know…right? You just created a page intended to combat a widespread belief based on no evidence whatsoever. You didn’t intend this to turn into a religious debate….really!

Look…anytime you post some sort of insane mystical bullshit, you have to expect the religious to flock to it. It’s what they tend to do. When the religious get all hot and bothered over something insane, the skeptics are going to flock to it with the intention of snickering rudely. It’s what we tend to do.

If you’re willing to criticize one insane belief, you pretty much have to be willing to criticize them all. A lot of these insane beliefs tend to be coalesced around religion in one way or another, and criticizing these crazy beliefs often involves criticizing religion. If you don’t have the balls to criticize religion, you certainly don’t have the balls to criticize the many, many, many, many crazy beliefs that are somewhat or entirely religious in nature.

Welcome to the internet, idiot. Methinks someone got his toes stepped on.

Urban Legends – Audio

Download Sermon MP3 – Urban Legends

Written in response to this urban legend…

I find it hard to reconcile a god that would provide water for Hagar’s dying child and yet allow millions of children to be tortured in Treblinka and Auschwitz Birkenau.

But then again, it’s not the concept of god I find abhorent. Some people need to believe in a higher power. What I find absolutely revolting is the concept of organized religion. Every major conflict in the history of mankind can trace its roots to a group of people believing that their god is better than someone else’s.

As an agnostic, I think dismissing the problems of the world on the absence of “god” in society is juvenile. Blaming someone (or in this case, the absence of someone) for something is far too simplistic, built on an incredibly warped system of logic. “The dog died because I asked daddy to leave”. And people don’t question the fact that the dog died because it had cancer,not because the child asked daddy to leave.

(Have I confused you yet?)

Do I have a right to complain? Yes, absolutely. I cannot prove nor disprove the existence of god. I’m an agnostic.

I make an honest living, I pay my taxes, I do good unto others. I don’t judge on the basis of sex, sexual orientation, race, religion, or belief. I think everyone is created equal*. I have no prejudices.

What right does the Catholic Church, or the Republic of the Philippines, or the General Conference… What right do they have to say that as a homosexual, I don’t exist?

I choose not to have a theistic figure in my life because I don’t accept any theory on “faith”. Accepting a concept on faith is conceding to the fact that it cannot be taken on its own merits. I believe in reason and logic and my own natural inquisitiveness.

I have a right to complain.

I’m going to step down from my soapbox now.

(*except for the poor and the ugly. Just kidding**. LOL)

(**maybe)

Today I have something a little different. I have twelve packs (1/3 of a box) of Urban Legends trading cards from Monsterwax. I read about it in the Non- Sport Update magazine and wanted it ever since but couldn’t find until now. The smallest comic book store in NYC happens to be the only place that sells them. The timing couldn’t be any better with Halloween right around the corner.

These cards could get a little gruesome and I love it. (However, I picked the cards that can pass as PG to scan.) Urban Legends always appeal to me and the cards, if I remembered right, are inspired by EC horror comics which I’m a big fan of. When I get some free time, I’ll read the stories on the back but right off the back I recognize some of the stories from the artwork. There is also a Shocking Stories set but I think I try to build the Urban Legends set first. Too bad they are not more readily available. It is a truly awesome product.

I got 76% of the set (38/50), twelve 3-D cards (one in each pack) and one background card. The 3-D cards have a blank back and don’t have a number so it could rather difficult to complete the set.

Background Card

3D Cards

I also got lucky and pulled a sketch card. It is of the Stranger on the Subway which is a lot better than pulling a sketch card of the batcycle. Sketches of inanimate objects just aren’t that exciting. He also kind of reminds me of the comic The Spirit (maybe not the Spirit himself but a goon he fought).

I doubt many have any Urban Legends cards for trade but this is a set I really want to complete. The cards I’m missing are: 1,5,8,10,16,22,25,26,32,43,47,49.

Have a happy Halloween.

As told by Barb Thaine…

A young woman was leaving a local shopping mall only to find that she had a flat tire. A well-dressed young man carrying a briefcase came up to her and asked if she needed help changing her tire. She told him she would call AAA but when she did she was told it would be over an hour before a truck would be dispatched to her site. The gentleman urged her to let him fix her flat and she finally allowed him to do so.

When he was finished, he asked if she would give him a ride to the other side of the mall, as his car was parked there. Looking at her watch, she realized how late it was and apologized to the young man saying that she needed to get home as it was her daughter’s birthday and her husband was at home with the two children awaiting her arrival. The man went on his way.

When she returned home, she told her husband what had happened at the mall and about the man who came to her aid. The husband went out to look at the tire and saw that the man had inadvertently left his briefcase in the trunk of the vehicle. The husband brought it into the livingroom and he and his wife opened it to see if they could find the man’s name and phone number.

Upon opening the briefcase, they found only five items: a rag, chloroform, duct tape, a body bag and an icepick (which was probably used to cause the flat tire).

As told by Ann MacDonald…

One summer day in Southampton, New York, a woman pulled into a gas station. As the attendant pumped gas, the woman told him she was in a hurry to pick up her daughter, who had just finished an art class in East Hampton.

A very well-dressed man walked over to her car and started talking to her. He explained that his rental car had died, and he needed a ride to East Hampton for an appointment. She said she would be happy to give him a ride. He put his briefcase in the backseat and said he was going to the men’s room quickly.

The woman looked at her watch and suddenly panicked. She drove off quickly, having forgotten that the man was coming back to the car for a ride.

She thought nothing of him again until she and her daughter pulled into their driveway. She saw his briefcase and realized she had forgotten him! She opened the briefcase looking for some form of identifcation so she could notify him about his belongings. Inside she found nothing but a knife and a roll of duct tape!

A man and woman went to Las Vegas for their honeymoon, and checked into a suite at a hotel. When they got to their room they both detected a bad odor. The husband called down to the front desk and asked to speak to the manager. He explained that the room smelled very bad and they would like another suite. The manager apologized and told the man that they were all booked because of a convention. He offered to send them to a restaurant of their choice for lunch compliments of the hotel and said he was going to send a maid up to their room to clean and to try and get rid of the odor.

After a nice lunch the couple went back to their room. When they walked in they could both still smell the same odor. Again the husband called the front desk and told the manager that the room still smelled really bad. The manager told the man that they would try and find a suite at another hotel. He called every hotel on the strip, but every hotel was sold out because of the convention. The manager told the couple that they couldn’t find them a room anywhere, but they would try and clean the room again. The couple wanted to see the sights and do a little gambling anyway, so they said they would give them two hours to clean and then they would be back.

When the couple had left, the manager and all of housekeeping went to the room to try and find what was making the room smell so bad. They searched the entire room and found nothing, so the maids changed the sheets, changed the towels, took down the curtains and put new ones up, cleaned the carpet and cleaned the suite again using the strongest cleaning products they had. The couple came back two hours later to find the room still had a bad odor. The husband was so angry at this point, he decided to find whatever this smell was himself. So he started tearing the entire suite apart himself.

As he pulled the top mattress off the box spring he found a dead body of a woman.

So-and-so’s friend, a girl in her teens, is babysitting for a family in Newport Beach, Ca. The family is wealthy and has a very large house — you know the sort, with a ridiculous amount of rooms; I mean, come on, if a house is big enough to have “wings,” then you know the house is larger than it probably needs to be.

Anyways, the parents are going out for a late dinner/movie. The father tells the babysitter that once the children are in bed she should go into this specific room (he doesn’t really want her wandering around the house) and watch TV there.

The parents take off and soon she gets the kids into bed and goes to the room to watch TV. She tries watching TV, but she is disturbed by a clown statue in the corner of the room. She tries to ignore it for as long as possible, but it starts freaking her out so much that she can’t handle it.

She resorts to calling the father and asks, “Hey, the kids are in bed, but is it okay if I switch rooms? This clown statue is really creeping me out.”

The father says seriously, “Get the kids, go next door and call 911.”

She asks, “What’s going on?”

He responds, “Just go next door and once you call the police, call me back.”

She gets the kids, goes next door, and calls the police. When the police are on the way, she calls the father back and asks, “So, really, what’s going on?”

He responds, “We don’t HAVE a clown statue.” He then further explains that the children have been complaining about a clown watching them as they sleep. He and his wife had just blown it off, assuming that they were having nightmares.

The police arrive and apprehend the “clown,” who turns out to be a midget. A midget clown! I guess he was some homeless person dressed as a clown, who somehow got into the house and had been living there for several weeks. He would come into the kids’ rooms at nights and watch them while they slept. As the house was so large, he was able to avoid detection, surviving off their food, etc. He had been in the TV room right before the babysitter right came in there. When she entered he didn’t have enough time to hide, so he just froze in place and pretended to be a statue.

This story has been told over and over in my town (Harrison, Arkansas). Here goes…

There were two roommates (yes, I know, another college story), Sarah and Megan. Sarah was the theatrical type and loved acting. She was in all the town’s plays. Megan was more of a book person, she loved to read and her studies were her first priority.

Anyway, there was a huge play called “Oh, Susannah” that Sarah was in, and it was coming up on Saturday… so every chance that Sarah got, she would practice in the park (that’s where she got her inspiration) for hours. Every time, she would beg Megan to go with her, but Megan would stay in the dorm and read.

Well, on Saturday Sarah was a hit. Being the star, she was detained after the play, and got home really late. As she entered, she heard her roommate’s rocking chair squeaking in the corner, but couldn’t see it, not all the lights were on. Must be waiting for me, Sarah thought. Putting her stuff away, she went back into the main room.

From the corner came a voice. It sounded rather husky, but that wasn’t what agitated Sarah.

“Oh, Susannah, don’t you cry for me…” came the voice.

“Stop it Megan! Don’t give me that crap, okay?” said Sarah.

“Oh, Susannah, don’t you cry for me…”

“Stop it! I mean it, Meg!”

“Oh, Susannah, don’t you cry for me…”

“Stop!!!!! That’s it!!!!” Sarah screamed as she flicked on the room’s lights.

Sarah gawked in horror at the sight. Her roommate’s body was in the rocking chair, but her head wasn’t, her head was on the wall, kept there by a butcher knife. From behind the rocking chair she could hear laughter – maniacal laughter.

“Who’s there? Who are you????”

From behind the rocking chair jumped a man, later found out to be the butcher that escaped from the sanitarium in the next town. All the time he was cutting Sarah, he was singing, over and over, “Oh, Susannah, don’t you cry for me… I come from Alabama with a banjo on my knee.”

Pinning Sarah to the wall next to her roommate’s head, he screamed, “Now, Susannah, don’t you cry for me!!!!”

One night a woman went out for drinks with her girlfriends. She left the bar fairly late at night, got in her car and onto the deserted highway. She noticed a lone pair of headlights in her rear-view mirror, approaching at a pace just slightly quicker than hers. As the car pulled up behind her she glanced and saw the turn signal on — the car was going to pass — when suddenly it swerved back behind her, pulled up dangerously close to her tailgate and the brights flashed.

Now she was getting nervous. The lights dimmed for a moment and then the brights came back on and the car behind her surged forward. The frightened woman struggled to keep her eyes on the road and fought the urge to look at the car behind her. Finally, her exit approached but the car continued to follow, flashing the brights periodically.

Through every stoplight and turn, it followed her until she pulled into her driveway. She figured her only hope was to make a mad dash into the house and call the police. As she flew from the car, so did the driver of the car behind her — and he screamed, “Lock the door and call the police! Call 911!”

When the police arrived the horrible truth was finally revealed to the woman. The man in the car had been trying to save her. As he pulled up behind her and his headlights illuminated her car, he saw the silhouette of a man with a butcher knife rising up from the back seat to stab her, so he flashed his brights and the figure crouched back down.

The moral of the story: Always check the back seat!

“The bible wasn’t written by the fake jews. There were no whites living in the holy lands at the time the holy books were written. Whites were cave dwellers , and they took the traditions and wrote themselves into history and tried to write us out, except they couldn’t blast away (all) of the black faces on the statues and art in the tombs of Egypt and other places, that prove we were God’s original people.(smile)

“Blacks have worked for hundreds of years in this country, and were denied everything we tried to have. They were sold away from their families, lied on, cheated, stolen from, not allowed an education, our women (and some men) were raped, discriminated against, disenfranchised and then after all the factories were moved away (no jobs) and the schools started de-educating us (telling us that whites were God) and then drugs and guns were brought into our communities by the white man for us to use to destroy each other,(sounds just like your God doesn’t it ?) and the churches sucking all of the wealth out of the communities, (yeah that’s him) and I guess you think that was alright.

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We are left depending on a wicked system to see us through, (the system of in God we trust) and the media put our face on this shit, like we brought all the guns and drugs into this country ourselves. War on drugs was really a war on the black man. A black person can’t get a loan to start a business. What jobs there are, are not paying anything.College is so expensive, that your career is obsolete before you can pay the loan off.

The banks did predatory lending practices on blacks and latinos so they can lose their homes, so what the hell are we to do?

Your people created all this hate, and it has come back on you .

You see one black person doing something and say that (all) blacks do it.

You are just an ignorant, prejudiced, racist baffoon, who wouldn’t know intelligence if it was riding your back.

You’re going to one day wake up, and be in bondage, and wonder what happened.

Rondeux42@aol.com Rondeux 1