It was a seemingly normal Friday night which just so happened to
be the 13th of October. Yes, that's right:
Friday the
13th. Four girlfriends got on the elevator to ride
down from their loft apartment in New York City when something happened
that caused them all to shriek. The elevator
stopped. It was caught between
floors and neither the top space or the bottom space was big
enough for any of them to squeeze through. After they stopped
screaming, the girls began to laugh. This night would turn
out to be even better than they had imagined. Things like this
just can't be planned. Amanda had an idea. "Why don't
we play a little game? It's Friday the 13th and we were on our
way out to see the new Saw 4 movie
anyways. Let's see who can tell the scariest
story. I can go first because just last week my best
friend's boyfriend's mechanic had quite an experience with
a ghost."
All of the girls agreed, but Amber was
doubtful. "It sounds like this is going to be the same old
urban legend we've already heard, Amanda."
Heather, however, couldn't wait
to hear more. "Let's just hear her out."
Urban legends are found everywhere in society. There are
some classic urban legends that we've probably all heard, such as the
story about
someone dying from drinking
soda and eating pop rocks, gang members killing unsuspecting
do-gooders who flash their headlights, and the baby-sitter
receiving horrifying phone calls from inside the
house. We all love these stories. A typical feature of
an urban legend is that it works really hard to make us believe it is
true, but how do we know if it really happened or not? There are
different ways urban legends try to convince us of their truth.
Sometimes they're told by someone famous or
someone who knows someone we know
(in other words: a friend of a friend). When an incident
happens to someone you
almost know, it makes the story seem more plausible. It's
not a warning given out by a government agency. It happened to
someone like
you. That means it could happen to
you
too, right? Sometimes the stories are supposed to have happened
in some specific place that we've
heard of or somewhere that we've been before. We need to
know whether this really happened to our friend's distant relative who
lives in Idaho or at our local grocery store. Although some of us
believe they can't possibly be true, we
can't help but wonder, in the back of our minds, if these stories are
legitimate. We listen to these 'fictional' stories, but
at
the same time our imagination gets the best of us and we begin to
wonder how much of these stories is fiction and how much of these
stories is real.
The scariest of all urban legends, to me, are those that are
supernatural. Killer madmen? Ok, they're no picnic,
but they belong to this dimension, so you can at least fight
back. Something that you don't know how to fight?
That's where the trouble comes in. You can't beat a ghost over
the head with a lamp and you can never seem to run fast
enough to get away from the soaking wet girl who comes out of your
TV. These stories deal with elements that we are unsure of and
that's where the fear comes in. The unknown is something
frightening and scary and supernatural urban legends combine
that
with a fear of the most familiar things as well. Who thought we
could ever be afraid to stand in front of a mirror in our own
bathroom?
We've left the girls in the elevator for far too long.
Let's go see how they are doing and what stories they are
telling in order to scare themselves and each other. The stories
they share will show us what their greatest fear is. I can tell
you the stories, but I can't tell you whose fears they are.
You'll have to wait and see what scares you the most. The urban
legends we hear this evening will be based on
contemporary American horror urban legends. Bloody
Mary, the Vanishing Hitchhiker, a story about a dead woman
haunting elevators, a tragic technology incident, and who knows what
else will
be told on this haunted Friday the 13th.
Picture of Bloody Mary. Websource:
Scary for Kids
