To not point out story is an urban legend?

A midwife told me the same story around 25 years ago, but it was an about large shopping centre not John Lewis. She was very earnest and said it in all honesty to warn me that it was going on there. God knows who told her.

Then a friend told me the same thing years later but about Disneyland! No idea where it started or even if the original story was true.

It reminds me of the other story which was doing the rounds a few years ago. A couple would hang around shopping centres inviting lone women to smell a new perfume. The “perfume” turned out to be chloroform which knocked the woman out so she could be kidnapped. I think I had an email about it, before social media existed.

Not sure who all these kidnap victims are or what happened to them!

I'm an idiot. I misread it, as you pointing it out (because "Oh, really?" can sound agreeable, or question, but the fault is all mine, as I didn;t read the thread title properly either) Sorry. You DID NOT point it out. Good for you and you were kind to move the conversation on.

If you don’t like the person go for it. Otherwise keep quiet.

The one we had at school was the female babysitter receiving weird threatening calls and reported it to the police; they rang her back and told her to get out of the house immediately because the calls were coming from the upstairs phone. I think they've made it into a film now.

Don't know what happened ti the children she was babysitting!

Is this the one you're thinking of?

https://www.nationaltrust.org.uk/visit/wales/craflwyn-and-beddgelert/discover-the-legend-of-gelert

If so, definitely a rural legend rather than an urban one! 😅

There was another doing the rounds bizarrely that Stan Laurel was Clint Eastwoods dad!

OMG I’d forgotten that one.

And Bob Holness played the saxophone on Baker Street.

😞

Oh the dead girl on the train one. A colleague told me it happened to her best friend, she completely believed her.

For those who don’t know it. A ticket collector tells a young women late at night that her ticket isn’t valid and she has to leave at next station. She panics but once she is off the police rush on. The ticket collector had noticed that a women a few rows back wasn’t asleep she was dead (stabbed normally) and two men where transporting the body

Why would it make you annoyed? Its just story telling for entertainment. Id give an eye roll if i heard one but getting irrationally angry is a bit extreme. Its mostly kids at school that tell these stories. I remember the Mc Chicken sandwich abscess one and also the Richard gere hamster one. There was another doing the rounds bizarrely that Stan Laurel was Clint Eastwoods dad!

Mackenzie Crook used that in Small Prophets recently!

They treated everyone listening as stupid, expecting them to believe the tall tale.

You treated everyone listening as stupid, by pointing out the tall tale. You also treated the tale-teller rudely by humiliating them at a social gathering.

Both you and the tale teller have social anxiety and do not know how to behave outside of the home.

Also, penguins are usually some of the most popular animals at a zoo. There’s always peoples crowding around them so would be very hard for children especially to get in and steal one! Plus they’re pretty big, hefty creatures up close, plus wet and fairly smelly. And they do not want to be put in bags.

YES someone told me this at uni and I believed that it had happened to her neighbour, and went around telling everyone 🤣🙈

There’s a good joke version of this where the person says “stay away from X town”, the shopper asks why, and the first person says “because it’s a shithole” 😂

This reminds me of when I first started work as a local newspaper reporter and at the time, the big urban legend of the day was the one where somebody woke up from being unconscious or something and found they’d had a kidney stolen. My Newsdesk one day claimed they found the actual person this had happened to and were trying to make me go out to their house to interview them.

It was only when lots of us in the office pointed out that this was probably a load of bollocks that Newsdesk relented and I didn’t have to go after all. I wonder did I miss the Scoop of the Century?

"La -- a" is still turning up on weird baby name threads-
it's always "my brother's girl friends sister's child has one in their class"

Hang on… 30 years ago, a good friend who was a primary school teacher told me her pupil had been caught taking a baby penguin from Edinburgh Zoo on a school trip - he popped it in his backpack.
She told me this in a lot of detail as the kid was in her class. Please don’t tell me it was a LIE?

No one has tried to steal me 🐧

I have heard of the spider bite and mini spiders 🕷️ in the arm many times

This is the perfect Sunday reading that i never knew existed. You are currently my fave mumsnetter 😁

Absolutely agree. Pretending to believe someone who is clearly lying is just encouraging lying.

I well remember back in the day on another forum when a poster told this ridiculous story of picking an apparently dead deer up out of the road and putting it in her back seat with her son and then the deer recovering - told it as true and it’s on Snopes as an urban myth.

It makes me irrationally annoyed.

Ah yes, Chlamydia and her twin sister Candida - lovely girls!

That's sad

My ex manager told me the one about the glitter spray before a smear test , that it had actually happened to her! Embarrassing!

As well as the L-a name story, there was one about people choosing Chlamydia as a name!

Hang on, the KFC rat story is totally true, it happened in Aldershot. I know because I was told it by a really believable guy at work... hang on a minute...