Anyone remember chain letters?

[sandrapinchedmysandwich]

I just saw, something on social media where a guy was telling people to follow him or receive 5 years bad luck. Which reminded me of chain letters. They don't seem to exist now thank goodness but I received a few when I was younger so people obviously believed them. I never really understood the point of them but some could be really quite menacing.

Can anyone else remember them?

Oh yes! About 30 years ago? Maybe more?

People would send them to me, as they knew I'd happily break the chain 😂

Yeah, we were always told to throw them away, but some people would do them. My friend did and gave one to me but I threw it away. Who wants to copy letters out 5 times or whatever! Imagine that now! I do miss proper letters though

Oh yes I remember them!

They were actually taken quite seriously when I was young. We used to get warnings at school and from our parents to ignore them and not get involved because they were seen as quite harmful.

Thankfully stamps are too expensive to do this now! There were email equivalents when email started to become common but they died out quickly.

I remember one naming people as a warning. It went something like "Claire from Leeds ignored this letter and a week later her house burnt down". "Sarah from Glasgow also ignored and she died the next day"

WTF 😒

My local radio DJ used to ask people to send them to him so he could destroy them on air and break the chain. Nice guy.

I do miss proper letters

I got a birthday card from my sister recently and it had a " proper letter" inside it. And I only realised then how long it had been since I'd seen one. It was like holding a piece of history in my hand.

It just took me back to all those years ago when I left home to be a student and the onlycommunication we had with those at home was hand written letters and talking on the phone after queuing for goodness knows how long at the public call box.

My dad demonstrated the maths to me, which I found compelling. It was along the lines of this chain letter has been going for x years and he showed me quite quickly it wasn't possible.

I wrote a letter to my kids at uni recently and they liked it, both were saying they definitely wanted to send one back but they’re getting round to it! My dd’s friend has moved abroad and she’s written her a letter but not had one back. Bring back letter writing! (Not chain letters though!)

The chain letters that passed around when I was at school were never nasty. They were always of the type that included something, eg a stamp, or a coin, or a picture, with the instruction to send it on with five more to six people. A sort of inverted MLM. I don't remember what was supposed to happen, but the social pressure was just to keep the chain going, nothing nasty. I stopped participating when it became too expensive for my pocket money. Which was just after I realised that I would receive one stamp and spend twelve!

I remember them & getting really quite scared. Do miss receiving “ proper letters” though. I have a leather writing case somewhere that was one of my favourite presents for my 11th birthday. It contains letters from my beloved maternal Grandmother. Need to dig that out!

I remember the more benign chain letters - send your favourite recipe to the bottom person on the list, and forward this letter to 5 people and in 4 weeks, you'll get 100 recipes in the post from all over the world.

Anyone remember Herman's cake? That was a chain letter in physical form.....

Yeah, that was the other thing that got me to stop bothering with chain letters - I never got one reply, let alone 100s.

Yep. I always threw them out but they did make me feel uneasy.