Urban Legends??

Miss Fluff

Anyone got any good stories/urban legends? Got one that I can think of off the top of my head.

One is based on the DART somewhere in leafy suburbia on the Southside sometime in the late 80s when mobile phones resembled breeze blocks and one was seen as a very Flash Harry if one possessed one. This particular morning, this incredibly obnoxious loudmouth oaf, let's call him Mr.Loudmouth, was SHOUTING into his over-sized contraption (not unlike Dom Jolly - I'M IN THE CINEMMMAAAAAAA) essentially letting everyone know that he was successful and loaded. He shouted about stocks, about shares, about acquisitions, about mergers, about his Porsche being taken in for a service, about flying to Monte Carlo for holiday the week after.....you get the picture. Undoubtedly really p1ssing off everyone within earshot with his blatant showing off. Next thing you know however, one of his fellow-commuters, an elderly chap, collapsed on the train and mass hysteria ensued when it became apparent that this old man had suffered a pretty serious heart attack. Everyone on the carriage started to panic when someone took control of the situation and said that we need to get to a phone immediately so we can call for an ambulance. Everyone turned to Mr. Loudmouth and pleaded with him to get off the phone so they could phone for the paramedics to come quickly. The problem was Mr. Loudmouth wouldn't get off the phone and continued his conversation. Disturbed by his reticence, his fellow passengers completely lost it with him and started screaming at him to phone 999, the screaming and pleading continued until Mr.Loudmouth had no other option but to admit to his fellow-passengers that his mobile phone was in fact a fake and he merely had it to show off.....:eek: :eek: :eek: :eek:

LOL

AARRRGH

Slightly OT, but I hate the way people take www.snopes.com to always be correct. I know for a fact that some of the things they claim to be Urban Legends are actually true!

petes

Reminds me of something that happened. A guy was walking down the street talking on his mobile thinking he was cool and what happens? You guessed it. It rang. This actually happened. Knew the guy.

D

dublindude wrote:

Slightly OT, but I hate the way people take www.snopes.com to always be correct. I know for a fact that some of the things they claim to be Urban Legends are actually true!

Such as?

monkeyfudge

dublindude wrote:

I know for a fact that some of the things they claim to be Urban Legends are actually true!

Of course they're true... they happened to your bestfriend's cousin's boyfriend... how could they be anything but?

xzanti

petes wrote:

Reminds me of something that happened. A guy was walking down the street talking on his mobile thinking he was cool and what happens? You guessed it. It rang. This actually happened. Knew the guy.

Go on it was you wasnt it

tbh

Theres a good book on the subject called "The tale of the choking Doberman" which goes through the origin of a lot of cool urban legends. Whats that? the Doberman? oh ok,

There's a guy who lives alone in a big house, and who keeps a doberman as a pet and guard dog. One night he goes out, and when he comes home, his doberman is lying in the hall, gasping for breath. The owner frantically rings a vet who agrees to call out. Couple of minutes later the vet duely arrives, and begins to examine the dog. suddenly he looks horrifed and rushs out of the room, pulling out his mobile phone. The owner goes "wtf? like" and asks the vet whats going on. The vet reaches into the dogs throat and gently pulls out two human fingers. When the cops arrive moments later, they find a robber, minus two fingers, curled up in a ball in an upstairs wardrobe.

Total crap, of course, but I like it. My favourite is the one of the young Irish country gent, who leaves his town for the first time in his life to visit his uncle in New York. The two lads head out drinking, but get seperated. Unable to find his way home, our hero decides to sleep on a park bench, and find his way in the morning. Locked, he falls into a deep sleep. When he wakes up the next morning, his shoes, watch and wallet are gone, and he has a diagonal cut across the back of his hand. Dazed, he stumbles into a police station to report the robbery. He tells the cop about the theft, and explains about the cut on his hand - he has no idea how it got there. The cop explains how lucky he actually is. He tells him that gangs of thieves roam through the park after dark, stealing from people - they cut the back of your hand to make sure you are in a deep sleep. If you wake up, they cut your throat.
:eek:

petes

xzanti wrote:

Go on it was you wasnt it

No but as you can see from my sentence I "knew" the guy!!

Oriel

petes wrote:

I "knew" the guy!!

In the biblical sense?

jd

Back in the 80s (eek!), a guy I knew brought a brief case everywhere. "Everywhere" usually being Keogh's Pub. We were really curious about what successful enterprise he was involved in (this being the 80s), so when he went to the Jacks someone opened it. All it contained was a "hang sandwich" and a can of coke.
jd

monkeyfudge

caimin wrote:

He tells him that gangs of thieves roam through the park after dark, stealing from people - they cut the back of your hand to make sure you are in a deep sleep. If you wake up, they cut your throat.
:eek:

Oh.. that's pretty cool.

But they can't be a very profitable gang... as I'm sure most people who sleep on park benches after dark wouldn't actually have much money.

Guy:Incognito

jd wrote:

Back in the 80s (eek!), a guy I knew brought a brief case everywhere. "Everywhere" usually being Keogh's Pub. We were really curious about what successful enterprise he was involved in (this being the 80s), so when he went to the Jacks someone opened it. All it contained was a "hang sandwich" and a can of coke.
jd

We had a guy come into our shop once who bought one of those metal laptop cases that look like it shoul dbe handcuffed to the Russian interior minister with Nuclear codes inside. He promptly put him lunch in it and strolled off.

Dyr

google for "purple ackie" or "purple aki". Thats interesting

i heard there's people on forums who belittle others for incorrect spelling and grammar in posts. It's probably just an urbane legend though

Shabadu

petes wrote:

Reminds me of something that happened. A guy was walking down the street talking on his mobile thinking he was cool and what happens? You guessed it. It rang. This actually happened. Knew the guy.

When I was in school, this happened to a classmate on the DART- she promptly shouted to her imaginary friend: "I've got to go, I've got a call on the other line!" and answered the call.

Hobbes

dublindude wrote:

Slightly OT, but I hate the way people take www.snopes.com to always be correct. I know for a fact that some of the things they claim to be Urban Legends are actually true!

Do you have an example?

Actually the fun is the forums there as you can watch they pick a legend to bits and the research they do to find out as much as possible.

I do know snopes has some items that are intentionally false.
http://www.snopes.com/lost/mistered.asp

(read the link at the bottom of the mister ed page).

rubadub

Some urban myths are so general and not so bizarre that they could easily happen.

Are there any specifically Irish urban myths.
Only one I know is the crap about poitin turning into crystals in your stomach, so if you drink water the next day they will dissolve and you will get pissed again.

Kolodny

monkeyfudge wrote:

But they can't be a very profitable gang... as I'm sure most people who sleep on park benches after dark wouldn't actually have much money.

Very good point.

That story reminds me a bit of this one...

I heard about a girl who went back to her dorm room late one night to get her books before heading to her boyfriend's room for the night. She entered but did not turn on the light, knowing that her roommate was sleeping. She stumbled around the room in the dark for several minutes, gathering books, clothes, toothbrush, etc. before finally leaving.
The next day, she came back to her room to find it surrounded by police. They asked if she lived there and she said yes. They took her into her room, and there, written in blood on the wall, were the words, "Aren't you glad you didn't turn on the light?" Her roommate was being murdered while she was getting her things.

jimmidy_cricket

I heard this legend ages ago and I'd love for someone to be able to say for sure if its true or not, although personally I think its not but anyway:

The Hay'Penny bridge is somewhere in america, the one thats in Dublin is a replica and the original was broken down and shipped over to the states when it was alegedly being 'painted' oooh about three years ago now I think.

Some rich yank employed his own staff to do the job to keep it hush hush.

I'd like to know of anyone who woked on the bridge while it was being painted. Do you all remember the time span I'm talking about? It would've been after the melenium bridge was opened and the hay'penny bridge was bordered up with scafold and you couldn't see in.

Has anyone else heard of anything similar? I'm still of the opinion its not true because I question why someone would do that, why not just build a replica, and how could someone be allowed do that etc. etc. but then again I can't prove it is the original either so there you go!

youcancallmeal

dublindude wrote:

Slightly OT, but I hate the way people take www.snopes.com to always be correct. I know for a fact that some of the things they claim to be Urban Legends are actually true!

I was under the impression that they stated wether it had been proven or not?

Sarsfield

rubadub wrote:

Are there any specifically Irish urban myths.

Have you never watched Podge & Rodge? Although I believe most of their stories are factual.

MorningStar

jimmidy_cricket wrote:

The Hay'Penny bridge is somewhere in america, the one thats in Dublin is a replica and the original was broken down and shipped over to the states when it was alegedly being 'painted' oooh about three years ago now I think.

Except you could see the brdge going into a skip and some clever so anso baought it all and sold in in seperate frames . It was in the papers and the guy was on the radio about it.

The stupid one I hate is that Temple Bar is named so as jewish people were barred from the area.

The fact a land owner called Temple or Templor and a river bank can be called a bar has nothing to do with it .

rubadub

Sarsfield wrote:

Have you never watched Podge & Rodge? Although I believe most of their stories are factual.

Yeah, they have some classic myths, but I havent seen any specifically Irish ones, like that temple bar one for instance, I have never heard of it before.

yeah!urban legends ock!always good craic freaking the lads out wit fake stories after a night out!

monkeyfudge

jimmidy_cricket wrote:

I heard this legend ages ago and I'd love for someone to be able to say for sure if its true or not, although personally I think its not but anyway:

The Hay'Penny bridge is somewhere in america, the one thats in Dublin is a replica and the original was broken down and shipped over to the states when it was alegedly being 'painted' oooh about three years ago now I think.

Some rich yank employed his own staff to do the job to keep it hush hush.

It would have been in 2000 or in 2001... the Ha'Penny needed to be completely refurbished as it was unsafe. Once the newer millennium foot bridge was open the Ha'Penny was closed for about half a year. As was said, the old wood was just being dumped but some American guy took it all and as far as I know he was selling it in fragments to people who wanted to own a part of the bridge.

tk123

the only Irish one I can think of is if you hop around the Pepper Cannister/other place were hookers hang out backwards 3 times you'll see the devil...

johnny_ultimate

Heard one that freaked the bejesus out of me once.
Some forest in Wicklow, there used to be a club called the hellfire club. Used to be some crazy happenings there - wont explain them cause im thinking about the children Anyway legend had it even the devil hung around there.
Well one night during a really happening shindig the people hanging out there decided to go to the local village and steal all the girls. One of the local lads was awoken by the noise and followed the group back to the club. he stayed in the bushes for a while and suddenlly the whole place blew up, and the devil himself leaped from the roof.

Totally and utterly bs of course, but scared me sitting up a dark forest at 3 o clock one night.

Edit : oh yeah forgot the part about anyone who enters the forest now will die soon after. Sliped my mind...

Rb

I'm an urban legend tbh.

tk123

how comes every other coutries urban legends are cool and all the irirsh ones involve the devil?!

Piste

Because you touch yourself at night.

Apparently my friend's friend was having a **** in his room with his eyes closed and wearing headphones. When he was finished he looked over to see that his lunch had been placed on his desk in him room

johnny_ultimate

^^^ someones been watching Ricky Gervais ^^^

Silverfish

johnny_ultimate wrote:

Edit : oh yeah forgot the part about anyone who enters the forest now will die soon after. Sliped my mind...

I was in the forest and I nearly died right then, its about nine vertical miles to get to the place.

Pighead

Pighead was told by a "buddy"a while back that your eyes are the same size the whole way through your life ie they never grow. Of course having a few cans of hakkenberg in me,I thought this was an amazing fact and proceeded to tell all and sundry.

People were impressed with Pigheads interesting facts and the chicks went wild for him. There's the sexy bloke that knows stuff" they shrieked.His stock was never higher.Then disaster,the "fact" turned out to be a load of horsepoo,the chicks left quicker than you can say "Phoney".

Pighead became a recluse and has spent the last 6 months posting on an Irish Website in an attempt to rebuild his confidence.HE HATES URBAN LEGENDS

Mossy Monk

petes wrote:

Reminds me of something that happened. A guy was walking down the street talking on his mobile thinking he was cool and what happens? You guessed it. It rang. This actually happened. Knew the guy.

i did actually see this happen back when mobiles werent as popular as they are now. pretentious ****wits will always exist

Terry

i know a guy who had that happen to him about a year ago. he's a bar man and it happened while he was behind the bar. everyone laughed their ass off at him.

monkeyfudge

Piste wrote:

Because you touch yourself at night.

Apparently my friend's friend was having a **** in his room with his eyes closed and wearing headphones. When he was finished he looked over to see that his lunch had been placed on his desk in him room

For a great many years now a good friend of mine claims that this happened to him... altough it was a cup of tea... I've never actually believed it though...

Your friend's friend isn't from Wicklow by any chance?