The Hissing Yucca Plant

This was one that I heard when I was at school in the late 80s. Marc, the friend who told us the story, claimed to have read it in the Daily Mail, which (if true) doesn't say a whole lot for that paper's standards of investigative journalism.

A family bought a large Yucca plant. The family noticed that when they watered the plant, it would hiss. They wondered if this was some kind of respiration sound. After this had happened several times, the family sought professional advice from a pest controller, who arrived swiftly and removed the plant from the house before explaining that the plant had a fully grown female tarantula nesting in it, and that the spider was about to give birth.

Do tarantulas even give birth as such? Or nest in Yucca plants?? The answer to both questions is no. A rather more melodramatic version of this story is reproduced on Snopes.com here:

http://www.snopes.com/horrors/insects/cactus.asp

Killer In The Car

Firstly, welcome to my Urban Legends blog.

I'm intending to blog any urban legends I stumble across personally.

Well let's start the ball rolling eh?

The Killer In The Car story was told to me in about 1991 by my ex-girlfriend. She swore blind that this story had actually happened to a friend of hers. (I wish now that I had asked which friend it was and then asked them about it myself.) The story is a variant of the well-known Killer In The Backseat story, as recorded here on Snopes.com - http://www.snopes.com/horrors/madmen/backseat.asp

Snopes.com, I should point out, is the best urban legend site you will ever find; all stories are sourced and verified wherever possible. OK, so the story I was told goes like this:

My ex's friend - why not call her Karen - was returning to her car after doing some shopping at the local supermarket one evening. Although she had driven to the supermarket alone, Karen could see that someone was sitting in the back seat. Decidely unnerved, Karen summoned up the courage to open the driver's side door. Stepping back, she shouted at the car's occupant (not unreasonably) "What are you doing in my car?". As the person leaned forward, Karen could see that her uninvited passenger was an old woman. The old woman told Karen that a strange man had just followed her across the empty car park. Frightened, she had taken refuge in Karen's car until the man had gone. The old woman then begged Karen to drive her home. Karen was sure that she had locked the car and was now thoroughly freaked out. Ignoring the pleas of the old woman, Karen ran over to a man who was coming out of the supermarket. She explained what was going on and asked the man to accompany her back to her car to help her deal with the strange intruder. As the pair returned to Karen's car, one of the doors was flung open and a figure jumped out and ran away into the night. Karen and her fellow shopper ran over, and the man gallantly searched the car. On the back seat he found two items - a halloween-style old lady mask, and a knife "a foot long"!

My ex was absolutely convinced that this story was true. Urban legends were by no means the popularly known phenomenon they are now, and I suspect that my ex would have been amazed and insulted if I had suggested that the story was basically a piece of folklore that played on popular fears (in this case, strangers menacing lone women).