The neighbors, puzzlingly, told them just to go to bed for now and not to notify the police right away. They would make a few phone calls and see what could be done.
The couple woke up the next morning to find all of their missing property piled neatly on the front porch.
There is an international physics institute in Erice, Sicily, which holds regular summer schools for graduate students and young researchers. I was told this story by a fellow graduate student before attending a session this past summer.
A few years ago, according to the story, a student at the institute had his car stolen while attending. He told the director about it, and the director asked him to wait a day before calling the police. The next morning the car was parked outside the school, intact and freshly washed.
I mentioned this story to a few other students when I arrived at Erice, and three or four others had heard variations, one involving a purse instead of a car.
I heard the first version in Washington, D.C., in 1984 and subsequently received it from several other locations. The second is from Steven Carlip of Austin, Texas, who sent it to me in September 1986. The stolen-car version is also told in the United States, as well as various stories about Mafia members offering someone a free hit job in return for a favor. I referred to this story as “The Helpful Mafia Neighbor” in my book The Mexican Pet; in the Italian translation of the book the title was “I favori del vicino mafioso,” which seems to have an authentic gangland accent. However, the background of the story may be American gangster folklore rather than traditions about the Mafia. An older story tells of a distinguished foreign scholar visiting MIT many years ago who had some valuable equipment and an expensive overcoat stolen from his rental car. Since his host was on familiar terms with Al Capone, the stolen goods were promptly returned. A similar incident is reported in The Autobiography of Lincoln Steffens (1931); Steffens, a muckraking journalist, supposedly had his pocket picked in New York City and mentioned it to his acquaintance, the head of the police detective bureau. Two days later, everything stolen was returned.
“The Two Hitchhikers”
A traveling salesman was driving from Seattle to Spokane late in the day and found himself getting sleepy. He decided to pick up a hitchhiker to keep himself awake. Just past Vantage, he saw a man with his thumb out.
The man was no sooner in the car than the salesman feared he had made a serious error. In his 40s, the man was unshaven and roughly attired, had little to say, and began looking around the car as if to see if there was anything worth stealing.
The salesman decided to pick up another hitchhiker, hoping for safety in numbers. Before he got to the town of George, he saw another man hoping for a ride and picked him up.
The new passenger was a clean-cut young man who looked as if he were headed to college. The rider got in the back seat, behind the first hitchhiker in the front. The salesman’s relief was short-lived, however, for the car was no sooner back on the highway when the young man pulled a gun and ordered the driver to stop.
When the car was on the shoulder, the holdup man ordered the pair out of the car with a gesture of the pistol.
The gesture pointed the gun away from the front-seat occupants, and the first hitchhiker promptly dived into the back seat and knocked the young thief cold with a solid right in the jaw. The older man pocketed the pistol and relieved the would-be robber of his wallet.
“Forty dollars,” he reported to the salesman, “20 for you and 20 for me.”
“No, thanks,” the salesman replied, happy merely to have escaped. The older man shrugged; he was now expansive and talkative.
“He’s new in the business,” he said of the robber. “He’ll have to learn that a gun ain’t a pointer. I’ve been in the business 20 years. I don’t make dumb mistakes anymore.”
At the salesman’s horrified look, the man laughed. “Oh, I ain’t working today. Just going to Spokane on a visit.”
This is the full text of the story I summarized in my 1989 book Curses! Broiled Again!, as told by Seattle Times columnist Erik Lacitis in a feature published on February 10, 1983. The story was sent to Lacitis by a reader; subsequently I received another version remembered from the 1930s by one of my readers from Tooelle, Utah. Jasper Maskelyne, descendant of the famous English magician John Nevil Maskelyne (1839–1917), tells a similar story that was a personal experience in his 1938 book White Magic: The Story of Maskelynes. Mr. Maskelyne was driving a fast new car when he picked up a scruffy-looking hitchhiker who spoke in “a rather impudent Cockney voice.” When a policeman stopped Maskelyne for speeding, the passenger backed Maskelyne’s false claim that he was not exceeding the speed limit. The policeman took detailed notes, and let them proceed. When they arrived at the hitchhiker’s destination, the man thanked him, “Then he pushed two fat wallets into my hands, and disappeared. One was the policeman’s note-book and the other my own pocket-book full of pound notes!” Maskelyne claims that he removed the incriminating pages of the notebook and mailed the rest back to the police anonymously. Thus, in this instance, both the crook and the layman were schemers.
“The Double Theft”
This “true” story was told to me back in 1970 in Silver Spring, Maryland. This woman, a friend of my friend who told the story, goes shopping downtown (in Washington, D.C.) at Lord & Taylor’s department store. While there, she has occasion to use the restroom. She hangs her handbag on the hook provided in the stall and no sooner has she sat down, then a hand reaches over the door, grabs her purse, and the person runs out the door. By the time she pulls everything up or down, buckles or snaps, etc., the person is long gone!
So she goes into the store offices and reports the theft. Usually the person will take the money and throw the bag into a trash can, leaving all those pain-in-the@#&/-to-duplicate cards and keys in the bag. Sure enough, a couple of days later she gets a phone call from the store manager informing her that the handbag has been recovered. Such a nice man!
“How soon can you get here?” (“I only live 30 minutes away.”) “Do you need a sitter for your children?” (“Oh no, they’re all in school.”) “I hope my phone call didn’t wake your husband.” (“Oh no, he works a regular 9-to-5 job.”)
Anyway, she gets downtown and, you guessed it, nobody knows a thing about her purse! She drives home in confusion and upon arriving discovers that in her absence a moving van has backed up to the door (as her neighbors later testify) and cleaned out the house.
One of my co-workers swears this happened to her husband’s co-worker’s sister’s friends…which was what tipped me off immediately (clue #1). It apparently happened in Rouyn, a small town in northern Quebec.
A couple went out to dinner and when they returned, their barbecue was missing. They did not file a police report immediately (clue #2). The next day, after work, they returned home to find their barbecue back in its place, with a note—something to the effect that “We’re sorry we borrowed your barbecue without permission; we had company over and our tank ran out of gas, so we borrowed yours. To make up for the inconvenience, here are two tickets to a show” (clue #3—who would bother doing that?).
The couple went to the show (clue #4—are people that stupid?) and when they came back their house had been robbed (clue #5—much too convenient).
The purse story was sent to me in October 1988 by Christine Turner in response to a column of mine on “The Double Theft.” She confessed that until reading the column she had believed the story. The barbecue grill story was sent to me in September 1995 by Katrina Spencer of Ottawa, Canada, who represents the skeptical approach to urban legends. “The Double Theft” was reported by folklorists as early as 1972 from England and is a favorite international urban legend. English and Spanish versions claim that theater tickets were left by the thieves, Italian versions mention a dinner at a good restaurant, while a Norwegian version says the tickets are for a popular music hall revue in Oslo. I have Australian versions of the story in which tickets for either a ballet or
an opera are sent to the victims. In the United States, the object stolen is usually a car, a car battery, or a barbecue grill; the tickets are most often to a sports event, but sometimes to a concert or a Broadway show. In the May 28, 1985, issue of the Wall Street Journal an article reported on the “true” car-theft stories submitted in a Chicago contest. One of the entrants claimed that his car had been stolen, then returned, along with two tickets for a Rolling Stones concert. You can guess the conclusion. Lucky for him, his story did not win one of the $400 prizes.
“The Robber Who Was Hurt”
Here is a story that I haven’t seen in print anywhere. It always is set in new housing estates.
During the day when her husband is at work, a housewife is boiling some milk for coffee when she sees a hand coming through the open window in the hall, about to unlock the door from the inside. She snatches the pan of boiling milk, runs up the hall, and pours it over the intruding hand.
Very shaken, she waits a few minutes then goes next door to her neighbour for comfort. At her neighbour’s house, the neighbour’s husband is in the act of bandaging his badly burned hand.
Sent to me in June 1983 by Roger Millington of Kingston, Surrey, England. This is a well-known legend in Great Britain with the intended victim sometimes burning the attempted intruder with a hot poker or an iron. This modern urban legend is an updating of older traditional stories, such as the fairy tale called “The Clever Maid at Home Kills the Robbers” and the legend “The Witch Who Was Hurt.” In the latter, a witch is able to take the form of an animal—usually a black dog or a cat—when attacking a victim. After the animal is wounded in its paw, the witch is unmasked the next day when she shows up in the village with a bandaged hand. Only a few versions of “The Robber Who Was Hurt” have been collected in the United States, including the following example, which effectively combines two distinct legend types.
“A Double-Whammy Theft Legend”
As told by Jack Paar
Another story that goes on and on is the one about the couple who received two free tickets to the theater anonymously through the mail. On the evening they planned to use the tickets the husband had to work late so they had to give up their plan to go to the theater. The wife was home alone, doing some ironing, when to her consternation she saw a hand reaching through the mail slot on the door to open it.
Horrified, she realized they had been sent the tickets to get them out of their apartment so it could be burglarized in their absence. Grabbing a hot poker she struck at the hand reaching in to open the door. Then she dashed to the phone to call her friend down the hall and ask for help.
“I can’t come,” her friend said in a distraught voice. “My husband just came in with his hand horribly burned.”
Where do such stories come from? Who makes them up in the first place? No one seems to know. Yet every once in a while someone tells one on our show—as having happened to them or someone they know.
From Chapter 16, “Stories in Their Anecdotage,” in Jack Paar’s 1961 book My Saber Is Bent. This legend combines “The Double Theft” with “The Robber Who Was Hurt.” Even though Jack Paar seems to have an ear for modern legends, he somewhat confuses the above example by having the woman grab a hot poker to stop the intruder rather than using the hot iron already in her hand. Possibly Johnny Carson inherited Jack Paar’s Tonight Show story files, for in 1984 Carson told the same combined version of the two legends as quoted above, except that he did have the woman burn the intruder with her hot iron.
“The Grocery Scam”
A girl walked into a supermarket and bought some groceries—a couple of things like bread and a carton of milk. At the checkout the woman in front of her turned around and said, “Oh, my God, it’s my daughter back from the dead. You’re my daughter, aren’t you?”
“No, I’m not your daughter,” the girl replied.
“You look so much like my daughter who died a couple of years ago. Would you do me a favour? When I leave and say ‘Goodbye,’ would you say ‘Goodbye, Mum,’ just for old time’s sake?”
The girl agreed and did as she was asked when the woman left the store. Then, as the girl prepared to pay for her groceries, the checkout woman asked for $160.
“But I only bought a loaf of bread and some milk!” she said.
“But your Mum said you were going to pay for it.”
“No, that’s not my Mum,” said the girl.
“Yes it is. You said ‘Goodbye, Mum’.”
“Caught at the Checkout” from Graham Seal’s 1995 book Great Australian Urban Myths, p. 100. This story is also known in the United States, where sometimes the scam artist approaches a young man, saying he looks exactly like a son who was killed in Vietnam. It’s possible that this story represents an actual scam, with the con person and the “victim” working together to cheat the store or restaurant. In his 1991 autobiography Take My Life, Please, comedian Henny Youngman described using the same technique to get a free meal at a New York restaurant. He would leave the table first, and tell the cashier that “The person who waves will be paying my check.” Then he would wave at the table of friends with whom he had dined, and “Someone would always wave back, and you’d be on your way.” Several readers have reported to me that Jack Benny enacted the same trick either in one of his films or on his television series.
“The Shoplifter’s Hat”
I heard this one while working for a local grocery chain. While the store was full of local retirees, an older gentleman was seen slowly exiting the store with a drop of blood coming from under his hat. The manager rushed over inquiring about the blood, wondering if the man fell, etc. The man nervously explained that he just wanted to leave. The store manager, while trying to help the man out, lifted the hat to find an unpackaged steak sitting on the man’s bald head. The man was promptly arrested for shoplifting.
Lane Yerkes. From Smithsonian vol. 23 #8
What a meathead!
When she first saw blood dribbling from the customer’s head, a California grocery clerk wanted to call an ambulance. But a closer look revealed that the man was trying to smuggle a steak out of the store by hiding it under his hat. Unfortunately for him, the package began to leak while he was waiting in the checkout line. You know, that sort of thing just wouldn’t happen with broccoli.
The first version, sent to me in March 1997 by Rich Wickliffe of Coconut Creek, Florida, is a well-known story in communities with a large retired or homeless population. The second version is from Vegetarian Times for July 1990. This story has been well known in Europe since the early 1970s, especially in England and in Scandinavia, and usually concerning a woman trying to steal a frozen chicken concealed in her hat. Older prototypes for the story describe another variety of meat or butter concealed under someone’s hat in an attempt to steal the food. A version in which the chicken is concealed in the shoplifter’s bra became popular in the United States and Canada in the early 1990s.
“Indecent Exposure”
I heard a funny story the other day. It’s true, though. My roommate heard it from a friend of his who lives in Boston. This couple he knows got married last year and decided to go to Jamaica for their honeymoon.
In the first couple of days they were down there, their hotel room was broken into. But nothing was taken. No money, nothing. So they forgot all about it. They just figured that the burglar must have been interrupted right after he got in. They had a great time the rest of their honeymoon. Hanging around on the beach, swimming, sailing around in the ocean. Everything was perfect.
And then they went home. About a week later they went and picked up the pictures from their trip. And as they flipped through them, through all the shots of the beach and the sunset and the waves, in among them was a shot of this native Rastafarian guy in the bathroom of their hotel room. And he’s got his pants down with his back to the camera and when the couple looks closer, they can see that the guy’s got the wife’s toothbrush stuck in the one place in Jamaica where the sun do
esn’t shine.
This the earliest published example of this popular story I have found; it appeared in Jay Forstner’s article “Local Legends” in the Ann Arbor (Michigan) Observer for March 1991, p. 35. The earliest oral versions of this legend I have are dated in the autumn of 1990, and I have received some 60 further reports, half of them in 1991, and the latest in 1996. Most versions claim that the incident happened to a couple vacationing in a tropical paradise, but the story is also told about various European capitals. In Australian versions the perpetrators are sometimes identified as Aborigines. Alan Dumas of the Rocky Mountain News in Denver, Colorado, sent me a version in March 1991 in which the victims load their vacation slides into a tray without first viewing them; they discover the outrageous toothbrush picture when showing their slides to friends and family members. Issue number 30 of FOAFtale News (June 1993) included discussions of this story that had circulated on the Internet, plus reports of it being told in the Netherlands and in New Zealand. The Kiwi version claims that the thieves filmed their outrageous action on the victims’ video camera. In the summer of 1991 a Chicago theater group called the Neo-Futurists included a short skit in their revue that involved several actors brushing their teeth in the background while a narrator told the “Indecent Exposure” story.
Too Good to Be True: The Colossal Book of Urban Legends Page 31